In all too short a time, the gong rang again. Chang-li led his chosen disciples to one of the circles that was even now activating to carry people to the second floor.

  He and Joshi had debated whether to have Joshi as one of the champions and had finally decided not to. Brother Stone was familiar with staves, and Chang-li used a short sword frequently. They had every expectation they'd be able to, after watching the other six, at least show some ability at this trial. Joshi was a master of hand-to-hand combat, not a particular weapon. In Chang-li's opinion, one he had convinced Joshi to share, it would be better for the sect not to have him humiliate himself in front of the crowd. If some of the junior disciples looked clumsy, that would not reflect as poorly on the sect as a senior disciple failing to perform. "Besides," Chang-li had said grimly, "maybe the second competition will be bare-fist fighting, or something where you can actually make us look good."

  He doubted that very much but kept it to himself. Instead, they had picked five disciples: Shou and Cui, who were, like Brother Stone, nearing the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. Both had at least some experience using weapons. The other three were the fastest learners among the Peak of Bodily Refinement disciples.

  Chang-li instructed them quietly to watch what the others were doing. "As soon as we see each form, I'll assign one of you, so pay extra attention to the little details," he told them.

  The other sects were assembled. Their grandmasters each stood besides seven disciples. All had their sleeves rolled up and looked determined for this challenge. The gong rang again as Chang-li brought Morning Mist into their places.

  A dowager stepped forward. "The competition will be judged by myself, Dowager Pearl Nima, and my sisters, Dowager Pearl Akadara and Nabiki," she gestured at two others. She wore black. The other two were clad in white.

  "Shadow Dancers, announce your champions."

  Master Ahren stepped forward, listing off names. Chang-li cycled Purification of Mind and Soul as the introductions went along. When the Shadow Dancers contestants had been introduced, they stepped into the glowing script circle, which filled the middle of this floor of the tower. The circle was about fifteen feet across.

  The crowd pressed in, jostling for positions to watch. There were seven lux batteries waiting: three small, three medium, and one larger than the rest.

  The cultivators strode to the battery appropriate for their cultivation rank. The first of their Spiritual Refinement cultivators picked up his battery. He stated his name again: "Do Mian." He pulled the orange lux into himself: "The Spear Style of Clo Yen."

  They watched as the cultivator drew the orange lux out of his body, forming it into a perfect spear: four feet long, with a pointed head and a counterweight on the bottom. He stepped forward into the middle of the ring and began stepping through a sequence of moves. He flowed from one to the next like water. It was clearly a form he had practiced many times before.

  Chang-li was accustomed to practicing patterns like that. He had several he used for sword practice, and Joshi had taught him a handful of fist-only sparring techniques. This, though, was stylized beyond the forms he used.

  "That'll be yours," Chang-li told Brother Stone in a low voice.

  At the end of every sequence of seven moves, the disciple paused, his spear held in an awkward position, sometimes with his head thrown back, another time balanced on the point of one foot. Then he'd step through his next set. Finally, after ten sequences, he stopped, the spear over his head, clasped in both hands, and let out a fierce "Hua!"

  "Did you get that?" Chang-li asked Stone in a low voice.

  "Most of it. By the time I've seen it again, yes." Stone sounded sturdy, but not overflowing with confidence.

  The next Bodily Refinement cultivator stepped up. He announced his name and produced his weapons, a pair of knives.

  Stone said, "Disciple Nen. This will be yours.”

  That was one of the Bodily Refinement cultivators, a young man who broke into a crooked grin as he leaned forward and watched. “Yes, elder brother.”

  Chang-li was starting to feel, if not confident, at least slightly better. The next cultivator produced an enormous two-handed sword. Chang-li and Stone exchanged a quick glance. "Disciple Shou. I think this is you," Chang-li said after a moment as they began watching. Shou shook his head but said nothing as he watched.

  The next weapon was even worse. This cultivator, a woman at the Peak of Mental Refinement, summoned a net and trident made entirely of orange lux. Chang-li had never practiced with either, and he doubted any of his disciples would either.

  Stone waited a moment before saying, "Juenne. This is for you."

  The Bodily Refinement cultivator started. She looked to Stone, her eyes wide. "I don't think — "

  "Nobody else is going to be any better," Stone said roughly. She leaned forward to begin watching. Chang-li wondered if Stone had picked her because he thought, if they were going to humiliate themselves anyway, to give it to the least talented of the representatives.

  He had a quick sigh of relief at the next weapon, which was a short sword of the type he preferred, alongside a shield. While he didn't customarily use a shield himself, he could see how the moves fit together. He wouldn’t be able to memorize all of this in one go, but maybe with repetition he could keep from humiliating them too badly.

