With the help of his image, who, when he wasn't busy being derisive, was a remarkably good training partner, Chang-li alternated sword work with an enhanced spell technique. Now that his body was set up to channel two different sets of lux at the same time, he was practicing becoming truly fluid with his spells while also using his sword. The trouble was, his use of spiritual lux was still limited. Without a physical lux framework to hang it on, he couldn't get his techniques to hang together. It was frustrating.

He’d modified his cycling, adapting Swirling Mists to let him bring lux in through one set of channels, circulate it, and then vent it out through his other set. Chang-li decided to call the pattern Breath of the Heavens. He also could inhale lux, separate it out, and send the physical luxes through his left channels and the spiritual through his right, without needing to spend much time thinking. This one he called Double Branching River.

Now that he'd made this much progress, he was certain the Morning Mist scrolls he had left behind would contain plenty of techniques he was capable of learning, but he didn't have them to hand. He searched through his own journal several times, looking at the notes he had jotted down about techniques he wanted to pursue when he had more time, but it wasn't sparking a realization.

He was no closer to reaching the Peak of Mental Refinement. When he had been progressing toward Physical Refinement, he'd been able to feel his progress. With each step, his core had been denser, capable of holding more and better quality lux. For Mental Refinement, though each veil had come as a marker of his progress, there wasn't the same sensation of stepping ever closer to a goal. It seemed that Mental Refinement would be a surprise once he finally reached it.

He kept coming back to one passage he had copied into his journal from an ancient Morning Mist scroll written by some cultivator who was long dust now:

Just as green lux mediates between the physical luxes and the spiritual, so does Mental Refinement come as a necessary step between Physical Refinement and Spiritual Refinement. While Physical Refinement is entirely focused on training of one's body to accept lux, and Spiritual Refinement imposing one's will over lux itself, Mental Refinement focuses on the place where the two meet, in the heart and the mind. Though it is called Mental Refinement, it would be foolish to think of it as merely a test of mind. One's heart, the emotions and drives that push a cultivator on, are just as important, and that is what the final stage unlocks.

Chang-li let the book fall away. He looked up and saw his reflection smirking at him, fighting the urge to slap himself silly. "What?"

The reflection shook his head. "This is why you will lose to me. You don't even understand what it is you're trying to do."

"I suppose you do."

"Of course." The reflection shrugged. "You forget I am the embodiment of this stage of cultivation. I know exactly what it is you need to do. You need to embrace your heart. But you, Chang-li, have spent your entire life denying it."

"No, I haven't."

"Of course you have." His image mocked. "Look at you." He spread his hands, and ghostly images appeared of Chang-li at moments in his past. Here he bent over a desk, studying diligently. He raised his head clearly in answer to someone and held up a hand, brushing off whatever he'd just been told before returning to his books.

"How many times did you refuse your friends or your brother when they offered to take you away from your studies for a night?"

"I couldn't afford to take time off," Chang-li said. "I didn't have the money for fancy tutors or to take a test over if I failed the first time. I focused on what I was trying to accomplish."

"Denying your desires in order to attain your goals. Admirable. But you've taken it too far."

The image waved a hand, and there he was again, refusing a bribe. He remembered that incident. A cultivator disciple wanting to make his records at the tower cull a little more impressive. It hadn't been anything particularly egregious, and he'd hadn’t reported it to his superiors.

"Preserving the integrity of a corrupt system," Chang-li's image mocked. "You've seen enough to know that now."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Doesn't matter if the system's corrupt or not. I don't have to be."

"Fine." Now again, the image shifted. This time it was Chang-li standing over a pallet where Min lay propped up on one arm, her hair hanging down around her shoulders. She was wearing her silken tunic. Chang-li recognized it at once. Their wedding night. He felt hollow and turned away. "What are you playing at?"

"You know what I'm playing at," the image said. "Because it's gnawing at you, too. So intent on doing the right thing, you couldn't see what was in front of your face."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Tell me that this whole marriage to Min isn't because you felt guilty about giving in to your own desires?" His image's voice was mocking now. Chang-li turned and strode away as far as he could in the room, but his image followed him, still talking. "You felt guilty for letting your baser impulses have control, and so you accepted a marriage that was hardly advantageous to you."

