Morning came pale and clean.
Mist lay along the low ground like a quiet thought that had not decided what to become.
They stood at the north gate with two dozen other teams.
Beyond the gate, the trial town waited.
Roofs at odd heights.
Alleys that led to doors that opened on walls.
Bridges over dry canals.
Steps that did not match the ground they reached.
The neat handed elder stood on a platform and did not raise his voice.
He did not need to.
"Three days," he said. "Flags at marked points. Bring them back. Do not kill, do not cripple, do not complain. If the floor moves, learn to move with it."
He lifted two fingers.
The bell rang once.
The town opened.
Ye Tian did not rush in.
He watched how other teams moved.
Some ran as if the flags would grow legs and leave.
Some crept as if the stones would bite.
Zhou Ren's group flowed like water that knows where it is going.
Sun Ruo and two quiet men vanished around a corner and were not there when eyes looked again.
Mu Qing stood close enough to speak without being heard.
"Corners," she said. "Walk them. Do not stand in the middle of streets. The watchers like the middle."
Bai Shen rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands.
"I will carry what needs to be carried," he said.
Wen Yao's breath was the sort that stays where it should.
"I will keep the count even," he said.
Ye Tian nodded.
"We move," he said. "No noise that we do not need."
They stepped across the line and the town received them without interest.
The first street was too narrow for three to walk abreast.
A shutter banged once and then held still.
Chalk marks on a door frame had been half washed and then left alone, as if the town had grown tired of pretending to be clean.
The Origin weighed the air.
[Environment logged]
[Unfinished floors and false doors present]
[Watchers likely behind screens and eaves]
[Recommendation: Minor Concealment, light mode]
Ye Tian let the cool of Concealment settle over their steps.
It did not make them vanish.
It made the corners keep them a moment longer than they would have.
They cut left at a stair that admitted only one at a time.
They crossed a dry channel and did not trust the bridge.
They walked along a wall and found a small square where nothing stood in the center except a pole with a painted ring around its base.
A flag socket waited empty at the top.
"Not here," Mu Qing said. "Later."
A boy watched from a roof two houses away.
He was too still for a child at play.
His fingers were chalked white.
A strip of cloth tied around his wrist had three small ink marks on it.
[Target: unknown outer disciple]
[System: Minor Tracking]
[Function: marks targets lightly, improves pursuit, reveals faint routes when called]
[Integrity: 67 percent]
[Seizure chance: moderate during marker placement]
Ye Tian did not look at the boy.
He looked at a door that was too clean for this street and walked toward it.
Bai Shen drifted to the right to block half a view.
Wen Yao slowed his pulse until his presence felt like a quiet room.
Mu Qing turned her head as if studying a crack in the plaster and watched the roof in the shine of a window that did not have glass.
The boy moved.
A tile clicked under his knee.
A small roll of paper came free between his fingers.
He waited for a breath, then flicked his hand and sent the marker down the alley, a neat arc that would brush Ye Tian's sleeve and leave a sign no eye would see.
Ye Tian adjusted nothing.
He let the marker come.
The paper touched cloth and tried to be a stain that was not a color.
The Origin lifted its voice inside him.
[Marker contact]
[Minor Tracking activation peak, brief]
[Proceed with Seizure on wrist or placement point]
Ye Tian did not grab at the paper.
He smoothed his sleeve with two fingers, as if to straighten a crease, and let his palm rest over the place where the mark had tried to live.
"Now," he thought.
There was no light.
There was only the sense of something that had tried to stay changing its mind and coming to him instead.
A cool line slid into his palm and settled.
[Seizure complete]
[Acquired: Minor Tracking]
[Integration available, light mode advised]
[Effect: mark creation and route sense, weak reveal of recent passage, partial resistance to being marked]
The boy on the roof frowned, puzzled.
He expected the roll of paper to turn and point.
It lay dull and did not move.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Wen Yao did not turn his head. "Your sleeve is smooth," he said softly.
"Is it," Ye Tian said.
Mu Qing's mouth made the smallest shape of approval.
"Do not integrate heavy," she said. "Not while they have pencils and boards."
"Light only," Ye Tian said.
They moved on.
The street bent and became stairs.
The stairs became a landing with a broken cart and a bucket with no handle.
A window looked into a room that was not there.
The Origin offered a thread of counsel that did not use that word.
