Morning Mist departed the headquarters for the capital tower before dawn. Noren led the sect, with the eighty Bodily Refinement cultivators and hundred acolytes who had not yet achieved that rank. Chang-li, Joshi, Brother Stone, and the senior disciples wrangled the horde.

  The sheer number of disciples amazed Chang-li. He didn't know most of their names, but they all knew him, touching their foreheads in respect and calling out greetings as he passed.

  The tower was about five miles from the city. The sect moved out quietly in the early dawn, but by the time they reached the tower, morning had dawned, the chill of the air giving way to a pleasant sunshine. The disciples were talking and singing cheerfully among themselves.

  Every tower Chang-li had ever entered was different. The tower at Golden Moon City had been broken, with only the third-floor entrance easily accessible. Chang-li and his friends had located a hidden entrance to its earliest floors, which had given them the boost to their initial cultivation. That tower had been wild, full of lux and tower beasts in need of cultivators to cull its challenges and drain its lux down to a manageable level. He and Joshi had helped to defeat the tower's guardian, which allowed lux technicians to enter and tap its store of lux, as beekeepers took honey from a hive.

  The tower at Varden City had entrances to each of its levels from the outdoors, allowing the cultivators to select their appropriate level of lux density and challenge. From his reading of the Morning Mist record, that was usual for a tower closely associated with a city, as opposed to a wilder tower such as the one at Golden Moon.

  The Heart of Ice in the far west had been a unique challenge, a tower not managed by the Office of Cultivation and with its own wild logic.

  Chang-li had assumed the capital tower would be more along the lines of the one at Varden City, with entrances for various ranks of cultivators to match their lux levels. As they approached, that turned out to be not quite the case.

  The tower rose up from among a fertile batch of rice paddies. The rice was golden now, nearly ready to harvest. The tower was a squat, blocky mass in the middle of it all, its sides square-cut. Ramps around the outside led to entrances at various points. He thought he could count four levels.

  Noren took them unerringly to a wide entrance at the very base of the tower. Outside the entrance stood a row of booths, walled in on three sides, protecting their inhabitants, who were bored-looking members of the Office of Cultivation.

  Cultivator-soldier guards stood about on duty. From their spiritual feel, most of them were at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement level. A couple of them eyed Chang-li warily as he passed. He felt the brush of their wills against his but took no offense.

  There were already legions of cultivators here. Large groups of sect members wearing matching robes, government functionaries, and what looked like prosperous members of the Taishin City community, all with their licenses in hand, filing through the booths.

  Noren led them to the farthest row of booths. He presented himself at the front. Chang-li and Brother Stone got the junior disciples to stand in a neat column four abreast, making it slightly more manageable. Noren strode to the cluster of officials waiting for them and dropped his own license and a sheaf of papers on the table."Sect of Morning Mist is here to refill our junior disciples' lux and allow them to cycle in a lux environment appropriate for cultivators at or approaching the Peak of Bodily Refinement."

  The chief official, a middle-aged woman, glanced at his license and flipped through the stack of permits."I need to see the licenses from your senior disciples. Then we will have my juniors inspect and affix a stamp into the license of each of your disciples," she said, sounding bored. "Now, you see here you have also included an unlicensed guest?"

  "That's right," Noren said. "Retired Auditor Biah will be with us today." He gestured, and Biah came forward, hobbling on his cane.

  "Oh, a retired auditor," the woman said. "That won't be a problem. I presume you have your retirement paperwork with you?"

  Auditor Biah removed his paperwork and presented them. He would be helping Chang-li with testing the disciples who had reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement and getting their applications for license upgrades in order today.

  An army of clerks spread out, going down the rows of junior cultivators, inspecting each provisional license and issuing a stamp showing the date and the tower location. Much faster than Chang-li had expected, they were ready to enter. He wished there had been an excuse to bring Min along. Even if she was well past the level where the lux of this floor would be helpful to her, it would have been nice to have her help, but she was working on some of the thousand other tasks back at the sect.

  Morning Mist had to wait for the prior sect, Crimson Tears, to enter before the guards permitted them to approach the vast doors. To Chang-li it looked like something off of a barn, huge wooden doors, twelve feet tall and wide enough for their column of four to walk abreast through. The guards closed the doors behind Crimson Tears and opened them again.

