License to Cultivate [Progression Fantasy Tower Climber] (FOUR books completed!)

The weary four moved into the oasis and found a little spot near the side of the cool blue lake under a set of trees. Here there was no wind carrying stinging lux shards.

Min and Hiroko seated themselves in a meditative posture and began cycling. Chang-li was bruised and sore all over from the blows he'd taken in the fight. He opened himself very carefully, allowing lux to flow in, and ran a couple of cycles of Purification of Mind and Soul, listening intently to his core as he did.

He didn't hear any discordant notes. After a few, he could feel his body beginning to knit itself back together and allowed himself to drop the cycling. Instead, he stretched out with his senses and his will and felt around the oasis.

The lux here was deep and cool. It felt as though it was pooling up from beneath them, blue in the lake, green in the trees all around. Chang-li breathed in deeply and felt air in his scorched lungs, soothing everything.

His body still ached, but he didn't want to push it. The lake called to him. He pushed his senses farther, deeper, assuring himself nothing lay beneath it. It was a rippling pool reflecting back at him.

He stood up. "I think I'm going for a swim," he said, and stripped off his robe, hanging it on a branch above. Conscious of Hiroko's presence, he kept his undergarments on, his loose linen tunic and pants. They were in need of a wash anyway.

He stepped into the lake until he was about waist deep, then plunged himself beneath the water. Coming up, water streamed off of his drenched hair. He hadn't realized quite how long it had gotten, and now that he had it loose, it fell well below his shoulders.

The water refreshed him. More than that, it tingled and set his mind humming. This was more than just ordinarily refreshing water. His mind felt clear. He pushed out his will and found it easy to control.

Could it be a trap? He considered, stretching his will out everywhere. There was no sense of another mind at work, no push against his own will. Towers often had natural resources to aid cultivators with their recovery, after all.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called back, "This lake is something special. Everyone should come in!"

Joshi followed him immediately. When he got to where Chang-li was, he stopped, frowning in concentration, then nodded. "You're right. It does feel good." He dropped into the water and began a backstroke across the surface of the lake.

Min and Hiroko hesitated. "We don't have anything to wear," Min called.

"Just take off your outer robes."

They still wavered. No doubt Hiroko was nervous about coming in with him, which was ridiculous considering how much time he and Joshi had spent with her while she wore little more than her undergarments in Golden Moon Tower.

At last, he turned his back and began to swim across the lake toward Joshi. Splashes from behind him told him the women had entered the water. The soothing liquid did more than just heal his mind. He felt his body recovering from its ordeal of the last few days.

He rolled over onto his back and floated, staring up at the orange sky as the blue soothed his mind. It seemed to help him focus on his problems.

So, he was here to climb the tower, as the General had requested. But it was important that he find an answer to what this Lens was doing to him, and how to keep it from killing him.

It was easier now to feel it, like his mind was seeing everything more crisply. He reached delicately with his will, gently feeling it out as he had back at the war camp, listening to the flow of lux in his body.

It was almost like he had a second core inside him, one that wasn't his to command, but that was impacting what his lux did nonetheless. Nevertheless, if he thought of it that way, like a faulty second core, what should he do?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

His first instinct was to try to somehow route his channels away from the Lens, prevent it from impacting him at all. Where it sat, just above his core, was so close to his main lux channels, he would have to move them quite a long way.

Instinctively, he shied away from that solution. This was a tool used by cultivators to advance them to another level of cultivation, to teach them things they hadn't already used. It was apparently usually used at the Lux Domination stage. A cultivator would have rebuilt his body from lux at that point, presumably making this safer to use.

But everything Chang-li knew from cultivation said nothing was safe. There had to be a purpose for this device.

Was it the key to breaking Lumos into lux? For a while he had been considering if this device might allow him to do that, if he understood how, but it was only an idle thought.

There something both subtle and complex about the Lens. He sensed it. The way the Lens subtly shifted the tones of lux told him it was something else, something more, something about high-level cultivation that hadn't even been hinted at in any of the books or scrolls he'd ever read.

