The man in the plain robe looked at Ye Tian, then at the lintel.
His smile did not reach his eyes. It did not need to.
"You first," Ye Tian had said.
The man nodded once as if it were nothing at all.
He stepped through.
The room beyond was small and dry.
Chalk dust lived in the corners.
A low table held two cups and a shallow basin with clean water that did not smell like the town.
The floor was a grid of boards that had been sanded more than the halls outside.
[Warning]
[Utility present]
[Signature, same mark as on roof tiles]
[Lines under the boards, slight]
Bai Shen stopped at the threshold.
Wen Yao stood with the kind of stillness that makes sound remember its manners.
Mu Qing looked at the lintel and the clean line where a brush had passed once and not again.
The man placed his palm on the basin as if greeting a friend.
The water did not ripple.
"Please," he said. "Drink. We have a missing bell between us."
Ye Tian did not drink.
"What is your name," he asked.
"Who cares about names," the man said, pleasant. "Call me the one who keeps track of lines."
"Then keep track of this one," Mu Qing said softly, looking at the basin. "Who filled that water."
The man's smile warmed a finger's width.
"Someone who does not like dust."
Ye Tian stepped in.
The boards under his feet felt steady, then a shade too steady, the way a page stiffens when a line has been drawn under it.
The Origin pressed a fingertip against the inside of his ribs.
[Marking plane active]
[Contact points, wrists and sleeves]
[Recommendation: do not stand still long enough for the touch]
The man did not reach out.
He did not need to.
He stood with his hands folded lightly, the position a scribe uses when he is deciding where on the page to write first.
"You have a good team," he said. "Balanced. Breath, shoulder, eye, hand. It will be fun to watch."
"You were already watching," Ye Tian said.
"True," the man said. "But a person is more interesting when the room asks him to step where he does not want to."
He gestured to the cups again.
Ye Tian let the gesture pass like wind over a pond.
"Who marked the tile," Ye Tian asked.
"The tile marked itself," the man said. "We only encourage."
Mu Qing's gaze moved from the table to the corner where chalk dust had gathered into a small drift.
Children do not make drifts like that.
Scribes do.
Wen Yao lifted his head a fraction.
"Listen," he said.
The room did not make sound.
The town outside made a soft line of it.
Between the two there was a skin, thin as paper, that kept the lines from touching.
[Note]
[This room dampens attention from outside]
[Marking power stronger inside]
"Let us be brief," the man said. "You have something that belongs to the center. The token. I would like to see it placed in a manner that helps the lesson."
"What lesson," Bai Shen asked.
"That the middle is the middle for a reason," the man said, perfectly kind.
Ye Tian stepped to the side, then another side.
He let his foot find a board that had been lifted once and set down again.
It clicked under him like a tongue behind teeth.
The man did not look down.
"I enjoy your caution," he said.
"You enjoy writing," Mu Qing said.
"Someone must," the man said.
He moved then, not much, just enough to lift a hand as if to fix a crease in Ye Tian's sleeve.
It was a polite motion.
If Ye Tian had been a boy in a school room, he would have thought it a kindness.
Quick Guard spoke in his arm the way a string speaks when plucked.
He did not swat the hand.
He let the fan rise a thumb's width and catch the air between sleeve and fingers.
The fan did not touch skin.
It did not need to.
[Touch intercept]
[Marking line displaced]
[Signature seeking new path]
The man's eyes narrowed the smallest amount.
Not surprise.
Interest.
"You learn fast," he said.
"I count," Ye Tian said.
He took one step nearer to the basin and looked into it.
The water reflected a room with no people in it.
"Your water does not know us," he said.
"It knows lines," the man said.
Wen Yao let a breath out as if fogging a window and then did not fog it at all.
"It is an old trick," he said. "A flat mirror that steals the first answer it sees."
"So it takes marks better," Mu Qing said.
"So it hides them longer," Wen Yao said.
The man clasped his hands again.
"I only wished to speak," he said. "The bell rings for those who remember the center."
"You tried to put a thread on his sleeve," Bai Shen said.
The man's eyes flicked to Bai Shen's shoulders and back to Ye Tian.
"Threads keep stories from blowing away," he said.
"Whose story," Ye Tian asked.
"The right one," the man said. "The sect's."
[Mark pulse, low]
[Contact attempt, incomplete]
[Observation: signature similar to roof tile, refined here]
Ye Tian glanced at the cups again.
He did not drink.
He dipped two fingers into the basin and shook the water off onto the clean lintel.
A dark dot appeared where a drop touched wood.
It should not have.
Wood does not take a print from clean water.
The man watched the dot and did not comment.
"Enough," Ye Tian said. "We will place our flags where the floor learns the right lesson. Not where your pen wants a sentence."
The man tilted his head.
"You think the floor cannot write," he said.
"I think it can read," Ye Tian said.
He stepped back to the door.
The skin between room and town felt like passing from a dry page to wet air.
The man did not stop him.
He lifted his fingers the smallest amount, like a teacher adding a dot over a character.
"When the third bell rings," he said, "look at the board."
"We will," Mu Qing said.
Her voice held no promise.
They stepped out into the market square again.
