Nika marveled at how well the ancient mechanisms still worked. Even before she’d been able to react, the plates had snapped shut again as the light faded out of the crystals lining the side of the round platform.

  By extending her Ki into the stone of the tunnel below, she could tell that there was a slight slant to it, leading back in the direction of the grand hall. It was highly doubtful that this would be a death-trap - eliminating students after a single failure would not be a successful strategy for raising young talents. More likely, they would be ejected, with the expectation to reflect on their mistakes. Though in Dario’s case, she suspected that the latter was not likely to occur.

  Still, she felt a pang of concern. Some of his actions and memories showed poor manners at best and were bereft of virtue at worst, but there was something strangely refreshing about interacting with someone as straightforward as him. There was none of the deception she was used to from other nobles, no silent judgment or implied threats and insults that were so well concealed she had to wonder if they were even there at all.

  But that concern was quickly pushed down; her priorities were clear. Even though helping someone beneath her station would be virtuous - though only marginally so - it would never weigh up against the value she might be able to bring to the clan by revealing these ancient mysteries.

  Hidden techniques had always been valuable secrets, but this was an additional, foundational stage of cultivation. The staggering implications had kept her mind spinning in the last hours. Even now, a part of her was working through the logistics of funneling young cultivators of the Houjo clan down here without any of the other Great Clans finding out.

  It would have to be handled with the greatest care, for the reverberations of this momentous news had the potential to thoroughly shake all of Tenjou. Compared to that, the question of Dario’s wellbeing, or even her own, was barely even an afterthought.

  Besides, this shouldn’t take much time at all. Her goals in life were clear as the crystal of a Mon and had been so for years.

  Nika stepped onto the platform with her chin raised, taking a few deep breaths as she brought her desires to mind. Her eyes closed for a moment as she firmed up her conviction and mental image, then she spoke aloud those words she’d always known to be true.

  “I desire to be virtuous. I desire to rise all the way to the top of Tenjou. Most of all, I desire to prove my worth to the clan.”

  But when she opened her eyes, the Ki that rose from her chest was not a bright and lively green. It started as more of an olive color, then darkening into a muddy greenish brown with her final proclamation. Before she could utter a word of protest, the ring of crystals lit up, this time taking on an orange hue. She only had a moment to wonder what that meant, before the hatch opened and she disappeared down the tunnel.

  Stone flashed by until she slid out into the grand hall to the sight of three black felines prowling the grounds, heads moving from high to low as they sniffed the air. The beasts turned as one to the sound of her entrance and immediately began to approach her in a flanking maneuver. There was one dead cat with two arrows sticking out from its throat, but no sight of Dario. She gathered her Ki as she strode to the nearest pillar, to have something to put at her back without moving into a corner.

  There she waited, shaking out her arms and legs and performing a few quick stretches. Her Ki was primed too, waiting right underneath her skin. But even as the first of the cats prepared to leap at her from the side, her thoughts were on the test. The fighting was automatic, almost an afterthought.

  Dark grey Ki sprang up around her fist as she sprang forth and struck high, catching the cat in the ribs to send it flying with a choked growl.

  Her first thought was simply that whatever device was embedded in that testing room had malfunctioned, the erosion of time having somehow worn down the elusive mechanism that controlled it. It was a tempting explanation, but those should be regarded with the highest suspicion.

  She kicked her leg back to send a cat crashing into the wall, but the claws still caught her across the arm-

  The counterpoint that came to mind was strong enough to discard that first thought: the mechanism that controlled the lights may have malfunctioned, but not the Ki itself.

  Her eyes flicked to fine drops of blood seeping out from a scratch across her shin. Surface wound. Fortified attacks strong enough to pierce the skin.

  All evidence pointed to the fact that the ephemeral Ki of this floor somehow took on a hue that matched the emotion. If a clear, verdant green would have been true desire, then the muddied olive she had produced might be something like a half-truth. However, there was much they didn’t yet understand about this strange, mental Ki.

  She hopped over another swipe which cut through the stone pillar like butter, adjusting her stance to the more fluid motions of Winding River.

  The second theory would be that there was some as of yet undiscovered trait of this Ki which they had overlooked. That it might correlate to something other than their emotions. But that was a poor theory indeed - it did not match prior observations, offered no additional explanations and created only more questions.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Her ankle whipped around, but she was forced to pull back from another set of red claws that left three lines of blood on her calf. The beast slunk back with a concussion instead of a crushed skull.

  The final explanation she was then forced to consider, was quite an unacceptable one. Yet it was the mark of an educated mind, to consider uncomfortable thoughts.

  She feinted to the left, then slid to the right on the balls of her feet, narrowly passing a lunge as she snatched a leaping cat out of the air by its hind leg.

  The only remaining conclusion was that her desires, such as she’d worded them, were at least in part false.