And why should it? That was exactly the sort of thing that was not written down in technique scrolls. The highest levels of cultivation were reserved for those who had earned the right to them, granted either by the Emperor, or a tutor, or wrested from the universe itself.

Chang-li didn't like that view. The more he saw of cultivation, the more he believed its knowledge should be shared with anyone who wanted. After all, the difference between a great cultivator and a pathetic one lay more in the application of that knowledge than in the acquisition of it. But he would accept that he wasn't going to find a convenient scroll lying around anywhere to tell him what to do with this.

Noren likely knew, but Noren wasn't here. He had sent Chang-li to this tower. That meant he expected him to figure this out on his own. Buoyed by the implicit trust in him, Chang-li rolled back over and began paddling to the edge of the lake.

The two women had bathed and were now sitting on rocks at the edge of the lake, their feet dangling in the water, their damp clothes pressing against them as their hair clung to their heads. Min especially looked appealing. She'd let her hair down and it flowed down her back in an ebony wave. She so rarely did that, always having it up, which was practical. She was a busy woman, after all. Chang-li thought she looked amazing with it down.

Eventually, Joshi strolled back across the lake, back at the edge of the lake, carrying a pair of fish in his hands. "There was a place on the other side where they were napping," he said, holding them up.

Chang-li was surprised. He hadn't felt anything in the lake. "Tower beasts?"

Joshi shook his head. "Just creatures who happen to live here, I think."

Chang-li's stomach rumbled. lux provided for all of his bodily needs, but there was nothing like a good meal.

"Let's get those roasting," he suggested. Joshi conjured a knife from the ambient orange lux. Placing the fish on the rocks, he deftly gutted them and scraped away the scales, cutting off the tail to leave beautiful, plump fish ready for roasting.

Chang-li decided to make himself useful by starting a fire, although he did have to use one of his Firepot scrolls on it.

That was alright. He'd make more while he rested after this. Everyone needed a bit of a break.

After a while Min joined him as Hiroko took charge of roasting the fish, with some input from Joshi. None of the four were particularly adept at cooking. Chang-li had always had his meals prepared for him by his mother or provided by school or employer. Joshi said he didn't have any experience, and Min had seemed horrified at the suggestion. Hiroko volunteered, while letting them know she was likely to get it badly wrong.

"I've been thinking about the techniques you're having me study," Min said. Chang-li brought his mind back from its wanderings. He laid aside his brush. He could ink scrolls and muse about cooking at the same time, but talking required more thought.

"Oh?"

"I understand use of the physical luxes and life lux is easy to grasp, but why bother studying spiritual luxes this early? Unless you're like Hiroko with a strong pull toward blue, I mean. We're not permitted to use violet, and indigo seems…" she waved a hand vaguely, "I don't understand it and none of these Mental Refinement techniques use it so why bother? Especially here where there's almost no spiritual luxes present."

"You have to practice now so you're ready later. And blue lux, at least, is going to be important to master."

"I don't feel like I understand blue lux at all," she confessed. "I tried asking Hiroko and she explained as best she could but it didn't help."

"It can be hard for someone with an innate talent to explain how that talent works," Chang-li agreed. "Don't worry. You aren't trying to master blue, just start thinking how it will work. I think the Thousand Whispers technique will suit you well, or perhaps the Vanquished Dreams."

She made a dismissive noise. "What good is a technique for speaking in a hundred different ears at once? That technique only works for people within a hundred feet of you. Why not just shout. And Vanquished Dreams, what does it matter if I can dispel nightmares from my thoughts?"

"They're just starter techniques. From there you'll modify and make them yours." He didn't tell her how many other blue techniques at the Mental Refinement stage he had discarded when looking for some to suit her. Min was an incredibly practical-minded person. So many blue techniques would have struck her as useless twaddle. "You'll know it when the time comes," he promised, and was saved from anything else by an exclamation from Hiroko.

"It's done, it's done, come eat!"