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Bk 2 Ch 46: 2 v 1

Chang-li couldn't have been gone long, but clearly quite a lot had happened while he'd been in the cell. Feng was bloodied and bruised, his robes torn and dirty. Joshi radiated anger and power. Chang-li didn't have to ask. His friend had reached the Peak of Mental Refinement as well. Hope flared in his heart. He and Joshi were both at the same stage, and Feng had not yet gone beyond.

Feng paused where he was, staring at Chang-li. "How did you escape?”

Chang-li took advantage of his distraction. He sucked lux in all around and cycled it through his body using his new cycling pattern, Double Branching River. The physical luxes he shunted to his left side, strengthening his sword arm and empowering his blade. The spiritual luxes he concentrated on the right side of his body. He quickly wove together a very simple net pattern using the Infinite Loom technique as a basis. It wasn't elegant; it wasn't the technique he knew it could be with practice, but he needed something fast.

Feeling the weave form in his right hand, he flung it at Feng, who raised an arm defensively. As the technique flew, it grew, shimmering like an enormous spider's web, a foot or so wide in every direction. It struck Feng and clung to his head and shoulders. Chang-li raced in, sword raised, as Joshi sprinted for Feng, lux blazing around his fist.

Joshi was half a step closer. He punched, catching Feng in the head and knocking the other cultivator back. Chang-li swung, hoping to disembowel Feng. Feng raised his hands and threw up a red and yellow shield that caught Chang-li's blade. His sword shivered under the impact. Chang-li took an involuntary step back as Feng's strength flared.

The Soaring Heavens cultivator grabbed at Chang-li's weave with his free hand and ripped it off. The technique seemingly had no effect on him. He caught Joshi's next punch and twisted. Joshi responded with a sweeping kick that took Feng in the knee. It was Feng's turn to stumble back now. Chang-li was already readying his next technique.

Feng sprang away from them, his leap empowered by lux. He landed twenty feet from them, posing elegantly. One hand raised, open, the other cocked back near his hip, curled into a fist. His face was set in a sneer, and for all that his hair was disarrayed, he looked every inch a cultivator.

"You dare to come against me, dogs," he spat. "See what a gulf there still is between you and me. You have lied and cheated your way along the path. How dare a slave and a scribe profane the Divine Climb with their presence? I will take both of your heads back, and then I will set the Inquisitor on your sect and have this taint rooted out."

Chang-li didn't bother with taunts. He was already preparing another weaving on the Infinite Loom. But something Feng had said caught his attention. A slave. He'd recognized Joshi then. Now, Feng had to die. As though there had been any doubt before. He could not be allowed to leave this place.

Feng raised both hands skyward. Lux flowed out of him like a fountain, blue with red woven through its structure. He shouted, and Chang-li felt his knees buckling at the force of Feng's will.

He had felt this before and assumed it was merely the pressure a cultivator several tiers up could apply to someone at a lower level. Now, theoretically, they were all cultivating at the same tier, and yet Feng's spiritual presence was still so intense. Joshi took a step forward, sweat dripping down his face, while Chang-li struggled against the pressure, trying to get to his feet again.

"You will not leave this tower," Joshi growled but his determination seemed to falter

"You dogs have no way to stop me," Feng taunted. "See what a true master of cultivation at the height of a tier can do? You think because you have taken your first step at Mental Refinement you can go up against me? I have been practicing at this level for weeks now, instructed by a grandmaster from a sect with a pedigree your scam could not hope to claim. I have been enforced with three different divine treasures. You saw the Heart of the Roc, which I consumed. It was the least of the three treasures I have used. You have no chance against me."

As he boasted, he held his hands up, the lux still streaming out of him, to support this continuous technique. Chang-li sagged under the feeling of hopelessness. Then, in an flash, he understood. Feng was using his will against them as a weapon, but it was lux-enforced, and that meant Chang-li could break it.

He allowed himself to sag to the sand. Feng turned his attention on Joshi, who was taking another step forward determinedly. "Come, then, if you are so eager to die."

Chang-li crouched on the sand, head down, panting. As he reached out with his lux senses, he felt the swirls of lux all around him. There was so much more than there had been in the training cell. This place was so much vaster, but the concept was the same, just as when he had trained against his own image. Chang-li switched to Breath of the Heavens. He cycled lux out from his right-hand side, pushing especially the green and blue together, and then expanded his cycling technique into the air all around. Slowly, so slowly, the lux began to respond to him. He drew it back in through his left hand, pulling it into his core, cycling it, and sending it out again as he dropped into a cycling pattern that was now as natural to him as breathing.

Feng didn't seem to notice. He had lowered one hand and re-summoned his own weapon, a lux blade. As Joshi struggled forward, Feng taunted, "I am still waiting, slave. Are you going to take all day? I have other places to be. There is a princess waiting for me to claim her."

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Chang-li focused on nothing but lux. His cycling technique expanded until he was covering an area twenty feet wide, enough to cover the whole space between him, Joshi, and Feng. As Feng took a step forward, raising his blade, Chang-li seized control of the lux.

Feng's stance broke. He lowered his sword, mouth falling open. His concentration had relaxed only for an instant, but it was enough, and now he was struggling with Chang-li for control of the lux. The intense, oppressive field all around was gone. Chang-li sprang to his feet, seizing hard on the lux. He had trained for this. He knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Joshi sprang forward, freed from the force of Feng's will. He leapt and crashed down to earth beside Feng. A cloud of dust went up. Feng's duel against Chang-li for lux control abruptly was done. Chang-li had all the lux he could possibly need.

