Joshi stared up at the edifice rearing out of the swamp above him. It was a stepped pyramid, seven tiers high, made of featureless black stone. When he cycled lux out of his body, the vented lux was drawn toward the pyramid and absorbed by its dark surfaces.
He sat down in a clear spot about 30 feet away, studying the single feature on the entire pyramid, an opening along the base on what he was calling the North Face. All around, the land raised gradually up out of the swamp, a barren hill devoid of life, like the pyramid had devoured everything in the area.
Magen hovered over Joshi's shoulder, the little lux creature's presence a comfort. Joshi cycled a bit of violet lux toward it, and it leapt and devoured the lux before the pyramid could absorb it. He arranged himself in his favorite cycling posture, legs crossed, arms held out with his palms upward, and cycled Purification of Mind and Soul. His channels were full of lux again, clogging the free passage of the red and violet lux he so desperately needed. Channeling shifted a bit of the unpurified lux from his body, but not enough.
With reluctance, he opened the satchel Chang-li had given him. A single purification ration remained. He pulled it out and stared at it, sighed mentally. He couldn't push on any longer. He'd gone as far as he could, and he had to purify himself.
Joshi consumed the ration. He cycled its benefits through his body, purging the unpurified lux with Chang-li’s Swirling Mists technique, packing his newly dense core with as much red and violet lux as he could. He had no idea what he would encounter inside the pyramid, and he had to be ready.
Joshi checked the satchel. He had a few pieces of dried meat remaining, which he ate, and drank the last sips of pure water in his skin. He considered throwing the satchel away. There seemed no point taking it any further. He ran a hand along the inside, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything, and encountered a hard lump at the bottom under the lining.
Frowning, he pulled the satchel wide open and peered in. There was a small lump hidden inside the lining. Joshi pulled and yanked until the lining came free, and a golden signet ring tumbled into his hand.
He stared at it. The ring showed a crest like one would use to seal a letter. He didn't recognize the device, but it was obvious what it was. The symbol of a sect. This was probably the sect of the long dead scribe who had left Chang-li the journal.
It made sense. The scribe had been with a cultivator of some sort. This ring was set with an iron surround, indicating it belonged to a cultivator of the Young Master rank.. He had no use for the ring, but felt he should return it to Chang-li. He slipped the ring onto his finger. It was like making a promise that he would survive this place and meet his friend again.
That done, he stood up. Magen circled his head, humming eagerly. "Yes, little one," he told the lux creature. "It is time to go."
They strode toward the tower as Joshi channeled red lux into his strong right arm, curling his fingers into a fist.
The first step into the pyramid took him to utter darkness. Joshi almost turned and fled, but there was nothing for him back there. There was no exit from this floor. His only hope of salvation was to reach the top of this pyramid. There had to be a floor guardian here. He had seen nothing else in all his time on the second floor that looked like a guardian. If he was wrong, then he was dead. If he went back, he was dead. The only path open was forward.
He took another step into darkness, and then another. After his fourth step, the darkness began to lift a bit, graying around the edges. He continued forward, his ears keen for the sound of any creature that might be approaching him.
Then it was light enough for him to see. He faced a blank wall. A corridor led off to the right. Now he could hear scratching and skittering ahead of him. He had no choice. Steeling himself, he went onward.
The corridor went straight for about 20 feet, then turned hard to the left. Rounding the corner, Joshi found his first opponents, a pair of knee-high rats. They each had two tails and abnormally long teeth. Their eyes glowed red as they rushed forward, their teeth shining with orange lux. Joshi set himself as the first ran toward him. He punched, his fists coated in red lux. His blow struck the first rat square in the snout and knocked it backwards, head over tail. It chittered and rolled, sprang back up.
Joshi was dealing with the other rat. He smashed a fist against it, aiming a bit more carefully, and knocked it back against the wall hard. Then he lashed out with one foot and crushed its ribs in. The rat flew back to smack against the wall, dead.
