Zhao Zhen sliced through the Binding Chains with his sword. Lux coiled around him as he gradually drew it into his core. Chang-li could still sense the wrong note in the man's cycling, but now he knew why. The Lens around the enemy's neck was influencing his cycling, helping him absorb the lux of their techniques. If their foe could do that, then nothing they did would wound him short of overwhelming physical damage to his body. That seemed unlikely. They had to find another way.

Joshi threw out another set of chains. The man slashed them with his sword and the technique fizzled, its lux dissolving away surprisingly fast.

Zhao Zhen laughed in triumph. "Fools! You think an attack can work against me twice?"

Chang-li focused everything he had on the enemy. There was a way to beat him, of that he was certain with everything in his being. Every foe could be defeated. There was always a way, if he could find it.

Cultivator Zhao Zhen reveled in this fight. With every attack these puny weaklings made against him, he grew stronger. There had been a bad moment there at the very first, when he'd blundered into their concealed script circle without noticing. Fighting multiple enemies had its own challenges. Then he'd realized that he could see each of their techniques forming in incredible detail. He could see just where to hit them with his sword to destroy them completely, or gauge just what they would do. With his superior strength and speed, it was child's play to take their techniques apart.

He would draw this fight out longer. When he killed them and took their cultivation, their techniques would serve him. By seeing them in action now, he'd know the tactical use of those abilities. That would make learning them fully far simpler.

This Binding Chains technique, for instance, would prove invaluable when fighting a cultivator a little lower than himself. He admired the strong fighter who employed it as a compliment to his physical skills. Now that he'd seen it once he'd be watching for it. if he'd been just a little slower, it might have given him considerably trouble.

On the other hand, the young man farther off, the one hanging back and sending a few tentative techniques toward him was a coward taking pot-shots at a stronger enemy from what he thought was safety. For a coward he did have some interesting weaves that Zhao Zhen looked forward to adding to his own repertoire.

He feinted toward the brawler, then tossed a technique he'd taken from Cai Hao, a green lux poison cloud crackling with yellow lightning. His enemies both retreated before him, giving ground, falling back toward the the island in the middle of the lake. Zhao Zhen followed.

He moved in, rushing toward the brawler, sword in hand, intending to slice one of his arms, leaving him weakened but still able to fight.

Instead, the brawler disappeared from in front of him. Zhao Zhen whirled. The bald man stood on a rock in the lake, some thirty yards away.

Zhao Zhen smiled. He focused on the brilliant green shoes on the man's feet. He'd seen those before. This fellow had taken Mai Yin's treasure and knew how to use it. That was alright. It would be Zhao Zhen's soon enough.

From the tower, one of the women kept firing arrows at him. He ignored most of them. The first of each kind he slashed apart. Then he layered another layer of lux armor tuned to counter that weave of lux. The girl had an impressive library of arrowheads, but after the first of each, he didn't even have to consciously defend against them.

The other woman was playing with blue lux. Her techniques seemed to be utterly ineffective, or perhaps she was trying to help her sect mates. Regardless, it didn't seem to matter. Once the two men were defeated, their abilities taken for his own, he could take the less powerful female cultivators apart at his leisure. It didn't seem that they'd have too many more techniques to give him, but he'd enjoy it nonetheless. His core was dense with the lux he'd taken from his fellow Golden Locks cultivators, and he worried that he might not be able to consume the remains of all four of these. Perhaps he could let the women run, then hunt them down after digesting the male cultivators.

The brawler launched off of his rock, shooting into the air, arcing toward him as he started a technique. Zhao Zhen focused all his will and Intent tightly around him, as the man descended. He could've dodged, but he wanted to study the man's attack. At the last moment, seeing the power in the attack, Zhao Zhen shifted tactic and deflected the falling blow to the side. The force of the impact rocked him and Zhao staggered. A breath of air escaped his mouth. "Oof!" The brawler landed in a crouch and came up instantly following up with another new technique.

A dozen fists pounded against Zhao Zhen from all directions, each blow backed with Intent. For a Lux Endowment cultivator, the brawler had a solid Intent.

Zhao Zhen felt his own will and Intent slip. He reinforced his will with his Intent, smirking. "I take from the weak," he said to himself, and his Intent resonated through him. Again the resonance echoed through the Lens, filling him with a sense of power.

It was so perfectly matched to these artifacts he had taken. No wonder he'd been able to master them so quickly. Everything in his past had prepared him for this moment, this proving of the truth.

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He was tired of toying with these mice. It was time to crush them.

He yearned to have the brawler's leap technique mastered. That would be his reward after victory. But he had already stolen an enhanced jump technique from Cai Hao. Now he used it, leaping to the top of the tower.

Down below, both men shouted in dismay. Zhao Zhen swung himself off of the roof and in through the window. Two shocked women stared at him.

The one with a bow lowered it. He ignored her, looking at the blue lux cultivator. There was something familiar about her, though he couldn't quite say what it was. She raised both hands, he thought in fear.

His mind exploded with pain and terror.

He couldn't see, didn't know where he was.

The short, sharp attack blinded him. His core sang off-key, and for one terrifying moment, he felt the Lens on his chest pulling something back out of him.

Zhao Zhen fought.

He controlled himself, taking hold of his will and forcing himself to see what was truly there. His vision cleared. He saw the scraps of blue lux that had surrounded him, seized them angrily, making them his own. But the women were gone, having fled down the steps.

