The Sphinx told them how to find the oasis whose guardian would yield up a green token. His directions were straightforward. “The place is not far from here, and the guardian is a rival of mine. I do not mind you killing her. But you will never find the orange guardian on your own. So here.” It gave a low whistle. One of the sleeping jackal dogs leapt up. Chang-li tensed, ready for a fight. The jackal snuffed around the clearing for a moment before bringing a stone to its master. The Sphinx leaned down and breathed on the stone.

"Come," he said to Chang-li, "take it."

Heart in his mouth, Chang-li stepped forward. The jackals all raised their heads to watch him. He came all the way up to the Sphinx's paws, bent, and picked up the stone. It glowed a little. As he held it, he could feel a tug to his right.

"Follow the stone and you will find what you seek. Be wary. This one hides. You will not see it until it is too late," the Sphinx warned. "Green is closer. Go there first."

They set off again, following the Sphinx's direction to an oasis where they confronted a living meadow full of man-high sunflowers that sprang up and attacked them. The flowers attacked with whiplike green cords, lashing out and stinging Joshi and Chang-li, who tried to stay in front of Hiroko. Chang-li’s sword and flame made quick work of the first flowers.

“You attack!” Joshi shouted. “I’ll protect Hiroko.”

“And I’ll heal you!” the princess called. Chang-li felt her blue lux working on the flowers, sapping their strength, and then a whoosh of fresh air across his body as his cuts healed themselves.

With the three now working in an easy rhythm, the flowers fell. When the meadow lay barren and burned, the largest of the fallen sunflowers yielded up a green stone.

Chang-li added it to his stash and passed out rations. He looked at the purification tablets. "Do we need to take one now, or can we wait?" he asked quietly.

Joshi seemed to consider, then turned to Hiroko. "What about you, princess?"

She stiffened, then forced herself to relax. "I think I'm good. Honestly," she added quickly. "I really do. I'm not just trying to push through this. Maybe it hasn't been so long since our last one."

"I think that is possible," Joshi said.

Chang-li said nothing. He was certain they had gone far more than a day since their last purification ration. He would need one again before too long, he could tell that. But the time between seemed to be increasing. Perhaps that was an effect of their progress toward Bodily Refinement.

He sat down and cycled, using the technique where he first released as much of the wrong-colored lux as he could into the ground around him, then concentrated on separate cycling of orange and yellow, with the violet deepening his lux channels all through his body. As he cycled the violet back into his core, he felt the core twitch.

For a moment, it seemed to expand, filling his whole torso. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were being pushed out of the way. Air rushed out of him in a whoosh, and then it contracted, pulling his organs back into their positions.

Chang-li cycled what violet lux he had, frantically, as everything inside him shifted. He caught his breath. It came rushing in, as though he'd never had air in his lungs before. He leaned forward, gasping and panting.

"Are you all right?" Joshi asked.

"Yes," he managed. He coughed, gasped a few times, then sat up. "My core condensed again. It was nothing like the first time." He turned to Hiroko. "When your core condensed, that was your second time, was it not?"

She nodded. "It was."

"Did it feel like, I don't know, like your lungs were being shoved up into your throat and your intestines pushed downward into... well..."

"No," Hiroko said, concern plain on her face. "Nothing like that. It was easy, like taking a step."

Joshi was studying him. "You may be pushing yourself too hard."

"There is no too hard on the path of cultivation," Chang-li snapped. He was worried that cultivating violet lux had damaged himself somehow. Carefully, he reached for his core. He cycled orange and yellow together, swirling them around inside, feeling it out. It felt fine. He could push more lux inside, condensing it further, and then draw out even finer, more refined strands of the lux.

He summoned yellow to his right hand and held a dancing flame two inches high on his palm for a whole minute before it vanished.

"Impressive," Joshi said. "But you're not doing enough with the orange. Orange is supposed to enhance your weapon work. Come, let's try sparring."

He stood up and pulled the pair of sticks he'd been carrying around out of his belt. They were three feet long, stripped of their bark, and Chang-li's hand knew the knots and ridges on each of them intimately. Chang-li rose and accepted one of the sticks. They took a few steps away from Hiroko, who closed her eyes and began cycling her own lux.

