"You are ready," Noren proclaimed. Chang-li stood a bit straighter beside him. Joshi said nothing.

He had lost track of time as they trained. Many days could have passed, but he wasn't hungry. The fruit Noren had split between him and Joshi and the thick lux of the well kept him sustained. In place of sleep, they had cycled and meditated. Chang-li felt as though he was consolidating his growth. Instead of reaching for a new height, he was understanding what he had reached here at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. His will and his luxes were aligned, and thanks to Noren teaching him the Veil of Will technique, he was in command of both.

"I will open a way for you to enter the vault," Noren said. "You'll have to find the object and escape on your own."

"Can you tell us what we are looking for now?" Joshi asked.

Noren shook his head. "Unfortunately, the more you know, the greater danger you will be in. I have studied the vault thoroughly while you two have been training. My suspicions are confirmed. The emperor was here."

"But the valley was sealed," Chang-li said.

"Clearly, the emperor has ways of getting past such seals," Noren said. "He was here hundreds of years ago. I can still sense his tampering, but it was subtle. He may have hoped to catch a returning Morning Mist Master by surprise. If a cultivator at a high stage of progression, like myself, entered the vault, they would find themselves trapped. No doubt the emperor has left alarms to alert him if that happened. I also suspect he has a Ward of Intent over the whole vault. It certainly smells like one to me, which means anyone entering the vault deliberately to take the item in question will be caught. Only by sneaking in under the Veil of Will and finding what you seek without consciously meaning to can you hope to escape his traps."

"Who's to say there's an object even in there?" Chang-li asked. "If the emperor can do all that, surely he emptied the vault first."

Noren shifted, looking uneasy, and Chang-li was certain he was hiding things from them. "There are protections in place, enough that I'm certain he did no such thing. Morning Mist is an ancient sect. You may have guessed that from the fact that we possess a lux well. Before the emperor was, Morning Mist existed."

Chang-li's mouth watered at the idea of uncovering the secrets of a sect that existed before the emperor, then wondered at himself. Just a year ago the idea of imagining a time before the emperor would have felt like sacrilege. That time felt like a lifetime ago. Every now and then he caught a glimpse of the scribe he had been. That man felt very distant. Chang-li didn't quite pity his old self, but he would not trade places with him for anything.

Noren cleared his throat, and Chang-li blushed. "If you're paying attention, Disciple? Obviously, the sect's destruction is more recent, and just being old didn't make us able to withstand the emperor, but it does mean there were some tricks that even he could not get past, not without destroying what lay within."

"That was a risk he was willing to take?" Joshi asked, seeming surprised. "My father always said that plunder is a trap. The man who loads himself down with more than his horse can bear leaves himself vulnerable to attack. Better to ride away with little, than be buried with much."

"Your father is wise," Noren said. "The emperor is a greedy man. No one could be the ruler of millions for a thousand years without being at heart greedy."

Chang-li thought about that, and decided to let it pass. Now wasn't the time to criticize the divine ruler of all Chang-li knew. "How exactly are we supposed to find something if we don't even know what we're looking for?"

"You'll have help," Noren assured him. "Now, the Emperor's tampering has, I believe, split the guardian. Always in the past, the Guardian of the Vault held two roles: to defend the vault against anyone not permitted to enter, and to help those who did enter find what they most needed. I believe his meddling served to enhance that first function. Now, the guardian will permit no one inside, not if it senses you. But I think the second function, the guide, still remains as it was. You must avoid the first half of the guardian using Veil of Will and find the second half. Then you'll find what you need. It may take you some time."

He broke off. He cocked his head as if to listen, a worried look passing over his face. Noren swore low and long.

"What is it?" Chang-li asked, instantly worried. Beside him Joshi came alert.

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"Someone is breaching the valley's defenses. We left the entrance open so that our people could come and go, but there are wards up, and they sense a presence entering the valley. Someone strong. Perhaps almost as strong as a Prism. I wonder..." He paused, then nodded decisively. "Yes, I recognize her now. The Inquisitor. Apparently, she has followed us here."

Noren quickly began a weave, opening a hole in the ground before them. "Quickly, into the vault; you must find what it is we seek. I will protect Morning Mist."

A circle appeared, a hole large enough to drop into. Chang-li met his gaze.

"Protect the sect," he said quietly. "Especially Min."

Noren nodded. "My days of fleeing are behind me," he assured them.

Chang-li stepped forward and dropped through the hole. He found himself falling through an aura of lux like they practiced in, but more dense. Using a little will, he conjured a cloud below himself. A moment later, Joshi landed on the cloud beside him. They both cycled Veil of Will to hide themselves.