Zhao Zhen filled with anger. Make fools of him? They would see.

He flexed his Intent and vented most of the lux he'd seized during this fight from his core.

Heart in throat, Chang-li watched as the enemy leapt to the top of the tower, then scrambled in through the window.

He and Joshi were halfway across the island to it when Min and Hiroko came rushing out, Hiroko dragging Min by her arm, Min's bow dangling in her other hand.

Joshi reached the two first. "Run," he told them. "We'll hold him off."

"We have to defeat him," Min was saying. "We'll make a stand together—"

And the tower exploded.

Pieces of burning wood and shards of shattered tile rained down all around them. Instinctively, Chang-li thrust out a red lux shell, strengthened by his own will, and deflected most of the debris. As the dust cleared, he looked.

Where the tower had been, a man descended, surrounded by a golden glow.

Slowly, he settled to the earth. He raised his hands, laughing. "You fools. You are mice for me to play with. I will take the best of your cultivation and made it my own. I will take everything from you."

With his left hand, he seized lux and flung it. Binding Chains appeared, lashing around each of their waists. The one touching Joshi immediately dissolved. Chang-li had read somewhere that turning someone's abilities on back on them was almost impossible at higher levels.

Chang-li knew now what to do. The technique was poorly formed, with only Zhao Zhen's will holding it from unraveling. With Liar's Blade in hand, he cut through the lux technique. Beside him Min and Hiroko grunted with effort, taking long moments to free themselves from the technique.

Chang-li moved forward to get between the women and Zhao Zhen, just as the enemy raised his hand again. Dozens of small lux projectiles shot out like arrowheads without the arrow, their tips holding yellow and orange lux inside.

They exploded like Min's arrows, mostly splashing harmlessly against the will of Chang-li and his friends. It was enough to show Chang-li their enemy wasn't just boasting, he truly had learned something of their techniques, even if poorly formed.

Even as he watched, Joshi tried once more to lash out with Binding Chains. It had no effect. The technique evaporated as soon as it touched Zhao Zen.

Chang-li's mouth was dry. His mind raced like a galloping horse. He could feel his own Lens in his chest cycling. He'd seen hints of that himself, hadn't he? The Lens letting him take in not just lux, but scraps of technique, hints to how to defend against attacks or enhance his own.

Was that what it was for, as much as purifying his own lux and making it stronger? There had to be more to it. Was this truly the time to be thinking about it? Yet, the answer to what the Lens was really for might hold the secret to this fight.

Using it might risk his own soul. But against the stronger cultivator, he had no other choice. He had been keeping the Lens away from his lux cycling during a fight, afraid it would distract him or worse, affect him in some way.

He no longer had that choice. If Zhao Zhen was using his Lens to make himself stronger, Chang-li needed to do the same.

Joshi put himself in front of Hiroko and Min, his will protecting them like a great shield as Zhao Zhen raised his hands and sent a five-strand technique that broke apart into spears and shattered against Joshi's will.

Chang-li moved.

He changed his cycling pattern to Double Branching River, but made an alteration in its pattern. Instead of flowing through his core, he allowed the lux to cycle once between his core and the Lens, then back out.

He could hear and feel the Lens as it altered the notes of his lux, shaping them perfectly.

What he needed right now wasn't an attack. He needed to understand what it was Zhao Zhen was doing, how he was shrugging off their attacks so quickly.

And so, as Chang-li hurled himself forward, he shouted: "Joshi! Strike him!"

Joshi launched himself forward, reaching Zhao Zhen before Chang-li could. His Thousand Fists punch attack struck out in multiple directions.

The first to land hit Zhao Zhen hard, sending cracks along the lux of his armor, even pushing him back on his toes. The next struck his head, and he flinched, but only just. Then the rest of the punches landed. Zhao Zhen smiled as they touched his will and were sucked in and destroyed.

Chang-li saw in that moment that two things were happening. The technique started breaking down as soon as it got close to striking. Then, as the lux came unraveled the Lens started drawing in and then feeding the broken-down lux into his core directly. After that, it was a simple matter for Zhao Zhen to adjust his defenses against the attack, keeping it from affecting him. With his superior strength of will and a Lux Embodiment cultivator's enhanced body and core capacity, they didn't have a chance in this fight.

Could he, perhaps, grab the Lens from Zhao Zhen's neck and destroy him that way? No. Chang-li rejected that solution immediately. Even if he could lay a hand on it, he wasn't physically the match for a cultivator whose entire body had been remade by lux. He needed to use his mind, not his hands, for this fight.

Chang-li had an inspiration.

He wove a Firepot variant that he hadn't already used in this battle, filling the inside with ice-aspected yellow lux, and hurling it at the enemy. The technique exploded in a cloud of frost. He watched how it impacted against Zhao Zhen, how the Lens picked apart the lux and slowly fed it into his core.

Chang-li hurled a second Frostpot. This time, there was almost delay. The Lux was wiped away like spilled wine cleaned up with a towel.

This was the key. Zhao Zhen's weakness lay in the moments it took him to learn a new pattern. If Chang-li could figure out how to exploit that, he could defeat him.

If not, he and his friends would die.

That couldn't happen. Chang-li would not allow it. He could not. With a surge of will, Chang-li threw himself back into the fight, seeking inspiration.

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