  Using the cat as a club, she knocked another out of the air, before she brought it over her head and slammed it into the floor.

  But which part should be considered false then? What outrageous claim was this Ki making? That she was not virtuous?

  She turned and heaved again with a meaty slap of flesh on stone.

  That she didn’t wish to rise to the very top?

  Another crash, bones breaking, blood splashing wetly on the floor.

  Or that she didn’t desire to prove her worth to the clan?

  A final, angry swing and she finally let go of the limp corpse, turning towards the remaining two beasts.

  “Come!” she growled with bared teeth and bloody hands held at the ready. The remaining two wounded, limping beasts flinched back as she took a step forward, but then her head snapped around as she heard Dario calling out to her.

  “Nika! There are more coming! Over here!”

  Clamping down on her anger, Nika took in the situation. Five more cats coming down from above. Two more nearby, injured. More beasts might be drawn in by the sounds of fighting. Their exit was blocked by beasts coming down, but Dario was beckoning her into a small and dark doorway. Unclear whether or not he’d secured an exit.

  A fight would have at least a thirty-five percent chance of heavy injuries and a non-zero chance of death. Climbing out the way they came in would not be possible without first slaying the beasts. Defending a doorway brought far lower chances of debilitating injury.

  The decision was clear, so she kicked a stone at the watching cats, then bolted toward Dario. To her right, one of the nimble beasts came bounding down at her, but he caught it with an arrow and then she was pushing through the doorway.

  “There!” he gestured behind him without turning away from the doorway, a small orb of light lighting up a section of the old wall. A bit of blood was trickling down from a cut on his hand. “We need a hole in the wall. It shouldn’t be too thick. There’s light coming through. I’ll buy us time.” He spoke quickly, voice sharp with urgency.

  The space was dark, covered in dust and rubble, the ceiling low enough that she had to bend her torso, but she didn’t waste any time pulling off her shirt and pressing her skin against the cold, dusty wall.

  Feeling unsure if Dario could handle the deadly beasts, she glanced back to see him splitting a thick cord of green Ki into six strands, each of them seeming to move independently to different parts of the doorway. As her gaze lingered on the frankly ridiculous display of fine Ki control, vines began to grow from where the green tendrils of Ki touched the wall. He must have put seeds there.

  Deciding to trust in his abilities, she then turned to her own task.

  It had taken her a long time to find the right feeling, of withdrawing hardness from outside herself, but it came faster to her now. Eyes closed, she felt the grainy touch of stone as an extension of herself, pushing a touch of Ki into it, before extracting it again. With mental images of obsidian slowly turning to clay, of the erosion of sand and wind beating against a boulder, of the rushing water of a river grinding at stone walls, she drew the Ki back and some of its hardness with it.

  The sounds of growling and wet pulp hitting stone made her push herself harder, sweeping her Ki further in like a wave that washed through the wall and back. She took another quick glance back as she wiped off a thick layer of powdered stone. The beasts were rapidly shredding the vines as Dario kept regrowing them with green Ki while he busily buried something under debris.

  The next wave went even deeper and as it returned, she immediately sent it sweeping back in, the mental strain enough to leave her panting. Dario came running up behind her right as the third wave completed. She hurriedly put her shirt back and then there was a click, followed by a whoosh of air and sounds of snarling and yowling.

  “We have to go! Now!”

  Ki flowed into her fist as she heard him digging through the debris behind her, thick and solid with concentrated hardness. She lunged, twisting her knee to deliver a massive blow with her full weight behind, smashing a hole through the thin remainder of the wall.

  A few more swift strikes and the opening was just large enough to squeeze through. Nika came out what she thought was the side of the grand building, Dario right behind her.

  Her eyes landed on a narrow alley and she headed straight for it, taking the lead.

  BOOM!

  Dario was laughing madly as he ran, eyes wild, even though his gait was uneven and the left side of his pants was wet with blood. But there was no time to talk as they fled deeper into the narrow streets and abandoned buildings of the inner city.

  She soon suggested that they should stop to bandage their wounds, so that they wouldn’t leave a trail of blood. Leaving behind some dirty rags in another empty house as a false trail, they then more slowly and quietly made their way through the narrow streets as they covered their tracks.

  After that, the next thing to do was to find a defensible place to hide and recover while they formulated a plan. These new Reijuu would be dangerous to face in higher numbers, so preparation would be needed.

  It didn’t take her long to decide on which direction to take them in. Those stone formations she’d seen earlier from the roof of the Cupola bore further investigation. If she was wrong, it would be as good a place to hide as any. But it would be quite a coincidence for another group of stonemasons to possess exactly those techniques she suspected were used in shaping and construction the stone arch.

  If it was what she suspected, it should be highly defensible at least. But at the same time it would raise a host of new questions.

  What could it mean for the Houjo Clan to have been present on this floor?