Chang-li spent the night in the forest, very alone and uncomfortable. He had forgotten to get his cloak back from Hiroko, so he curled into a ball and shivered, sleepless through the night. He alternated periods of shivering with time seated, trying to cycle. It was so hard. Every repetition of a cycling technique allowed more lux to leak away from his body. He was feeling heavier by the minute, like being weighed down by the very air itself.

Chang-li stored as much orange and yellow lux in his core as he could, along with the precious scraps of violet. When morning finally came, he had no food to ease his hunger, having given all of it to Joshi. He hoped his friend was doing well inside the tower, and feared he would never know what became of him.

About four hours after dawn, Chang-li at last heard the sound he'd been straining to hear since yesterday afternoon. Feet tramping up the road, distant singing as a party came along the mountain path toward the camp. He stayed back in the trees, watching as the party came past. To his delight, it was, as he'd hoped, large and varied. At the front marched a dozen soldiers led by a cultivator wearing the orange-and-purple robes of the Soaring Heavens sect.

Then came a bunch of slave porters, their tight collars looking unbearable around their necks, now that he knew how cruel the devices were. They were followed by narrow ox carts, each pulled by a single animal, teetering along on enormous rickety wooden wheels and loaded high with provisions for the camp. There were fourteen carts, each accompanied by a drover with a master at the back watching the whole pack.

After that, the walkers, men and women in clothes denoting their status as laborers. A little ways behind them, far enough back that the dust died down, trailed six more soldiers.

Chang-li waited until the laborers were almost past him, then stepped out from the trees, rearranging his clothes as though he had been doing his business in the woods.

He fell in near the back of the laborers, keeping his back straight and trying to act as though he belonged here. His scribe's robe was dusty and splattered after his time in the tower, and he had nothing to carry. His sword and his journal rested safely in his soul space. He could feel them there. It was an anxious, uncomfortable feeling. He hoped he'd get used to it soon.

Chang-li marched along, listening to the gossip. The laborers were apparently finally starting to relax. They were past the section where the tower beast attack had happened, after all. Listening carefully, Chang-li gathered the attack had been four days previous. So he had been right. Time did pass differently inside the tower. He had no sure count, but was certain he’d been inside for nearly two weeks.

He was almost certain that was not the case for Floor Three, where he had been before. The hours he had spent inside, cowering in fear from tower beasts, had corresponded pretty well with the time that passed outside.

What would be the difference? Was it because there was no proper entrance to the third floor and they had gone in through a hole in the wall? Was it a lack of violet lux? He wasn't actually sure how much violet lux there had been on the third floor, as he hadn't been capable of assessing that when he was there. But he was starting to believe that violet lux was responsible both for the strange passage of time and his rapid cultivation progress. Violet lux, he suspected, affected time itself. No wonder it was forbidden.

An hour and a half later, they rounded the last narrow bend in the road, and Chang-li saw the cultivator encampment laid out for him once more. It was on the far side of a ravine from them. A narrow stone bridge arced the ravine, easily defendable by a couple of men with long spears. The road continued past the bridge on up the mountain, leading to the third floor entrance hole. Any tower beasts that should escape from the third floor would stream past this point, leaving the camp out of the way of their anger.

On the far side of the ravine, the stone and mud-baked brick buildings clung to the side of the mountain like lichen. The bridge crossed the ravine to the entrance plaza. There the guards came out and checked the caravan’s paperwork. Chang-li had a moment of panic, but kept his head and reminded the guards to check the list from last week.

“Oh, we thought you’d been with the caravan that was attacked.”

“No,” Chang-li lied. “I had several days of business down in Golden Moon City. There should be a notation that I might not return with the same group that brought me.”

The guard turned pages of the list. “So it is. I’ll mark you off here as safe and sound. Welcome back.”

Chang-li passed into the outer camp, a narrow canyon-like row of guard posts and storerooms. Then, stairs led both upward and down. Below were the slave quarters and housing for peasants and laborers. Down below, where the camp opened up into a large flat shelf, was more exposed to wind and weather.

The steps led up. Chang-li climbed them into the section of camp reserved for the army, expedition support, and artisans. This was where the scribing house was and where the army quartermaster's facility was. Chang-li spent most of his days here. Farther up, of course, was the royal court. He hoped Princess Hiroko had made it back all right.

Chang-li slipped in the side door of the scribing house. He hoped to avoid seeing any of his fellow scribes until he'd had a chance to change, but luck was not with him. As he entered the junior scribes' barracks, two of his fellows were seated on the floor talking to each other. Scribe Jun looked up. His eyes went wide. He leapt to his feet.

"Scribe Wu, you..." His eyes flicked from Chang-li's face to his feet. "You look terrible, your robe is a disgrace! You just came up the mountain? Were you attacked again by beasts?"

Chang-li shook his head. "No." realizing he hadn't thought of a good enough cover story. "Ah, the truth of it is..." He thought fast and lowered his voice. "I finished with my tasks in Golden Moon City last night, and I went out to a tavern to celebrate. There was a girl there. She seemed like she liked me, you know? She was getting me to buy one drink after another. We left the tavern. I was pretty drunk, but I thought... Well, anyway..." He cleared his throat, trying to look embarrassed. "She took me out to a back alley, and the next thing I knew, it was morning, and I came to in a puddle of vomit and blood. My purse was gone."

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Scribe Jun and Scribe Lin chuckled at his misfortune. "That'll teach you," Lin said.

"Yes," Chang-li said. "Anyway, I wanted to get cleaned up before I report in to Inspector Ji’in.”

"I'll bet you do," Scribe Jun said. He hesitated, then sighed. "Look, I'll run for a quick pail of water. Can't have you casting bad impressions on the rest of the juniors.”

