By mutual agreement, the three walked from where they had slain the tortoise to the nearest oasis, which they could see from atop the tortoise. They were careful not to go deep enough to engage its guardian. Instead, they rested at the edge, taking a few hours of real sleep, cycling, eating, and preparing for whatever would come next.

At last, when they were as ready as they could be, and Chang-li knew he was merely stalling, he pulled out all seven tokens and arrayed them.

"Now, how do we summon the guardian?" Hiroko asked.

Chang-li shrugged. "Beats me. Wulan's journal was short on details. Joshi?"

The other man shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know either."

"Well, then we'll just have to work it out ourselves.” Hiroko arranged the tokens in a line, running from violet to red, then sat back. "Perhaps we need to infuse them with lux?" She frowned. "That would require channeling violet lux, so that can't be the answer."

Chang-li was worried that perhaps it was, but he wasn't going to start out by suggesting they use forbidden lux. Not until he'd tried a few other things. "Perhaps we just need to channel our own lux into it," he suggested. "The guardian must be expecting cultivators with various different flavors of lux. Maybe he just wants us all to say hello."

Joshi nodded. "Let's try that." He sat one hand on the red token. Chang-li leaned forward and touched yellow and orange. Hiroko hesitated only a moment before resting her small hand on the blue token.

Chang-li focused. He pushed a tiny pulse of lux out of each of his hands. Then, as he heard the notes of each of their four lux colors chime, there was a rush overhead. Wind whipped past them. He looked up.

The sky was swirling. Not the placid shifting of colors he had grown used to, but like someone was dumping wine out of a bottle. A vortex of color swirled around. The white hole at the center grew in intensity. It was coming closer to them, reaching down straight toward them.

Chang-li was petrified with fear. The whiteness swallowed up the whole sky, passed over the whole world. And a moment later, he was in darkness.

"Welcome, Cultivator," whispered a voice. "You have come far. It has been a long time since anyone brought me a worthy offering, let alone a perfect one. Why is that?"

"The entrance to this floor has been lost," Chang-li replied.

He couldn't hear or sense Joshi and Hiroko anywhere. He couldn't feel anything either. Was he still sitting? Was he standing? What had happened? Was he even alive? What was this place?

"Ah," whispered the voice. "That is too bad. I miss visitors. Perhaps now that you have found the entrance, you can share it with others."

Chang-li swallowed. "I'll be sure to do that," he lied.

"Don't worry," the voice whispered. "I do not seek to harm them. Cultivators bring enough harm upon themselves. My duty is the same duty as the guardians of every floor in every tower, save the shackled. But I shall not speak of them here. I am to assess your worthiness to move on. It is simple. You have brought the offerings, and so you may proceed. But you have done more than merely bring offerings. You have brought me one of each, and that means I shall offer you a keen boon indeed. So show me, cultivator. Who are you?"

A presence was probing at Chang-li's mind, forcing itself against him. He tried to fight, but it pushed at him. In desperation, he did the only thing he could think of. He pushed thoughts and images at it, showed Young Master Feng racing through the hapless band of soldiers and scribes, bringing death on them, showed him escaping from the tower, showed how he had snuck and cheated and lied his way back in, and then his progress through the tower alongside Joshi and Hiroko.

The presence retreated. "Very well," it said. "You have done well, young cultivator. You are strong. Receive your boon.”

Chang-li felt its presence settle over him more kindly, speaking in his mind. You have set yourself an interesting path. Twice the challenge, but with this foundation, it may be possible. Be careful. He will not like what you are becoming. If he learns how far you have progressed in this tower, he will send questioners. You must hide yourself. Cloak yourself in shadow. For that, I offer you this boon.

A pounding headache pressed against Chang-li's head. He laid a palm against his forehead and groaned as knowledge raced through his mind, all in a moment. For an instant, he saw more than he'd ever seen before, understood how everything fit together, and then it was gone, vanished. But he did grasp one key thing.

With a quick thought and a twist of indigo lux, he tore open his soulspace. It was like opening a pocket into the heart of himself. He stared into it with his mind's eye. It wasn't very large, not yet, but it brimmed with potential.

He was holding his sword in his hand. Now, with an effort of concentration, he willed for it to enter his soulspace. It vanished from his hand and appeared inside. He closed up his soulspace, then, almost in a panic, opened it again and removed his sword.

The sword was fine. He was fine. Yes, this would help indeed. Aside from being able to hide the sword that, as a scribe, he was not supposed to have, he was already seeing possibilities. The soulspace could conceal contraband, like more purification rations.

