The next day was a repeat of the first. With every swap-off, Feng seemed to grow more angry. He was bringing larger and larger groups of enemies back to the others. Joshi, his pride stung despite his best intentions, matched him.

It was paying off. Hiroko was able to consistently connect with four, even five beasts, tying them to a cultivator. Or, conversely, to connect two cultivators to a single beast. Every time they dropped a group, Jiya asked her if she wanted to pause, and Hiroko shook her head. "No. We need to keep going. This is perfect."

And then, about halfway through the day, in the midst of a fight, Joshi felt Hiroko's cycling pause and shift, taking on a new tenor. He knew without her having to say that she'd reached the third condensation, but as the last of the pack of speed turtles dropped, she lifted her hands in exultation.

"The third condensation!"

"Well done," Li Jiya said. "You should retreat and cycle at once. You need to make your gains secure."

Hiroko sat herself on a rock and began to use the Way of Star’s Light Joshi had taught her.

"That's an interesting one," Jiya said, watching her. "Where did you learn it?"

"One of my tutors," Hiroko said.

"I've never seen one quite like that. It has a very different feeling to it."

It was one of the seven basic techniques the Harupa monks taught their learners. Joshi was coming to realize cycling techniques and patterns seemed to vary region to region. His own were not common here.

"Keep going," Li Jiya encouraged.

Feng prowled around. "We're wasting time. I should be gathering another pack while the princess cycles."

"It is my turn next," Joshi said, "and the princess must ready herself."

"Hah!" Feng sneered. "She has only four hours a day to cultivate. She shouldn't waste any of it." With that, he vanished out into the jungle.

Joshi sent Magan to follow him while he prepared himself for whatever Feng returned with. Li Jiya was standing over Hiroko, helping her cycle. Joshi turned to Jen and saw the young man was looking desperate. Sweat dripped down his face. His jaw was set tight. "Are you all right? Do you need to go back?"

Jen shook his head. "I can keep up with the rest of you. I can do it," he insisted. He took out a book from his pocket and peered at it. Joshi glanced over his shoulder. The characters were not ones he could read.

Li Jiya looked up from Hiroko. Her eyes widened. "Where did you get that?" she asked.

"From the sect library," Li Jen said calmly.

"You can't read it."

"I think I've almost broken the cipher. This is one of Grand Master Daifong's techniques. He was our master of bows," Li Jen explained. "I studied under him until he died of the Bone Break Disease. This is the braid he meant to teach me as I studied at Peak of Mental Refinement. The Six-Thought Arrow."

"You cannot use a technique in battle that you haven't actually been taught," Li Jiya insisted. "Even if you could read the words that are there, learning from a book is very different from learning from a master. There's no one to guide you to make sure you're doing it right."

"I have to be able to keep up," Li Jen said desperately. "I have to. I have been trying this technique for several days and I think I almost have it."

Magen was distantly thrumming concern toward Joshi. Joshi opened himself to the little creature and received a flood of worry along with the creature's vision. Feng had just entered a clearing full of brilliant green plants. The plants were 10 or 15 feet high, with long green stalks and enormous heads. The heads whipped around like those of animals, chomping and biting.

Joshi watched in amusement as Feng bounded between the stalks, hitting them with his chaining technique. It would be pleasant if Feng's tendency to bite off more than he could chew came to bite him. He disentangled himself from the creatures and rushed away.

The plants uprooted themselves, pulling their long, underground tendrils up like shaking dirt off of unused feet. They rose up, pulling in their leaves and rushed after Feng.

"Prepare," Joshi warned the others. "Feng is on his way back. He's got some sort of plant creatures.”

Hiroko’s eyes widened. "No, that's bad. Tell him not to."

"I can't speak to him," Joshi told her. "I'm just watching him. Magen doesn't talk to others."

Already he could hear the noise of odd hoots and scraping cutting through the din everywhere in the jungle. Feng appeared, his robes hardly disheveled, a small streak of blood across his face and a wild grin on his face.

"I have found us a decent challenge," he said. "I believe the largest of these creatures has a treasure at its heart. I bring it to lay before you, my princess."

Then the plant monsters were upon them. There were eight of the things. They took root at the edge of the riverbank where Joshi and the others were waiting. Joshi had chosen this spot earlier because of its vast supply of lizard-log creatures. He'd been able to pull them back to the group four and five at a time. They'd cleared the river and used it as a defensive boundary in their last fight.

The plants formed a half-circle around them with the river hemming them in at their backs. The plants’ roots disappeared beneath the ground. They seemed to pull strength from beneath them, growing in size and deepening in color.

"Princess, begin your technique!” Feng encouraged.

