Noren held up a hand. “Not so fast. There are complications."

  He snapped a finger out at Chang-li's chest. "That Lens, for instance. When I sent you into the vault to retrieve it, I had a sequence of events in mind whereby we would use it as a bargaining chip to restore our sect. I should have considered the possibility you might accidentally absorb it yourself and told you it could happen. Before you begin you must make a choice."

  "What do you mean?"

  "As you remake your body, you can reject the Lens. It will be difficult, but with an Intent as comprehensive as yours, I believe possible.” Noren looked him over. "However, removing the Lens after the time it has been bonded will almost certainly destroy it. It’s very likely losing it now will permanently damage your ability to cultivate."

  Noren said it so calmly Chang-li could only gape at him. At last he closed his mouth and swallowed. “You said I had a choice?”

  Noren smiled and nodded. “Yes. Instead you can try to absorb the Lens completely, weaving it into your remade body.”

  “That’s possible? And would let me still cultivate?”

  “It is at least theoretically possible. What it would do to your cultivation… I am not certain. If it went wrong, of course, you’d probably end up horribly dead but that’s going to happen to you if you do nothing as well.”

  “And you think this is a good idea.”

  "An excellent question." Noren rubbed his hands together. "Do you recall on the path to Bodily Refinement, the first time you felt your core condense?”

  Chang-li nodded. "It was like I'd been pushing every bit of lux into my core, stuffing it as hard as I could. Then all of a sudden that lux became suddenly more dense. I could pack in two or three times as much easily.”

  “And when you reach the Peak, your lux channels strengthened, letting you carry even greater quantities of lux through your body. The Lux Embodiment stage is a far greater change than either of those, but it is designed around the same principles. You are seeking to make yourself a vessel for lux. The more and purer lux you can carry through your veins, the better your techniques will be, yes?”

  Chang-li considered. That did match his understanding. "So you're saying if I rebuilt my body around the Lens, I'd be able to use even more lux?" That seemed like a good enough argument for trying, as long as the challenge wasn't completely impossible. But Noren's eyes blazed like flame, and his mouth was an insane rictus.

  "No, boy. I'm saying if you successfully incorporate that Lens into your new body, you'll be able to crack Lumos right here. Right now."

  That thought hit Chang-li like a mountain falling on him. He took a step back. "Lumos?"

  Noren paused and shrugged. “If it doesn’t cripple you.”

  Chang-li barely heard him as he shook his head, trying to make Noren's words make sense his explanation. "But, but—“ He said the first thing to come to mind. "You have to be a Lux Dominator to touch Lumos."

  "Not required,” Noren said. "Just usually considered a recommended prior step. And of course, the fact that you need Imperial permission to crack Lumos, which means if you do this, you'll have the choice of keeping your ability completely secret from everyone around you, fleeing the Empire, or throwing yourself on the Emperor's mercy and begging his permission to continue to exist."

  Chang-li wrestled with Noren’s words for a long moment. “I don’t really have a choice do I? Not if I want to continue my climb.” He seated himself on the ground next to his body, folding his legs and setting his hands on his knees. "How do we start?" he added belatedly.

  Noren laughed and smiled. “First, you need to siphon indigo lux into your body, and then use it to trace out every single one of your lux channels."

  Chang-li did as he was told. Sitting next to his own body was strange. When he closed his eyes and cycled, he felt like he was in two places as once. The more he focused, the more he felt just one of himself. He was back in the dissolving body, laying on his back. He kept his eyes closed and focused.

  "Indigo is a spatial lux, as you know," Noren said. "Add just a tiny hint of red once you've got the indigo worked all through your body. And then, do this." He demonstrated a quick weave that Chang-li felt rather than saw.

  "There's no green in that," Chang-li observed. "It won't hold together."

  "It will in here," Noren promised.

  Chang-li did as he was told, combining the red and purple, and carefully letting the technique escape from his body. A thin tracery of purple lines hung in the air, along with two darker purple spots.

  It took him a moment to realize he was looking at a map of his own lux channels. Then it was like he was standing on his head, and he had to reorient himself to make sense of all of it. There were two deep purple spots, one above the other, in the center of the diagram.

  He pointed at the lower one. "My core." Then at the upper one. "The Lens."

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  "Precisely," Noren said.

  Chang-li studied the network of channels coming out of his core. They were in two distinct groupings, his left-hand channels better developed, his right-hand channels a thin tracery of lines, with twice as many going to his fingers as on the left.

  The left-hand channels crossed over at his core and sent a few branches down into his abdomen and right leg. He realized that was how he reinforced the rest of his body with the Physical luxes.

  He'd always thought of the Spiritual channels being equally distributed on his right side. Now he saw it wasn't true. They were concentrated almost entirely in a loop between his core, his arm, and his head. That made sense. He needed to use the Spiritual channels mostly when creating techniques, and so his eyes and his fingers were vital.

  "Now," Noren instructed. "This is the skeleton, as it were, on which you will remake your entire body. Before you do anything else, think about what changes you might want to make. Altering your lux channels after this will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Take your time."

  "What would you suggest?" Chang-li asked.

  Noren shrugged. "You're the one who has to live with this body," he said. "I will note, however, that being able to use both kinds of lux everywhere in your body is going to be even more important once you've remade yourself."

