After a long while spent staring at the stone door, they retreated back through the tunnel to the outer encampment. Joshi sat on a fragment of broken wall. Chang-li paced, thinking aloud.

"If I could just reach the Peak of Spiritual Refinement, then the guardian would accept me and let us enter."

"Or we could threaten that shade until he acknowledges me," Joshi said. He muttered under his breath something about ungrateful ghosts.

"That's probably not going to work."

"Then, if you can't think of anything better to do," Joshi said, "let's train." He stood and took up a ready stance.

Chang-li matched him, cycling red lux to keep his endurance up, and they began stepping through their drills.

"Not like that," Joshi said, and unexpectedly launched himself at Chang-li. Chang-li brought up his hands to defend himself. They exchanged a flurry of kicks and punches, Joshi skillfully turning away every one of Chang-li's blows. Chang-li managed to block most of Joshi's, but one or two punches got through and landed stinging on his face or chest.

"Ow," he complained, "I thought we were training."

"What good is it if you don't have the motivation to avoid getting hit?" Joshi demanded, and they kept at it.

For days they trained, sparring, cycling, practicing patterns. Chang-li delved into the journals he brought along, looking for any kind of clue. He listened to Joshi detail how he had reached the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. He meditated for hours as Joshi slept, as the half-moon rose and set. Nothing seemed to matter. Maybe he needed the fire of combat to help him make that last leap. Chang-li hated the thought of leaving this valley now that they had found what they were looking for, but if they couldn't get past that sealed door, they were wasting their time.

In between their other tasks, Joshi and Chang-li cleaned out the huts, removing the yellow masks, garbage, and debris, burning it in fires away from their campsite, or burying it in a long ditch not far from where they'd placed the bodies. They left the larger hut where the women had been kept for last. Chang-li was grateful to find few signs of the horrors that must have taken place there. There were a few ruined pieces of women's clothing and little else.

A couple of the bandits' trunks had yielded a small stash of coin and a silk tunic similar to the one the yellow mask boss headman had been wearing. Buried at the bottom of one chest, though, Chang-li found a treasure. It was a journal, carefully wrapped in oilcloth. When he opened it, the pages flaked away under his fingers, but the script he recognized as Morning Mist's secret language. Under that bundle, he found a handful of pieces of black silk with red wax on them. He puzzled at first, pulling them out, and found a small metal plaque that bore the imperial seal. It read, "Sealed by order of His Divine Majesty. Entrance forbidden on penalty of death."

The silk was so old, it crumbled under his fingers. He carried the finds out into the sunlight and showed Joshi.

Joshi's eagle eyes focused on the red wax. He picked it up. "There were traces of this down in the cave by the sealed door. The bandits must have found these and brought them out."

Excitement filled Chang-li. Then the Emperor himself had ordered the cave shut. No, that didn't quite make sense.

He expressed his frustration to his friend. "Perhaps the book has answers," Joshi suggested.

Chang-li agreed and set to the task of deciphering it. Joshi wandered off to look for fresh meat or berries for dinner. When he returned, Chang-li looked up from his work.

"You seem excited," Joshi observed as he tossed a pair of skinned rabbits into the cookpot they had appropriated from the bandit's stash.

"It's a record of the siege," Chang-li said. "Most of it's badly decayed. The last few bits were protected, probably because they were toward the middle of the book. It says the grandmasters of the sect all locked themselves in the inner sanctum after sending away as many of the juniors as would go. Without any of them to open the door, even the Emperor would be thwarted. The writer speaks as though he's expecting to die."

"As well he should," Joshi said. "Defying the Emperor's will is not a recipe for a long and happy life."

"But this means that the inner sanctum really may be intact," Chang-li said. "If even the Emperor could not enter... then there may be something for us to find."

Joshi stroked his chin. "But could they have had that much power? To thwart the emperor who they couldn't hope to beat directly."

Chang-li considered. "Wards can be very powerful. Used right they control more power than a cultivator could control directly. Also, perhaps, the wards here were something older than the sect itself... if they merely were activating them… We may learn more inside."

