Who has not heard of the famous Shaolin Monastery, the cradle of martial arts? The emperor himself favors the shaven-headed warrior monks in saffron robes, whose hands with images of a tiger and a dragon burned into them invisibly and inevitably create the politics of the Celestial Empire. Then from great China we are transported to Japan of the 15th century and Kharkov of the 20th century. Legendary actors of the No theater and our contemporaries, the art of ancient actors and modern karate schools, a meeting with a faceless noperapon in a night cemetery and an advertisement “Your task is to survive!” The theme of martial arts is one of the main ones in the work of G.L. Oldie, and the novels “The Messiah Cleanses the Disc” and “Noperapon” have long and deservedly entered the golden fund of science fiction.