  Chang-li couldn't see anything through the brightness of the light beyond. Noren strode through confidently. Chang-li and Joshi remained at the back, urging the disciples through. When the rest were inside, they also stepped in, the guards leaping up to close the doors behind them even as they entered.

  Chang-li blinked around at his surroundings and found himself slightly disappointed. They were in a field of rice paddies identical to the ones they had just left behind, except the rice here was only waist-high and gleamed with a red-orange hue.

  There was no sign of the other sect. Fish swam in the slightly too-deep water of the paddies, about the size of Chang-li's foot, glinting silver and orange. He extended his lux senses. They were tower beasts, their flesh filled with lux, but only a little. To anyone past the Peak of Mental Refinement, they’d offer no benefits.

  "All of you, check that you have purification rations on you!" Chang-li bellowed to the juniors who had not yet reached Bodily Refinement as he and Brother Stone separated the two groups of acolytes. He and Auditor Biah would work on testing the ones who had already reached Bodily Refinement.

  Noren strode over. "I'll take it from here," he said. "Go ahead and do what you need."

  Chang-li's lux senses were giving him confusing impressions. He pushed out with his will. "This place feels small.” If he had to guess, he would say the wall of the tower was no more than five hundred feet in front of him.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Spirit walls," Noren said, waving a hand. "This place is divided into multiple chambers. I’ve booked one for our exclusive use."

  "Yes, but what use?" Chang-li asked. “There’s hardly enough lux here to bother with.”

  Noren ignored him. “Joshi, your help please?” he called. “Chang-li, get on with it.”

  He gathered up the disciples to be tested and led them some distance away along one of the paths to an elevated section of ground between two rice paddies. Here, red flowers, something like poppies, but with a dense yellow center, waved. Again, they were slightly infused with lux.

  The lux density here didn’t feel much greater than in the outside world, but from the way the disciples were cycling, it must be enough for them. Had this thin lux really once been enough to fill his core? It was barely a trickle, the purity not even worth pumping through his channels. But he wasn’t here for himself, after all.

  Chang-li had the disciples arrange themselves by seniority under Brother Stone’s watchful eye, and he and Biah quickly conferred.

  "You take half, I take half?" he suggested.

  Biah shook his head. "I am not a member of your sect and cannot conduct these tests. I can watch and instruct as you do and help make sure your certification paperwork is in order, but no more. I suggest you have another of your senior disciples assist you."

  The problem was Chang-li needed Brother Stone to help make sure the other disciples didn’t get into trouble while waiting their turn, and Joshi was assisting Noren.

  He called over Disciple Shou and Cui."Watch me for the first couple, and then when you're comfortable, you can begin the testing yourself.”

  Shou nodded, peering over Chang-li’s shoulder at the sheaves of papers he had there. For each disciple, Chang-li had already filled in details: name, birth sign, length of time studying cultivation, provisional license number. The results of the testing remained to be filled.

  Cui looked nervously at Chang-li, then at his own feet. "Ah, forgiveness, Senior Brother Wu, but I…"

  Chang-li sighed, remembering that many of these cultivators had been simple laborers just a few months before. "You can’t read?"

  Cui shook his head miserably. "Forgive me."

  This was yet another bottleneck Chang-li hadn’t thought of. While at lower levels, disciples could be instructed in groups and given the same basic cycling techniques to perform and patterns to learn to weave, at higher levels, technique manuals were almost a requirement.

  He thought of the Path of Morning Mist book, sitting in the bag at his feet, in the vain hope that he might have some opportunity to study it this afternoon, and made a mental note to find out which of the disciples could read. He might need to put together a basic literacy course as well, on top of everything else that rested on his shoulders.

  "You can assist Shou," he told Cui. "Let’s get started."

  He looked down at his papers and called up Disciple Niyan.

  Niyan presented herself. She bowed very low. According to Chang-li’s records, she had previously been a seamstress’s apprentice who had leapt at the opportunity to exchange her needle and thread for lux weaves.

  "You’ve been cultivating for..." He checked his record. "Two months, four weeks."

  "Two months, three weeks, five days, elder — ah, senior disciple,” she corrected him cheerfully. Her broad features shone with excitement. He could sense the lux cycling in her channels a little unsteadily, but she had certainly had her third core condensation. All that needed to be tested was whether she had truly reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement. There were multiple ways to confirm. He would use certification by inspection to assess the strength and quality of her lux.