  A sudden thought struck Chang-li. He'd met a handful of cultivators at lux Embodiment, especially in the last week when he'd killed them. They certainly appeared to be made of flesh and blood. "Uh, this procedure is going to change me?"

  "Of course it will. Or it's no good," Noren said.

  "I know, but..” He found himself blushing again. "How exactly? I mean, am I still going to need to eat? To breathe? To excrete? Will I be able to…” He trailed off.

  Noren cocked an eyebrow. "Ah. Thinking of your lovely wife, then? I shall remind you that the Emperor has one of the most advanced lux bodies I’ve ever seen, and he is somewhat notorious for his ability to father children. So, rest assured. While you may be remaking your body with lux, you're still going to have physical needs. You can still be killed. Starve to death, though it will take much longer. Drown, though you ought to be able to remain underwater for at least ten times as long as you currently can."

  "I can’t swim," Chang-li said.

  "Well now you won't need to," Noren said cheerfully. "Yes, let's see, where were we? Yes, you are on the correct path. Your lux body will still have all the needs of a physical body, but also require greater amounts of lux in order to remain healthy. It's one of the few handicaps a cultivator at this level faces. In fact, if he becomes entirely devoid of lux, then his body begins to consume itself. Not a good thing. Hence why General Li required lux batteries brought in from other places in the Empire, since the Wastelands were previously largely devoid of lux. You, however, will not suffer that problem if you succeed in your attempt with the Lens, because Lumos is more readily available outside of towers."

  Chang-li nodded. "Right."

  He thought about it, the design, and as he did, the Physical lux channels brightened. He extended them throughout his body, strengthening them.

  Then he drew the spiritual lux channels. Rather than leave them concentrated on his right side he spread them everywhere, weaving them all around the physical channels. He tied the channels together at key locations. Noren watched his work and occasionally made suggestions.

  Finally Chang-li considered. His core would stay where it was. It made sense there in the center of his body. But what about the Lens? It sat now in the middle of his chest, just beside his heart, where it had been absorbed into his body in the treasure vault. There was no reason why it had to stay there. He could drop it down until it nearly overlapped with his core, cutting the cycling time between the two of them down to almost nothing. That ought to allow him to cycle between them rapidly. In that last fight with Zhao Zen, cycling had been critically important.

  Noren leaned in as Chang-li settled the Lens back behind his core. "Why do you put it there?"

  “It will let me cut down on the time it takes me to cycle between my core and the Lens," Chang-li explained. "In that last fight with Zhao Zen, the fact that it took him longer to cycle between his Lens and his core was what gave me the edge."

  Noren snorted. "No. He was just bad at cycling. Your reasoning is faulty.” He pointed upward, at the termination of the lux channels that marked Chang-li’s head. "That’s where you want it."

  "Why?" Chang-li demanded.

  "Because," Noren said, “that will let you draw in Lumos with your eyes and your ears." Noren tapped his own. "How do you bring in lux?"

  "I breathe it?" Chang-li pondered what his master was saying. Certainly when he was cycling, he breathed in and out rhythmically, along with his cycle. lux just flowed into him.

  "Well, Lumos requires a bit more of an active gathering. You've already got the ability to hear lux, you'll find it works similarly for Lumos. And your eyes will be your biggest asset. That’s why the punishment in the old days for what you would now call cultivating without a license was to blind the miscreant. That would prevent him from ever reaching lux Endowment or higher. Of course, once he's reached Lux Endowment, you can't blind a man without serious effort, but still." He stretched. “I’m not entirely sure that the new ways are more merciful."

  Ignoring that unpleasant thought, Chang-li returned to his concentration. When at last his lux channels in the ghostly projection were arranged to his satisfaction, Chang-li looked up at Noren. "Now what?"

  "Now is the hard part," Noren said. All of his previous humor was gone. "I will exit the temporal chamber, leaving it to you. You'll need to trigger the transformation. I'll be holding this space stable from the outside. Once you trigger the transformation, all the Lumos your core has absorbed will escape and begin interacting with the lux here in the chamber. You will have to hold yourself together with your own will and reshape your body. The Lumos may try to interfere with that, or it may begin wearing away at the walls of the chamber. If it breaches the walls before you are done, the process will be halted."

  “Meaning I'll be killed?"

  Noren gave him a quick nod. “The other possibility is the Lumos may be attracted to you while you rebuild your body. If that's the case..." Noren hesitated. "Well, you'll have to see how strong your Intent really is."

  Chang-li felt a thrill of fear run through him. If he failed, he died. If he did nothing, he died. "I don't really have a choice," he said aloud. "I have to do this." He bowed to Noren. "Thank you, Master, for everything. If I fail, please protect the sect for me."

  Noren set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "This is something not one cultivator in a thousand at your level could manage. But I know you can, Chang-li. You have the strength of will and the insight into yourself to manage."

  Noren turned back. "One last thing. If the chamber spirit appears after I am gone you may have to absorb it into yourself to keep it from interfering. That will complicate matters immensely and also destroy this chamber when you are done. That would be an unfortunate event," he shrugged, "but better than letting it claim your body for its own. I'll see you outside."

  And just like that, Noren was gone. Chang-li blinked. "You didn’t tell me how to start the process!" he called. His voice echoed around the empty chamber. There was no reply.