“And now you must decide,” the voice said again. “Two doors. One leads out. One leads up. You will choose. If you step out, you will not be able to return through this door. If you go on, there is no promise of how hard and how far it will be to reach the guardian of the next floor.”

Then light flared all around. Chang-li was standing in a small chamber with Joshi and Hiroko. As the voice had said, there were two doors. One was a gaping cave mouth with daylight filtering through. The other, an arch, with torches flickering on the wall beside it and stone steps leading upward.

Joshi was looking around, wide-eyed. "You heard that, right?" he demanded. "In or out?"

Hiroko nodded. "Yes." She looked suddenly very tired. Almost, Chang-li would have said, afraid. He started to ask what her boon had been, then caught himself. It wasn't his place to ask. “That’s really no choice. We have to leave. We don't have the rations and anyway, why would we stay here?"

"To cultivate," Joshi said brusquely. "We have not yet achieved Bodily Refinement."

"I'm close," Hiroko declared. "I can feel it. My core has condensed a second time. A few trips inside with my future spouse to guide me and I will reach it. It is not my place to cultivate on my own. That is not my duty in life. I must return as soon as I am able."

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Chang-li nodded. "Yes, Princess, you must. I don't know where this door will lead, but hopefully not too far from the camp. You can tell them that you were lost in the woods for however long it's been. Try to be vague about just how long you've been hiding in case we're right about time flowing differently inside the tower."

"You make it sound as though you're not going with me."

Chang-li took a deep breath. "I shouldn't.It'll be easier for us both to return separately. I have a reason why I could have been down in Golden Moon City all this time. I'll wait until I can find a party returning to the camp and join them. You should go back at once, though."

Hiroko nodded. "Yes, yes, I should. I..." She took a step toward the door, then paused, looking at them both. She gave them a smile, but her eyes were sad. "Thank you. You saved my life, both of you. I will do anything I can to return the favor, but it probably is for the best if we pretend not to know each other. It could be hard to explain why you know an Indigo princess."

Joshi bowed his head. "As you say, Princess."

She winced as if he had hit her, her eyes filled with tears. "I just... I..." She turned and ran for the entrance, vanishing as soon as she set foot within the arch.

Now Joshi and Chang-li were staring at each other. "What about you?" Chang-li asked.

"I appreciate you waiting until the princess was gone," Joshi said. "You know I can't go back."

There was nothing for the escaped slave back in the cultivator encampment except a renewal of his bonds. "What will you do? Run? I will not betray you. You should be able to be well away from here in a matter of days."

Joshi hesitated. "If I go back, they will put me back in a collar, and I will never set foot in this tower again," he said quietly. "If I run, I will be hounded across the empire anywhere that this brand is recognized. I might perhaps return to my own people. We have our own fight with the empire. My family would not betray me, I don't think. But I will also never set foot in a cultivator tower again."

"What other choice do you have?" Chang-li asked.

"How many purification rations remain?"

Chang-li knew the exact answer. There were seven. But he didn't say that to Joshi. "You can't be thinking of going on." But now that Joshi had raised the possibility, it weighed on Chang-li's mind as well. His core had condensed twice. He didn't know how long it would take for a third core condensation, nor did he know what the next step was, to complete Bodily Refinement. Perhaps it was mentioned somewhere in Scribe Wulan's journal, or perhaps he could get the secret out of Joshi. It would likely take more than seven days, though.

It would certainly take more than three. Of that he was certain. If he offered to share the rations with Joshi, there was no way he could possibly reach the Peak of Bodily Refinement. If he kept them for himself and continued onward, he might make that peak. Then there would be no one to stop him. He'd be able to leave the tower in his own time, on his own terms, return to the camp, and win himself an imperial pardon and a full cultivator's license. The world would be open to him. Achieving the Peak of Bodily Refinement well before the age of 30 was supposed to mark the sign of a cultivation prodigy.

Joshi's eyes searched his. "I will not leave," the former slave said quietly. "I cannot. I must go on. If you will not give me the rations, I will have to take my chances."

"You'll never make it. You haven't even had your second core condensation."

"But I must try. I have been a slave. I will die rather than go back to that life. The only chance I have for true freedom is as a cultivator at the Peak of Bodily Refinement. If I have that, there is no one who can put chains on me ever again. They will be forced to let me cultivate."

"Me too," Chang-li said, hearing how whiny he sounded.

Joshi shook his head. "You are a free man, a scribe."

"I've been forbidden to cultivate," Chang-li interjected.