He wove together another technique on the Infinite Loom and flung it toward Feng. He couldn't see him or Joshi through the cloud of dust, but he could hear the sounds of their fight: slapping, punching, and strikes like he'd never heard, grunts and shouts. He could feel both of them through his senses, which were now far more reliable than his eyes anyway. His aim was good. His weave caught Feng and settled around his head and neck once more. This time, Feng wasn't ready for it. Chang-li closed off the thread and put the technique into action.

Feng screamed a high-pitched wailing sound. "It burns! It burns!" There was a sound of running feet, and Feng emerged from the cloud of dust. Illusory blue flames engulfed his head and shoulders. He was beating at himself with his own hands, his techniques forgotten. "It burns!"

Joshi pursued him, but Feng's desperate flight kept him ahead of Joshi. Feng stumbled toward the moat of lux, and before Chang-li could realize what he was doing, he plunged his head and shoulders into the stream.

"No!" Joshi roared. He seized Feng's ankle and dragged him back. "You won't get away that easily."

Chang-li was racing forward, sword in hand again, preparing to weave a new technique. Feng was fighting with Joshi, even as the barbarian hauled him back from the lux canal, his hands were straining against Joshi's arm. Joshi had a death grip on his ankle.

Then Feng began to shift and change. His head and shoulders were coated in a silvery gleam. Chang-li could feel the disruption to his lux patterns. As he watched, the silvery gleam began to continue down Feng's shoulders and into his arms and torso.

"Joshi, get back!" Chang-li shouted, and the barbarian let go of Feng and sprang backward.

Feng got to his feet. His handsome features were hidden behind a silvery mask now that shifted and caught the light. The silver had reached his sternum and was continuing downward. Feng was cycling, no pattern Chang-li could recognize. His strength was intense, even greater than before. He was pulling in red and green both, perhaps instinctively fighting whatever the lux was doing to his body, trying to sustain himself with physical and life lux.

"You have underestimated me again," Feng croaked, his voice distorted under the silvery lux, which by now had reached his navel. "My body is prepared for this transformation, one that would destroy either of you. With the roc's heart, the tears of the phoenix, and the thousand-year lotus root I have consumed, I will emerge victorious. You are merely stepping stones on my ascencion."

Chang-li stared in awe at the silvery, liquid-coated Feng, as far down as his knees. He knew what was happening now. Feng's body was being transformed by lux, transformed into lux. It was a transformation cultivators were not supposed to be capable of before they had achieved a tier beyond Spiritual Refinement. And yet, it seemed Feng was managing it. The resources of his sect had gone to good use. He was a terrible, powerful foe, and if the transformation completed, who knew what would happen?

"Joshi, we must end this now."

As if a spell was broken, Joshi and Chang-li raced in. Chang-li threw a Firepot at Feng, more to see what would happen than anything else. The yellow and red technique splashed harmlessly against the silvery coating of Feng's body.

Feng laughed. Only his feet remained unchanged. Now, he raised his fists heavenward, and the lux in the chamber once again began to respond to him, far more violently than before.

Chang-li felt his own control ripped away. He had the lux in his own body, nothing more. Joshi was there, punching. His thousand fist punch resonated in from eight different angles as Magen darted in, getting a look onto the back of Feng's head, but they didn't seem to disturb him at all. Joshi wasn't making physical contact with Feng, which Chang-li thought was wise. There was no telling what that coating would do.

His coating complete, Feng began to weave a complicated technique. There were at least four different colors of lux arranged in a weave Chang-li could barely begin to follow. If he'd had time to do nothing but stare at it, perhaps, but he was trying to figure out how to win this fight. He didn't have time to study just yet.

Reinforcing his sword with red and orange lux, Chang-li struck a blow against Feng's raised right arm. His sword bounced off with a clang. If Feng even noticed, he gave no sign. Instead, he completed his weave and tied it off.

The air around Chang-li exploded. He was knocked off his feet, sent flying as flames seared his body. His ears rang. He hit the ground and rolled over and over, then lay stunned for a moment as a wave of heat passed over him. The air was full of smoke. Coughing, he raised up onto his knees and looked around for any sign of Feng.

Joshi had been thrown the opposite direction from him, nearly sixty feet away on the other side of the river of lux. He was already on his feet, racing for the nearest bridge. He was pointing and shouting. Chang-li couldn't make out what he was saying over the ringing in his own ears, but the pointing finger was easy enough to follow.

Chang-li turned. Feng was hovering ten feet over his head, a gleaming silver creation. There had been no change to his appearance since the lux had finally coated his feet. Chang-li was certain something had gone wrong. When the stories spoke of cultivators transforming their bodies, it was said they remade them almost instantly. It seemed like Feng was stuck somewhere in between.

Chang-li suspected that he had failed some stage of the transformation. If he did leave the tower, no doubt the Inquisitor would have him put down. But that was of no help to Chang-li, since it didn't seem like Feng was going to leave them alive.

Feng snapped his finger. A weave Chang-li hadn't seen him form flew forward. Chang-li hurled himself to the side, rolling over as the technique exploded where he had been, covering the ground with a sticky, burning substance. He was on his feet. He turned and ran for Joshi, sensing behind him when another technique was coming, and dodging to the side. Feng laughed. From the sound of it, he was following Chang-li, hovering.

Think! Think! There had to be a way out of this. If he was going to fail to Feng like this, he might as well have let his image win the contest for control of his body.

He was not going to die here. He had so much farther to go.