[Light integration possible while walking]
[Minor Tracking, light mode]
[Effect: short lived marks, faint route noticing]
He let the new thing sit on the edge of use and become something he could call without leaving a footprint on the table the elders kept.
[Integration complete, light mode]
[Note: mark duration short, route hints weak, resistance minimal]
"Chalk," Bai Shen said quietly, pointing with his chin.
On the wall near the corner, a chalk line curved up and away.
It would be nothing to someone walking fast.
It was a sentence to someone who was not.
"Watchers leave notes for themselves," Mu Qing said. "They tell each other where eyes liked to sit yesterday."
They followed the line to a narrow back way that smelled of old water.
On the far side, voices carried.
"Count the tiles… if the beam is loose we go around…"
"I said do not step there…"
"Flag at the bell house… first team to reach…"
The street opened into a cross of four lanes with a tall post at the center.
A ring of white paint circled the post.
No flags had been fixed yet.
Two teams stood at opposite arms of the cross, each waiting for the other to make the first wrong move.
Zhou Ren stood at the head of one arm, smile neat, sleeves clean.
Sun Ruo stood in shadow at the other, two men at his shoulder, both with hands that hid small habits.
Ye Tian did not step into the open.
He let his team stand with him in the mouth of the lane.
The neat handed elder watched from a balcony that had not been there a breath ago.
Or perhaps it had been there and no one had wanted to see it yet.
"Good morning," Zhou Ren called calmly. "We are all learning to walk."
"Some of us," Sun Ruo said, without raising his voice, "already know how to step where others do not look."
The ring of white paint around the post was not paint.
It was powder that waited to jump when a foot disturbed it.
Ye Tian could smell the faint sharpness of it.
"Not yet," Mu Qing said softly. "Let the middle eat someone else."
A young team in plain robes chose to be brave.
They tried to cross at an angle that would cut both rivals out of the first grab.
The powder lifted.
Panels under the white settled an inch and then rose again.
Nothing broke.
Nothing shouted.
It was still enough to spill a man.
Zhou Ren stepped forward as if walking a garden path.
His right hand did not move, but something near it felt watched.
He placed his foot where no one else would have and did not sink.
The watchers on the balcony did not speak.
A brush moved.
A small bell hung by a thread and stirred without ringing.
Sun Ruo did not take the center.
He let one of his men run the edge of the circle and bump the panel with the heel of a hand.
The panel wobbled and showed where it did not want to be stepped.
"Useful," Wen Yao said.
"Not yours to use today," Mu Qing said. "We are learning others, not teaching ours."
Ye Tian looked down at the powder.
He did not need Tracking to see where feet had gone in the last hour.
He let the new sense brush the lanes anyway.
For a breath, faint lines rose in his mind.
Not light.
Not sound.
Just the feeling of weight that had passed and the direction it had chosen when it left.
[Minor Tracking, route hint active]
[Center panels weak at two points, left quadrant safer]
[Watchers attention high]
"Left," he said quietly. "Then turn before the last step."
They cut along the safest arc and did not rush the turn.
Bai Shen placed his foot as if it were a cup set on a shelf that might not hold, then placed the other where the shelf proved it would.
Zhou Ren watched them and smiled as if pleased by a correct answer.
Sun Ruo did not look at them at all.
At the post, a small latch waited.
It was the sort of latch that looks simple and asks for a careful hand.
Ye Tian did not pull.
He pushed, then drew, then turned the width of a nail.
The latch agreed.
The socket opened.
There was no flag.
Only a folded slip with a line on it.
He opened it.
The line pointed toward the bell house the next street over.
The paper smelled of oil and dust.
"Not here," Mu Qing said again. "They want feet to stand where the middle can see them. We go along the shade."
They left the circle.
The powder lay quiet behind them.
The bell house rose above the next roof like a thin tower that could not decide if it wanted to be taller.
Steps climbed its side.
A narrow door at the base stood open and admitted only one at a time.
Voices reached them before they stepped in.
"Two teams inside…"
"The stair will not hold many…"
"The flag is on a rope…"
The first steps were stone.
The next were wood.
The next were boards that had been asked to be steps and had agreed for a little while.
Bai Shen went first because he was built to carry.
Wen Yao followed because his pulse kept even time for the wood.
Mu Qing kept one hand on the wall and her eyes on the joints.
Ye Tian took the end and let his new sense feel where feet had rubbed a little more dust from a certain edge.
