Joshi considered his situation. The five rogue cultivators had given him only a single name each, and he had given them his. They had an uneasy détente. The rogues harvested the rest of his slain beasts and roasted them while Joshi sat under a tree cycling. He watched them through slitted eyes. He didn't want to get into a fight. There didn't seem to be any need for one. They could go their way, and he could go his.

As the men ate, they began to relax, laughing and joking amongst each other. One produced a flask of spirits and passed it around. Their seeming leader, who called himself Er-yun, offered the flask to Joshi. He accepted and took a sip. The coarse spirits were harsh on his throat and burned. To his surprise, they had an effect on his lux channels. He cycled, pushing the contamination away.

"What is this?" he asked.

Er-yun smiled. "Good stuff, isn't it? Helps purify out the lux.”

That bothered Joshi. The strangers had reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement, as he had. They shouldn’t need help to purify themselves: their cores and lux channels should have been remade and now be capable of processing lux without contamination.

As he cycled, he studied them, and he didn't like what he saw. Their cores were shaky. The Hapiru monks, who had been his teachers, had warned him of the dangers of advancing past Bodily Refinement without the aid of a sect. A sect would have access to spiritual treasures to assist in his continued advancement, but more importantly, a sect would have Paths to guide him. After reaching Bodily Refinement, each cultivator’s journey became more individual as he focused on his own strengths, but a Path could serve as a general guide. Most sects would have multiple Path manuals and the instructors could further guide a disciple on them. Joshi would need to find a sect to accept him soon. He had thought he could go a little farther on his own, relying on the teachings of the Hapiru monks. Now he wondered.

Joshi's own core was solid as a rock, a perfect sphere in the center of his body, the source of all his lux channels. Every breath of lux he took in passed through his core and was refined before flowing into his lux channels. It was not an unconscious process, like the way his heart pumped blood through his body. He could affect it with his thoughts, changing his cycling patterns to alter the flow of lux through his veins. That was the very essence of what it meant to be a cultivator—to take control of those processes which others considered purely unconscious.

These men, though, seemed to be employing a brute force method. They had strengthened their cores, condensing them the three required times before advancing to the Peak of Bodily Refinement. Yes, they could store the same quantities of lux as Joshi, but they didn't seem to understand how to purify it and use it the way they wanted. He was starting to be curious what they would look like in battle. He didn't think it would be good.

One of the men paused in mid-sentence, staring at Joshi's hand. "You," he said. "That ring, what is it?"

Joshi had honestly forgotten he was wearing the cultivator ring he had found in the satchel Chang-li gave him. He looked down at it now. Any fool could tell what it was—a mark of a Young Master of a sect. The sect icon itself was obscure. Joshi wasn't entirely sure what the half-circle and three wavy lines were supposed to represent, though Chang-li had named them as the Morning Mists sect. "My sect ring.”

The other men looked at each other sharply. "We thought you were sectless like us."

"My sect is no more," Joshi prevaricated. "I am all that is left. I came here to seek my fortune, just as you have."

That answer seemed to mollify the men. "Right, well, we should all be going.” Er-yun stood up. "Come along with us. We know where there's a treasure to be found."

“Wait,” one of the others said. “Weren’t we going to wait for Master Shyoni?”

“He was supposed to be here a week ago. Something’s gone wrong. If we wait for him, we’ll get caught. Besides, he’s not our master anyway.”

“Who is Master Shyoni?” Joshi asked. The name was strange, sounding foreign.

“Never mind,” Er-yun said. “He’s not here, so it doesn’t matter. Coming?”

Joshi’s curiosity was piqued. He was still looking for an opportunity to separate himself from these men, but he worried if he made too swift a move, they would attack him. "I can come along," he agreed. Besides, he had no set place to be. He had not yet determined the challenge for this floor, if there even was one. The tower was broken here. The Emperor's chosen entered and plundered at will.

There was a route to the next floor. He knew that much from the slave gossip he'd heard in camp. This tower was five floors tall, and the final floor contained a tower challenge, one winnable only by a single cultivator or party of cultivators, after which the tower's power would wane for a time, reducing the chance of a tower eruption.

That's what the expedition was doing here—culling the tower, siphoning away its power, allowing young cultivators to make use of it and to cut down on the number of tower beasts inside. They'd already made an impact. There were far fewer creatures here than had been on his disastrous first entrance to this floor under the auspices of young Master Feng.

Joshi needed to find a way up to the fourth floor quickly before the official cultivators decimated that as well. If he wanted to get the most use out of this tower, he needed to climb. And a treasure might be just what he needed.

His mind made up in a flash, Joshi rose and bowed to Er-Yun. "I would be honored to accompany you," he said.