"You have been using orange lux as if it were red," Joshi said, "just pushing it out to the tip of your hand and hoping it does something. Even I am shaping and sculpting my red lux blows far more than you're doing."

"I've been focusing on the yellow," Chang-li said. "The orange just takes care of itself. It flows into my weapon and strengthens it. I don't think I could have cut through the head of that hydra without it."

Joshi nodded. "I agree. Yet you are using it like a club when it should be," he waved his stick, "a blade. Focus. Wrap your blade in orange lux."

"It's a stick, not a blade," Chang-li pointed out.

"For a sufficiently talented orange cultivator, a stick is a blade," Joshi snapped. As if to prove his point, a small orange sheath appeared around his own stick. Its outline wavered, then vanished, but it had been there for sure.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Chang-li stared. "Was that?"

Joshi nodded. "I have been practicing with orange. It is very foreign to my fighting style to use on a weapon. But the Hapiru monks have a technique, Spikes of the Closed Fist, where they mix orange lux into the red. The red forms a gauntlet and powers the strike. A small trace of orange form a spike used for piercing. I understand the theory, and I will be practicing with it more. For now, though, we need to practice your swordplay."

Chang-li centered himself. Keeping his right hand at his side, he extended his left arm, holding the stick as he would his sword. He channeled orange lux into the stick.

"No, don't feed it to the stick," Joshi corrected. "The stick doesn't do the work for you. Your mind controls this. You must learn it now. You are the weapon, not your stick, not your sword. You and your lux technique. Shape it."

Chang-li grit his teeth. Sweat ran down his forehead. He tried again, pushing orange lux out, imagining it coating the stick.

"Better," Joshi said approvingly. "Now, attack while holding that."

He raised his own stick, bare of lux, but his hand glowed red. Chang-li struck. Joshi parried, catching his stick, throwing him back.

"Again!"

A dozen times Chang-li swung. A dozen times Joshi caught him. Chang-li was nearly out of the lux his core had purified. He took a breath, sucking in more, trying to cycle the undifferentiated lux through his core and siphon out the orange. He grabbed what he could, shoved it haplessly toward his stick. There wasn't enough. He imagined it only on the tip. As he swung, he stretched that down a couple of inches along the edge of the stick which would hit Joshi's blade.

Joshi raised his own stick to parry, and Chang-li's orange lux blade sliced through Joshi's stick. It fell to the ground. Joshi held up his hand, releasing the other half.

"Good," he said approvingly. "Focus on how that felt. I want you to go back and cycle only orange lux. Hold that stick, if it helps. Form a weapon out of that."

Chang-li couldn't reply. He had no breath left in him. Instead, he nodded, then collapsed bonelessly to the ground, arranging his legs in a cycling position. He focused. Joshi, meanwhile, strode a little distance away.

"Where are you going?" Hiroko called after him.

"I wish to practice my punches." gesturing to a grove of trees. "I will go over there so as not to disturb your cycling."

A few moments later, a sound of creaking wood and dull slaps floated through the air. Chang-li focused on his own cycling. Let Joshi do what he needed to do.

They took purification rations before setting out again. Chang-li counted what was left. Seven.

Two days. If they took them less than once a day, they might perhaps stretch to three or even four. Then they would be out. He closed up his bag without mentioning it to his companions, though he saw how they both looked at him as he gave them the rations. They could count as well as he did. They knew how long it had been since entering this place.

"Ready for the last challenge?" Joshi asked.

"Perhaps the last," Hiroko said. "What if this guardian requires more than offerings?"

"We shall be on guard," Chang-li declared, and they set off across the desert. Chang-li kept the Sphinx's stone in his right hand, unsheathed sword in his left, remembering what the Sphinx had said, that they would not notice this protector until it was too late. The tug was getting stronger as they went. There was no sign of an oasis, no sign of a challenge building.

"I sense no life," Hiroko said again and again.

The stone in Chang-li's hand began to hum. He held it up. "Can you hear that?" The others nodded. "I think we're close.”

Joshi pointed ahead. "You see that group of rocks there?"