They passed a landing where the wall had been painted and then wiped.
A small smear of purple had hidden in the corner and failed to leave.
"Marks over marks," Mu Qing said.
At the next turn, a boy with chalked fingers slipped from a side door and tried to brush Ye Tian's sleeve again.
It might have worked on someone who had not already taken the trick into himself.
Ye Tian let the sleeve touch and gave nothing back.
The boy frowned and vanished down a slit of stairs that did not lead anywhere the eye would want to follow.
At the top, a bell that was not heavy hung from a beam that did not feel safe.
A rope ran from the bell to a crossbar above a small square where light fell in a neat rectangle.
On the crossbar, three hooks waited.
Two were empty.
One held a roll of cloth tied with a strip of white.
The square below already held five people who wanted to be three.
A shove turned into a short fall.
A foot stepped on a wrist and then left it.
No one spoke to apologize.
Ye Tian did not step into the square.
He stepped along the wall and counted the beams.
"Third from the left," Mu Qing said, without looking. "The nail is newer."
Bai Shen braced his legs and lifted Ye Tian by the ankle for the space of one breath.
Wen Yao set his palm on the beam to calm its small complaint.
Ye Tian reached and did not pull.
He pressed.
The hook loosened.
The roll slid free.
No one had time to object.
He dropped back to the boards.
He did not open the roll.
A watcher cleared his throat somewhere above them.
A brush paused and then drew a line across a page.
[Devotion +4]
[Observation: retrieval clean, attention rising]
[Advisory: exit without showing the prize]
They left by the same path and let the bell house keep its air.
On the street, a child drew with chalk on a step and did not look up when they passed.
The chalk made a small circle, then another, then a line from one to the other.
It was nothing.
It was something.
"Someone is mapping," Mu Qing said. "Not for now. For later."
They reached a narrow lane where laundry hung on a rope and hid the sky.
The cloth smelled like soap and old sun.
Ye Tian set the roll on a low step and opened it enough to see without making a show.
Inside lay a strip of red cloth with a mark that looked like a small flame, and a wooden token the size of a thumb knuckle.
The token had a notch.
The notch would sit in a slot on the post back in the square.
When it did, someone's bell would ring.
"Two steps," Mu Qing said. "We took one."
"Then we take the second without giving them a story to tell," Ye Tian said.
They folded the cloth again and slid the token into the sleeve.
The Origin stirred, then grew still.
[Minor Tracking, route hint active]
[Nearest safe path to square identified]
[Watchers attention moderate, shifting]
They went by the quiet way.
A door opened onto a room where a carpenter had left a cup half full of thin tea.
A beam had been replaced and not yet stained.
A ladder leaned where it did not belong.
Bai Shen moved the ladder one finger to make the balance right.
No one would see it.
It would keep someone from falling when eyes were on the wrong thing.
They reached the square from the side that most people are sure does not exist.
The white powder ring lay quiet.
No one stood in the center now.
Teams had learned the lesson and gone to learn other lessons.
Ye Tian stepped to the post.
He did not place the token yet.
He looked at the balcony.
The neat handed elder was not there.
A small laugh came from the roofline two houses down.
It was not loud.
It was pleased.
Zhou Ren stood where a roof ridge met another roof ridge.
His sleeves were still clean.
His right hand was by his side, very still.
He lifted his chin the smallest amount.
He did not speak.
A thin light ran along a tile near his foot and pointed.
Not at the post.
At the lane where Ye Tian stood.
The Origin shifted from calm to alert without sound.
[Notice]
[You are being marked]
[Signature unknown]
[Resistance minimal in light mode]
[Recommendation: do not fix token while marked]
On the far side of the square, Sun Ruo stepped from a shadow as if it had asked him for help and he had agreed.
His eyes did not move to Ye Tian.
They did not need to.
A thin brush in a quiet hand drew a line somewhere above them.
Mu Qing's voice did not rise.
"Walk," she said. "Not here."
Ye Tian slid the token back into his sleeve.
Bai Shen turned as if he had just remembered that he had left water boiling.
Wen Yao breathed once, the kind of breath that keeps a floor from telling on you.
They left the square the way water leaves a cup that has been tipped without warning.
Behind them, the thin light on the tile did not fade.
It brightened a finger's width and held.
The town did not speak.
It waited.
And the chapter ended with a mark that would not wash, and a road that would only be safe when someone decided to teach it a new name.