It wasn’t easy, and his back was killing him, but Sendai had finished unloading the cart by himself. At his relatively early level of development it was definitely a two person job, but the back-ache he’d given himself by the time Liu returned was worth the water talisman.

After getting his tallystick marked with the day’s work, obviously Sendai needed a walk to stretch out his spine. So he took one. The path down to Hualin town was the obvious choice – it had nothing to do with that talisman in the pocket of his sect robes. Besides, the training manual he’d been given detailed a breathing exercise he could practice while walking, timing his breathing against the steps he took, and trying it out was pretty chill. He didn’t know if he could feel the movement of qi in his breath yet, but it was cool.

No matter how nifty the breathing exercise was, it still got boring by the time he’d gone halfway down the path. So he pulled up a private window, just in the corner of his vision to do a little web browsing.

There wasn’t a power-levelling guide for eating, exactly, but there Sendai did find a years-old forum where someone had asked how to get their avatar acclimatized to eating and drinking practically legendary amounts.

It will come naturally, advised a Chinese player making use of machine translation. But it is good to increase the proportion of game access to limbic systems and autonomic systems to sense when the avatar is too full.

That? That was crazy. Those were parts of the brain you didn’t touch, mining. The brain’s limbic system was you. Memory, emotion, consciousness. And the autonomic system controlled breathing, heart rate. Fuck with that stuff and you’d piss yourself at best, kill yourself at worst.

Was giving a game that much access safe? Sendai didn’t even know if it was legal for software to interface that deeply, but the Wind of the Eight Kingdoms were based in China. Or Macau, anyway, which was like a territory. Special administrative region. Slandering the government was definitely against the law, but risky neuro-circuits? Maybe it was okay over there.

Over there? Sendai wasn’t anywhere near Macau, on or offline. He was in the Eight Kingdoms where around three hundred million people had active accounts, outnumbering the population of the entire ancient world. That big, and the laws of countries didn’t really apply. This part of the NeuroWeb was big enough for its own law.

Sendai would have to ask Liu or somebody about it. There had been some security settings his mining rig had refused to allow Eight Kingdoms to access, when he originally signed up, but there was always something his synaptic firewalls was blocking...

The arch over the gateway into Hualin came into sight. The town was picturesque, even if not all of the population was.

It didn’t take Sendai long to find the sidestreet where fucking Vincent Churuba and a couple of other guys in Sargasso black and red hassling a couple of kids in Mountain Mantis sect uniforms.

Actual kids. Like, the oldest looked about fifteen, the younger one maybe twelve.

“Are you two old enough to be out of school? Maybe you’re so retarded they kicked you out or something?”

“Please, uncle, we just want to leave.” The eldest shielded the younger, tried to lead him away, but one of fucking Vincent Churuba’s goons shoved the kid back against a wall.

“Hey, you wanna go, go,” the goon said. “All you gotta do is get past me.”

That was Jase. Jase wasn’t going to be a problem, his thing was watching Churuba do stuff and then pretend like he’d helped. Sendai didn’t recognize the other one, but he looked too skinny to be physically strong. Quick, maybe.

The first rank kids tried leaving again, were shoved up against the wall again by a laughing Jase.

“All you guys gotta do is leave,” Vincent fucking Churuba teased, grinning. “I didn’t know they let retards play this game.”

“And that is because you can’t afford a freakin’ mirror, Chalupa.” Sendai made himself known, sticking his thumbs in his belt and striding up.

Churuba narrowed his eyes, glaring over his shoulder. “Hey, fuck off, retard. I ain’t in the mood.”

“Oooh. Triple retard. Bonus score. You got any insults that an adult might use?”

Jase shoved one of the kids to the ground and turned his full attention on Sendai. “Vincent beat your ass. Broke your sword. You ain’t top dog no more, Hentai.”

Sendai clicked his tongue, pointing the finger guns at Jase. “Very good. Inventive. But you can’t just steal Chalupa’s old lines, Jase.” He blinked mockingly at Churuba. “You got tired of calling me that the dozenth time I tossed your ass out of the rust pit and into a body bag, didn’t you?”

“I said fuck off. I ain’t in the mood for your shit, Sendai.”

“You ain’t in the mood for my shit?” Sendai gestured at himself. “Lei tai. You, me, now. You win, I’ll fuck off back to my girlfriends for the rest of the day. I win, you fuck off back to...” He gasped in mock shock. “Oh, no. Starbright left your fucking toxic ass when you thought pissing on game landmarks was an alpha move, didn’t she?”

All the attention off them, the kids ran for it. But Vincent and his crew advanced on Sendai threateningly.

“Don’t fucking talk about her,” Churuba hissed.

“Fine. So let’s hit the lei tai man. Get them death waivers on. Beat my fucking skull in if you’re so into that.”

“I don’t need your fucking shit. I already put you down.” Churuba sneered.

“Oh? You too good for me now, Chalupa? Y’all think you and the boys are all Wu Tang Clan?” Sendai gestured at his goons with a twirl of the fingers. “Unfortunately, you just a damn sham.”

Churuba glanced to one side as the two mantis sect kids bolted out onto the main street, watching them go. “Make sure the town guard don’t see this,” he instructed the unfamiliar goon, then hauled his mace from his belt.

Sendai’s cocky grin ebbed away. “Lei tai? One on one?”

“You shouldn’t have fucking said shit about Starry.” Churuba shook his head slowly, setting his wildly inappropriate neon yellow hair swaying. “Three on one.”

Sendai steepled his fingers in front of himself, starting to walk backwards. “I’m just saying, man. Women don’t want a fucking alpha bro who pisses on everything, they wanna be around a guy who’s, like, fun to be around.”

