Min strained to layer the green into her orange technique. Chang-li stood by, observing, not saying a word. She tried to focus on her technique and her burning muscles, not her husband.

This was her fifth trip inside the tower since arriving at Vardin City three weeks ago. She was on the verge of reaching her second core condension on the way to Bodily Refinement. She could feel it.

They had finally gotten permission to access a higher floor than that light-forsaken ice realm. If she never had to spend another hour freezing her ears and fingers, that'd be all right with Min. She was working on a lux archery technique Chang-li had resurrected from one of the Morning Mist scrolls. The first technique he'd tried to teach her hadn't worked out. It was too foreign to him, and the description just hadn't been clear enough to Min.

No one else in the sect was drawn to lux archery the way she was. But somehow, even the first failed technique had offered her hints of the correct fit. When she was young she had often played games with bows and arrows, and the idea of standing back and unleashing damage on her foe from a distance appealed to her.

Chang-li had pored over the records before emerging with this new one two days ago, and she'd been itching to try it ever since. She was combining it with the Way of Stars’ Light cycling pattern, isolating the threads of orange and green lux, and leaving everything else in her core, which was now a dense, tight lump just above her navel. The green was stubbornly refusing to meld with the orange, no matter how she tried and visualized.

"Go back to just orange," Chang-li suggested. Min gratefully let the green drop. It lingered in the channels at the ends of her fingertips as she pressed the orange lux out of her body and into a physical form. The bow was a great curve of orange, five feet tall, the string an almost invisible thread of light. She pulled it back, feeling the tension in her shoulder.

Unlike with a real bow, she could keep the string pulled for minutes at a time. Now she extruded an orange lux arrow and laid it against the bow before sighting along it. She could still feel the green in her fingers, and curious, allowed just a little to emerge. Without her direction, it wrapped itself around the arrow's shaft before coating the arrowhead in green lux.

"That's it," Chang-li said. Min almost lost control of the technique. She loosed the arrow, letting it fly. It shot forward and struck her target, a tree forty feet away. The arrow exploded into orange shards as it hit, scoring the tree with lines visible even from here.

"You did it!" Chang-li exclaimed, sounding proud, not surprised. Min let the bow dissolve as she turned to him. His delighted smile lit up his whole face. His eyes, honest and laughing, met hers, and Min felt warm all over. She responded with a smile of her own.

"Try to remember exactly how you did it," Chang-li urged. He was digging in his satchel for a writing stick and a journal. "Can you describe it to me? I'll note it down and append it to the original technique."

Min sat down on her rock, laughing to herself. She told Chang-li everything she could think of, and he jotted it down like the scribe he'd once been, bent over the page and writing furiously.

She was still surprised to realize, barely a month since her wedding, that she was falling deeply in love with her husband. Chang-li was so different from anyone she'd known in any of her previous lives. He wasn't obsequious like a courtier or rules-bound like a government official. He wasn't scheming and trying to find an angle for himself like the higher-ups she'd known in the Brotherhood, or bowing and scraping to his betters like the underlings. He was honest and open and good-hearted. Chang-li liked to try schemes and maneuvers, but he wasn't any good at them. If he was, he probably wouldn't be here, married to her. There was a decency and honesty in Chang-li that drew her to him.

She hadn't been able to tell him how she was coming to feel. Though they shared a bed — more than shared it, delighted in spending time with each other — and they were working toward roughly the same goals, Min was worried that her feelings were more intense than his. If she gave voice to what her heart was saying, would frighten him off? Better to work together to build the sect and reach their goals. As their partnership grew, so too would his affection. For now, he was an eager and gentle lover, a caring teacher, and an honest ally. That was more of a foundation than most marriages had, after all.

On the other hand, she hadn’t been able to tell him about her grandfather’s plan to bring in a new sect grandmaster either. Even thinking about it made her stomach squirm. Would Chang-li storm away, or freeze up, or try to confront her grandfather? Any possibility seemed terrifying. There was still time. She could wait… just a little longer.

Chang-li had set aside his journal and was working on a technique now. She covered a smile as he wiggled his fingers, directing the lux. Some cultivators managed it without moving their hands, but Chang-li always twitched his fingers a little, like he was trying to move the lux physically. He sighed, and his intense look of concentration faded.

“What were you trying? A new technique?”

He nodded. “Something I read in the scrolls. I told you about my Infinite Loom, yes?”

She nodded. “It’s a… master technique to allow you to substitute different sorts of lux?”

“There’s two ways to approach weaving techniques. One is just to memorize a pattern from a scroll or a teacher, repeating it exactly until the lux does the same thing every time. Li Jiya’s Moon Whisper Fang technique is this. Your bow should be, too. A weapon that works the same way every time, that you can call by instinct, in a heartbeat, woken from a dead sleep.”