"But only if we can find a way past the door," Joshi said, as he added water and some sliced wild onion to the stew pot. He set it by the fire, then beckoned to Chang-li. "Enough study. Time to work your body again."

They spent an hour or so in hard work, then called a break. Chang-li crossed his legs beneath him and resumed his best meditation pose. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his core, channeling Double Branching River, sending spiritual lux up his right side and physical lux along his left. He was close to the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. He knew he was.

"How did you break through?" he asked Joshi without opening his eyes. He had been meaning to ask for days, but everytime he was tempted, he instead focused on his own training, as if learning from Joshi was somehow cheating. Now he realized that was a foolish thought. A cultivator should look for wisdom anywhere they could.

Joshi didn't answer at once. Then he said, "I realized what I had to do, and the only way to do what I wanted was to reach for that peak. And then it was easy. I couldn't believe how hard it had been before. It was like my will and my lux became two sides of the same sword."

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"What you had to do? We were fighting enemies. How was that any different from what usually happens?"

Joshi didn't answer. Chang-li opened one eye. His friend was scowling off into the distance.

"There were too many enemies and innocents all mixed up together. My father would have had scathing things to say about that. I realized the only way to fix the mistake I'd made was to dominate the battlefield. The way my father had always described. Only more directly. And then it all slipped into place." Joshi made a dismissive gesture with his arms. "I'm not sure that's of any help to you."

It wasn't, but perhaps it could give him an insight. Chang-li sat and meditated. Every time he had advanced so far, he had been in a battle, but that wasn't a rule. In fact, most cultivators would have thought it insane to put themselves into a position of advancing on the battlefield. He ought to be able to do this with cycling and meditation. Chang-li breathed in lux. It was thick. Too thick. Like what he'd get from a tower. He'd noticed it, of course, ever since entering the valley but now it nagged at him.

"Where is this lux coming from?" he asked, getting to his feet. He extruded a thin tendril of green lux, which he fanned out all around, feeling the lux distortions, listening to them. The music of the lux was stronger off to the right. He followed the sound, moving toward the ruins..

Joshi followed. "What is it?"

"There's something we missed." Chang-li led them through the maze of ruined walls, destroyed buildings, trying to picture what this place had once been.

He could almost see it now. The outer sect was built around the enormous courtyard. The entrance to the inner sect on the wall on the east side, diving deep into the mountain. Over to the west, where they were heading now, the mountain dipped inward a bit, creating a fold in the rock.

The buildings ended, and he studied the outcropping of rock. The lux music came from beyond there. Chang-li skirted around the outcropping and found himself in a pincer of rock walls surrounding an open grassy area.

It went up steeply, and they followed. The grass under foot gave way to stone and the walls closed in. The path, for so it must have been, zigzagged upward.

Now they were on a ledge above the ruins. Chang-li looked down. They'd come up nearly fifty feet. From here, he could see the ruins of the sect laid out in front of him. And still, the sound of lux grew louder. They kept on. The ledge narrowed before turning around a corner of the rock and ending abruptly.

The cliff fell away steeply beneath them, three hundred feet. Chang-li grabbed onto the rocky wall aside to steady himself. At the end of the ledge was a stone monument. It was a square-based pillar with tapering sides that came to a point at the top of the pillar, a place which looked as though it had once held an ornament of some sort, now lost to the ages.

There were carved letters in the rock, worn away by the years. Chang-li stepped forward. His fingers traced the letters. He couldn't quite make them out. "Do you feel it?" he asked.

Joshi nodded. "There's lux coming from that stone. It's connected to a lux well. I can feel the flow. The lux well is… not here, but not far." There was awe in Joshi's voice. "Do you know how rare those are? The monks of Harupa had one. It was what made their school one of the finest places to get a cultivator's education." He inhaled deeply.

Chang-li followed suit. Lux rushed into him, the obelisk yielding up its bounty to his inquisition. He filled his core with lux. This was purer than anything he'd had from a tower, though not quite as thick.

He cycled. It separated easily into each of the colors. He wove a quick test pattern. The different colors melded beautifully. "How are lux wells created?" he asked.