  As he watched the sword-and-shield wielder step through his pattern, Chang-li mumbled softly to himself, mnemonics to remind him how things should go. His right hand twitched as though he were writing it down, a technique he had picked up during his student scribe days for any lecture where he was not permitted to take notes. The feel of writing down each character helped imprint it in his mind.

  The last two weapons were a guandao and a long axe. Stone gave out the assignments, and when the Shadow Dancers fell back, Chang-li breathed a sigh, less of relief, more of resignation. "All right," he told his people quietly. "We've got three more to watch."

  By the time the fourth sect went into place, he realized he was no longer using imaginary characters to write down the actions of the sword-and-shield user. Instead, it was as though he could picture a page from a path manual, with each step in its stylized form, where a single character could represent each movement. That wasn’t how he instinctively thought, so it had taken him some time to become used to that method. Now, it seemed right.

  In what felt like a sickeningly short amount of time, all five of the sects performed beautifully. Chang-li couldn’t see any way Morning Mist would be able to compete here.

  They had to try. He stepped forward into the circle, his disciples at his back.

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  Chang-li felt helpless as he hefted the Lux battery and ingested its contents. They would go in order of seniority, which meant he needed to watch all of his disciples before he himself had his chance.

  First up was Disciple Juenne. She formed a credible trident, but the orange blob in her left hand that was supposed to be a net looked more like a shapeless bag. She was sweating before she started a single move, her face a mask of fear. She jerked through a set of motions that bore some resemblance to the first sequence in the form, then ground to a halt, facing Brother Stone.

  From his perspective, Chang-li could see her terror as she whispered, "I don't know how. This isn’t what we practice.”

  "It's all right," Chang-li said softly. "Just do what you can."

  Juenne made it through another three sets of movements before stopping in the center of the circle. The net in her hand dissipated as she stood for an uncomfortably long moment. Chang-li gestured frantically, and at last she took up a place at the edge of the circle. Her face was flaming red.

  Chang-li wished he could have comforted her. It wasn't her fault. The charter sects had sprung a trap. Morning Mist couldn't get out of. There were so many things his sect didn't know. They had a trove of manuals from the earlier version of Morning Mist, but aside from Noren, who was about as forthcoming as he was predictable, no living teachers. The sect shades might have been valuable resources, but they were back at the sanctum, out of reach of Chang-li for the moment.

  Disciple Nen went next, performing slightly better than Juenne. He ground his way through a full ten sets of movements, though Chang-li did think they looked much like anyone else's.

  And so it went on.

  When it was Disciple Shou’s time, he crafted a very credible two-handed sword and briskly stepped through what was, to Chang-li's surprise, nearly a perfect rendition of what all of the other sword wielders had done. Chang-li felt a little bit better at that. He heard a few murmurs of surprise from some of the other watching cultivators and allowed himself a moment's satisfaction before the feeling of dread closed in again.

  Disciple Cui didn't do as well as Shou, but again, Chang-li felt it could have been much worse than it was.

  Brother Stone's turn. He stepped into the ring. Chang-li could feel him cycling from here, using Swirling Mists and pouring all of the orange lux in his core out through his channels. To Chang-li's surprise, he created a spear nearly six feet long with a barbed head at its top and a round counterweight at the bottom.

  Brother Stone grinned as he crouched. That wasn't the initial position any of the others had used. He kicked off into the first sequence of moves, and Chang-li had to work hard to keep his shock from showing on his face.

  Brother Stone brought every movement in the sequence to life. He was performing the same kicks, thrusts, and stabs as all the other spear wielders, but with a vitality that made it seem he was really in combat. When he touched his spear's counterweight to the ground, it wasn't a hesitant tap but a slam that reverberated around the room. He spun the spear overhead, its point flashing. Each pose at the end of the set looked natural and menacing. Chang-li would have sworn he had practiced this for hundreds of hours.

  As Stone finished the form, raising his spear overhead with both hands and letting out a guttural shout, half the room applauded. And it wasn't just Morning Mist either. Several of the Gem Court ladies were drifting toward the edge of the circle, eyeing Stone appreciatively.

  Chang-li met his eyes as Stone returned to his place and gave a very shallow nod of his head in recognition. They were going to lose this challenge. There was no question. But between Sho and Brother Stone, they hadn't completely disgraced themselves.

  Brother Stone had raised the bar. They didn’t just have to take this loss and leave with their disgrace. Brother Stone had showed Morning Mist had talent. Chang-li needed to go even further and throw this insult back in the Charter Sects’ faces. So they had wanted to make Morning Mist look ignorant, uneducated?

  Then he knew exactly what to do.

  Inspired, Chang-li took up his place at the center of the ring. He summoned a sword made of orange lux, with the same proportions as Liar’s Blade. Chang-li summoned his sword in his left hand. A murmur round the room to that, but he didn’t let it affect him. In his right, he summoned not a shield, but an orange brush, half the size of the sword.