It took them several hours to reach their destination. The rogue cultivator party surprised a couple of fanged rabbit creatures. Joshi hung back and watched as the rogues bludgeoned the creatures to death with their weapons. They infused lux into their weapons from their hands, but it was barely differentiated. Masses of red and orange weren't so much woven as simply extruded from their hands. No wonder these men had been let go from their sects. They showed no sign of understanding what the purpose of cultivation truly was. They laughed and whooped at their kills, absorbing the lux from the beasts. Joshi avoided taking any of it as he hadn't helped with the kill.

Er-Yun noticed. He dropped back as they continued and spoke to Joshi. "You avoided that fight, stranger."

Joshi shrugged. "I am still cycling the lux from those frogs. I thought I would allow the rest of you to refill your own cores."

"I am eager to see you in action."

"The time will come," Joshi said, though he was in no hurry for it.

Er-Yun peered at him suspiciously. "You must have reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement like us, or you wouldn't be able to eat the flesh of the beasts in here. You can't have gone much beyond it."

Joshi shook his head. "Not yet."

"Well, we're hoping the treasure we seek will be enough to propel us farther along the path. That's why we're here, risking everything. They said we weren't worthy to be cultivators. We'll prove them wrong."

Joshi noticed as they went, the land gradually rose. It was hard to tell in the thickly dense jungle, but at last, they came to a place where the forest thinned out and finally emerged onto a ridge. A breeze ruffled the other cultivators’ hair and dried the sweat on Joshi's bald head. He expected sunlight to glint down, but not here in this tower. Like the other floors, lux swirled overhead, dominated here by red and orange, with just hints of yellow and blue.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He took in the ambient lux, straining out all of the violet he could to feed to Magan. The little spirit was still following him, invisible to the others. It accepted the lux gratefully and reassured him that he was in no danger of starving. That was good. If the lux creature could only eat violet, he would have had a very hard time keeping it alive.

Joshi had heard of great cultivators who had lux spirits bonded to them. The stories were always fantastic but vague on the details. While he was curious what Magan might do when stronger, mostly, he was just happy for the little creature's constant companionship—a warm presence nuzzling against his mind.

"We're almost there," Er-Yun announced.

The other cultivators cheered. "Let's stop and eat."

They stopped, unslinging their packs and rooting around for rations. Joshi was out of the dried meat and cheese Chang-li had given him. He had some strips of frog flesh he had wrapped in leaves and ate those, then began to cycle. The other cultivators followed their meal with a couple of quick iterations of a basic cycling pattern similar to Purification of Mind and Soul. While Joshi was still working on his fifth repetition of Way of Boulders, they stood up.

"You're still at it?" one asked, looking surprised.

"I am," Joshi said, not looking up. "I will be finished soon."

"You don't need nearly so many repetitions," Er-Yun said. "Have you been at the Peak of Bodily Refinement long?"

"A few days," Joshi said.

"Well, there you are," Er-Yun smiled, folding his arms across his chest with a self-satisfied look. "We've been there for months now. It doesn’t take long to realize that without a Path and a dedicated cycling technique, there’s not much point in cycling. Your body refines the impurities, and anything else is fruitless without a proper cycling technique. None of the beginner techniques work well enough to bother with.”

No, Joshi thought as he purified his own lux over and over. That was exactly why these cultivators were on their own. They did not understand the purpose of cultivation, which was always, always to prepare your body for the next step. True, he could quickly refine the lux in his core with a couple of repeated cycles, but by pushing the refined lux through his body, he strengthened his channels, increased his capacity for more, and prepared himself for the next step, which admittedly he wasn't yet sure how to achieve. Even if the cycling techniques were no longer optimal, it was better than neglecting his cycling as they were.

The monks had taught him what he needed to get to the Peak of Bodily Refinement. They had told him that after that, he would have to find a sect willing to take him on and teach him their secret Paths. The journey from Bodily Refinement to Mental Refinement was difficult and would require great effort on his part.

He was looking forward to it and would continue to do what he knew he could to prepare himself, which was to cycle his lux, refining it, making it more pure, and increasing his own ability to handle multiple colors at once. Already, red and orange were easy for him to combine. He would need to add a third and begin using braid techniques before he could hope to reach the Peak of Mental Refinement.

From what he did know of other cultivators at this step, green was the usual next color to mix with a pair of physical luxes. Green was considered the bridge between the purely physical luxes and the spiritual luxes. More complicated techniques, such as weaving, almost always required a strand of green to tie together the physical and the spiritual luxes. But you couldn't just slap together luxes and have it do things for you. You had to understand what it was and what it meant to you. So, until Joshi had a technique or an instructor to show him, he would concentrate on deepening his understanding of red lux and orange, of his own body and the weapons he could make of it.

The rogues were getting impatient. Joshi finished his cycle and stood. "Thank you for indulging me," he said. "So where is this treasure?"

