"Now," Noren said, spreading his hands, "I must enter this tower and intervene against Prism Eri." He grimaced. "I had hoped to be able to assist with the Inquisitor first, but the soul oath I made to the Emperor in exchange for his recognition of our sect is pressing hard against me."

  He said it so casually. Chang-li's head spun with the implications. Soul oath to the Emperor? Recognition for the sect? There was a great deal that he had apparently missed.

  “Here, you forgot this.” Noren produced Chang-li’s cloak, the one he’d gotten from the floor guardian after promising to destroy the master of the tower. It shimmered with light. Chang-li took it and hung it around his neck. Its weight was a comfort.

  “Thank you, Master.” He took a deep breath. “I feel… renewed.”

  "I will leave you to take care of the Inquisitor." Noren cocked his head. "She is currently toying with your friends at the war camp. I suggest you intervene immediately."

  Chang-li blinked at him. "You want me to go up alone against a cultivator with hundreds of years of experience on me?"

  Noren shrugged. "With all the advantages you have now, boy, let’s just say I have faith in you. I'm afraid I may have pushed Inquisitor Pak harder than I should. She is now convinced our sect is a threat to the Empire, or at least has convinced herself of that. I didn’t think she would prioritize you over Prism Eri, but apparently she has. You'll have to straighten her out or put her down. I can't delay any longer. Whatever happens, do not enter this tower again until the fight here is finished. Do you understand?"

  Noren's last words were sharper, more direct. Chang-li shivered at the force of them. "I understand."

  "Good. Then you and I have separate places to be." Noren took two steps forward and vanished.

  Chang-li caught himself staring. He didn't have time for this. He looked down the glacier toward the warcamp. He could feel bursts of lux and will coming from three miles off. He needed to get there, and fast.

  Chang-li filled his core with the lux even now rising off the top of the tower. He felt twinges of lumos around the edge. He ached to study it more, understanding the interaction between the tower and lumos, but it didn’t seem like he would get the chance just now.

  A flying cloud was a construct of indigo lux wrapped with a layer of red and yellow holding it together. He’d ridden on one for enough hours to have a decent idea how they were put together. Weaving red along with the yellow shades for air-aspected lux, he formed himself a quick disc, then filled it with indigo lux. His contraption seemed crude compared to a real flying cloud, and he doubted it would hold together very long. But for now, he just needed get to the camp.

  He leapt atop. The disc wobbled under his feet. Chang-li held out his arms to keep himself balanced. He focused, feeding more indigo lux into the disc. The disk moved forward, quivering in the air along the craggy ice.

  He shoved more indigo in, heedless of the cost. This was a horribly inefficient technique, and he could already see ways to improve it, but for now he just needed to get to his friends.

  Chang-li rushed forward at breakneck speed, far faster than the flying cloud had ever managed. As he did, he elongated his disc into an oval with the two narrow edges front and back. That seemed to slice through the air a bit more easily. He found himself leaning forward and back to keep his balance. The farther he went, the easier it was. He needed to write down this technique as well as everything he had learned on his way to Lux Embodiment.

  Lux Embodiment.

  He was still in shock. It had worked. He could feel his new body, how strong he was, how perfected.

  He was still a being of flesh with all the organs and blood he’d ever possessed. Now, though, he understood how to work each of them. More than that, he had insight such as never before into how other people’s bodies worked. That could prove useful.

  He was about to go up against an Inquisitor, a Lux Dominator cultivator with hundreds of years of practice at that level. A merciless woman whose power he had seen before, who had declared herself an enemy of the sect. His conscience twinged. She was a representative of the Emperor. Her word carried the force of his law. Should they sue for peace?

  He rejected that thought. Noren had said she was Intent on destroying the sect. She was a threat to his friends, his wife, his students. She would perish, if that’s what it took.

  He neared the war camp. Techniques flared all around. He could feel multiple wills clashing. The Inquisitor was like a steel tower, her will hard, sharp, and well-defined. There was another strong force smashing into hers like a battering ram. Joshi, who was standing between the Inquisitor and everyone else.

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  Dozens of lesser cultivators danced around the edges, throwing in techniques, confusing the battlefield. Chang-li shaped his own senses, preparing for the onslaught. The Inquisitor wasn’t using Lumos. He had to assume that after centuries at this level, she understood how, but it was forbidden to her. He had to be prepared for her to use it in a pinch.

  He raced through the open side of the war camp, knocking over tents as he passed. He hadn’t realized the rush of wind that his oval was pushing out behind him.

  Chang-li saw the cultivators up on the parapets sending down techniques. Min’s arrows rained down, and so did half a dozen others. The Darwur were encircling the fight. They together had raised great red lux shields around the area in which the Inquisitor and Joshi were fighting. Techniques crashed against those shields, shaking and shattering them, but the Darwur threw up new ones every time one broke. It seemed incredible that the Inquisitor hadn’t just crushed them like bugs. Was she toying with them? Holding her lux in reserve for a stronger opponent?