Joshi shook his head. "No one knows. This itself is a priceless find. If another sect knew this existed, they would have claimed these ruins long ago."

"Unless there's a reason they couldn't," Chang-li said grimly. "We have to get past that wall. I need to know the secrets that lie within."

As he spoke, he felt his core twitch inside His lux seemed to shake. Joshi stared at him. "What was that?"

Chang-li was too busy examining himself to answer. He'd felt something change, not quite like a core condensation, but rather like his lux was answering him differently.

He pulled in still more lux from the well, hoping to invoke another change. It didn't happen. Joshi was staring at him. "It's like when I advanced," he told Joshi.

"I think you're close."

Chang-li hoped his friend was right

"You felt that," Joshi said. It was not a question. "Concentrate on it. That is your clue. Focus on that feeling. Let it guide you to understanding how to master your will."

Chang-li's eyes unfocused. He sat down where he was, without knowing quite why. He reached out a hand and set it against the obelisk. He was facing outward, away from the mountain. The wind blew past, whistling. He heard Joshi retreating back down the path as he focused inward on his core and his channels, cycling lux frantically.

Double Branching River wasn't the right pattern. He switched to Breath of the Heavens, bringing lux in one set of channels, moving it through his core where he separated it out into the seven colors, then releasing each color one at a time, red all the way up to the tiny traces of violet that the obelisk was providing him. He didn't know why, but it felt like the right thing to do.

The sun was going down, casting the valley into deep shadow. Already his ledge was darkening. It didn't matter to Chang-li. His cycling kept him warm.

This was what it was all about. His reason for cultivation. His dedication. Why it was he was pushing himself so very hard. Because he wanted to understand. To understand everything.

The same twisting sensation came again, his core responding to his will, his lux pattern changing without his own input. The lux spiraled out of him so easily on that belief. He wanted to understand everything. He wanted to know how this lux well worked and why there weren't more of them. He wanted to know the secrets of Morning Mist. He wanted to know all the secrets of cultivation.

That was why he sat up at night, scratching in his journals, writing down everything he had learned. Because he didn't just want to know these things himself. He wanted them recorded so they could be passed on and not lost. He wanted to find Morning Mist's secrets not just for himself, but so that the sect could live once more. Secrets meant nothing. Acolytes, disciples, masters, the pattern of passing along knowledge from elder to junior—that was what made a sect. Too many of the other sects he met seemed to think that the secrets themselves were the most important thing. But that wasn't what Chang-li believed.

And then he felt it. As his cycling pattern shifted once again, Chang-li stretched out his will, and it answered him easily. He wasn't trying to force it or wield it as a weapon. It was a tool for him to understand the world around him and to make everything make more sense.

He threaded lux through his Will, marveling at how he hadn't before seen that that was what he needed to do. As he did, he felt his core harden. It was like what had been a glass core was now made of diamond.

He inhaled lux, so much lux, more and more, expecting to fill his core, but it just kept coming. When it finally was full, he spun out the purest, clearest green lux he'd ever seen. And yet, as he looked at it, he sensed that there were shades of green within it. He couldn't quite distinguish them yet, nor pick out their tones, but his new understanding told him they were there.

The sun had gone down. The first evening stars twinkled overhead. Chang-li got to his feet, stiff from sitting, and realized how cold he was. He made his way back down the mountain path and found Joshi, roasting a pair of fat quail over the fire. Joshi looked up and smiled. "Congratulations."

"I did it," Chang-li marveled. Then he dove for his pack, pulled out his journal, and began writing everything down.

Joshi interrupted to give him his share of the roast meat. Chang-li ate absent-mindedly, using his right hand to feed himself while he scribbled with his left. His teachers would not have approved of that, nor would they have approved of his handwriting. But he had to get it all down while it was fresh in his mind.

Once he had, he looked up. "Tell me everything that happened to you when you reached Peak of Spiritual Refinement," he asked Joshi, who had polished off his quail and was now consuming some pickled plums from a jar given to them by the villagers.

Joshi smiled. "At least some things never change," he said, and started in on his own tale.

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