“That makes sense,” she agreed.

“The problem is, from what I can tell many sects teach their lesser disciples only with this method. That makes the disciples reliant on the sect, rather than being able to develop their own skills more deeply.”

“Experimenting with lux is dangerous,” Min pointed out. “You’ve warned us all of that. That’s why you’re learning from the scrolls, isn’t it?”

Chang-li looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes and no. The point is, Infinite Loom is a growth technique, allowing me to shape and modify my lux inputs and get different results. The Loom itself prevents me from doing anything too dangerous.”

She got the sense he wasn’t being entirely truthful but decided to let it pass. “And?” she prompted.

Chang-li sighed. “I’m trying to learn to use blue more effectively. I know I ought to be able to weave blue and yellow, but it’s just not working, no matter how much green I add. I can make the yellow explode — I’m having trouble getting yellow lux to be anything except fire, my mindset isn’t quite right for anything else — but I should be able to weave in blue to add a lingering effect. Blinding my target, maybe.”

“That sounds advanced,” she said. “I thought the scrolls you’d translated were mostly for Mental Refinement stage. That sounds like a Spiritual Refinement technique.”

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“I’ll keep at it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll find a clue in the scrolls later. Do you want to try your bow again?"

She did, actually. Min got back to her feet and cycled. She summoned her bow. It answered her faster this time, starting to feel comfortable. According to Chang-li, if she continued using this weapon and focusing on it, it would eventually take on the appearance of a real bow, adapting itself to her wants and images instead of just being a rough, lux outline. Min was looking forward to that.

She nocked another arrow and let fly. As it sprang forward off her bowstring, she felt something shift and change inside her. Chang-li saw it as well.

"Sit down," he said sharply. "Cycle Purification of Mind and Soul. You're reaching your next condensation. Let the lux guide you, but don't let it overwhelm you. Don’t chase it.”

Min sat cross-legged on the rock, her arms extended outward in the basic cycling position she'd used when first learning patterns. She found Purification of Mind and Soul easily enough. Chang-li and Joshi both had spent hours drilling it into her head. But it wasn't quite right for this. Her lux ran through her veins as her core throbbed.

She was on the verge of her core condensing, but something wasn't quite there yet. Min focused on her cycling until all she could feel were her own lux channels throbbing through her. They were expanding and contracting in time with her own heartbeat. Her core was rotating as it pulsed. The first core condensation had been nothing like this. Min's heart beat faster, her channels pulsing more rapidly with each breath.

"Control it," Chang-li said sharply. There was a note of fear in his voice. Min had no idea what could happen to her if something went wrong here. Maybe she would be stunted or killed. It didn't matter. She would control this.

Min focused hard as her lux fought against her. She forced her cycling back into the Purification of Mind and Soul, trying to relax and let her lux guide her body. It wasn't working.

Chang-li's voice was distant. She couldn't make out his words. There was a throbbing in her ears from her blood or the lux. Min felt her core spinning faster and faster as it pulled at her lux. It was going to take it all and consume her. No, she would not lose control of herself. This wasn't right. She didn't give in. She commanded.

If the lux wouldn't listen to her, she'd rid herself of it and start again. She cycled Swirling Mists, pushing the lux out of her channels. And as she did, they calmed, becoming still. Her core spun, but now it was under her control. She could see herself now, a creature made of lux, surrounded by a shell of flesh. The channels were fighting her because there was a mismatch between them and her core. She'd been cycling wrong this whole time. Purification of Mind and Soul wasn't what she needed. Min reached out with the wordless understanding she'd just been granted.

She pulled in lux from outside, brought it to her core, and cycled. As she pushed it back out, completing one lap of the cycle, she could feel everything snapping into place. She sat and cycled a dozen more times before opening her eyes.

Chang-li was standing over her, his face looking terrified as she'd never seen him before. Min's heart warmed. He might not feel as intensely as she did yet, but he cared for her.

She got to her feet, stretching, feeling her body and the lux channels burned through it. Her core was a dense mass in her midsection, holding more lux than she'd thought possible. It sat there waiting for her to purify it and spin it into arrows.

She summoned her bow. Already it had shrunk to little more than two feet long, but more dramatically curved than before. There was a hint in the orange lux of texture, like wood grain. She knocked back an arrow, easily coating the orange with green, and let fly. The tree she was aiming at, a poplar about four inches around, exploded when her arrow hit it. Chang-li shouted, stepping in front of her and throwing up a quick shield as the splinters and broken leaves pelted them. The debris slid off of his shield harmlessly.

Min looked up. "Oops," she said.