  Even as Chang-li approached, a particularly vicious bolt of green smashed through a shield and into the cultivator who had been holding it. The man fell to the ground, screaming and writhing as the lux soaked into his body, filling his core and burning his lux channels from the inside.

  Chang-li didn’t have time to stop and help. He barreled forward. At the last moment, he yanked upward, pulling the straps of red lux, and the board responded, jumping ten feet into the air. He soared over the edge of the lux shields and into the battle circle. Dismissing the technique as he fell, he landed hard, barely keeping his feet.

  Joshi and the Inquisitor both turned to face him. The Inquisitor had her sword in her hand. She smiled, her eyes glinting with something like madness.

  "And there, at last, is the chief disciple!" she bellowed. "Now I shall ensure the task is completed. Your sect will be wiped from the earth."

  "Inquisitor Pak!" Chang-li shouted. He didn’t expect this to work, but he felt he had to try. "Prism Eri is attempting to seize control of this tower. If she does that, she will be able to challenge the Emperor himself for dominance of our land."

  He wasn’t entirely sure this was true, but it fit with everything he had learned. The Emperor was a Lux Dominator, or perhaps higher-tier cultivator who could use Lumos. From what Sun Wukong had said, Chang-li strongly suspected he himself had a bound tower, even though he had not ascended to the heavens. There was a great deal there Chang-li still needed to figure out, but now was not the time. "Do your oaths to the Emperor say you should look away from such treason?"

  Yoonji jerked upright, and he felt her will falter for just a second. This line of reasoning might pay out more dividends if he could force her into it more.

  Then she gathered her Intent and smashed down with her sword. At the same time, a technique blasted out of the tip of her sword, straight at him, half a dozen different colors woven together in a pattern he could only begin to comprehend.

  Joshi shouted a warning. Chang-li had been expecting something like this. He dodged the technique, pulling Liar’s Blade and beginning to cycle.

  What was going to win against this woman wasn’t specific techniques, but to break through her will. He flexed his own will and was astonished, delighted, to feel how his Intent could adapt to this scenario as well. He had worried that “I Master” would be a bit too intellectual of an Intent. But mastery of the battlefield was just as much within his scope as understanding and unraveling new techniques.

  He wasn’t any match for her in strength. He could tell that. Her core was much denser than his, but it wasn’t nearly as full of lux as he expected.

  A tiny tendril of blue lux floated up and brushed him on the shoulder. He started to thrust it away when he realized it wasn’t from Yoonji. The lux had a familiar beat to him, and he allowed it to touch him.

  "Chang-li," Min whispered in his ear. "She’s dangerously starved of lux, thanks to being in the wilderness and not entering the tower. We’ve been trying to drain her by making her respond to our attacks. It’s only sort of working. Her will and Intent are enough to stop almost everything. But the shields she’s using are draining her."

  That had been an excellent strategy. Chang-li approved, but he was worried that when Yoonji ran out of lux, she would switch to using Lumos, forbidden or not. He had to believe she was capable of it, or else he might find himself badly surprised. "You can hear me?" he mumbled.

  "Yes," Min replied in his ear.

  Yoonji was striding forward, her will focused between him and Joshi. "I thought this little farce would lure you out of wherever you were hiding," she said triumphantly. "There was no sense in defeating your sect without you here. Where is your master?"

  "Grandmaster Noren has entered the tower to stop Prism Eri’s actions," Chang-li said. "A job that feels more in your domain than his."

  Inquisitor Pak snarled. "You know nothing." But her Intent shook again. Chang-li knew he had a viable course of attack here.

  She slammed down with her will, so hard Chang-li gasped. All around him, the Darwur fell to the ground, their shields snapping out. Above, he heard Morning Mist cry out. Min shouted in pain, and it was all he could do to face the Inquisitor still.

  "I’m all right, and so is Hiroko," Min reported to him. "Some of our people are down. Unconscious, I think." There was an unspoken addition. They both knew that they could be dead. Some of the Darwur were crumpled in very twisted heaps, and he worried that Yoonji’s attack had killed them, but he couldn’t spare time to focus on that. Not just yet.

  Yoonji reinforced her body. That was all the warning he got as she rushed forward. Joshi shouted a challenge, but she was ignoring him as she charged Chang-li.

  He had Liar’s Blade up. Her sword smashed down against his. The force of her blow skidded him back several feet, but he remained standing. His sword shook. He had just time to enforce it with orange lux as the blades clashed.

  It, and he, survived.

  She stared at him in shock.

  "How have you reached Lux Embodiment?" she demanded. “No. It doesn’t matter. You will die, and then your friends.”

  Chang-li cycled, his heart rate smooth, his breathing easy. A lux body had many advantages. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”