He expected they would betray him as soon as they had located the treasure, and he would be ready for that. The monks of Hapiru had taught him not to offer violence first, but to never shrink away from a fight that was forced upon him. If they betrayed and tried to kill him, they would regret it. His father and brothers preferred to strike first, and from cover, destroying the stranger before he could become an enemy. It was a harsh philosophy from a harsh land. Rejecting it was one reason he had landed in bonds.

"It should be just over the ridge," Er-Yun said.

As they continued up, Joshi kept the rogues in his sight, not allowing them to get behind him. They reached the top of the ridge, and he stared down. A vast crater lay in front of him. It was from an ancient volcano, or perhaps like the place deep into his people's wild lands that his father had taken him once as a boy. The khan told him a story of how long ago, before the emperor, before any of the great cultivators of legend, a star had fallen here and created a bowl with a lake at its center. The lake was a sacred place of his people, and, as his father said, the star lay there still, waiting for the day when the greatest khan their people had ever seen would come to claim its power.

He had not thought of that in nearly two decades. Joshi pushed the memory away. The crater was verdant with plant life. In the center rose an enormous nest of what looked like twigs from here. Joshi knew they had to be entire tree trunks created by some huge beast.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It is the roc's nest," Er-Yun said. "We learned about this from a cultivator who had been here on a previous cull. The roc is constantly out hunting for prey to feed its young. It returns to the nest only once a day. The rest of the time, the eggs are unguarded. He said each of the eggs contained enough lumos to elevate a man straight from peak Bodily Refinement to Mental."

And if Joshi had thought these were fools before, he knew now that they were the worst sort of idiots. "Lumos. The substance that only the emperor and his prisms can safely use? Unaspected lux, the very nature of the universe itself?" he asked skeptically.

"Yes."

"The whole purpose of cultivating towers is to break lumos down into lux and then diffuse it throughout the world," Joshi pointed out. "Even if there were reserves of lumos inside the tower, which doesn't make any sense since the tower is made to break it down, we couldn't possibly touch it. Our bodies aren't ready for that sort of power. We'll be unmade."

Er-Yun looked stubborn. “That is just what they tell everyone. All of us have been thrown out of our sects and rejected. We will not be able to make it to Mental Refinement on our own. But if we can get this lumos, achieve Mental Refinement, then, then they'll have to take us back. I'll show my brother that everything he said about me was wrong."

Joshi craned his head, looking for the sign of the roc, but the sky was just a massive whirlpool of lux. "Go ahead," he told them. "I want no part of it."

"More fool you," Er-Yun said. "Come on, time is wasting," he told his fellows, and they began to scramble down.

Joshi hesitated. Could they possibly be right? No. There were no shortcuts on the Heavenly Path. The Hapiru monks had been very clear about that, and they had prepared him perfectly for reaching the Peak of Bodily Refinement. He would trust their training now. Even if there were lumos to be taken, his body was not ready for it. The change he had made to his body, being reforged to this bodily perfection had only shown him how much more there was to reach. He was keenly aware of his spirit, his mind, as aspects of himself he had not yet mastered. How could he possibly hope to touch the matter of the universe itself and not be unmade in his current form?

He sat down and cycled, morbidly curious about what would happen when the rogues reached the nest. They made good time, reaching the bottom of the bowl quickly, striking out across it. The underbrush didn't seem to slow them very much. He estimated it was about half a li to the nest.

He could spot Er-Yun by the wide grey stripes on his cultivator's robes, making him easy to pick out against the more sedate patterns of the other four rogues. Er-Yun was the first to reach the nest, which was taller than he by a lot. He started up, climbing from one log to the next. The others quickly joined him. They swarmed up and into the nest. He could see their heads poking out. They were shouting and waving jubilantly.

And then a shadow passed overhead. Joshi looked up. A bird, a beast, a creature with a wingspan at least a hundred feet passed overhead. It let out a shrill call that froze the marrow in Joshi's bones. He scrambled to his feet as the roc folded its wings and dove for its nest.

The rogues screamed. The screams quickly cut off as the beast fell on them. Then, seconds later, it emerged from the nest. Joshi could feel its anger from here, shaking the forest. It screamed, and the sky above resonated.

The whirlpool reversed course. Red lux poured down from the sky into the bird, shot through with green and blue and hints of the higher colors. The bird grew even wider. Its nest glowed before exploding outward in a shower of branches. Joshi had just time to fall on his face and cover his head with his hands on a shield of red lux as the blast wave struck him. Bits of bark and wood pelted off of his shield.

When the explosion was past, he sat up carefully. The fiercely angry roc leapt for the sky, leaving behind five smaller versions of itself. The infant rocs were three times Joshi's height, he guessed, covered in red fuzz with black trim. They stood up on shaking legs and began running about.

It was vaguely comical, except that two of them were running right at him. They hit the slope and didn't pause. Joshi leapt to his feet. He pushed red lux through his legs, strengthening him before racing away from the crater as fast as he could.