Chang-li settled himself on the floor, hands on his knees. He began to cycle as the thin lines of his intended lux channels, core, and Lens hung in the air in front of him. He memorized that pattern, then closed his eyes and felt himself out.

  As his Intent focused inward on his true body, he sensed what Noren had been telling him. His body was failing. The physical substance that made him up was slowly being eaten away. Lumos in the Lens was leeching slowly out, and every time a particle emerged, it shot through him, destroying small pieces of his substance in its way.

  He realized, then, that just as the key change a cultivator undertook at the Peak of Bodily Refinement was enabling his body to handle lux without destroying itself, here at Lux Embodiment, he was preparing himself to touch Lumos without being unraveled. That was the true purpose of this stage of cultivation. Even though, from what he understood, most cultivators would never touch Lumos. Even Lux Dominators weren't permitted to use it without the Emperor's permission. Which was another worry for after he got out of here, and he banished that idle thought quickly.

  Chang-li cycled lux around his existing channels and his core, leaving the Lens sealed off. He didn't dare let any more Lumos escape than he had to.

  How to begin the transformation?

  No sooner had he fully formed that thought than he knew the answer. He took a deep breath, then connected the Lens to his core.

  Lumos poured out of the Lens and into his core. It hit the lux there, cycling, and raced through his body, exploding outward and dissolving Chang-li with it.

  It was the most exquisite pain he had ever felt, like being devoured by acid from the inside out. He burned and itched at the same time. Even as his bones melted away, his flesh dissolved, the pain didn't stop. It grew more and more, until all he could feel was the pain and his cycling. Determinedly, he kept cycling, his will focused entirely on himself now. He knew that his body was gone, and he was holding on to his own existence just by using his will, infused with Intent.

  He cycled.

  "I master. I master. I master myself."

  It was a mantra, over and over, in time with his cycling. His lux answered him, and his channels grew calm.

  Now he extended his channels, reshaping them, moving them as he had imagined in the diagram. The spiritual and physical channels lay contentedly side by side. He tweaked here and there, matching his vision for himself based on the cultivation and fighting he had done since he'd begun his progression.

  He was shaping the body that would serve him for the rest of his existence in this realm. He had to get it right.

  When his channels were as he intended, he carefully began moving the Lens. It resisted at first. Though it was empty now of Lumos, it was a great spiritual weight in his body and didn't seem to want to leave the position it had taken.

  Chang-li affirmed his Intent. "I master myself," he said again. If his own body wouldn't heed him, then how could he ever claim to master anything else?

  Now the Lens budged, moving up painful fractions of an inch at a time. It was like trying to push a boulder uphill with his nose. Frustrating. Painful.

  Chang-li didn't have a body anymore, but he felt as though sweat were dripping down him anyway. The burning and itching had subsided now. His body, the one he didn’t have, hurt outside his will.

  He felt a force pressing against him, seeking to penetrate through the capsule of his will, which was all that kept him alive. The Lumos trapped in this chamber sought to consume him.Chang-li pushed back against it, his will an iron shell around himself.

  "I master," he said. Nothing could touch him without his approval.

  The Lens fell at last into place. Chang-li had the sensation of a deep breath of relief, though he was keenly aware he had no lungs with which to breathe.

  His core, his channels, and his Lens in place, it was time to rebuild his body.

  He stretched out his will, gathering in lux. Even as he did, he felt it fighting him. Lumos was everywhere in the chamber, and as he pulled in lux to begin forming his body once more, he could feel the Lumos sliding in as well. He wasn’t ready to try to deal with it yet, but here the Lens helped. As he cycled in the Waterwheel pattern, the Lens caught the tiny fragments of Lumos and held them there, while his core purified his lux. He gathered in all the colors, but especially red. When he thought he had enough, he began spinning it out.

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  First, he thought just to use red. After all, he needed to rebuild his body physically. But instinctively, he realized he needed the green lux of life, and as he did, along came blue, the lux he'd always found most mysterious, though Hiroko had good mastery of it. The blue lux here was helping bond the substance of his new body to his lux channels.

  Now that he understood what he was doing, Chang-li altered the pattern of the weave he was creating. Three parts red, one part green, and just a tiny hint of blue wrapped around it all to bind it to his channels.

  The first layer he laid down around his channels, a new bodily structure like a kind of spiritual tendon that would hold everything together.

  Next, he increased the green that he would need and added just a hint of orange lux in.

  He began placing his bones, strengthened with red and orange lux. They would be nearly impossible to break now. His ribs he paid special attention to, broadening them and flattening them to provide more armor around his vital sections.

