Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui had barely arrived in the City of Heaven’s Sun before the heat very nearly scared them straight back out again. But they did not want to waste Ye Tianxie’s “kindness,” so they gritted their teeth and stayed, looking over everything around them without the smallest enthusiasm.

“I can’t take it… Is a place this hot fit for human beings?!” Zuo Pojun fanned himself with one hand. Even the air he breathed out felt hot.

“Fatty always did have trouble with heat… Oh, and never mind what this temperature does to the sense of touch — what concerns me is whether my flawless skin is going to be damaged… Even the smallest amount would be unforgivable.” Murong Qiushui shaded the sunlight off the top of his head and said it in a voice with real alarm in it, too. In fact the heat here did not come from the light at all. It came from the fire elemental spirits rioting in the Lava Hell to the south.

“This is not fat! This is powerful. Strong! Understand?” Zuo Pojun said, lifting an arm.

“Oh, oh, dearest Third Brother, don’t get excited. Being flabby is your most beautiful quality. Don’t you see that beside you I can play the delicate little bird to my heart’s content? Every one of those wicked men who covet my beauty takes one look at that big thick body of yours and puts on an expression of retreat and regret. Oh… retreat, because they are afraid. But why the regret, I wonder?”

Zuo Pojun: +_+……

Zuo Pojun very wisely chose not to answer that, because anything he said would have gone on forever. Murong Qiushui’s strange arguments came in an endless supply. It was not only his face that was unlike a normal man’s — the construction of his brain was plainly out of the ordinary too.

Just then Ye Tianxie’s voice came through Zuo Pojun’s communicator, calm with a trace of hurry running under it. “Pojun, Qiushui… log off right now… Pojun, get to my place and pick me up as fast as you possibly can — the fastest you can manage! Then we go north of the city!”

The call cut off. Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui looked at each other, and without another word between them they both logged off at once. Ye Tianxie almost never spoke to them in that tone, and what he had asked for was “the shortest possible time.”

The shortest possible time…

In the twenty-third century, maglev vehicles had gradually come into use worldwide for their low noise, high speed, low consumption and comfort. But fast as these ultra-low-altitude craft are next to anything on the ground, the sheer volume of people in Huaxia keeps that speed from ever being used. On the streets of Jinghua the limit still hovers around fifty miles an hour, the same as it was a hundred years ago.

There is one form of transportation, however, not yet in general use, that is not bound by those limits at all.

Under five minutes after the call, Ye Tianxie came out of his house to find a military helicopter setting down in front of his door and raising an enormous cloud of dust. Ye Tianxie’s step faltered. “That’s a bit much…” he said to himself. “No wonder he got here so fast. He’s actually gone and brought this thing out.”

“Second Brother, get in!!”

Zuo Pojun waved from above, and Ye Tianxie jumped up fast. He took the back seat and got his belt buckled. The airframe rocked, not too violently, and lifted.

“Second Brother, where are we going… This body isn’t much, but it’ll do better than five hundred an hour, no problem.” Zuo Pojun held the helicopter level with a practiced hand and kept his eyes ahead as he asked.

“North of the city… Pojun, you really did bring out a helicopter…” Ye Tianxie could not help remarking on it.

“If I’d driven, at this hour three quarters of the time would go on traffic lights and jams. Two or three hours and I still might not have made it.” Zuo Pojun pulled his hand back, and the helicopter’s speed climbed straight up as it drove north. If Ye Tianxie said “the shortest possible time,” a helicopter was the only choice he had.

On the outskirts of Jinghua, in that forgotten and disregarded slum.

Today the place had one extra thing in it: a luxurious, eye-catching black sports car. Under the startled, suspicious eyes of the residents, five men got out of it with a swagger to them and looked down the length of their noses at the houses and the people here. And very quickly every one of their eyes filled with disgust… as if the run-down streets and houses and ground here were dirtying their noble bodies and their eyes.

“Young Master Huang, the person you mentioned is here?” This one wore sunglasses and a black suit with a white scarf wrapped around his neck — a whole outfit assembled in terror that somebody might fail to notice he was a gangster. And in the blazing heat of July, that outfit put one word in your mind immediately, and one word only. Or, if you prefer, a word and a number.

“That’s right, right here. Don’t be so quick to doubt me. Once you see her you’ll understand.” The man they called “Young Master Huang” nodded, and pointed at the small house Ran Chenxin lived in, the one that was visibly leaning. It was plainly a condemned building, and it was falling apart besides. Nobody would be willing to live in a place like that unless poverty had left them nowhere else to go.