"And you are a devious man who has already found his way into a tower that he was forbidden to enter. I have no doubt you can do so again if you put your mind to it. You have the ability to go back to the camp and enter your old life, perhaps with no one noticing. They have forbidden you to enter the tower, yes, but they have not put a collar around your neck that prevents you from cultivating at all. They have not beaten you, condemned you to death." He lowered his head, almost in a bow. "You are a cultivating genius, the sort that comes along every few generations. I have no doubt you can find a way to make it to Bodily Refinement. And once you do, no one will stop you. They'll see your worth. But please. Please."

It hurt to see the proud man beg, his bald head shining with sweat as he spoke. Chang-li swallowed. He opened his pack and took out his scribe’s kit and Wulan’s journal, then passed the whole bag over. "There's seven of them. It won't be enough."

"It will," Joshi said. "Thank you, friend." He slung the satchel over his shoulder.

Chang-li shook his head. "No, wait. There's something you should know." He couldn't look Joshi in the eyes as he made his confession. "You were right. There was more in the scribe's journal. I didn't tell you because I was afraid what Hiroko would say when we got back. Violet Lux. The violet lux is the key. If you cycle it intentionally through your channels, it strengthens them. You can push it into your core and it makes your core dense. I'm not a cultivating genius, Joshi. I've been using Violet Lux even though the emperor himself forbids it."

Joshi's eyes went wide. "Of course. I never thought to try. Though I care not for the emperor and his strictures, I have no cycling techniques that make use of violet.”

Chang-li quickly described how he had used it in the various cycling patterns. He shared details of the one he had learned from the scribe's journal. Joshi held his hands in a cupped gesture just above his navel. He breathed carefully. "I can feel it," he said in wonder. "There's no more violet in here. It's just what's been in my body that I haven't been able to purge out. But it does change. If the second floor has anything like the violet of the first, I just might have a chance."

He opened his eyes and smiled. Chang-li had never seen such an open, honest smile on the barbarian's face. "Thank you, brother.” He clapped Chang-li on the shoulder. "If I die, I die as a free man and a cultivator. If I live, it is because of what you have done. I will owe you a debt for the rest of my days."

"Then you had better reach the Peak of Bodily Refinement so I can collect," Chang-li said.

Joshi laughed. He squared his shoulders and set off toward the stairs. Chang-li watched him go. As soon as Joshi's foot touched the first stair, he vanished, leaving Chang-li alone in the room.

He had time to consider only once more. He could change his mind and follow Joshi. But the man already didn't have enough rations to reach Bodily Refinement on his own, not without a blessing from the heavens. Two of them would just eat up the rations twice as fast.

Chang-li took a deep breath and then set his face toward the other entrance. He stepped through the cave entrance and found himself on a rocky shelf on the side of the mountain. The slope above him was loose shale that would come down if anyone set foot on it. Below, the cliff fell away steeply. The narrow shelf led far ahead. There was no sign of Hiroko. Either she had not come out in the same place or she was already gone. There was no opening behind him, just a smooth rock wall. If he wanted to re-enter the tower, he’d have to look elsewhere.

Chang-li opened his soul space. He slipped the sword, the journal and his scribe’s kit inside, filling the space, then set off down the ledge. The path wound down to an easier slope covered in trees. And then, working his way along, he found the road up the mountain and realized he was about two li from the camp.

He stopped and withdrew a little bit into the trees. His plan now was simple. He would wait for a day, hoping to find another party coming up the mountain from Golden Moon City. He could mingle with them, pretending to have been in Golden Moon City all this time, and return to the camp. If more than a day passed and no such party came, he would continue up to the camp on his own.

What he really wanted was to leave a space between the arrival of the dirty, unkempt, half-naked Princess Hiroko and himself. Whatever happened next, he didn't want anyone in the camp associating him with her. It seemed like a good way to get himself killed.

Chang-li sat in his favorite cycling position and began to cycle. At once, he was struck just how hard it was. His body brimmed with the lux he'd brought out of the tower, but the air around him was almost entirely devoid of lux. He pushed it through his body, but each breath he took in contained no new lux, and with each breath he exhaled, he lost some tiny, precious portion of his own.

He carefully sequestered as much of the precious violet lux in his core as he could. Then wondered if that was the right choice. Could a cultivation master see into his core and realize he had been cultivating the forbidden lux?

No matter. He cycled and thought about what he would do next. He had to get back into the tower. He knew the entrance for the first floor. It would be hard to overcome obstacles on his own. If the defenders of the oases did not regenerate quickly, he might wander for months before finding enough to once again call the first floor guardian and prove his worth.

So be it. He would get his hands on enough cultivator rations to last a year, if he had to. He didn't care how long it took. He would reach the Peak of Bodily Refinement. Of that he was certain.