Chang-li looked around. They hung in the air amidst golden fog. Far below, he caught flashes of color. He directed their cloud downward. As they sank, Joshi grabbed his shoulder and pointed wordlessly. Chang-li turned.

There was a creature darting between the puffs of lux everywhere in the vault, flying sinuously, flashing gold and purple. Its edges seemed blurred. An enormous serpent-like creature, something like the dragon he'd met in the previous tower, but feathered all over with long grasping forelimbs and a gleaming purple gem on its head.

"The guardian," he mouthed. It didn't seem to see them as it continued on its patrol.

They hunkered down on their cloud and descended toward what quickly Chang-li realized was an absolutely enormous trove of treasure. It stretched out in all directions. Most of it was merely coins, gold, silver, and copper scattered in such enormous masses, Chang-li couldn't even begin to calculate how much there might have been.

As they dropped lower, it filled their whole field of view. Sticking out from amongst the coin were objects. A jade cup, an egg of pure white porcelain, a vase, twice as tall as Chang-li, white with red designs all over it. A statue of a woman with six arms, each holding a weapon. Sword hilts, boxes, crates.

This place was absolutely enormous, but it felt oddly familiar. Chang-li, focusing on his cycling and peering about everywhere for a hint at what artifact Noren might have meant, took a moment to realize where he'd felt it before.

This was like being inside Prism Nai Hong's soul space. And that, at last, made sense. Of course, this vault would be like a soul space, something not connected to the real world. Chang-li tried to remember what the prism had told him about such spaces. Truly strong cultivators could move between them. They were as vast as you could imagine. But he had thought, from what Nai Hong said, that they had to be maintained by a cultivator, his lux, and his will, even unconsciously the way Chang-li maintained his own soul space. Who was maintaining this?

"What do you think we're looking for?" Joshi asked, as the guardian circled high above.

"Maybe look for something with a big black, forbidden by imperial decree seal on it," Chang-li said grimly.

They were only a few feet above the treasure now, skimming along on the cloud. Chang-li resisted the urge to reach out and grab rubies and diamonds as they passed. He had a feeling that disturbing any of this would bring the guardian's attention on them at once.

As they hovered over the treasure, Chang-li kept a nervous eye on the feathered dragon far ahead. This must be the guardian Noren had warned of, and attracting its attention might lead to their destruction. But how were they to find a specific item in all of this, especially when they didn't know what they were looking for?

"What if we just start grabbing treasures and leave when we've gotten enough?" Joshi said. "This all must be valuable. We take it, we sell it, and we could be done with Noren and whatever schemes he has."

Chang-li looked around. There was so much here. He wanted it all. Not the gold and the jewels; these were incidental. He wanted the knowledge and the things that would help him proceed along his Heavenly Climb. Some of the weapons he saw sticking up might be—must be—cultivator weapons designed for those at high stages of cultivation. He'd read of such things, and he yearned for them.

Overhead, the feathered dragon shrieked. Its flying became more frantic. Chang-li glanced up.

"I think we disturbed it somehow." But it didn't seem to have spotted them. It was merely flying about, searching. "Maybe it sensed our greed," he suggested.

Joshi didn't answer. He looked grim.

"What we're seeking has got to be powerful. Maybe the most powerful thing in here," Chang-li said.

He closed his eyes and stretched out his lux senses, trying to take note of anything. The vault was a discordant mass of lux-imbued items. He could see them with his lux senses, like burning embers in a dying fire, brighter than their surroundings. He could hear them too, playing discordant lux notes, each perfectly tuned to itself, all unharmonized. But as he listened, he heard rising and falling in the sounds of the lux not a tune but a rhythm, beating itself out like a heartbeat.

Chang-li let it wash over him.

"What are you thinking?" Joshi asked.

"Shh," Chang-li said. "I'm trying to listen."

As he did, multiple distinct rhythms revealed themselves, the notes unmerging into a whole. For a moment, it was discordant. Then he began to sense the rhythm and meaning, and he realized that this was perfectly orchestrated, the notes and beating in time. And that meant to him there was some intelligence, some force behind it.

He stretched out as far as he could. And there at the center of the musical maelstrom, he felt a presence. Chang-li urged the cloud forward without opening his eyes.

"Whoa!" Joshi called.

"It's all right." Chang-li said. "I know what I'm doing, I think."

At least, he hoped he did. They'd find out soon. Chang-li and Joshi headed deeper into the vault, eager to learn its secrets.

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