Two-thirds of the way up the maze of ladders, ropes, bridges, planks, and nets, having been attacked every few minutes by enemies out of the darkness, Chang-li was beset by two competing worries.

Feng lay somewhere ahead of them. Had he already reached the tower guardian and earned the boon? It seemed impossible that they were gaining on him, not when they had to stop and flail their way through bats or creatures that ripped themselves from the wall and attacked with stone limbs, or the odd screaming fungus monsters they'd fought a handful of minutes ago. But then again, Feng would have had to carve his way through as well.

At least Chang-li's sword tactics were getting plenty of practice. With little lux here, he was falling back on those skills.

His other fear was deeper-seated. What if they caught up with Feng but were unable to match him? He had disciples with him, several of which might be on the verge of the Peak of Mental Refinement themselves, and neither Chang-li nor Joshi had yet reached that level.

When they reached another protruding ledge and cleared it of the sightless mole creatures that scurried out from cracks in the wall to swarm at them, Chang-li told Joshi, "I think we need to rest."

Joshi grunted. "Agreement. Put down your packs, eat, and cycle,” he told the disciples, who collapsed against the wall in relief. Brother Stone merely leaned into the rocks, chewing his rations and keeping his staff at hand as he scanned the great yawning opening beyond them.

"What do we do now? I don't know how to reach for the next veil," Chang-li confessed to Joshi in a low voice. "At least with the trial of touch, I had a hint."

Even now, he could feel how piercing the second veil had left him more alert, as though every piece of his skin was as sensitive as his fingertips to the impressions of lux all around them. He could close his eyes and sense where the disciples were just by the way the air currents eddied around them. But the trial of heart had no such hints in any of the scrolls he had read, merely saying it was different for every cultivator, which was hardly helpful, and that they would know it when they saw it.

"Perhaps it is as simple as proving yourself brave," Joshi suggested. "My people have a manhood ritual. A boy is sent out naked with a bridle in one hand and a knife in the other. He returns mounted on a horse he has caught and broken himself, clothed in garments he's fashioned from his own kills, and is a man of the tribe, or he does not return at all."

"That's helpful," Chang-li commented, slightly horrified.

"Your people have no such ritual?"

Chang-li scratched his head. "My fellow students stole my money and threatened to leave me head down in an outhouse my first day."

"That is precisely my point," Joshi said. "Just as rituals of courage differ between peoples, so perhaps this test of heart is different from one to the next. Think. Here we are learning to deal with lux as it seeks to overwhelm our mind. We have blocked it from our senses and been rewarded by enhancement to those senses. Now we must control how our mind affects our heart, or perhaps how our heart affects our mind."

Chang-li said, "I think you may have the right of it, for a man may be clear-thinking and know what must be done, but if his courage fails him, he is unable to do what his mind has decided to do."

"Yes," Joshi stared off into space. "Yes, perhaps that is the secret. In which case, I think we simply must continue pushing ourselves to our limits. I have felt the lux growing stronger as we go."

"I thought I sensed that as well," Chang-li agreed. He had been tempted more than once to put the band around his wrist once more and had checked his bag to ensure it was still there. None of the disciples had removed their bands for more than a moment or two while cycling, though Joshi had encouraged them to make the effort.

Chang-li was about to speak again when he heard a soft cry that sounded like someone calling out from farther up. "Did you hear that?"

Joshi cocked his head to one side. "I think so." They both listened. The disciples came alert. Brother Stone pushed off from the wall and stood at the edge of the ledge, cupping a hand to his ear. The call came again.

"I'm certain of it," Chang-li said.

"I don't hear anything," Brother Stone said.

"I did," Joshi said grimly. "It sounded like a woman."

"A trap, do you think?"

"No." Joshi's expression was grim. "It's Li Jiya. Let's hurry."

Chang-li had doubts, but he followed Joshi to the ladder leading up to the next piece of this spiderweb maze. Even if it was really Li Jiya, what if she was being used as bait in a trap? Feng might have wounded her and be forcing her to call out to draw them in. Or perhaps she was lying in wait for them. Or perhaps it was another illusion.