Chang-li laughed and took a step back, reaching for her hand at the same time. "Are you all right? I thought you—I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm fine." And then, seeing the way his eyes strayed to his scribing book, Min explained exactly what she'd been through. Chang-li had his book in hand before the third word left her mouth, scratching down every word she said, his head nodding.

"Of course. Of course. I see it now. This is making some of the scrolls make more sense. I'll have to tell Brother Stone and the senior disciples what to watch for. It seems like you won't be the only one with this sort of mismatch between your base cycling technique and what's needed to perfect your gains at Bodily Refinement." He shook his head. "There's so much I don't know about being a cultivator. I shouldn't be teaching you or anyone else. I should be finding an instructor who can help me. I am endangering you and the other disciples. I need to—"

Min squeezed his hand and made him look at her. "You're teaching me. You think Feng would have taken time to instruct his bride in anything? I've been speaking with the other cultivator spouses. Most of them reach Bodily Refinement and perhaps Mental Refinement with the use of elixirs and pills under the supervision of a senior grandmaster. They don't actually cultivate," she said, letting the scorn drip from her words at the thought of using artificial aids like that. "And then there they, stuck at Mental Refinement. No matter how high their spouse ever gets, I don't want you to leave me behind. I want to walk at your side as far as you go."

The words slipped out of her mouth without her thinking, and she started to turn away, embarrassed. Chang-li held on and put his other hand on her shoulder. She looked back up at him.

"I won't leave you behind," he said, his words solemn. "But I don't want to risk hurting you or the others. I need to know everything. I need to know more."

She laughed and disentangled herself, taking a step away as her heart beat a little too fast. "Is that why you're barely sleeping? I wake up in the night and you're bent over the scrolls, trying to decipher them. It would take years to translate everything you have there.”

“And it still wouldn't be enough. This is only a fraction of what a sect should know, I'm sure of it. Wulan has said the same, that they only took what they could gather from the sect libraries, or remained behind. Certainly anything about the steps above Spiritual Refinement is lost to us."

Min had, of course, shown him the scroll she'd taken from the library in Fai-Lan City, and they'd pored over it, trying to correlate the landmarks on its delicate parchment to any known map. Chang-li had made three different copies, then put the scroll back away in its case to keep it safe.

Now she had an idea. “Why don't you give me a copy of that map? We can remove some of the identifiers and anything that shows the Morning Mist headquarters, but my grandfather's people can make inquiries."

He shook his head. "It's too valuable a secret. I know, I know. I'm the one who's been talking about how we shouldn't keep secrets, and cultivation should be accessible to everyone, but this kind of treasure, if we let slip to another sect, they'd be there in a heartbeat to steal everything they could. Besides, we can’t fund an expedition anytime soon." Chang-li tucked his journal into his satchel. The two of them strolled across the grass.

The new disciples were practicing their basic techniques a quarter mile or so away, under the supervision of Brother Stone and the other senior disciples. Joshi had vanished as soon as they entered this level, declaring he was going to be working on his will training, whatever that meant. Min wished that the Darwur cultivator would spend even a tenth as much time with the disciples as Chang-li did, but despite his titular role as senior member of the Morning Mist sect, Joshi clearly had no interest in training any disciples, only in his own advancement.

Min let herself gossip a little about the other gem nobles that Chang-li knew from Broken Moon tower. It felt good to relax and just talk together.

“And how’s Hiroko? Have you spoken to her?” Chang-li asked.

"Hiroko has the same problem as at Golden Moon. All the other gems are jealous of her, and all the cultivators want to marry her at all costs, so they're not even looking at the other gems. Hiroko, meanwhile, has..." She hesitated.

Chang-li smiled. "She has her eye on someone, doesn't she?"

Min nodded. "I don't think he's noticed."

"Oh, he's noticed," Chang-li said. "Problem is, he is determined to walk his own path and sees no room on it for a wife."

"Well, that's stupid," Min declared. "Hiroko would be happy to go anywhere that he takes her. He just needs to get over himself."

Chang-li sighed. "Maybe Joshi knows what he's doing."

"Nonsense," Min said. "I'll have to see what I can do. I feel bad for Hiroko anyway, stuck in that back-biting circle of harpies day in and day out. I don't know what the Dowager Pearl's up to. She has some sort of plan, but I'm not exactly welcome to come to tea. My brother tells me a few things, but..." She sighed and looked away.

"I was wondering if there was a reason you were throwing yourself into our sect so wholeheartedly," Chang-li said.

"It has nothing to do with that," Min snapped. "I believe in the sect of Morning Mist. I want to help us grow. I told you that." She looked up at Chang-li. "So let me help.”

Chang-li reached for her hand and squeezed it. "As if I could get anywhere without you," he said.