Down the slope a pair of revenants dragged themselves from the dirt at the foot of one mushroom and loped toward Chang-li and Joshi.

"I will take these," Joshi said before Chang-li could respond. He crouched, leapt, and smashed into them. Chang-li could make out his lux technique brimming with green. The cloud around him as he crashed down was laced with blue lux, and both the revenants fell under the shock. Neither rose.

As Chang-li approached, Joshi checked both for movement. "You were right," Joshi said. "The key is to get the blue lux beneath their surface."

Chang-li shaded his eyes. Three more cultivators were moving up the slope from the purple crystal peak toward them, but they weren't moving the way the revenants had. Their stride was purposeful. Their bodies fully under their control. He pointed. "I think those are Feng's people."

Joshi shaded his eyes. "Yes, I recognize two of the disciples." There was no sign of Feng. Chang-li's heart began to race. They had spotted him and Joshi. He had no doubt about it. They were making their way with purpose and would be here in a matter of minutes. He wet his lips. "What should we do?"

"We fight," Joshi said, as though that wasn't obvious. Though Chang-li supposed there was still time to retreat back out of here, he wasn't going to flee from a fight. A knot of worry in his stomach was growing larger by the minute. He had never gone up against other humans before, and he had no doubt the cultivators would be after his blood. He would be forced to kill or be killed.

Joshi seemed equal to the challenge. He was busy cycling, his eyes intent on the other three. "They want you dead," Joshi told Chang-li quietly. "You must remember that. There's no need for them to come at us. Look how far ahead they are. Think of what they did to Li Jiya and her disciples. Do not hesitate."

“I won’t.”

"It is not wrong to regret the need to take a life," Joshi said quietly. "I lost my place in my clan because I hesitated to kill someone who was at my mercy, and though I regret what has happened since, I do not regret my choice. Make yours now. But know, you must fight or die."

"Yes.” Chang-li was resolved. He cycled, separating out everything he could. These were cultivators, not beasts, not shambling horrors, but men with minds capable of deceit and seeing through his plans. He readied a Firepot as the three approached. Joshi sent Magen out toward them.

"It is only those three," Joshi reported back as the trio of cultivators got close enough for Chang-li to make out details. One was half a head shorter than the other two. One had a prominent scar on his face, and one wore his shoulder-length hair loose. That was how Chang-li would think of them. They must have names, but he didn't know them or care. They were the short one, Scarred, and Loose Hair.

Chang-li fortified his sword with all three physical luxes, strengthening the blade with red, sharpening its edge with orange, and infusing it with yellow-lux flame. He was as prepared as he could be. About 50 feet away, the three, without any sign between them, broke into a run.

Scarred was coming straight in while Shorty raced to the left and Loose Hair to the right to flank them.

Joshi ran forward toward Scarred, his fist glowing with lux. Just before he reached him, Chang-li hurled his Firepot technique. It struck the man in the chest and coated him with flame. The cultivator twisted his hand and deployed a counter technique. The flame dropped away from him to land at his feet just as Joshi came in with a smashing right fist.

Meanwhile, Chang-li had turned as Shorty raced toward him. The man carried an orange lux polearm longer than he was, tipped with a gleaming blade. Chang-li's block knocked the weapon to one side. Shorty barreled in but Chang-li stepped back and to the side. As the short Soaring Heavens cultivator raced past, he stuck out his foot. The man stumbled over Chang-li's leg and went down. Chang-li raised his sword for a blow, but Loose Hair was there with a sword of his own. He caught Chang-li's attack and threw him back away from his fellow.

Meanwhile, Joshi was exchanging a flurry of fists with Scarred. Chang-li couldn't spare time to watch. Magen buzzed about overhead, its hum sounding concerned. Shorty was getting to his feet while Loose Hair backed Chang-li toward the nearest giant mushroom.

Chang-li twisted to the side so he would go around rather than into the trunk of the mushroom. He was already working on weaving a technique, even as Shorty rose and began constructing his own weave with two hands.

Chang-li tried something he has never done except in training, a simple yellow structure enforced with green and blue. He didn't expect it to do much, but threw it straight at Shorty's face. The technique, from a scroll that had called it a blindfold, flew out and caught Shorty across the face. It expanded into a green-yellow mass that slid over his features until it blocked his eyes, nose, and mouth. Shorty scrabbled at it with both hands, his own technique forgotten, as he let out a muffled scream.

Chang-li was too busy with the other to take advantage. He furiously blocked attacks from Loose Hair. They matched strikes. Loose Hair was using a two-handed sword. Like Chang-li's, it didn't seem able to channel spiritual lux, but it was well enforced with orange and red.

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Loose Hair forced him back until he was against the trunk of the mushroom. It was squishy beneath Chang-li's back, and its cap dipped low over his head. Loose Hair swung. Chang-li ducked. His enemy's sword struck the mushroom trunk and stuck there. As Loose Hair tugged ineffectively at his weapon Chang-li stepped forward and thrust his sword straight into the man’s belly. He dropped his sword, and clutched his stomach with both hands. He tried to weave lux together. Green and red, probably some sort of bandage. Chang-li didn't stop to think. He pulled his blade back and swung again, his sword tip slicing across the man's exposed throat, opening it with a vicious, deep wound. Choking on his own blood, Loose Hair collapsed.