Chang-li shaded his eyes. There was a circle of stones rearing up out of the desert a little ways off. They weren't very tall, perhaps only five or six feet, and in the strange light from the lux sky above, they were hard to make out. But they were in the direction the stone was beckoning.

"I'll bet that's it." He checked his core. It was full to brimming with yellow and orange lux, ready for him. "Be prepared.” He set off, Joshi right beside him.

As they approached the rocks, Hiroko gasped. "I feel something. It's huge, and it's under us."

The sand beneath their feet began to shift and move. It tugged at Chang-li's sandals, pulling him backward.

"Run!" he shouted and raced for the rocks, the others pounding across the sand at his side.

The rocks were a circle of stones about as tall as a man, half as wide, yellow and gray against the brown and tan sand. The sand inside was moving too, but differently from the sand at their feet. It popped and skittered like hot droplets on a hot metal pan.

Chang-li raced through the stones. He felt hard ground under his sandals. The sand here was only a thin layer atop rock. The other two pounded beside him. They arrayed themselves back to back. Chang-li stared about. Where was the creature?

And then, as the rock beneath his feet shifted and he staggered to keep his balance, he realized his horrible mistake.

Hiroko screamed, "It's alive!"

The circle of stones rose up out of the desert. They were standing on the back of an enormous tortoise. The stones were planted on the middle of its hard shell. Ahead of them, its enormous neck rose from the sand. It was facing away from them. Perhaps it didn't see them.

"Hiroko!" Joshi barked. "Try to drain it, confuse it. Do whatever you can. Chang-li, with me."

He sprinted forward toward the tortoise's head. It was good thinking. The neck was likely the creature's only weak spot. Chang-li raced down the slope of the shell, across foot-high ridges.

Joshi was far ahead of him. His feet flashed with red lux. He hadn't shown that technique before, but it made him faster. As he reached the edge of the shell, he leapt, springing high into the air. Ten, fifteen feet, his fist glowed with red lux as he plunged at the tortoise's neck.

He hit. Chang-li felt the vibrating all through the tortoise as Joshi's lux-empowered fist crushed against its neck. The tortoise shrieked, screamed, throwing back its head. Chang-li staggered forward, desperately trying to keep his balance. He called on his orange lux, coating his sword with it, imagining it sharp, the point extending out from the tip of his sword by feet. As he reached the edge of the shell, he fell forward, thrusting with his left hand.

The lux tip of the sword sliced into the tortoise's neck, sinking deep. Chang-li fell forward, driving the sword deeper and deeper. Now the metal point was embedded within the tortoise's neck. He focused all the orange lux he had on strengthening the blade, making it longer, wider, deepening the cut he was making. He pulled sideways on the blade, hard as he could.

Meanwhile, Joshi had pulled himself up the tortoise's neck and was standing atop its head, smashing a fist between its eye sockets. The tortoise was weaving and shaking. Chang-li felt the edge of Hiroko's technique brush past him. It chilled his flesh. She whipped the technique away, focusing it only on its proper target, the tortoise.

Hiroko screamed, "It's fighting me, but it's weakening. Hit it harder."

Chang-li yanked back on his sword. It came free. Wrapping it in lux once more, he plunged it deeper into the tortoise's neck. Blood and ichor ran down the tortoise's neck. It staggered, then fell forward onto the sand.

The tortoise shuddered. Hiroko screamed. She was falling down the shell toward Chang-li. He raced to catch her, realized he had a sword in his hand, tossed it aside, grabbed her before she could hit the edge of the sand. He was afraid the tortoise's death throes would crush her if she slipped from its shell. They lay flat, clinging to the edge of the shell as the tortoise writhed and heaved. At last it lay still.

Chang-li cautiously picked himself up. His sword had stuck point down into the tortoise's shell a few lengths away. He rose, walked over to it, pulled it free. Then he turned to look for Joshi.

The big barbarian stood atop the tortoise's head. His own head was thrown back face to the sky as he laughed and pounded his chest, chanting something that Chang-li couldn't understand. After a moment he sobered, leaping from the tortoise's head back to the shell with the other two.

"That was a good fight. Now, let's find the offering."