  "Please fill your core with lux," he instructed.

  She looked taken aback. "Uh, yes, of course, Senior Brother, just a moment."

  She changed her cycling technique and began pouring lux into her core. He realized then that it wasn’t nearly as full as it should have been. With a quick flash of his Intent, he pushed his will out, sensing all of the disciples around him, and realized more than half of them had barely any lux in their cores.

  "Stop!" he barked.

  Startled, Disciple Niyan stopped what she was doing. "All right," he said. "First of all, you have all reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement, which means it is safe for you to keep and store lux within your bodies. Your core won’t hold on to lux outside of a tower for very long at this stage of your cultivation, so every time you do enter a lux-dense environment, the first thing you do is fill your cores. Do you understand me?"

  There was a chorus of, "Yes, Senior Brother!" but he didn’t feel he’d impressed on them strongly enough.

  "All of you, sit," he ordered.

  Even Disciple Shou and Cui sat. He didn’t bother to correct them. Auditor Biah watched with an amused smile on his face.

  Chang-li took a deep breath. "Without lux, a cultivator is stronger than an ordinary man, yes, but that is all. If he goes up against a cultivator who does have lux, he is like a lamb who has found himself in a pack of lions. Do you understand?"

  Their faces were intent on his, but he didn’t get that feeling of understanding. How could he make it clear to them? "What do you think cultivation is all about?" he demanded, looking around.

  None of them volunteered an answer. He fixed his attention on the hapless Disciple Niyan, seated at his feet. "You. Niyan. You’ve reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement. What is the purpose of cultivation?"

  She blinked and frowned, her focus suddenly driven inward. "To improve myself?" she guessed.

  "You are all former Brotherhood or close associates of the Brotherhood," he said. "When Brother Stone would train to become stronger and teach you to train and become stronger and defend yourselves, what was the purpose of that?"

  "To increase the strength of the Brotherhood, Senior Brother!" one of the seated disciples called.

  Chang-li pointed. "Exactly. You are strengthening your bodies because you were part of a whole. Your cultivation strengthens the sect. That means you are not permitted to make decisions about whether or not you fill your cores with lux. You will always be prepared! Anytime you have a chance, your core will be full of lux because you do not know when a threat to the sect will present itself. If you, a cultivator, have lux available to you when a threat emerges, you are an asset to the sect, a protector. A warrior. If you do not have lux, you are a detriment, no more use to us than a child! Besides..." He shook his head, "by this point in your cultivation, it should be second nature to fill your bodies with lux whenever it presents itself.”

  "But Senior Brother..." another female cultivator a few rows back hesitantly raised her hand. "It’s just that when we started training, the senior disciples, Brother Stone and Shou and Cui, emphasized not to keep lux in our cores when we weren’t training. That it could damage us."

  Chang-li sighed, trying not to raise a hand to his face in dismay. "That was before you reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement," he said. "You’re supposed to have reached a stage of cultivation where lux is no longer foreign to your body.” He stared and met uncomprehending stares in response.

  Auditor Biah chuckled. "It seems," he said softly, "that while you may be able to certify their advancement to this point, they may have some difficulty with the knowledge portion of their exams."

  Chang-li groaned. He had only just last night finished writing the basic knowledge examination for the cultivators at the Peak of Bodily Refinement, with some help from Auditor Biah. Now, on top of realizing that several of the disciples would have to have the exam read to them, it seemed like they hadn’t fully mastered the theories of cultivation they needed.

  That, however, could wait. They were wasting their time in the lux-rich environment. "Some of you are still not filling your cores!" he barked. "Yon! Dang! Fa!"

  The three named cultivators sat bolt upright, their eyes widening in horror. "Which part of 'fill your core with lux' was hard to understand?!" Chang-li didn’t enjoy hearing himself snap. He considered himself a patient teacher, but this was just ridiculous.

  "Perhaps you should begin them with the basics," Biah suggested, “such as the foundations of your sect path."

  Auditor Biah might be correct, but Chang-li had not yet figured out what the Path of Morning Mist actually was, so he wasn't going to be able to pass it along to the disciples.

  And maybe that was true. In which case, he was wasting time.