After the initial watch-throughs, I gave myself a break, if you could call it that. On one hand, I wasn't doing anything, just listening to jazz and staring through the fake window of my room. Beyond the screen lay an evening cityscape. There was a stunning view of a wide river and a majestic bridge, as if seen from the fiftieth floor or so. Two serpents of traffic crawled across it in opposite directions. One coming towards me shone with white headlights, the other receded in a trail of red.

The rest wasn't particularly restful, my impatience was beginning to itch again. The desire for instant results is common to all people, but not everyone can accelerate their mind with the Thousand Sparks of Awareness to process what they've seen faster.

Mental techniques always made me hungry. The brain burned through calories like mad. Thank the gods it did so far more efficiently than a regular human brain, so I didn't have to eat that much more, or, consequently, spend much more time in the loo. In general, my body's energy management had reached a new level. My food intake remained almost unchanged, with a few exceptions.

I needed either more sugar or more alcohol. Although alcohol didn't hit me as hard anymore. I could drink beer like water. But beer without the usual kick didn't taste quite the same, so plum wine became a regular inhabitant of my fridge. It could actually get me a little tipsy, if I downed a litre or two.

I wasn't aiming to get drunk, just feeding my body something to break down. Then I fried a steak for dinner.

So, what did my boosted brain manage to come up with?

I'd made a mistake.

I shouldn't have been watching fresh recordings, I should have tracked down high-ranking third-stage fighters and gone back to the first year of their studies. That way I wouldn't just see different types of qi, I'd also be able to trace their progress. And that could be much more useful for seeing the whole picture.

I didn't feel like sleeping after dinner, so I opened the Yellow Pine third-years' rankings.

Again, the issue of cultivation paths came up. Not many fighters followed the single-qi path, so I only found two successful fighters of that kind in the top twenty: Tobias Armitage and Yara Duval — pure Finger and pure Blade, respectively. There were far more combinations. David Morrow was a good find — Finger and Lightning. Kae Mur — Water and Earth. Mur's Mace root was suspiciously high as well, though it didn't reach the levels of her Water or Earth. These two alone covered most of the qi types I hadn't explored yet, so I decided to start with them. With Mur, to be precise. She began as a Water cultivator. Not a very successful one, judging by the fact that she dropped out in the first round of her first three tournaments.

Although there was another reason.

Mur had participated in the very first tournament after admission. There were only eight people in that one.

So, Mur. Her armour was yellow and black, also featuring the signature water canister on her back and piping running to her hands, just like Lian's, but without the fine-tuned design. And she didn't bother drawing from the bowls around the arena.

Her opponent, Shunji Shohei, looked like a cyber-ninja in black armour with only a few yellow stripes. His katana gleamed like it was brand new, no scratches, and he wore a bandolier across his chest with small discs, while two chakrams hung on his back.

The fight started surprisingly calmly.

Mur stood nearly motionless, her arms slightly spread to the sides. Her armour still gleamed with the sheen of fresh polish, and steam was starting to hiss from the nozzles running along her forearms. Warm and damp, it rose in thick clouds. This preparation clearly put Shohei on alert, he didn't rush into the fight, instead shifting his katana behind his back as if assuming a defensive stance.

Mur played with the steam for a moment, then hurled it to the ground and took three sharp, sliding steps toward her opponent. The floor beneath her feet froze solid, leaving behind streaks of frost, but the vapour didn't fully disperse. What remained, she sent flying towards Shohei.

He slashed at the cloud with his katana, but it was a waste of effort.

Her foreign qi triggered Shohei's protective projection, and silver discs began flickering here and there like fairy lights on a Christmas tree.

Mur snapped her fingers, and the mist froze instantly, transforming into a burst of icy sparks. Eight silver shields solidified in front of Shohei.

She lunged, extending her empty hands. Water surged from the tubes and froze into a long icy spear mid-movement, but Shohei deflected the thrust with his katana.

He sliced the tip of the spear clean off before it could strike through the gap between his shields.

The severed shard of ice shattered on the floor, melting on contact.

Mur pulled the spear back for another strike and instantly regrew the tip.

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Another thrust. Shohei cut it again.

Her aim was precise, always targeting the same weak spot in his defence, but she couldn't break past the katana. The idea was solid, and I appreciated how she kept his formation under constant pressure, but if I were Shohei, I wouldn't be standing like a lump in the middle of that icy haze.

Still, he seemed confident. He didn't even touch his discs, just began advancing with his katana. With each step, another chunk broke off the icy spear, and Mur no longer had time to fully regrow it.

So instead of a spear, a thick icy club formed in her hands.

That, Shohei couldn't slice through. His katana lodged deep in the frozen mass, and I recognised the trick from the previous fight, the same one Nyambe had used to freeze Bennet's sabre. But unlike Bennet, Shohei couldn't pull his blade free. Mur grabbed the club one-handed, and with her left, fired an icicle straight at Shohei's head.

It shattered against the helmet's faceplate.

Shohei responded with a chakram. He tore a disc from his back and hurled it straight into Mur's abdomen.

