Joshi stepped off the raft into the lux-enforced tube leading beneath the surface of the lake. A ladder ran down its side. He slipped from rung to rung, descending as he led the party on their way to one of the lower levels of the tower.

They were still waiting for the official bride tournament to kick off, and neither Chang-li nor Joshi wanted to waste any cultivation time.

After an uncomfortable evening being hosted by the Oaken Band Brotherhood, and another pointless day settling into their sect headquarters, they were at last heading for the tower. Min had arranged permission for them to enter one of the lower levels. The upper floors were reserved for the bridal tournament.

The level they were going to would prove no challenge to anyone past the Peak of Bodily Refinement. But that was alright. Joshi needed to recharge his core and practice basic techniques, and Chang-li and Min were worried about beginning to teach all their new disciples.

They descended 40 feet beneath the surface of the lake. The tube around him was made of a translucent material, heavily reinforced with lux, but he could sense it was a physical substance at its base. Perhaps rice paper that had been so infused with lux it became waterproof and rigid. The tube was wide enough for two different ladders, but they were only using one. Min said to leave the other for ascending climbers, though she wasn't sure anyone was inside.

Joshi stepped off onto a ledge in front of a yawning opening in the bone-white surface of the tower. Like with all true tower entrances, he could see nothing inside, just the shimmer of lux calling to him. Without hesitation, he stepped through.

An icy wind buffeted him. Joshi staggered forward, holding a hand up against his face as pellets of ice and snow drove into him. Min had warned this level was cold. "It's actually underwater," she had said. "Long, long ago, the emperor froze the water, allowing cultivators to enter."

He'd been expecting a series of icy tunnels carved into a block and was dressed for it, wearing warm clothes and boots. This, though, was a howling wasteland with a blizzard driving down.

Chang-li appeared next to him, already drawing in the ambient lux. "The lux is a bit thin," his friend noted.

"Your wife told us this level was more suited to those reaching for Bodily Refinement."

"It'll do," Chang-li said. The rest of the cultivation party stumbled in through the gate. Min shivered even in her heavy cloak. They had Brother Stone and Disciple Cui with them, as well as eight new Brotherhood recruits. Joshi was not particularly enthusiastic about training them, but Chang-li had spent much of the afternoon yesterday stepping them through basic cycling techniques.

"I'll scout ahead,” Joshi said.

"I'll make sure that they start cycling lux properly," Chang-li agreed, urging his charges away from the entrance. There was a rocky outcropping a little way off. Chang-li chivvied his charges in that direction as Joshi and Magen strode into the blinding snow.

Joshi sent his lux creature to scout about. Magen was much faster than he was and unaffected by the cold. The lux creature reported back at once that there were creatures out there moving, cold as the ice and snow itself, powered by red and yellow luxes.

No challenge at all for them, Magen reported cheerfully, but possibly a concern for the new disciples.

Joshi moved to intercept. He'd get the measure of these creatures, and then he and Chang-li could arrange for their newest group of students to take on a decent challenge.

As he plunged his way through knee-deep snow, his mind wandered. What was he doing here? Oh, he and Chang-li had discussed and agreed that this was the best course of action. And certainly, it was easier than running all over the empire looking for another tower cull that would allow a sectless cultivator to join. But every day he remained with the Morning Mist sect, Joshi woke feeling as though the chains of his slavery were threatening to encircle his wrists and neck once more.

He told himself over and over the words of the first-floor guardian of the broken tower’s boon. No bond will hold me. Except that which he himself chose to bear.

And that was the trick. The chains Joshi was forging now would hold him as tightly as his slavery ever had. No, more tightly, because he had raged against the collar and slavery, fought to keep his wits, found the first chance of escape, and taken it. Now the ties that bound him to Chang-li and even Min were ones he could not bear to think of severing.

Chang-li had become more truly a brother he'd known before. His own brothers had mocked and scorned him as a half-breed. When he had returned from his studies with the monks of Harupa only to disappoint his father, they'd taunted and tormented him until the day he was driven beyond what he could take and thrown words in his father's face until he was driven out of his home, never to return.

