Elsewhere in the Empire, the Red Lantern Festival was a joyous celebration, with evening parties and music playing in streets while strings of the eponymous red lanterns hung from every building. At Westgate, though, the festival managed to feel somehow ominous.

Yoonji had always felt Westgate was the poorest and most barbaric city in all the empire, with its squat stone walls and its segregated districts for foreign merchants. Here, imperial officials were either corrupt and prone to taking bribes, or hard-set in their ways, inflexible and impossible to work with. You never knew which you'd get until you were halfway through negotiations. None of them had proper respect for an Inquisitor's band either.

Yoonji reached the city as night was falling. She wrapped her will around herself like a cloak, hiding her cultivation from anyone. Instead of her Inquisitor's badge, she took one of her false identity cards from her stash, identifying her as a minor governmental official. She waited in the short line of entrance at the gate before presenting her paperboard to the guards. They barely glanced before waving her in.

Yoonji entered the city. The red lanterns cast an ominous glow over the whole place. She could hear music coming from inside some of the larger buildings, the taverns and coffee houses that took the place of civilized tea shops and wine parlors here in Westgate. The music, too, was all wrong, harsh, with heavy rhythms and strange instruments.

No matter. She wasn't here to partake in the festival, but to find evidence of a conspiracy, and it wasn't hard to find that evidence. They weren't doing much to conceal themselves. The will and Intent of multiple high-level cultivators stood out like beacons of light in the dark city. She sensed several of them making their way toward a small garden near the merchants' district, and made her way there.

At the entrance to the garden were a couple of city guards looking more alert than the ones at the gate. They stepped forward, barring her way with their spears.

"The garden is reserved for a private function tonight. Unless you have a pass, you are not to enter."

"My pass is right here," Yoonji said pleasantly.

She pulled out her Inquisitor's badge and a lux construct alongside it. As the first guard looked at the badge, she slapped the construct against his arm, then spun and slammed it into the forehead of the next. The two fell back, their mouths hanging open, eyes going wide.

"You will let me pass. You will forget you have seen anything. Fifteen heartbeats from now, you will forget any of this happened," Yoonji said.

Then, as the two continued to reel, she stepped through the entrance into the darkened garden. A handful of red lanterns hung here and there from the scrawny trees and dim statuary that littered this place. They cast no real light. It was fine. She didn't need light.

She moved in the shadows, her senses wide as she assessed the gathering of cultivators. No one here was above Lux Embodiment. Eri herself, it seemed, was not present. That was good.

Then Yoonji felt the approach of a much more powerful cultivator, someone at the height of Lux Dominion, if not past it. Yoonji wrapped her Intent even more tightly around herself and faded into the shadow as a brilliant figure descended from the sky into the middle of the garden.

Prism Eri radiated out light as she stood there, her perfect features arranged in an expression of mild interest. She snapped her fingers. "Approach me, my disciples."

Eleven cultivators formed a circle around Eri. Yoonji watched as Eri looked from one to the next.

"I see Sha Fon and Doh Rien are missing. Does anyone know what has become of them?"

There were head shakes, but no replies.

"Well, eleven is enough to do my will," Eri said carelessly. "You are my most trusted disciples, and you have proven my faith in you is justified. Have you all acquired what I sent you for?"

In answer, each of the cultivators produced an item from their Soulspace.

Yoonji could feel the spiritual power coming off of each: a red fan, a green silk ribbon, a lantern that glowed with a purplish tint, incredibly powerful artifacts. She could feel the spiritual weight of each of them. These were the sort of things a powerful sect would have locked in their vaults. Now Eri's minions had them.

"Excellent," Eri said. "With these, you'll be able to quickly ascend through the floors of the Primal Tower and defeat the Guardian to open the way for me to enter. Once you do, you will be well rewarded. When we ascend, those treasures you have taken will become your bonded weapon, and the heavens themselves shall tremble at our power."

She smiled at each of them. "We will not be entering Heaven as paupers. When we ascend, we will remake the heavens in our own image."

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Each of the eleven bowed low. Eri was clearly enjoying this as she studied each of them. "Well done. I will go on ahead and smooth your path to entering the Tower. You'll go in your trios as planned. Bah You, Bah Yiu, you two are together. The rest of you, form trios who can work well together. I have word that there are already cultivators climbing in the Tower, but from what I hear, they're only at Peak of Spiritual Refinement. They will not even be obstacles to you. Still, be sure to hunt them down and kill them. We cannot allow anyone else to take what is ours."

"What of the lesser cultivators?" one of the disciples said, the first Eri had heard speak. "Word is that General Li has formed an alliance with the Darwur, and they've sent hundreds into the Tower."

Eri dismissed that with a wave of her hand. "Peak of Bodily Refinement cultivators at best," she said. "They're not worth wasting our time on. When I have taken the Tower myself, the presence of such will not even be an inconvenience. Now, I shall go. By dawn, I expect all of you to be with me."