It sank halfway in.

There was no blood, but the icy trap melted away, releasing the katana.

The judge intervened before Shohei could strike again.

I was liking Blade more and more.

Mur's second and third tournaments ended much the same. She would trap her opponent, reveal and lock down their formation, then strike at the gaps with her ice spear, but she couldn't penetrate the armour.

After the third tournament she disappeared for quite a while. Not until she broke through to the second stage did she return. There, she expanded her toolkit with Earth qi and dual-element techniques. On the very first tournament after that, she made it straight to the semi-finals. She lost her match, but still placed third. Her opponent from the other bracket was carried off unconscious to the med bay, whereas Mur went there under her own power.

Mur's opponent in that match was Destiny James. She wore silver-and-gold armour, or rather, silver-coloured armour adorned with intricate gold engraving. It looked expensive, despite the fact that by the time she reached the semi-finals, it was already covered in dents, scratches, and coloured marks of local overheating. Still, the core material wasn't silver but titanium alloys.

Mur's own armour was in slightly better shape — just one slashing wound on the left shoulder. The servo-motors were intact, as were the water tubes from her reservoir.

One thing was certain, Mur had grown more skilled and experienced. The very first thing she did was scoop up some water from one of the bowls and draw a large boulder from another.

Both scoops were forms of telekinesis.

The judge gave the signal, and James attacked first. She didn't move an inch but raised both arms like pistols, index fingers extended and thumbs cocked back. From her index fingers, blue beams fired, each one about as thick as a finger. They struck Mur's formation instantly, but it didn't faze her.

Lasers. Definitely lasers.

Mur fully trusted her formation, which intercepted the beams as quickly as James could shoot. In the meantime, Mur turned the water to steam and pulled the boulder onto her left hand, shaping it into a hybrid of a mace and knuckle-duster, or perhaps a heavy buckler.

Then James spread her arms wide and brought them together sharply. Two yellow beams, needle-thin, whipped across each other like a cross-cut. Mur's formation reacted, forming small golden shields at the point of contact, but it took a moment too long to catch up once the beams began to slide and slice into her armour.

That pushed Mur to act.

She thickened the steam into a dense fog and shoved it forward. Then she slid across an icy path she created underfoot, sweeping her left arm wide. The rock stretched and became coated in ice, forming a spear.

But before Mur could strike, James crossed her arms at her stomach, her finger-guns pointing in opposite directions, and leapt back. From her fingers, yellow beams once again lashed out, and as she spun like a top, those beams sprayed in sweeping arcs while she retreated.

She managed to slash Mur several times with the beams, though Mur kept close behind, gliding across the ground. Still, most of the beams hit the invisible dome surrounding the arena. I hadn't noticed anything like that in our own school, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

I paused the video.

What the hell was that?

What kind of technique was this?

Why did the beams change colour and thickness?

I dove into the archive to find more information about this James.

Late third stage: Finger, Blade, Water. That was James today, but what I needed to know was James back in her first year, early second-stage.

Logically, she couldn't have mastered more than two types of qi at that time. I saw no sign of Water, which meant she was either a pure Finger user, or Finger-Blade.

I suspected the latter, because she wasn't aiming for precise single-point strikes, she was trying to cut, and that spinning move of hers looked suspiciously like a Blade-type dash technique...

There's always a bit of freezing after a dash.

I unpaused the video.

James landed just as Mur caught up. James was engulfed in steam. It crystallised into a cloud of frost, freezing her formation mid-activation. It was a shell of blue pentagons, spaced just a few centimetres apart, forming a dome around her.

Mur struck with her spear, aiming between the junction of three segments. The tip slipped through cleanly, with no resistance, and struck James in the left side of her chest. It dented the armour but didn't pierce it, just knocked her to the ground.

Mur stepped on James's stomach, raised the spear and drove it towards her throat. James twisted her neck just enough for the point to glance off her armour.

At the same time, she raised both hands and fired her standard blue beams into Mur's chin.

Mur's armour held, and she stabbed again. But without Point Qi, the stone tip couldn't pierce titanium alloy.

She took a few more beams to the chin, screamed in frustration, spun the spear around and morphed it into a mace, slamming it down toward James's helmet.

Even without Mace Qi, the result was immediate.

The helmet didn't show much damage on the outside, but James's arms flailed and the beams sprayed harmlessly into the ceiling.

Mur screamed and brought the mace down again.

On her last breath, blinded, James slashed upwards with yellow beams. One of them hit, breaking through the already-weakened chin plate. Mur lost control, her weapon dissolved into water, and the stone core shattered against James's helmet.

A split second later, James swept Mur's legs out from under her, sprang to her feet, stomped on Mur's chest and carved two beams across her throat.

The judge tackled her to the ground just before she could take Mur's head clean off.

It was an excellent fight, and, I suspected, a turning point for both girls. Probably right after this, Mur decided to swap her spear for a mace, which led her to study Mace Qi. And James? James must have added Water to her arsenal.

I'd bet a hundred it was for the movement technique. That icy glide looked brilliant and let changing direction mid-run.

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