The second rat raced toward him. Joshi finished it with one blow to its skull. Orange and red lux flowed from the creatures. The red was almost perfectly tuned to Joshi's own. He absorbed the red and offered the orange to Magen, who accepted a bit of it with a hum of distaste. The lux creature clearly preferred the spiritual, not physical, lux colors. The rest dissipated into the dark walls of the pyramid. Joshi had taken not a single scratch in that fight. He pressed on.
When he turned the next corner, another pair of rats waited, about the same strength as the first two. He killed them, absorbing their lux and cycling it through his body. Their red lux was far denser and purer than the ambient lux he had been absorbing from the environment, or even that which he had received from killing creatures outside the pyramid.
He cycled it through his body and let it flow into his core. He could feel his newly dense core beginning to accept this lux and knew he was on the path to Bodily Refinement. With lux this strong and pure, perhaps he could reach it. Some fragments of the lux remained in his channels, beginning the process of clogging them once more. But there was no help for it.
He turned again at the end of this corridor and faced three rats this time, the middle one of the trio a head taller than the other two. They rushed him in a frenzied pack. He knocked one back with a snap kick, smashed a fist against the second, and the third ducked in under his guard and bit at his unprotected chest. He narrowly dodged the rat's teeth, stepping back and then aiming a kick at it. With the seconds that bought him, he obliterated the first rat's skull, then, facing only two opponents, fell back into the rhythm he'd used twice before. He finished the fight breathing heavily.
Once again, he was forced to absorb the dead rats' lux to replace what he had expended in that fight. Once again, the unwanted orange residue clung to his lux channels. Magen settled on his shoulder. Its soothing presence washed away a bit of his tiredness. He reached up with a hand as if to pet it. He could feel it vibrating against his palm.
"We can do this, little one.”
At the end of this corridor, he found the stair leading up. Joshi eyed it warily, but he had no choice. He had to ascend. He climbed the steps.
On the second floor, the enemies he faced were giant lizards, coming up past knee-high on him in packs of three and four. They lashed with their tails as well as attacking him with teeth and claws. Joshi sustained a few wounds to his bare arms. His slave's pants were little protection, the thin cloth ripping under the attack. These packs used red and blue lux. He hadn't noticed them make any use of the blue, but it was present in their bodies as he cycled. Magen accepted some of it. The little lux creature seemed to have a taste for blue, though not quite the voracious appetite it showed for violet.
Joshi wondered if it would get along with Princess Hiroko. He hoped Hiroko had made it back to the encampment safely and resumed her normal life as much as she could. He hoped Chang-li could find a way back into the tower on his own. The scribe was a cultivating genius. He probably would have already reached Bodily Refinement by now with the resources he had given Joshi. If Joshi ever escaped, he would owe Chang-li a great debt.
The third floor enemies were foxes. The indigo tint to their fur warned Joshi to expect mental attacks. Sure enough, as they attacked him, they often appeared to be a few inches to the side of where they really were.
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Joshi took a moderate bite on his left arm when he misjudged one fox's attack. After that, he learned to trust his instincts and not his eyes. When he suffused red lux throughout his whole body, it responded faster than he could actually think. His punches would land on their target even if his eyes lied about where that target was.
He burned through lux at an astonishing rate. Each pack provided enough lux to replenish him, but also added to the growing burden in his channels. Joshi wondered if the tower guardian was doing this on purpose somehow. Pushing him, testing him, providing him the tools he needed to prove himself or to die. There was no choice. Joshi would make it through.
On the fourth floor, the enemies were badgers. They used orange lux to reinforce their claws, just as Joshi wished to do himself. He studied them as much as he could while desperately fighting for his life, seeking an advantage. With the final pack, he drew orange lux from his veins, cycled it through his core, and then pushed it out to his fist. It wasn’t a graceful chord, two lux colors mixed together in a balanced pattern; it was more like sticking a wad of orange lux to the carefully-channeled red and hoping for the best.
