"Again!" the temple master shouted.

Khorun breathed in and set his feet in a square stance. He put his hands out, palms toward each other. They started a couple of feet away, then Khorun started to draw them together, focusing on his internal energy. Nothing happened at first, but then, when his hands were mere inches apart, the mystical energy began to grow between them. Clay saw "QI ENERGY 20/60" show up in white script across the endless black of the background.

"Good," the temple master said. "Now do the steps I showed you to collect and store the energy." Khorun brought his feet together, then swept his right foot back in a wide arc. He settled his weight over that foot as he pulled his hands apart like the spreading of a crane's wings. "QI ENERGY 0/60; STORED: 15; DISSIPATION: 2/MIN."

So the stuff left the body and just went away if not used. Interesting. Clay figured the higher skills in cultivation would allow not just more storage capacity but slower "leakage," as well.

"Good," the temple master said. "Use your spear." Khorun held his bo staff at the ready in front of him. Then he thrust it toward a metal dummy while activating his Oaken Spear power. It went off smoothly, draining Khorun's qi, and did 19 damage to the dummy. Clay smiled, wrinkling her brow at the words, "MERIDIAN: NONE; DISRUPTION: 0."

The temple master grunted. He got down off his raised platform and walked to the dummy, rapping on it with a hollow "clong" sound. He nodded to himself, then turned to Khorun. "Pretty pathetic," he said.

Clay was taken aback. "Master?"

"You did damage to the Bronze Man," the temple master said. "Just damage. Like a club might do, or a dog, or a falling tree branch." He turned to the dummy. "It's not how hard you hit, but where," he said. "Oh, I don't mean joints or arteries, the meat of the physical body. I mean the places where the qi travels." He rapped it lightly on the jaw then the chest with one knuckle. "MERIDIAN: GOLD FIRE. DISRUPTION: 97."

"There," he said. "Now your opponent can't use his qi to attack or defend. It doesn't matter if you hit it like you're hammering a post into the ground now." He walked away.

"What now?" Khorun said.

"Now is lunch," the man said.

"Shall I return after lunch, Master?" Khorun asked.

"Mmm... no. No, you should go away now and practice."

"How will I know when I'm ready for further training?"

"When you're no longer as bad as you are now."

"So--" Khorun began.

"Listen," the temple master said. "Go talk to the mystic scribe. Follow the river up the hills to the west. He'll be at the mill. He'll answer some more of your endless questions. Already I'm worried you've put me off my lunch."

Khorun bowed wordlessly and left the bitter little temple-minder behind.

As Khorun left the roadside temple, Clay noticed soft lines, like a stripe, running underneath the temple--underneath the ground, in fact. The stripe seemed to run up the south side of the small hill the temple stood on, then east toward where the road dipped down into a valley. A vein of ore? Not likely; those showed up as much more irregular on the white-on-black wireframe view of PERSEUS. The stripe-line seemed more... well, active. She made a mental note of it and returned to the wayhouse.

Khorun's belongings were few enough that he carried them with him. The only thing that needed to be retrieved from the wayhouse was the little gargoyle. Clay made sure no one was around, then retrieved the object with its bundled code.

Clay examined what the ugly little statue had seen. There were three pairs or groups of people who had passed by the wayhouse since the previous evening. One individual had the low-latency earmark she theorized was the identifier of a Neuronet worker. Clay examined its identifiable attributes compared to the person--presumably a player; it'd be an extra complication if it were not--who traveled with them.

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The possible Flunky had less back-and-forth with the PERSEUS system handling requests from the Everhome worlds' player activity. It made sense, Clay thought: the Flunkies were "part" of the game world, with semi-independent NPC attributes 99 per cent of the time. It was only when the "human touch" was required that Neuronet parceled out resources to provide conversation or more active management. Carrying out the tasks of poor Biero in the village was something the programmed intelligent system could manage; taking the player's verbal abuse was the special privilege of the Neuronet "workers."

She thought perhaps she'd set a monitor where she found players standing idle, just to see the difference between them and NPCs, and them and Flunkies. Again the rude player's comment played in her head: she needed to get her own Flunky. Easily enough done, she figured, although Vonzell would have to do the majority of the work while Clay's vision was impaired. Vonzell was hardly a computer wizard. It wouldn't be a matter of simply plugging in another computer and running the game: Clay wanted to obscure the digital signature of the other game account.

For now, though, Clay set aside the gargoyle's code in a little cache. Khorun set off along the river. He pressed the gargoyle between his hands as if manipulating a ball of qi, then pulled them open again with a conical hat formed between them. He put the hat on his head, using his staff as a walking stick.

As Khorun progressed he noticed the river had one of the hazy lines running under it, like the monastery had. Perhaps this was a natural feature of this world. Another curving line bisected it at one point: that line was under the crest of a little ridge, over which the river fell in a tiny, picturesque waterfall.

He clambered up the grassy ridge, looking at the line underneath the earth. Suddenly struck with an idea, he assumed the semi-relaxed cultivation stance he'd been taught. He focused on building a ball of energy between his hands. After a moment, he was rewarded with a ball of qi. "QI ENERGY 22/60." Aha. Khorun moved over to the water and, setting his knees against the flow of the river, stood on the exact spot where the two subterranean lines met. He performed his qi cultivation again. "QI ENERGY 24/60." So that confirmed it: the lines underneath the earth boosted the qi capacity of anyone standing above them. They had to be some sort of energy, like ley lines.

Khorun had forgotten to store the qi he'd collected on the hill, and so concentrated on performing the qi-collection form while remaining on the intersection of the lines. "QI ENERGY 0/60; STORED: 18; DISSIPATION: 2/MIN." He was able to store a greater amount of qi as well. He imagined a couple of qi-using fighters standing on nearby lines and not wanting to give up their advantage: "Come over here and fight me." "No, you come over here."

He got quite a shock when an actual voice said, "Nice day for it." A tall, broad-shouldered young man was making his way down the hill. He was dressed in a fine silk tunic and pants, with a sword at his hip. "Are you cultivating?"

"Yes," Khorun said. "This seemed like a good spot for generating qi."

"For sure," the newcomer said. "It's a dragon-line intersection, yeh? I had it marked for me on Kompass."

"I don't know what that is," Khorun said. "I do not possess a compass. Not even a map."

The young man chuckled. "It's 'Kompass,' with a K," he said. "One of the aiders." When Khorun shrugged, he said, "The aiders are mini-programs you can run in some of the worlds. They help you with quests and finding your way around."

"Oh, like an API," Khorun said. Clay knew of the old protocols by which programs allowed other programs to talk to them.

"I guess," said the young man.

"Oh," Khorun said. He bowed. "I am Khorun."

"Fei-Lung," the young man said, and bowed. "So, mind if I use that spot to cultivate?"

"Oh, of course," Khorun said, stepping out of the river.

Fei-Lung stepped onto the spot where the dragon lines met. He stood in a basic stance, then looked up. "Wait--how did you know these dragon lines were here?"

Khorun indicated his blindfold. "There is seeing, and there is seeing," he said. He gave a little bow and headed back up along the river, allowing himself a small smile as he walked away out of sight.

It was no more than a couple of kilometers before Khorun arrived at a small, square house at the crest of a hill. Not surprisingly, a dragon line ran directly underneath the middle of the house.

Khorun knocked on the door. An old man answered.

"Greetings," Khorun said. "I was told a scribe might be found here on the hill. Do I have the honor of addressing him?"

The old man looked up at him, blinked, and blinked again. He stood still, his hands wrapped together in the deep sleeves of his emerald green silk robe. Finally, he spoke.

"Bletchley," the old man said.