The green light with which the cavern was filled was taking on a bluish tinge as they approached the top. Chang-li braced himself as he cycled. To his surprise, despite there being no visible sign of it, here he found a decent trace of the physical luxes. He purified out red and yellow for himself, readying weaves as they at last reached the top. They had not been attacked for the last 30 yards of their descent, a situation Chang-li found suspicious in and of itself.

They stepped off onto a wide ledge with a tunnel leading off it, the walls glowing with blue and green light. Chang-li stared down into the vast blue pit, seeing how far they’d come. It was like looking down into a deep underwater pit. The bridges and ropes laced the hole like a skein of tangled threads. He could see a place where they'd made a stand on a rope bridge and knocked several slats out, far below.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The cry came again, to their left. They turned, facing an opening into the cavern wall. Taller than a man and wide enough for two to walk abreast, it glowed green, and Chang-li could make out a figure lying a little ways along the corridor, slight and wearing the distinctive robes of the Moon Whispers sect. Li Jiya.

"Be careful," Joshi said. His gauntlet formed around his hand as he strode forward. “Li Jiya, do you need help?”

Li Jiya raised up on one elbow. She was facing away from them, her hands raised defensively. She cried out in fear, cringing away from something they couldn’t see.

“Wait,” Chang-li said.

Joshi stopped. “I don’t think she can hear us. What’s wrong?”

Chang-li felt with his enhanced lux senses. He could see faint blue tracings around Li Jiya. She was trapped in a circle no more than two paces wide.

“I think it’s a challenge,” he said. “I can see the blue lux all around her. I think she’s trapped in it. Some sort of mental attack.”

“Can we free her?”

Li Jiya was lying at the entrance to another cavern. Beyond, all was blue. Chang-li couldn't see much. There was just room around between the lux circle and the wall to get around it. He approached carefully. "Can I have your stick?" he asked Brother Stone, who handed it over.

"What are you doing?" Joshi asked.

"I'm marking the bounds." Carefully staying several inches clear of the circle, Chang-li drew a line all around it as he made a complete circle around Li Jiya. Then he stepped back. "There. Stay clear of the line I drew and we can go around."

Joshi led the way, the disciples following. They stopped in the passage to the cavern, just beyond Li Jiya.

“We could… just leave her,” Chang-li said.

“Not if we can help her. But we don’t want to risk ourselves, either.” Joshi’s reluctance was clear in his voice.

Li Jiya cried out again. “No! No! I won’t —Li Jen, no—”

Joshi’s expression changed to determination. “Ready yourselves," Joshi told the disciples. They spread out on all sides of the circle. Then he picked up a stone from the floor. Joshi tossed it into the middle of the lux circling Li Jiya.

Blue-green light flared. The flames formed symbols Chang-li could almost read before coalescing into four human shapes. The sand beneath moved, it shifted and rumbled, and bodies pulled themselves up until they filled the silhouettes of green light. Li Jiya buried her face in her hands.

The men were disciples of Moon Whispers, and they were quite clearly dead. Their mouths hung open, their faces slack, their eyes alight with blue-green fire. They took steps toward Li Jiya, hands extended.

"Kill them!" Joshi barked.

Chang-li had a Firepot ready. Undead hated fire, didn't they? He tossed it at the closest as he swung with his sword. His blow cut down the revenant, dropping it to its knees and taking one leg off at the ankle. It crawled forward, intent on Li Jiya.

She was on her knees now, staring in horror at one of the revenants. “Li Jen, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” The dead man looked nothing like her brother. The trap still had her in its grasp.

Chang-li swung his sword again, striking the crawling revenant in the back of the neck. It spasmed, all of its limbs shaking and writhing in unison.

Across the circle, Joshi had punched one revenant in the head with a red fist. His blow was echoed back twice with lux fists that came out of the air to hit. The disciples and Brother Stone faced off against the other two revenants. Brother Stone's staff whirled as he struck. The revenants didn't seem to care about the blows, not unless it was enough to immobilize them.