"Thank you," Chang-li said fervently. He crossed to his own chest and opened it up, taking out a replacement robe. By the time Jun came back with a bucket of water and a scouring cloth, Chang-li had stripped down to his small clothes. Jun set the bucket down on the other side of the paper screen and beat a hasty retreat, probably to avoid Chang-li asking any other favors.

He washed himself as best he could in the bucket. He'd have to go to the baths as soon as he could, but they were open to junior scribes only one night in three, and he wasn't sure anymore what night today was.

He dressed in his spare garments and bundled the filthy rags into a pile. He'd bribe one of the camp laundresses to do her best, but there was a good chance this outfit was ruined, in which case he'd have to requisition another, which would be taken out of his pay. Chang-li went to report to his boss.

The rice wine Inspector Ji'in had requested was sitting on the inspector's desk, unopened. The inspector turned a pleased face to Chang-li as the junior scribe slid the wood and paper door shut behind him.

"Well done, young Wu. I have not tasted this vintage in six months. I'm pleased to have it back. Tell me, how did the army records work go?"

Chang-li was ready for this. "All sorted out, sir. I dropped the paperwork by the quartermaster's, and he was very appreciative of our help and our discretion," he emphasized the last word.

Inspector Ji'in nodded and smiled. “Then there is a favor they owe us. We shall not be so crass as to mention it, of course. Quartermaster Lun understands how the game is played. Well done. Now that you are back, I have plenty of work for you. I'm expecting the number of expeditions into the tower to increase, which means the other junior scribes will be on a heightened rotation. I'll be assigning you the job of holding down the desk here unless something truly critical comes up."

Chang-li's heart sank. "Why will there be more expeditions, sir?" he asked.

"Well, the attack, of course. I assume you heard of that. It seems as though tower beasts escaped somehow and made an assault on the caravan. Fortunately for you, not while you were there. Fourteen people died.”

“Oh, of course,” Chang-li said hastily.

“The Master of Cultivation believes we may be near an eruption. We must prevent that at any costs. It's literally his head at stake here. I, of course, have assured him that the Scribes' Guild stands ready to assist in any way we can, primarily in documenting the parties entering the tower, how long they are there, who participates, and so on. I may have to send a request for more junior scribes since we lost Scribe Dai and yourself from our roster of scribes who can enter."

"I've been thinking, sir," Chang-li said. "Seeing as it's an emergency, I could take a rotation as well, just here and there. I've been doing plenty of cycling using the Way of the Faithful, and I felt no ill effects from my previous exposure."

"No," Inspector Ji'in said clearly. "Do not speak of it again."

So much for that hope.

“In addition, the Moon Whispers sect arrived yesterday. They have only a single scribe with them, so will require our support. I foresee a busy, confusing time coming up. I may have to requisition some municipal scribes from down in Golden Moon city to assist us. At any rate, Scribe Wu, you are in good time. You may have the rest of the afternoon to yourself.” Inspector Ji’in sniffed delicately. “Might I suggest you visit the baths?”

As Chang-li went about his scribing duties over the next two days, he felt wrong. His experiences in the tower had changed him, and he wasn't entirely sure who the new Chang-li was. He tried to remember why he had become a scribe in the first place. He had been the sickly child of a hard-working peasant family, his mother a laundress, his father and his brother dock hands. it had been clear from a young age that Chang-li was not cut out for that sort of physical labor.

If only his brother could see him now. He marveled, considering his muscled arms hidden beneath his robes. The weeks of cultivating in the Tower had changed him. None of his fellow scribes had yet noticed. Chang-li was taking care to rise and dress before any of them were up. His scrawny frame was built out with muscles now. If this was what condensing his core just twice earned him, he could not wait to see what would happen when he reached Bodily Refinement.

He had become a scribe because, with a quick mind and a body tending toward sickliness, it had seemed a good choice. His mother's brother, who had been a city clerk working closely with licensed scribes, suggested it as a possible career for Chang-li and he’d leapt at the chance. His uncle’s friends had sponsored him to the school, while his uncle helped out with fees.

He had adored Uncle Luan and his friends. Some of those friends had been scribes to cultivator sects for a time before being posted to Yellow Sky City. They had always had the most fantastic stories of accompanying cultivators on their journeys and the incredible things they'd seen. From a young age, Chang-li had been thrilled at the adventures. Somehow, he had begun associating the adventures with the scribes themselves. It wasn't until he had become a licensed scribe himself that he realized that scribes didn't have adventures. They just wrote them down.

For a time, he thought that would be enough. He had position and rank and might climb high enough to become an important official one day. He would never starve. The money he was sending back to his mother and brother would let his mother retire from her duties as a laundress. She would no longer have to spend her days stooping over boiling tubs of linens, breathing in the chemical-laden smoke that had changed her once sweet voice to a rasp and given her a persistent cough.

That was worth his sacrifice. He had known from the moment he was accepted as a licensed scribe that he would never see his mother and brother again. The emperor, in his wisdom, ensured that scribes could not serve in the same province as they had grown up. That would prevent them from giving their friends and relatives unequal treatment. The empire depended on its records being accurate. A licensed scribe was held to high standards. He could not marry, nor take a long-standing lover. If he indulged too strongly in vices, that would be noticed. Inspector Jin had skirted along that edge, and it was likely why he was exiled to a backwater, supervising a broken tower cull rather than given a plush role in a city overseeing tax collection.

Chang-li found himself turning to Wulan's book over and over as though it held the answers. As he lay drifting off to sleep that night, he realized it did. Wulan's own regrets, the ones the ghost had expressed to him, seeped through the pages and they echoed Chang-li's own. Wulan had spent his entire life recording great deeds, being witness to them, but not participating. That was what he himself feared, to observe rather than to do. It was no longer enough for Chang-li to be a scribe. He would be a cultivator.