He couldn’t manage the claws that the Harupa monks said should be possible. Instead, a single long spike of orange lux extending out from his fist like he was holding a three-inch dagger between his third and fourth fingers.
On the final pack, he successfully stabbed the first charging badger through the eye with his lux spike. Joshi laughed aloud in delight. The lux spike dissipated. He'd lost his concentration. He fell back onto punches as the remaining badgers tore at him. He defeated them, but he had lost a lot of blood.
Joshi sat down on the floor to cycle. He had no food or drink and was weakened from blood loss. His blood clung to his arms and legs in streaks, drying and turning itchy. He cycled red lux throughout his body in the Purification of Mind and Soul pattern he had used to cure the wounds caused by his slave collar.
It was getting easier and easier to do. Before, just healing a few sores had taken great concentration and huge supplies of lux. Now, he deftly guided the red lux to where it needed to be, touching every wound and causing them to knit back together. None of them were much more than surface wounds.
The bite he had gotten from a fox worried him. His lux channels felt strained in that area and he worried the fox had carried a disease. Red lux could heal injuries but did not fight off infections. For that, one needed green, and Joshi had no green lux techniques. Instead, he focused on what he could, then switched back his cycling to the Swirling Mists pattern and leaned his head against the wall. He would not sleep here but he could rest.
When he finished his cycling, an hour or so later, Joshi felt as though he'd just gotten a good night's sleep. It did nothing to cure the growing hunger in his stomach. He had fought for who knows how many hours now, sustained only by lux. A cultivator past the Peak of Bodily Refinement could consume the bodies of tower beasts for food if he knew how to prepare them. For anyone who had not yet reached Bodily Refinement, the lux impurities in their flesh would kill him.
He had to reach the top. Joshi rose and started for the stair to the fifth floor, Magen hovering at his side. It felt as though the little lux creature had grown in strength in their time here. Joshi hoped that were so. If he did fail, perhaps Magen would survive.
On the fifth floor, Joshi faced Chima cats, a beast native to his steppes, with pale tan fur and spots. They were a little larger than the Chima cats he had hunted as a boy, and they fought far more aggressively than the sneaky steppe hunters he had been acquainted with ever had. They attacked him viciously in packs of four and five, leaping past his head and getting behind him.
Joshi learned to keep the wall at his back as he fought, forcing them to come at him from an arc on both sides. With his right arm, he punched. He channeled orange lux to his left and conjured what the monks of Hapriu had termed a basic one-note shield, a simple circle of manifested lux about a foot tall, that he could interpose between himself and the attackers. They bashed themselves against it, buying him time to take them on one at a time.
By the end of the second pack, he was finding it easy to manage two colors of lux at once. Many cultivators did not attain such skill until after they reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement, but his teachers had told him to strive for it. It was the mark of a cultivator who would rise far. He couldn't spend time rejoicing, though, not with his growling stomach and increasingly clogged lux channels.
Joshi had the pattern of these levels now. A single pack of enemies waited in each of the three corridors, and then there would be a stair leading up. The third pack was always harder than the two previous, but would use the same tricks and techniques. These cats used red lux to fortify their bodies, orange to turn their teeth and claws into weapons, and indigo to hide their attacks from him as best they could. Armed with that knowledge, with Magen chirping happily above him, he rounded the last bend and prepared for a fight.
There were six cats in this pack, and they sniffed him at once, yowling and dashing for him. He summoned his lux shield with his left hand. A cultivator could learn enhance his shielding technique as he progressed, adding more colors of lux to give the shield a stunning effect or perhaps a health leech.
For now, all Joshi wanted was defense. He pushed as much orange lux as he could manage, at the same time wrapping his fist in red. If only he had the attention and ability to weave the orange and red into armor for his whole body. That sort of chord was far beyond him today.