If only his father could see him now, Joshi thought wryly as he approached the monsters Magen was telling him lay beneath the snow. He couldn't see anything, just more mounds of ice and snow. This place was a frigid wasteland. The lux was thin, hardly any spiritual luxes at all, which was a problem since Joshi needed to practice and develop more spiritual techniques. He'd reached the Peak of Mental Refinement, but taken no steps beyond it. To reach Spiritual Refinement would require mastery of the spiritual luxes. Chang-li was well in advance of him. He would need to work hard to stay caught up.

Now, ten feet ahead, a mound of snow stirred and shook itself. It rose up, inch by inch, until it towered over Joshi. Then it opened its eyes. Limbs formed. The creature had blazing eyes set in an oblong head. It was made of snow. Its mouth opened, showing teeth of ice, and it roared a blast of frigid wind at Joshi.

He leapt to one side, cycling his lux in the Way of Boulders, then leapt and readied his Meteor Punch technique. Lux flowed through him. Even as he descended, he directed the red lux to his fist, making his arm a weapon, while reinforcing the rest of his body with a trickle.

He smashed fist-first into the creature, driving down through it as he crashed to the ground. A wave of force blasted away from him in every direction, sending shards of ice and snow everywhere. The snow creature was blasted literally to bits.

Joshi cycled, and at once realized something was wrong. Killing the creature should have freed up its lux, giving him a burst of yellow and red, but it hadn't, which meant the creature was still alive. Now he could sense the thin trickle of green life-lux in the air. It pulled the red and yellow back together, gathering ice and snow around them, and a moment later, the creature had reformed.

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Joshi grinned. So, it would be a challenge. This time, the creature formed an arm tipped with spears of ice. It swung at Joshi. He caught the blow on the back of his left arm, forming a small red lux shield. The icicles scratched across it. They were reinforced with orange lux and drove deep into the shield, but he'd been expecting that. He grabbed the creature's arm with his right hand and drove his fingers deep into the ice, feeling out its body.

It had lux channels, like a cultivator would, filled with red and yellow and held together by green. The channels moved as it did, letting the creature reform. If it had lux channels, if it was empowered by lux, then that likely meant it had a core.

Joshi sprang back. Magen was warning him two more of the creatures were approaching. He needed to figure out how to defeat this one fast.

Joshi called Magen back to him, putting the lux creature on the other side of the ice monster. As the ice monster dropped to all fours and came roaring at him, each furious step kicking up a blast of ice and snow, he stood his ground. He wove his Thousand Fists technique using his last stores of indigo lux. Indigo lux gave a cultivator control over space itself, allowing, in Joshi's case, for his punch to come from multiple points at the same time.

He drew back his fist, and as the creature lumbered up to him, drove it straight into the center of the ice monster. Six more punches copied his first: two from Magen, the other four from the thin air. Joshi's physical punch and the two Magen supplemented struck hard. The other four were little more than distractions, but they were all aimed at the same point, striking the creature at intervals around its enormous snowy torso, driving inward, knocking the snow free and revealing the core within.

Joshi stepped in and grabbed the core. He wrenched it free as the creature roared and slashed at him with icy claws. The core resisted, tugging at the lux channels that animated the creature before pulling free, and suddenly a vast wave of purified lux flowed into Joshi as the creature collapsed into a puff of flurries and blew away.

There was far more green here than he had expected. He cycled furiously, Way of Boulders sustaining him. As Magen chirped a warning, the other two creatures were nearly on him, but he knew how to deal with them now. He turned to face them, feeling warm and alive despite the cold, testing himself against opponents.

That was the way of a warrior.

This is not the way of the warrior, his own voice echoed from his past. He shut his eyes, briefly remembering the words he'd said to his father. “To strike from behind in a cowardly ambush? We should be ashamed.

"If they came at us like warriors, we would fight them as warriors," his father had said. "But they come as conquerors, using powers that we have not mastered. I needed you to become a cultivator, Joshi, so that you could bring that back to all our people, so that we could claim the Heart of the Desert and raise our people up to greatness. But the monks failed you, you failed me, and now this is all we have left. I will rather go to my ancestors apologizing for the tactics I chose than apologizing for the death of our entire people."

Joshi opened his eyes as the pair of ice monsters lumbered forward. He set himself, picking the one to his right as his first target. His father had been right. It had taken him months of slavery to admit that to himself. The empire didn't fight fair. Cultivators had powers no ordinary man could hope to master.