Hiroko was casting lux out even as Li Jen and Li Jiya summoned their weapons. Joshi charged forward and punched a plant in what passed for its head. His Tiger’s Claw clipped leaves. There was no blood, not even sap, when he pulled back. The plant lashed at him with one vine-like limb.

Feng was darting between them too fast to be seen, using a technique to jump rapidly back and forth. He had summoned a short, curved blade with a wicked hook at the front, his favorite weapon. It was dripping with green lux.

"No!" Hiroko shouted. "These are Tower Flora. They have a natural affinity for green and blue lux. We can't use that against them. My techniques don't work. They draw sustenance from the tower itself."

Joshi didn't follow all of the ins and outs, but he understood enough. These beasts would need to be slain the hard way.

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"Protect the princess!" he growled to the Li siblings and started forward. He punched again, and his target flower ducked to the side, like it had sensed the blow coming, whatever it used instead of eyes, he wasn't certain.

Feng's sword flashed, ripping leaves from the flora. A tendril shot out and grabbed Li Jiya by the ankle as she swung her polearm. The plant tripped her up and yanked her upside down. Her robes fell down over her head. She shouted a muffled cry.

"Jiya!" Jen shouted. Joshi was busy fighting his flower, but through Magen's eyes, he watched as Li Jen summoned his lux bow. He overlaid it with a different technique, one Joshi hadn't seen before.

Until now, Li Jen had stuck to techniques using the physical colors red, orange, and occasionally yellow. Now he started with yellow and interlaced it with green. Joshi knew his theory well enough to know that most braids that connected the physical colors with the higher spiritual colors used green as an intermediary. Sure enough, Jen added an indigo thread to his braid.

Joshi caught the flower's tendril with his other hand. He slashed down with his gauntlet, his spikes cutting through the tendril. The flower reacted, screeching in an inhuman voice. The sound emanated from its leaves as the whole plant shook.

It sprouted tiny, hairy tendrils all over its surface. As he grabbed at it with his open left hand, the tendrils stuck to his skin, catching his hand and keeping it in place. He punched the flower in its head, and his gauntlet went right through, knocking off the top half of the flower's supposed head. But the thing was still fighting.

"It draws strength from the tower," Hiroko was shouting. "You have to cut it off at the roots."

Well, now she said so! Joshi summoned a lux shield in his left hand, cutting the bond between him and the flower. He hadn't been sure it would work, but it did. He dropped to the ground, grabbed at the base of the plant, and yanked. Nothing.

This wasn't using his strength to his advantage. Joshi wove together red and yellow, thinking of Chang-Li's fire pot technique. He needed something like that, but not the same. He needed to be punching harder, driving it further into the earth, extending outward. Instead of red physical Lux delivering the yellow elemental to his target, he needed the yellow to empower the force of his red.

He pulled back his arm and punched forward. The force shot out of his fist, driving the blow deep into the earth. He knocked the plant upward. It was still connected to the ground by two roots. He whirled and slashed, Tiger’s Claw gauntlet spikes severing both sets of roots. As the plant came down, he caught it. The weight staggered him. Both arms wrapped around the plant as it screamed and hurled, he whirled it and smashed it hard against a rock. The plant exploded in a puff of pollen and dirt.

He had no time to gloat. As he felt the lux from the dead plant rise up all around him, he seized it and turned to the next.

Li Jiya had untangled herself and was fighting. He heard her shout, "Jin, no!" and looked through Magen's eyes once more. Jin had a lux arrow at his bow, shimmering three different colors. The colors weren't harmonious. They seemed to be fighting against each other. He could feel the unruliness of the lux in Jin's technique even as he unleashed the arrow. It burst forward, splitting into six, each of the six striking at the plants, setting them on purple fire.

An equal amount of lux blasted back and engulfed Jin himself in purple flame.

Li Jiya shrieked. She dropped her weapon and raced across the clearing to her brother. "Help him!" she shouted. She summoned a technique and splashed him with water, but it did nothing to the purple flame.

Li Jin fell to the ground, writhing and screaming as the flames consumed him. They didn't touch his robe, but his flesh was crackling and burning. Hiroko was beside him, her hand outstretched. She'd made a connection to Jin, but not to anything else. There was no one else to kill. Feng was finishing off the last of the flowers. Li Jin's technique, though it had backfired on him, had destroyed the plants almost entirely.

"I don't have anything." Hiroko was babbling. "I can't, I can't, I don't have a source."

"Take me." Li Jiya was begging her. She seized Hiroko's hand and forced it to her own breast. "Please, Hiroko, take me."

Hiroko's face twisted with pain. Even Joshi could see it was no good. He crossed the distance to them in two long strides and lifted Jiya from her feet, pulling her away from Hiroko. Hiroko slumped to the ground, exhausted and in pain, even as Jin's screams and his flailing dimmed and died. The flames continued.