"What else could I have done?"

"Quite a lot," the shadow said. "For one, you had a governor of a province over a barrel, and you didn't even try to negotiate for a better deal. You could have asked him to help you write off your scribe debt. Instead, you just proposed to this woman and then left her alone on your wedding night. You know very well that she's attracted to you."

"She was furious at me," Chang-li said.

"And making the best gesture she could. Why did you turn her down?"

"You think that's how I wanted it to be?" Chang-li shut up and shook his head. "I'm not having this conversation."

"It's not me that you need to justify yourself to," his image said. "It's you. You know that this is true. You let your mind overrule your feelings and impulses, and you think that's a good thing."

"It is. How else would I have gotten where I am?"

"How does Feng get where he is?" the image demanded. Chang-li turned because the image's voice had taken on a less mocking, more serious tone. "How do any of the Young Masters climb? They do it by taking what they want and then making it stick. You are trying to work inside the rules. Even as you're forging and lying and cheating, you're refusing to see the truth. It’s a leash to keep the powerful in check. That's the whole point of these marriages. That's why the emperor sets up this system of permits and sects and masters of the climb and inquisitors and spouses. The system rewards those who reach out and take power, then ties them with chains of silk and gold.You don’t even understand it but you let him pull you right into it."

Chang-li felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. The image's words cut deep. "So, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying you will never be strong like this. You need to seize what's in front of you and use it. Feng would."

"I do seize what’s in front of me!”

"You don't. What of the time you gave Joshi the last of the purification tablets and allowed him to continue to climb while you stepped aside? Would Feng ever have done that?"

"Well, no."

“Or having Min at your mercy, in your debt, but taking nothing from her. Would Feng have done that?"

"Of course not."

"And Hiroko? You have secrets that could utterly ruin her, and you've done nothing with them. How do you intend to get more powerful if you won't use the tools you're given?"

"My friends aren't tools."

Chang-li's words were ripped from him without a conscious thought. He felt as though he'd just run a long distance. He stood panting, staring at his image. His image's frown shifted slowly into a neutral position.

"Say that again."

"My friends aren't tools."

"Are they your friends?"

"Yes." Chang-li spoke more deliberately now. Feelings and regrets bubbled up, threatening to drown him if he let it, but he pushed on. “I never truly had friends before. In scribe training we focused on ourselves. The others relaxed together and forges so-called-friendships, only to throw their friends away the instant advancement was on the line. I kept to myself because I couldn’t bear to do the same. Now I climb. Those beside me now are different. They are my true friends. If a climb means I have to leave them behind or destroy them, then to hell with that. I'll find my own path outside of any system. I don't care what Feng would do. I reject Feng. I don't want to be Feng. I want to be me. I will climb my way and bring the people I care about with me."

His image smiled, and Chang-li felt something fall away from himself.

His mind was a whirl. He could feel a rush through his body as, without him consciously doing it, his core rose from his pit of his stomach up to the center of his chest. It poured lux through him, the two streams, physical and spiritual, separating naturally without his having to do a thing, swirling out of his body into the room and then back in, denser and more pure than they had ever been.

His core swirled and rotated before dropping back into the middle of his abdomen. He took a deep breath, held up a hand. It didn't look any different, but he felt different.

"The Peak of Mental Refinement," he said, wonderingly. Then he turned and looked at the walls. He could see now, the weave, violet and indigo lux, tightly bound together. The violet was trickling slowly, so slowly, into the room. He was inhaling it without even realizing. It was weaker now. He could see gaps in the weave. All he had to do was pull the rest of the violet into him and the whole place would collapse. He could step out as easily as taking another breath.

He turned back to his image. "There's still a good ten percent of the violet lux left."

His image nodded. "There is. And will you be contesting me for this body when it is all gone?"

"I shall." Chang-li believed what the image was saying, but he no longer felt worried. His mind was sharper and faster than it had been. He raised his right hand and summoned a little ball of green and blue lux. "With the time that remains, I’m going to practice the Infinite Loom. I need more offensive power against Feng.”