Jiang jumped out and instantly died.

  “Oh.”

  *PING*

  He respawned, jumped out, and just barely escaped the car he had somehow, again, missed. The wind of its passing disoriented him, but he survived for now. He jumped again and missed another car by inches. He jumped again and missed another car by inches.

  Then he jumped on another toxic waste barrel and barely survived.

  He did it again.

  And again.

  And almost died when the last toxic waste barrel started rotating beneath his webbed feet, but scraped by and jumped to the opposite riverbank.

  The screen scrolled forward and the cars on the next stage were faster. Jiang jumped forward and barely survived, then barely survived again, and again, and again…

  He made it to the opposite riverbank.

  The timer buzzed.

  *DEFEAT* flashed in bold black-bordered red letters on Jiang’s world-screen. 6 was simply better at this game than he was, and no amount of practice over such a short duration was going to solve that problem. He could recover and he could improve, but you could only build so much skill over a short period of time. The key to all skill was practice, Jiang knew, and without time to practice he was fucked.

  Suddenly, the world returned to normal in the pocket dimension but an ink-stain appeared where 6 should be. The ink-stain grew until Jiang knew the point of the game wasn’t to try killing him (although 6 may have tried doing that), but to inflict a psychological attack on him.

  Jiang cursed. She had somehow determined that his void-body resisted physical damage, but that he had no psychological protection from it. Active techniques were worthless against him, but passive ones went totally uncontested with Jiang in such a qi-depleted state. His body could absorb qi very easily, and his dao could reproduce techniques with very little qi-loss, but without any qi reserves to speak of on hand, he wasn’t able to project a protection field, and he wasn’t able to resist techniques that attacked the environment around him, and he wasn’t able to resist techniques that disrupted his mental and spiritual functioning.

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  The ink-stain grew larger, covering perhaps half the world now. Additionally, a quiet ringing began in Jiang’s ears and a metallic smell began like the smell of fresh blood in Jiang’s nose. He knew it wasn’t real blood— she wouldn’t be able to pierce a single blood vessel with a mountain’s worth of force behind a needle, but she could override his sense of smell. Very quickly Jiang became unable to sense anything. His vision was totally blacked-out, his smell totally ironed-out, and his hearing unable to detect anything but a shrill ringing. It would drive a lesser man to madness.

  But Jiang was already mad. Sanity-based attacks wouldn’t work on someone whose definition of “sane” was the same as a lunatic raving in a box.

  “I swear the stars are filled with people and that you can live on one with permission from the gods!”

  “The world is secretly controlled by men, not gods, and you can kill them! Give me money and I’ll try!”

  “You can ascend to dread without a dao! I’m already a dread! Give me your city!”

  It was an all-too-common refrain. They claimed to understand power they could not imagine, much less comprehend. If they did try to glance upon the power the celestially-ascended gods above wielded, they would die as the information overwhelmed their brain.

  Really, what Jiang was experiencing now was quite similar to that effect. He had glanced upon knowledge from outside the world and it had corrupted his senses. But why weren’t 6’s senses affected? Did she have resistance to insanity-inducing effects?

  Jiang could feel her trying to stab him with something, but it didn’t work and she quickly jumped back. He didn’t have time to react— she was much faster than him. If she knew his body was so strong why did she try to stab it?

  Suddenly he could feel something climbing up his nose. Jiang tried to pull it out, but tentacles restrained him. His face was soon covered by a thousand suction cups, and he could feel something climbing up his nasal cavity into his brain.

  He struggled, but to no avail. Every sense and movement was restrained. All at once the feeling of death began creeping in as he realized that this attack was qi-draining. She was pulling qi directly out of his brain, where Jiang’s spiritual center was located. It would never have been possible if Jiang had enough qi reserves to form a proper mass that attracted itself, but in such a depleted state his qi was all-too-easy to steal. There wasn’t enough internal gravity to the mass of qi to prevent it.

  He screamed with fury and struggled with indignation but it was all meaningless. The world was already black but Jiang could feel his vision growing faint. All at once it disappeared and the world became empty.

  Back into the void again.