She leapt skyward and was gone, taking her light with her. Yoonji allowed herself to breathe once again. She felt Eri's presence head southwest, making straight for the Primal Tower.

Her heart was racing. She knew it was her duty to arrest these traitors. But eleven cultivators at the Lux Embodiment stage would be a lot for her to handle, and she had no idea what these treasures did.

The first trio of cultivators leapt over the wall of the garden and started away toward the city gate, the others lingering behind. A moment later, a second trio left. There were five remaining.

Yoonji steeled herself to do her duty. She could not allow a rogue Prism to just do as she liked. The Emperor had commanded that Eri not be allowed to seize this Tower, and while Yoonji didn't understand what that meant or why, she was determined to do the Emperor's will in all things.

Yoonji unfurled her will, strengthening it with her Intent. She stepped into the middle of the garden. Five sets of eyes fell upon her. She flared her will and Intent around her like a peacock's tail, and smiled at the looks of anger and dismay. "You are all under arrest. I, Inquisitor Pak Yoonji, am speaking with the authority of the Emperor himself in this. Submit, and your deaths will be short and painless."

They were two women, three men, all wearing Eri's golden sect robes. Two of the men had identical thin features on their faces and had to be brothers. Those two stepped forward together. Both of them held long, thin swords in their right hands, while holding the artifacts they had shown Eri in their left. One held an orange fan, the other, a jade jar.

Yoonji prepared herself for a difficult fight. She popped a dozen lux constructs from her Soul space, quickly infusing them with lux and released them. Lux constructs, like technique scrolls, could be crafted well ahead of when they were used. But a construct properly created had far more potential than any scroll. It could have some initiative of its own.

She didn't have time to direct any of them beyond simple protection. Four of the constructs were enormous paper umbrellas. They fanned out around Yoonji and the two brothers who advanced on her, spinning around and blocking any attack from the other three who might intervene.

Six of the constructs were like darting birds, flitting around. They would seek to attack the cultivators' eyes, pecking them out and delivering potently concentrated Lux technique that would poison their blood and destroy their balance.

Yoonji herself drew her long guangdo, her favorite weapon for dealing with multiple enemies. The sword-blade head was decorated with a long red tassel. The long, smooth pole was capped at the bottom with copper.

Yoonji whirled the guangdo as the brothers came in. She had advantage of reach here. She could hear the other three cultivators on the other far side of her umbrellas, casting techniques against them. The umbrellas wouldn't last forever, but they'd buy her a few precious seconds. If she could take down these cultivators, she'd have an easier time with the other three.

Yoonji didn't underestimate her opponents. They were a tier below her, and she doubtless had centuries of experience on either of them. But that didn't make her immune to their attacks, certainly not when outnumbered and faced with unknown artifacts.

The fan-wielder raised the fan and waved it toward her. A gout of fire blasted from the fan. Yoonji broke the wave with the blade of her guangdo, the fire streaming out on either side of her to vanish harmlessly. Her last two lux constructs, sitting on her shoulders, scavenged the leftover lux from that technique and refined it before feeding it back into her.

That was an advantage she had over her opponent. They would have to manually refine any additional lux they needed in this fight, while she had constructs who could do that for her.

Yoonji stepped forward, thrusting her guangdo at the fan-wielder, but his brother caught the blade with his own sword, knocking it to the side. He held up the jade vase, and Yoonji felt a powerful pull from it. It was trying to suck her Lux from her, and it must be a powerful artifact indeed, because she had to exert her own will on herself. From the frustrated look in the man's eyes, he had hoped that would be more effective.

Yoonji grinned. Time to show them what a Lux Dominator could do. She wove her will and Intent together. "Kneel," she ordered, thrusting it out.

Both brothers stumbled. The one with the fan went to one knee. He looked up, eyes full of hate, and sent another fiery gout of lux from his fan.

Yoonji held up her left hand. "Stop," she ordered, and the wave dissipated.

She thrust her guangdo again, this time infusing it with her Intent. The guangdo grew as she thrust it, its blade extending out six feet to skewer the fan-wielder through the chest.

His brother shouted, throwing the jade vase at Yoonji's feet. She leapt up as it crashed into pieces, her guangdo sliding through the air. It sliced through the second brother's neck, severing his head, which fell into the shards of the vase and vanished. The destroyed vase was still pulling at her, more intently than it had previously, sucking in the lux all around in a vortex swirling about.

The fan-wielding brother fell, dying to the pavement, his blood sucking into the vortex along with his lux. The fan lay on the ground beside him, moving in the maelstrom.

Meanwhile, the pull from the vortex had caught Yoonji's umbrella constructs, ripping them away and dragging them toward it.

Yoonji leapt over the umbrellas, pinwheeling in the air, using her guangdo to push herself up once more before landing behind the other three cultivators, who were staring flabbergasted at her.

At the same time, she ordered her bird constructs to attack one of the women, a short, porcelain-skinned beauty with dark hair who held a golden chain in her hands. The chain gave off the feel of a spiritual weapon.

Yoonji prepared herself for the next round of battle.

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