Well, he was a cultivator now, and he would see to it no one ever had the advantage of him again. Look what he'd done to Feng! Joshi sprang forward, driving in on the first ice creature with a punch. He gave himself orange-tipped claws emerging from the red lux gauntlet around his fist and cut through the icy barrier surrounding the monster's body. He drove deep into it, digging with his claws as the creature tried to strike at him. His left arm warded off the blows as he focused on the prize, the core at the center of this monster.

No one would stand in his way again. Not the greatest cultivators in the empire, not the emperor himself. Feng had tried to stop him, and Feng had learned his mistake. The arrogant young cultivator had pushed Joshi to the limit, but Joshi was alive and Feng was dead. Joshi seized the core, ripped it away, and even as the creature was collapsing into snow and raw lux, turned to face the third monster.

This was too easy. He needed a greater challenge. If the other floors didn't offer it to him, so be it. There were other lands, other towers for them to face. With the help of Chang-li, and now Min, the sect could provide him a name and a place from which to strive for greatness. He might even return home in triumph to his family, able now to grant them what they had always wanted, the protection of a cultivator, the ability to raise up cultivators of their own and protect their people. His father would hail him as the greatest of his sons. His brothers would bow to him. The women of his clan would-

Joshi ripped the core from the third ice monster as it collapsed. A woman's face did come to mind. It wasn't any woman of the Darwur, but rather, Indigo Princess Hiroko.

He let out a long sigh as he began to cycle the lux from his two latest victims. One of them had a trace of blue lux to it. Hiroko preferred blue lux. She used it as a weapon, having an instinctive feel that was rare in any cultivator. He'd spoken little to Hiroko in the past weeks, and not at all since learning she had declared just prior to his emergence from the tower that she would marry Feng.

Of all people, Feng! When the arrogant young master had insisted that Hiroko would be his bride, Joshi had been determined to show him his mistake, wipe the smile from his face and force him to apologize for his arrogance. That had been superseded by killing the bastard, which was a better way to treat your enemies anyway. But coming out and hearing that Hiroko had announced to the entire tower cull she would marry Feng still boggled him.

She couldn't possibly prefer Feng to every other cultivator! Then again, she hadn't exactly been granted many alternatives. The Golden Moon Tower cull had been short on talented young cultivators. With Li Jiya off to become bride of the emperor, her brother dead, and Chang-li married, there had only been Feng and Joshi himself to make good targets.

And Joshi was not in the market for a bride. Hiroko knew that. Probably. Still, hearing that she could have preferred Feng had his hackles up.

She'd be here at this tower cull, and there'd be many more cultivators for her to choose from. Among the teams come to support the potential brides, she'd find a husband, no question. Hiroko was exactly what the emperor had bred her to be. A dutiful spouse-in-waiting, ready to tie a cultivator down to the empire. Yet another chain he didn't need. Even if she was beautiful and gentle and had remarkable depths.

The time he’d spent with her at Golden Moon Tower was like a dream. Seeking to find that again would be foolishness. He didn’t need a wife, and certainly not one who came with the ties Hiroko bore.

On the other hand, Min was proving to be quite a good ally for Chang-li. Joshi didn't trust her divided loyalties. She clearly loved her grandfather and the Brotherhood she'd grown up in. If forced to choose between them and her husband, Joshi suspected she would, with great regret, pick them.

He hoped it wouldn't come to that. Chang-li was a man besotted. It was rather revolting to watch, actually. Joshi supposed he should be happy for his friend. Chang-li had everything the former scribe had ever dreamed of. He was a cultivating prodigy, with a spouse who could offer him assistance in climbing the ranks, the recognition of empire officials, secrets of a long-lost sect at his disposal.

Chang-li's future was bright. Joshi was one slip away from being recognized as an escaped slave, enemy of the empire, an untrustworthy person who should not be allowed to continue cultivating. There were prisms about who had already demonstrated the ability to appear and disappear at will, to see that which they should not, and to enact judgment with a single word.

So what should he do?

His father's furious face came to mind again. "You are no son of mine. Be gone. You are not of the people. None of our hearths will give you food or drink, not until you humble yourself and beg my forgiveness."

His own proud reply, "I will die before I beg you to allow me back."

His father’s scornful laugh rang in his ears, more biting than the icy cold wind.