The new guy glanced up and down main street. Shot a thumbs up Churuba and Jase’s way. “Clear!”

And Sendai’s way. Because while Churuba was lining up to say something incredibly smart about toxic masculinity, gender roles, and dating – or possibly something like ‘time to beat on that retard’? Sendai lunged forward and punched Jase in the gut before he could go for a weapon. One knee forward, slightly lowered, letting Sendai get low enough to punch up just under the ribs.

Jase huffed drooling lines of spit down his chin with a sickly wheeze, went down onto his knees, utterly winded. He crumpled forward, forehead hitting the street’s stones as he struggled to breathe.

That was punching with jing? Sendai liked having jing.

Churuba swiped out with the mace, but Sendai could dodge all day if he wasn’t trying to hit Churuba. And he wasn’t. He skipped backwards over Jase’s prone body, feinted left, right, left again as Churuba failed to decide which way he’d step around his downed buddy.

Sendai went right. Churuba chased him two steps, drew the mace back for a blow, and lashed out at Sendai’s face.

Last time, one hit had downed him. Maybe, maybe, Sendai could take one hit from Churuba and stay up, now. But he didn’t intend to find out – he arched backward out of the way, and when Churuba tried to take him on the backswing...

It was perfect. Almost exactly as Sendai had day-dreamed about, shoving peach baskets around.

The first swipe, the miss, had Churuba over-extended to the left, and he took another swing right from that position. Swinging out his arm with a scream, at gut level. Sendai shoved his head forward, pulled his hips and belly back, and whipped the paper Talisman out of his robes. The thread binding the talisman slipped off in his chest pocket – hidden in the fabric of his robe’s lower layer, beneath the front lapel. The paper fluttered, as Sendai reached out and slapped it onto the back of Churuba’s mace just as it went past Sendai’s navel.

Blue-black frost flared in three wave-like lines stacked one over the other on one side of the mace, glinting, even as the fiery red triangle ignited.

Churuba didn’t notice, spinning back to the right and glaring at Sendai as his mace started steaming, dripping a slurry of ash.

It exploded in his hand.

A gout of steam and shards of metal sprayed as two opposing elements warred with each other – water qi quenched fire qi, but as Sendai would later learn, it was possible for fire to evaporate water. More importantly, water could rust metal, and fire could vaporize metal.

And Churuba’s mace? Was just regular metal. Not reinforced, or pure steel, just boring-ass iron.

A fragment clicked into Sendai’s forehead with a sensation not unlike taking a bullet. He stumbled back into a wall, blood streaming down his face, only to look up and spot Vincent Churuba screaming and peppered with black, smoking flecks of what had a second ago been his mace.

“FUCK!” he roared.

There was a moment. Just a moment, as Churuba was screaming and bleeding and staring at what used to be his mace, when Sendai could’ve, like. Come up and stabbed him. Kicked him in the nuts.

The temptation was strong. Instead?

“Hey Vinny. Now that we’re even and can bury the hatchet, if you drop me a line, I’ll give you some dating advice, yeah?” Sendai gestured with his thumb and pinky out, miming a telephone.

“You motherfucker!”

About then, the town guard arrived just in time to see Sendai getting introduced to the new guy in Churuba’s gang by means of three traded punches, a slap in the face that left Sendai reeling, and a shin-stomp that made the new guy swear he’d rip off Sendai’s nuts.

“Joke’s on him, I don’t have any yet,” Sendai whispered to Tex through the holding cell’s bars.

The kids had brought the town guards, not appreciating that they were in the mood to give a beatdown first, ask questions later – anyone playing a cop was always in that mood.

The eldest, Vikram, was hovering uncertainly behind Tex with a somewhat familiar expression of hero-worship and wonder on his young face. Not that Sendai was a role model, of course.

Tex stroked the long ends of his moustache slowly, turning to gaze at the three boys in Sargasso Pirate gear in the opposite holding cell. Churuba was covered in too-watery blood, and that was the only colour on him. He and the new guy had logged out, leaving their avatars colourless in the cell. Jase was playing some kind of solitaire with a pack of long, thin cards, the size of bamboo slips.

“Well. I’ll bail you out,” Tex said, his voice a low whisper. “You still done wrong, boy.”

“I done wrong?”

Tex flashed a grin at him. “Next time, don’t get caught.”

Sendai clasped his hands together through the bar and bowed. “I hear your wisdom, Master Lio.”

Tex chuckled, and bounced a clinking money-bag in his palm as he went out to find the guards. Whether it was a fine he was paying, or a bribe, Sendai wasn’t altogether sure.

Vikram stayed behind, glancing nervously at Tex’s back, before bowing to Sendai. “Thank you for coming to our aid, older brother.”

Sendai looked down into the kid’s earnest face, pale brown with bushy eyebrows, and squinted at him. But moving his face hurt, and he winced as the shard of metal stuck in his skin shifted.

Vikram blinked. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just. You’re welcome, Vikram. Just try not to follow my example or anything.”

“As you say, older brother.” Vikram bowed again.

When the guard came to let Sendai out, Sendai paused before going.

“Hey, Jase?”

Jase glared up from his solitaire game. “What?”

“Let him know I’m serious about helping.” Sendai pointed at Churuba’s black and white avatar. “If he wants to get back with Starbright, he’s got to be less of an asshole. She was upset about that – one of Starry’s friends is friends with Arel.”

Jase looked at Churuba’s unconscious avatar, then back at Sendai distrustfully. “Yeah, whatever, man.” He got back to his solitaire game.

“Starry’s got single friends. Just sayin’.”

Jase narrowed his eyes at Sendai.

Vikram followed Tex and Sendai back to the sect compound with the other kid, darting at each other to practice weak versions of a rust brawler shin-stomp on each other the whole way.