  Next, he wove in muscles, decreasing the amount of blue lux here to hardly even a trace. He laid those down, filling out his frame.

  Now it was time to put in the organs. He increased the green and removed the orange lux entirely, then, almost as an afterthought, added indigo in. That should allow him to speed up or slow down the workings of various organs and glands.

  He had never studied anatomy before, but as he laid out his body, he understood how it worked together, how this small gland that he'd never even known existed released a substance that would, in high stress situations, speed up his heartbeat and his reaction time. How his liver functioned almost like a core for the physical substances he took into his body, filtering out impurities. How it all worked together.

  He marveled a little at it and longed to have his journals at hand where he could write all of this down. Surely he would remember these details when he was done, though.

  Now he was ready to add the rest of it.

  His skin he put together almost entirely with red lux, keeping it the same shade as it had always been, but smoothing out a few imperfections here and there and erasing a handful of scars.

  Hair sprouted on his head, growing to the length he had become accustomed to, brushing his shoulders while unbound.

  He formed his eyes, his ears, his nose, keeping them as they had been, despite a quick urge to sculpt his nose just a little. He wasn't changing who he was, just perfecting it. He almost forgot to add nails to his fingers and toes.

  His work complete, he drew in a breath of air and his new lungs inflated for the first time. His heart beat, pushing the blood he had constructed, along with the muscle and inner organs, around his body. He could feel it now, moving through his body just as his lux did.

  He opened his eyes. He was lying down on the floor of the chamber. Chang-li rose to his feet and extended his arms. He looked down.

  Skin covered muscle. His body responded when he told it to. Fold his arm at the elbow. Open and close his fingers.

  He held up a hand, looking at those fingers. His scribe's calluses were missing, and so were the sword calluses on his left hand, but he instinctively knew that a pen or a sword would feel the same as it had before.

  He was naked, and that was awkward, even if no one else was here.

  Chang-li took a step.

  Like a spirit, the chamber spirit emerged again, looking like Chang-li as before, but now the spirit was a little shorter.

  Had he made himself taller? He hadn’t meant to, but perhaps his vision of himself was a little taller than the reality had been.

  The spirit looked him over. "Not bad," it said. "I was very tempted, especially when you were struggling against the Lumos, but... well, your grandmaster frightens me," the spirit admitted. "Do me a favor sometime and loan this chamber to someone you don't like. I'd love to escape."

  Chang-li laughed. He couldn't help it. He felt so good. "Not likely," he told the spirit.

  It was time to get out of here. He closed his eyes. The chamber was still full of both lux and Lumos. If he waited for it to degrade naturally, he'd be inside here for weeks, perhaps months, while minutes or hours passed on the island outside. No good.

  He reached out and began unraveling the lux in the walls. Then he reconsidered. There should be a way to step out without releasing all the stored violet lux he'd worked so hard to add. Noren had done it.

  He closed his eyes and reached out with his will, feeling the walls of the chamber. He could see the technique surrounding him, the weave surrounding him. All he had to do was bend two strands of violet lux apart, then weave a little indigo, and with a mere thought, Chang-li stepped out of the chamber.

  He was standing atop the tower again, the crystal in his hand. He quickly looped it around his neck.

  "Well done," Noren said, ostentatiously sheathing a dagger he had been holding. "I was almost a hundred percent certain you would manage it. Good to see you with us again."

  Noren looked him over head to toe. "Ah.” He produced from nowhere a silk cultivator's robe, the Morning Mist pattern, but with two broad golden stripes along the breast, showing his new rank. "You might be more comfortable in these."

  Chang-li donned them gratefully. He took a deep breath. After so many weeks with the Lens fighting him at every moment, this felt right. “Is this why you sent me here? To let me prepare for Lux Embodiment?”’

  “Ah. Right,” Noren said. He pursed his lips together for a moment before saying, “I was hedging my bets. There were multiple outcomes that might have worked. If you’d let General Li enter and claim the bounty there without the intervention of outsiders, he’d have been able to help you with that Lens. He’d owe you a favor, so he would probably not kill you. Also, I had every intention of arriving myself before things reached such a critical point. I wasn’t expecting this soul oath to be quite so uncomfortable. It did interfere with me doing as I wished.” He let out a long breath and looked uncharacteristically quiet. “In truth, Chang-li, I took risks with your life I should not have. I apologize for that.” He bowed deeply.

  Caught off-guard, Chang-li could only gape. “Uh…”

  Noren straightened. “And now that’s resolved, it’s time for us both to get back to work.”