Chang-li wrenched his sword free from his enemy and struck again, decapitating it. The creature still kept moving. He hacked one arm, then the other. The individual limbs kept going.

Joshi's opponent was a pile of ground meat, its head bashed in, its chest caved, black goo oozed out of holes in its torso. But it was still trying to get to Li Jiya.

Chang-li leapt over the severed, writhing arms. He plunged into the green lux circle.

He could feel the blue lux affecting him already. His heart raced. Fear flooded his veins. Shadows fell across his vision, and he could hear things moving, coming for him.

Not real he told himself. The blue lux was hitting him,

“You will fail,” a disembodied voice told him. It sounded like Min. “You will never be a real cultivator. Give up now. Your path ends here.”

“Not real,” he said aloud through gritted teeth, and took a step forward.

The intensity of the attack on his mind increased. Chang-li cycled, closing his eyes and practicing the skill he’d learned of using his other senses to block out the lies.

He could sense Li Jiya just ahead, huddled against her own fears. Chang-li took another step and reached her side. He dragged her to her feet, draping her arm around his neck. Then, as she hobbled beside him, pulled her free from the circle, back toward the great green chamber until they were ten feet from the circle.

Li Jiya exclaimed, “Scribe Wu? What are you doing here? How —” Her eyes seemed to clear. She looked around. “I thought I was somewhere else. Where are my people?”

"You stay here," Chang-li said, because the revenants had turned and started for her, ignoring the disciples chopping them to pieces. Chang-li wove a net as he strode toward the revenants. He fashioned it with yellow lux, which he had the best structural control of, imagining a lattice of interlocking slats. Then poured green in everywhere between the slats, before adding a touch of blue.

These creatures were clearly powered by green and blue lux. The life lux, green in this case, were animating their corpses long after they should have been dead, while the blue provided their mindless determination to attack Li Jiya. He would need to undermine both.

He flung his net wide. It filled the whole tunnel between him and the others. As the first of the revenants stumbled into his net, it burst into multicolored flame and dissolved to dust.

"Throw the pieces in!" he shouted. Joshi, understanding what he meant, grabbed one of the writhing arms and tossed it. The disciples set to with a will, picking up any pieces of body not able to move on their own and throwing them into his net. When his weave at last unraveled, the revenants were dust once more.

Li Jiya sagged against the tunnel wall. "Thank you," she said as Joshi joined them.

"What happened?" he asked.

"It was Feng." She took a deep, sobbing breath. "He was waiting for us. His people..." She shook her head. "I was expecting treachery, but not like this. They killed all my disciples. They knew we were coming. One of my disciples betrayed us. They took him away and killed the rest of us. Feng broke my leg himself. He used a technique on me and I think the tower amplified it. I was trapped in my own fears for I don’t know how long. You saved me." She was looking at Joshi as she spoke. Chang-li felt a quick stab of jealousy. After all, he'd been the one who figured out how to defeat the revenants, the one who pulled her from the trap.

"Do you need further aid?" Joshi asked.

Li Jiya shook her head. "There's another exit on the other side of the green chamber. I can get to it now that you've pulled me free. I'm done here." She looked utterly defeated.

Joshi reached out and squeezed her shoulder. "It is no failing to misjudge the ruthlessness of an evil man."

She met his gaze. "You're lying to me. You would not have underestimated Feng in that way."

"Perhaps I have known more ruthless men than you have."

"Perhaps. Be careful. He expects you to come. He said he knows what you're after, and he won't let you have her."

Joshi's expression was grim. "Does he now?”

“Perhaps you should abandon this climb,” Li Jiya suggested, "He has more disciples than you, and they're all stronger."

"We're not abandoning anything," Chang-li said before Joshi could speak. "We have to complete this floor. If Feng is waiting for us to spring a trap, then so be it. That gives us a chance to defeat him and win the Tower Boon ourselves."

Li Jiya shook her head. "If you make it out of here alive, I will owe you a great debt."