Empress Rising: The Hunt

Chapter Five

I cast my gaze around the si he yuan. The courtyard of the Jade Society was a grassy, rectangular space that contained worn stone benches and four towering oak trees. My brother and raked fallen leaves and branches out of the open area, while my grandfather followed him around with a bag.

"Where should we decorate next?" Hun asked after she'd finished putting up the streamers. She reached into the bag and pulled out a lantern.

We didn't have to worry about the several white houses that enclosed the courtyard; the families had already put up their own decorations.

I pointed to a large brown building with four pillars, two on either side of the entrance. A sign hung above it, painted with golden Chinese characters. "The training hall."

After we finished tying streamers to the pillars, I decided to peek into the hall to see if anyone was training. Ba used to have to sneak me inside, and we'd train for short bursts of time, since Mao had forbidden him from teaching me how to fight. But if my father were to train me today, we'd probably be able to get away with having the place to ourselves the whole day.

"This place is so empty," Hun said, as if she'd read my thoughts. Her words echoed in the large room we'd entered. A huge mirror covering the length of one wall. The other three walls were decorated with swords and spears of different sizes. The weapons lined the walls, dusty from lack of use.

"There's not much in the market for demon-slaying warriors these days," I explained, "so a lot of the families have moved away after getting real jobs, and the families left are too busy with...other things."

Shady things. Monopolizing Chinatown's grocery stores and restaurants. Forming Asian gang rings. Mao turned a blind eye to some of the families' less-than-noble involvements. Yet, it was common knowledge in the Jade Society that Mr. Yang, Luhao's sleazebag of a father, had traded his sword for 0.44 Magnum Revolver, his trusty steed for a sleek black Harley-Davidson.

Treacherous and despicable, Ye Ye called those men.

Hun was shaking her head. "Shameful," she said. "Just shameful, what this generation of warriors has become." The disappointment in her eyes made her look about two thousand years old.

"On the bright side...everyone's a lot better at playing video games," I offered weakly.
Hun whirled on me, eyes flashing. "Playing video games? Warriors are supposed to master the eighteen arms of wushu, and learn how to withstand fire and ice, and—" Hun veered away from me and pointed toward the temple where I'd prayed earlier. A huge line of the aunties and uncles now snaked down the front steps, and smoke from incense curled out the door. "What's going on here?"

"The annual prayer to the gods." A.k.a. our neighborhood's favorite annual game: Who's the Biggest Buddha Brown-noser?

Each lunar new year, everyone in the Jade Society—aunties, uncles, boys, and girls—put on a big show to demonstrate their devotion to the gods. It was the only time most of them ever bothered stepping foot in the temple.

I guess I couldn't blame them. After sixteen years without seeing a single deity, I'd begun to believe they didn't exist, either.

"C'mon. That place looks like it could do with some decorating," I said, pointing toward a white building next to the temple. "That's the game room."

When we drew close to it, Hun walked up to the room and pressed her face against the window, her breath fogging up the glass. "Game room?" she spluttered.

"Yeah," I said, taping streamers to the around the door. "We host weekly Warframe championships in there."

The game room hosted at least ten procrastinators at any given time, not to mention two X-boxes, an air hockey table, two dartboards, stacks of comic books, and four flat-screen TVs. Talk about extra.