  Chang-li had the steps of his form memorized Face left, sword high, shield low. Step two, three, raise shield, block, swing out with sword, turn to the right. One step back, stab, block, shield. Feet together, arms crossed, pose. Sequence two, turn one hundred and eighty degrees. Step, step, lunge, block, step back.

  As Chang-li stepped forward, he accepted that Morning Mist would not win this fight competition. That was all right. Anyone could demonstrate these patterns if they took the time to learn and practice. Instead — and his Intent resonated all through him, energizing his core, stirring the lux therein — he would show he had Mastered it.

  As he took the first steps of the first pattern, he wrote each step of the pattern on the air with his brush, pushing just a hint of blue lux through his right-hand channels and out, a signal symbol for each, just like in a technique manual. The characters hung in the air as he stepped through.

  He took up the first pose and used his will to collapse all of the characters together. They slammed into a little blue circle hanging in the air.

  Chang-li started the next set. Sweat dripped down his forehead. He could feel eyes on him, hear whispers all around. But he was focused on himself and the pattern he had mastered. He ended the second form, created a second ball of blue lux in the air. The third. The fourth.

  At last, as he completed the steps of the tenth pose, he stood in the center of the ring, dissolved the brush from his right hand, and pulled a single piece of parchment from his soul space. He slammed all ten of the dense balls of lux against the parchment, forming a lux scroll in that instant.

  He let the orange lux sword dissolve as the spectators looked at him with mouths agape, then down at the scroll in his hand. The blue lux sat on the page, showing each step of the pattern.

  A moment later, the crowd burst into applause, even as the sect grandmasters and the dowagers pushed into the display ring. "That was very interesting," Grandmaster Ahren said through clenched teeth.

  “If Morning Mist truly claims to be a charter sect,” Mistress Rim said as she stared at the scroll in Chang-li’s hand in something between shock and disgust, “then it should devote itself to preserving the ancient forms correctly and not adding embellishments.”

  Chang-li raised a hand. “Knowledge is useful only when it is passed down,” he said. “Disciple Juenne?”

  Juenne presented herself. She bowed low. Her eyes darted to the side. Chang-li could tell she would rather have been anywhere else. He held out the scroll he’d made to her.

  “You know how to use a Technique Scroll, yes?”

  She nodded, her lip trembling a little. “Of course, Senior Disciple.”

  “Please demonstrate this for us.”

  She looked baffled. He lowered his voice. “Blue and green lux to dissolve the scroll,” he whispered. “Cycle it through your core. We need more orange,” he called to the technicians off to the side.

  “This is most irregular,” Ahren was blustering.

  Dowager Lady Nima raised a hand. “We will permit this. It does not figure into Morning Mist’s score for this challenge, but you have intrigued us. Go ahead and demonstrate.”

  The Lux technician threw Chang-li the smallest lux battery. It had enough orange for the task. As Juenne dissolved the scroll in lux and cycled it back into herself, Chang-li handed her the orange, then gestured everyone to step back.

  Her eyes went wide. She cracked the battery and pulled the lux into herself, then formed a sword, the exact shape Chang-li’s had been, in her left hand. Her right hand was empty. Chang-li mentally scolded himself for the oversight.

  With just a hint of hesitation in her first steps, Juenne performed the first movement of the sword and shield form perfectly, aside from not actually having a shield in her hand. Her confidence grew with every step. By the fifth form, she had a smile on her face, and as she finished the tenth movement and raised her hands triumphantly, she let out a “Hya!” that reverberated around the room.

  Again, the crowd burst into applause. The masters were staring at Chang-li, as was Dowager Lady Nima. Mistress Rim said slowly, “You are a Lux Embodiment cultivator, are you not?”

  Chang-li nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then how do you know to create a Skill Transference Script which can impart physical knowledge?”

  Chang-li allowed himself a smile.

  “All Technique Scrolls are merely captured lux bound to a pattern. Their purpose is to pass knowledge along.”

  “Yes, but that’s a Lux Dom—” Mistress Shu began before cutting herself off.

  Chang-li didn’t react. He had read of these kinds of techniques before. They weren’t that different from a standard technique scroll, and had seemed worth the risk. He wasn’t completely certain that without the pressure of such an intense scenario that he could manage it again.

  “Enough,” Dowager Lady Nima announced. “Morning Mist, you have demonstrated your capabilities, just not for the challenge at hand. The winner of this challenge is Shadow Dancers.”

  Groans went up all around the room from Morning Mist members, but Chang-li had been expecting it. He bowed politely to her. “Thank you.”

  “I look forward to seeing the second challenge,” she said. “But for now, it's time for the evening supper. Masters, you will join me at my table in the upper room.”