Chang-li stared in horror at the dying man. He had done this. He had killed a man, and not quickly, not painlessly. Loose Hair was gagging and choking as he died.

But Shorty was back. All traces of Chang-li's technique were gone. He had a technique in his hands as he raced toward Chang-li. Chang-li brought his sword up again. Instinctively, he reinforced the yellow in his blade as he slashed down through the air between the man's hands where his technique was forming. His yellow lux sliced through the weave, breaking it into tatters.

Chang-li grabbed all the yellow he could find, formed it into a fistful of flame, and shot it at Shorty's face. The man stumbled back. Chang-li was on him, swinging. No grace and elegance in his attack, just desperation, he caught Shorty in the side of the ribs, blade biting deep but not a fatal blow.

Shorty had an orange lux blade in his other hand. He stabbed forward, catching the edge of Chang-li's robes. Chang-li shouted. He kicked the man in the chest, knocking him back, then sprang forward and brought his blade down again and again. Finally he stopped, panting. Shorty lay still, his torso a mass of wounds gushing blood.

Chang-li's eyes were wet as he stumbled back. He looked around for Joshi. He'd forgotten his friend during his own desperate fight, but Joshi was safe, his own enemy lying dead on the sandy forest floor. He had almost reached Chang-li as the scribe finished his second opponent.

Chang-li looked up and met Joshi's eyes. He was tense, worried his friend would say something congratulatory. Chang-li had never felt less glorious in his life.

Instead, Joshi nodded his head gravely. "It is done." He reached down and took a scrap of cloth from a clean-ish section of the dead man's robe and handed it to Chang-li. "You will need to clean your sword."

Chang-li nodded. He wiped the blood from his blade best he could, then tossed aside the bloody rag, trying not to look at the men he had killed. He took a deep breath. "Feng sent them, didn't he?"

"I think we can assume that, but we do not yet know whether Feng left them behind after leaving the tower himself, or if he still waits ahead of us."

"He would only leave if he has gotten the boon. And there would be no point is us going on," Chang-li said dully. "There was only one boon."

"I doubt he has left," Joshi said quietly. "I expect he sent these to see if they could deal with us alone, but that he is still ahead."

Chang-li tried to pull himself together. "It wasn't too bad," he said. "They, uh, I mean, there was two on three, and they're the same stage we are. Perhaps, especially if Feng is alone, we have a chance."

Joshi hesitated. "None of them were very good," he said brutally. "We cannot use them for comparison. Feng, despite his arrogance, I must admit he is a masterful cultivator, and he is beyond the Peak of Mental Refinement. Have you reached the peak?"

Chang-li shook his head. "No, and I don't know the way either. You?"

Joshi considered, then nodded. "I think I sense my path. If I am right, if the test of heart is in pushing yourself to your breaking point and then beyond it, then I believe there's no faster way for me to reach it than to face Feng."

"Then we go on," Chang-li said, and he felt lighter having said so, despite knowing that they were going up against a foe neither of them was sure they could defeat. They set off through the mushroom forest toward the giant crystal in the distance.

"Feng is waiting for us," Joshi said after a while.

“What? Chang-li was startled. "Why? What would possibly cause him to delay? He must have taken the tower's boon by now."

Joshi shook his head. “I don’t think so. He killed Li Jiya's disciples but left her alive. He was taunting her. He did not mean her ever to leave this place.”

Chang-li pressed his lips together. “That still doesn’t explain why he would still be there, why he wouldn’t take the boon and go.

"He and I and Li Jiya and her brother were escorting Princess Hiroko. I knew then he was desperately jealous. He seemed to regard Hiroko almost as his own property, even though she has made no sign of accepting his suit. He saw Li Jen die, and I thought then that he seemed glad of it. I think he is determined to humiliate and then kill Li Jiya and myself for daring to oppose him."

"That is ludicrous," Chang-li said.

Joshi smiled. It was without humor. "Have you known many Young Masters?"

Chang-li shook his head. "I was trained in a small city. We didn't even have a tower of our own. This is the first time I've really been around cultivators. I've heard plenty of stories, though.”

“I haven’t either but I have known men like them. Young, full of their own power and importance. Deep down they are hollow. They know they are unworthy of real respect so they vehemently demand a show of it from others. They are jealous of any sign of worth from their peers."

Chang-li thought it over. He shook his head. "Sometimes in a scribing school, there were students like that who thought the best way to put themselves ahead was by showing that everyone else was beneath them. But I did best when surrounding myself with a group of other students who could help each other pull us up. If I was good in ancient Kahakian characters and my friend skilled in mathematics, we could help each other. That's how I made it as far as I did as a scribe." He realized how foolish he was going to sound, then said it anyway. "I thought that was going to be true for cultivators as well."

"Perhaps it is within a sect," Joshi said, but he sounded doubtful. Considering how Feng had just used his disciples. Chang-li was doubtful as well. It felt foolish, like a waste, and he wondered why the emperor tolerated such a system where those with potential fought and destroyed each other. Would not the empire be stronger if all who had a knack for cultivation were trained and brought to their own personal peaks?

But that was a worry for another day. Today, he needed to focus on staying alive.