Young Master Huang — that is, Huang Quan. He had had the door shut in his face several times, and been chased off by the residents here with whatever they had to hand several times more, and his limited patience had finally worn through. So he had come out with a few close friends, each of them backed by something. The soft way had not worked and the hard way had not worked, so all that was left was something harder. Living in a place like this, she had to be without power and without connections, without anyone at all to lean on. There was no pressure and no risk in taking a girl like that.

“Seizing a common girl by force” is not merely a description of the dark side of the old bureaucratic order. In today’s Huaxia, and in every dim corner of the world, it is still being played out. In front of the strong the weak have no dignity and no ability to resist… If Ran Chenxin truly had been a girl with nobody at all to rely on, then today there would have been no second fate available to her, or to her sister.

“Huang Quan! You’ve come back again, you thieving-hearted little brat! What is it this time? Let me tell you, don’t you imagine you’re something because you’ve got a little stinking money. However many people you bring, I’ll beat you every single time I see you. Sisters, that toad is back — get your things and come on!!” An old woman who had been washing clothes saw Huang Quan back again… and with men, this time. She rolled up her sleeves at once and took up her washboard. Ran Chenxin was gentle and soft by temperament, unfailingly polite and mild with everyone, and she had a quality about her from birth that made people want to protect her and treat her kindly. Everyone here liked her very much, and when they saw her bullied they came running without a second thought.

At that shout seven or eight old women came out at a run — some with benches held up, some with door-bars, one with a vegetable knife that still had a leaf stuck to it — all of them howling and charging in the way you would charge a wolf. There was real force behind it, enough to send a pack of slick-faced young gentlemen who had never seen anything of the kind turning on their heels and running.

Huang Quan had plainly been beaten by these people before. His body backed him up several steps without his meaning it to, and the bruise on his leg that had nearly finished healing began to ache faintly again. And not only his body — his beloved car still carried a good many of the marks they had left on it.

The pretender in the sunglasses and the scarf, in this heat, gave Huang Quan a look of contempt. The hand in his pocket came up all at once and pointed at the sky.

Crack!!

One sound, and every one of those women stopped where she stood, looking with flinching eyes at the pistol in his hand and the white smoke trailing slowly off it. These were women who had seen nothing of the world, who had never seen a real gun, whose entire knowledge of guns came off a television screen. A weapon that can take a life in an instant had an overwhelming power to frighten them. All that fierce momentum drained out of them at the sound and left their faces the color of dirt, and not one of them dared come forward again.

They protected the two sisters, Chenxin and Chenxue. But at a moment like this, who dares gamble with her own life? They all had families, husbands and children of their own, and however fond they were of the sisters, they could not be willing to put their own lives up to shield them.

“Everybody go do whatever you were doing. We’re only here to take one person away. Anybody who wants to stick her nose in, I don’t mind sending her to the western heaven.” The man in the sunglasses lowered his hand, blew coolly across the muzzle, and pitched his voice like a man who owned the planet.

“You… what you’re doing is against the law! If you try anything, I’ll have the Public Security Bureau come and arrest you!” the old woman at the front shouted, holding hard.

“Public Security Bureau? Hahahaha…” The man in the sunglasses threw his head back and laughed wildly, as if he had heard the joke of the century. At the same time the man standing beside him — in a flowered shirt, and looking around thirty — took a step forward and said with a sinister smile, “Auntie, I’m the captain of the first squad at the Public Security Bureau north of the city. Here… this is my enforcement ID. Who was it you wanted me to arrest, just now?”

“Hahahaha… hahahaha…” The men laughed wildly on, and the women’s faces went whiter and whiter. Two of them backed up a few steps, then turned and hurried away. Once those two had gone, none of the others dared stay either, and they scurried back into their houses and shut their doors tight. They were not heroes made of iron. Anywhere a gun is, they will be afraid by instinct… because a gun is a thing that can kill a person all at once.

Chenxue had woken when the gun went off. She forced her eyes open. In her ears was the wild, gloating laughter of men, and heavy alarm came over her pale face.

She could be entirely indifferent about herself. Even if she were to die this moment she would not be afraid, but… she had struggled so bitterly to get this far for her sister’s sake alone. Only when her sister found the happiness that belonged to her, and she had seen her go on being happy, could she leave content… How could she let her sister be hurt?

In that moment, she was deeply afraid.

“Sister! Sister!” she called in her alarm, and that weak, pale little hand pushed with all the strength it had at the sister who was still in the game world.

Shattered Star-Heart logged off at a set time every day, came to look in on her sister every little while, and stayed with her whenever there was nothing else to do. And Chenxue very seldom called her out of the game on her own, because when she went into that game the smile on her face had no pressure and nothing mixed into it at all.

So when Chenxin heard that anxious call, in the game world she was thrown into a panic, and logged off in a hurry without even the time to explain to Ye Tianxie.

(End of Chapter 269)