The cats were upon him. Joshi's fist lashed out like lightning, smashing into the whiskered jaw of the first cat, knocking it into the one behind. The two tumbled over each other in a confusion of limbs and tails. The next two cats were already in the gap. Joshi shifted his shield an inch to the side, and one of the two cats smashed against it, seeming to daze it.
The fourth cat darted beside the shield. Joshi punched with his fist. He couldn't yet manage to channel orange lux to both hands at once, and so his fist was strengthened by red, but not equipped with an orange spike. Still, he punched right through the skull of the cat. It dropped to the ground, lux coiling off of it. Joshi seized the lux almost without thinking about it, cycling it through his body.
It clogged his veins even worse, but he desperately needed it, as his own supplies of orange were running thin. Now one of the stunned cats had leapt up and was clawing at him. Another bashed against his shield. He strengthened it with more orange lux, and then channeled red lux to his right foot and lashed out. His toe hit the cat in the abdomen and knocked it away. It fell to the ground, hitting hard, and lux began coiling from its body. Two down, four to go.
Joshi was running low on orange lux. He made a decision and dropped the shield, instantly pushing what remained of his orange to his right hand to form a spike. Then he sprang forward, shouting as he charged the first cat. His fist smashed into its head, the orange lux point driven deep into the brain behind the eye socket. He whirled as another pair of the beasts attacked his rear and kicked out with one foot. Lux was streaming into him from multiple cat corpses now. He was cycling and fighting just as a proper cultivator should. It wasn't even difficult. All the cycling practice he had done had made this as natural as breathing. He was able to recycle his enemy's lux back into himself.
He shouted and once again drove his lux-tipped hand into a cat, catching it in the neck and skewering it. It fell to the ground, bleeding but not quite dead. He stomped down hard with a foot and felt its vertebra snap. Two left, and Joshi had their fellows’ lux at his disposal.
The pair came on, seemingly maddened at the sight of their prey fighting back. One lashed at him with sharp claws as he demolished the other with a single blow. The cat's claws ripped painful lacerations across his torso from shoulder to opposite hip, biting deep. Joshi screamed in pain as he ran out of orange lux. The pain disrupted his cycling concentration. His foe's dissipating lux swirled around him in the corridor as he was unable to seize it. He called on the last reserves of red in his core, channeled it to both hands, then, hands together, smashed his two fists down onto the middle of the last cat’s spine. It dropped like a stone.
Joshi sagged against the wall, pain shooting through his body, out of strength and out of lux. He closed his eyes and tried to cycle. The pain was too much. He had only a tiny amount of purified lux left in him. His channels were nearly clogged. Magen hovered over him, humming worriedly. Joshi opened his eye. Was it his imagination, or was the little puffball of light denser than it had been once?
"Just a moment to catch my breath," he managed.
Magen hovered, then darted down and lay against his chest, close as a heartbeat. Joshi's own heart slowed to match the lux creature's pulsing. Slowly the pain abated. Joshi reached out for all the lux remaining in the corridor. He pulled it into himself and cycled the most basic technique he could, Purification of Mind and Soul. Women in the throes of childbirth could manage this. Men mad with sun delirium. Even small children with broken legs could use the cycling technique.
Slowly Joshi's soreness eased. His wounds began to heal. As the pain diminished, he inhaled more lux, cycled it in a more efficient Way of Boulders technique, purifying what he could, expelling as much detritus as possible. There was precious little violet lux in here, and he was feeling the lack. What he did have, he sent down his lux channels in his best attempt to purify them, then vented the little left for Magen. The lux creature snapped up the violet, humming more contentedly.
After a while, his cycling complete, Joshi stood up. The cat's claws still marked him, vibrant red pucker wounds marring his chest. He had enough lux to heal them, but he didn't want to deplete his core. Whatever lay ahead of him on the sixth floor would be stronger and worse than these. He needed every bit of lux he had to face the challenge. His stomach rumbling, his mouth parched, Joshi stood and made his way to the stairs.