Jiya struggled against Joshi's grip. He held her tight. Even as she wept and wailed, he watched as the flames at last left Jin's body. Then he let Jiya go.

She threw herself to the ground beside her brother. He was clearly dead, his skin blackened and shriveled, his lidless eyes staring melted at the sky. It was the most horrifying thing Joshi had ever seen, and he had been in battles where hundreds of men and horses had died.

Hiroko was weeping quietly. Joshi approached the women. "I told him not to try a technique he didn't know," Jiya was saying. "I told him. I told him he needed help."

"I couldn't," Hiroko was whispering. "I couldn't make a connection to those creatures. I'm sorry."

"Why didn't you take me?"

"It doesn't work like that," Hiroko said, her pain evident in her voice. "It would have killed you and it wouldn't have saved him." She buried her face in her hands.

Feng strode over. He looked down at the body. "It was a Mental Refinement technique?"

"Of course it was, you uncouth vermin," Li Jiya spat.

"That explains it. The flames that consumed him were from his own mind. That is why his robes and the rest of us were untouched. It is the most common way for a cultivator reaching Mental Refinement to die." He remarked to Joshi, "At that stage, your mind, not the tower beasts, is your true enemy. Jen killed himself twice, first with his arrogance and using a technique he had not mastered, and second when the technique failed by giving in to the lies his mind was telling his body." He shook his head as he turned and strode away.

Joshi's hand was in a fist. He itched to punch Young Master Feng, but Feng would take that as provocation and lash out, and in the process, the two women might be hurt. Instead, he stooped and arranged Jen's robes a little better. He told Hiroko. "Let us help Li Jiya to the tower entrance. We will send others to fetch his body back."

The weeping woman did not resist as they urged her to her feet. Supported by Hiroko and Joshi both, she stumbled to the entrance of the tower, where Joshi left her beside the princess and went to have a word with the guards. When he had arranged to have Jen's body taken back, he turned to find the dowager watching him. She hadn't been there a moment ago.

"What happened?"

He explained everything.

“Was Feng at fault deliberately, in bringing the flowers?”

"I do not think he knew that Hiroko would be unable to connect to those creatures. He seemed as surprised as we did, and he certainly did not force Jen to use a technique he wasn't ready for," Joshi answered. Frankly, he very much disliked Feng and would enjoy seeing him meet justice. But the only fault that could be laid on him was bringing a group before their party was ready. And in truth, cultivators should always be ready for any challenge.

The dowager bowed her head. She looked very old and tired, and Joshi recalled that Li Jen was her grandnephew. "Li Jiya will not be joining you for at least the next few days. I will take Hiroko away for the rest of today, and perhaps tomorrow, depending on how she responds. It will take her some time to process this. It may not have been her fault, but she will not feel happy about it."

"You are wise, dowager," Joshi agreed.

"The fourth floor will be open soon," the dowager said. "I hope your sect is ready to perform. My pleas have gone unanswered. No other sects are coming. Now my brother's sect is crippled. I very much do not wish Young Master Feng to win this tower."

Joshi studied her. "Why do you care so much, my lady?"

She practically growled, "If he wins, he will almost certainly reach the Peak of Spiritual Refinement, thanks to the boon here. He is well past the Peak of Mental Refinement already. Should he do that, and petition the Court of Gems for a bride, I will have very little choice but to allow him to marry Hiroko."

Joshi felt as though he'd been slapped. "But, is that what Hiroko wishes?"

"A cultivator who can master a cull at a broken tower almost unaided, and who makes not one but two ranks of advancement at that tower, is a powerhouse," the dowager said grimly. "He must be wed. It would be an insult to force him to take a lesser bride when one of this rank is here. Hiroko knows her duty to make a good marriage. You do not think the gems of her rank are given the luxury of taking their time at making their choices? No. If Feng conquers this tower and petitions the court, she will have very little choice but to accept. Should he fail to win the tower boon and not reach Spiritual Refinement yet, then I shall be able to postpone Hiroko's decision. I have already been asked to supervise the regularly-scheduled tower cull at Vardin City. I was looking forward to it. It will be the site of the Emperor's Gauntlet, and I expected to be there to witness my grandniece win the Emperor's favor. Now..." The dowager shook her head. "Well, I have said too much already, but I wish to thank you for your kindness to my grandniece. I will take my leave. She and Hiroko both need me now."

The dowager strode off to where the women were standing together, their arms wrapped around each other. Jiya was still weeping. Hiroko's tears had dried. She looked past Jiya's shoulder at Joshi. Their eyes met. He felt a moment of connection between them before she turned away and guided Jiya to join the dowager.