The broken fountain kept its crack.
The cloth lay where Ye Tian had left it.
The fan balanced on the stone lip as if it had learned to be a bridge.
[Mark status, present, weak]
[Direction of pull, toward the clean lintel door]
[Note: signature prefers its own room]
"Good," Mu Qing said. "Then we leave it thirsty."
They moved away from the door without looking back.
Bai Shen took the right street.
Wen Yao took the left glance.
Ye Tian kept the middle for himself.
The town breathed around them again.
Lines of chalk showed where children had been told to see, not where they wanted to see.
"Second flag," Bai Shen said.
"Not where they can write about it," Ye Tian said.
They walked the map that no one had drawn for them.
They followed smells more than signs.
Sesame cakes.
Wet rope.
Old straw.
A place where a knife had been sharpened too often.
The Origin hummed.
[Minor Tracking, route hint active]
[Not safe to return through the bell house]
[Better path along the long wall with three windows and no glass]
They crossed a courtyard where three poles stood in a row like old men waiting for weather.
They turned at the long wall and kept their hands to themselves.
At the far end, a small shrine held a bowl of stale rice and a twig of pine.
No flag.
Only a slip of paper under a stone.
Mu Qing lifted the stone with two fingers and read without moving her lips.
"Wrong door," she said.
"Which door is right," Bai Shen asked.
"The one that does not want to be," she said.
They found it around the next bend.
A door with a broken hinge that had been mended with string.
A threshold worn by feet that had not cared if it were clean.
Inside, the floor did not try to teach.
It only tried to be a floor.
A post stood in the center with a socket near the top.
No powder ring.
No balcony above.
Only a small window that watched a wall.
"Here," Ye Tian said.
He took the token from his sleeve and set it on his palm.
No light ran along his skin.
No mark tried to speak.
[Safe to place]
[Attention, low]
[Bell, local]
Bai Shen set his feet.
Wen Yao held the room still without touching anything at all.
Mu Qing stood beside the window and watched the wall as if it were the interesting thing.
Ye Tian raised the token and turned it in the socket the width of a nail.
The bell that rang was near.
It sounded like a small temple agreeing to be a temple.
No one cheered.
No brush scratched.
[Devotion +5]
[Visibility, slow rise]
[Note: the center will not like that]
They left the room exactly as they had found it.
The string on the hinge did not break.
The threshold kept its dirt.
Back on the long wall, footsteps came from the other side, light and even.
Sun Ruo stepped out from a slit of alley and stood at his ease.
He looked as if he were waiting for a question.
He did not ask one.
"Good morning," Wen Yao said.
Sun Ruo nodded.
He glanced once at Ye Tian's sleeve, once at Mu Qing's hand where it was empty, once at Bai Shen's shoulders.
"The man at the clean lintel," Sun Ruo said, calm. "He likes the middle."
"He likes ink," Mu Qing said.
Sun Ruo's mouth might have wanted to smile and decided not to.
"He will write your name with a fine brush if you let him."
"And if we do not," Ye Tian said.
"Then he will write something else," Sun Ruo said.
He stepped past them without turning his head.
For a moment his sleeve brushed Ye Tian's fan where it lay at his side.
Only for a breath.
Only enough for the Origin to feel the shape of a habit.
[Touch contact]
[No system in sleeve, utility held inside ribs]
[Signature, quiet as ash]
[Note: not the same as the clean lintel]
They let him go.
He vanished into a smell of rope and old straw and became no one.
At the next corner, a board had been nailed over a window.
Someone had painted a number on it and changed their mind and painted another over it.
A scribe stood on a stool under the arcade and tried to see three places at once.
"Standings," Bai Shen said.
"Later," Mu Qing said.
"Now," Ye Tian said.
They went to the board.
Names were inked in neat lines.
Three had small red marks beside them.
Zhou Ren's line had two.
Another team had two.
Ye Tian's line had one from the white ring, and a second that had not rung from the door where the basin waited.
As they watched, a boy ran up with chalk dust on his fingers and whispered to the scribe.
The scribe frowned, then drew a small sign beside Ye Tian's line.
Not a flag.
A note.
"What does that mean," Bai Shen asked.
"That they cannot find the bell," Mu Qing said.
The scribe looked at Ye Tian and then at his brush and chose not to speak.
The third bell struck.
It came from the center of the town and from somewhere above.
It sounded like a rule clearing its throat.
At the clean lintel door, the dark dot where water had touched wood began to spread.
No one stood near it.
The basin did not move.
A thin line ran from the dot to the floor and then under it.
The Origin lifted its head.
[Notice]
[Marking plane expanding]
[Signature choosing new hosts]
[If you return, an imprint will be placed on your team]
"Good," Ye Tian said softly. "Then we will not return."
"Not yet," Mu Qing said.
Voices grew louder at the far end of the arcade.
Zhou Ren arrived with two people who did not match each other and made it work anyway.
He stood as if he had planned where his shadow would fall.
He lifted his eyes to the board, then to Ye Tian, then to the street between them.
He did not speak.
He did not need to.
A laugh that was not unkind slipped along the roofline and drifted away.
[Devotion +4]
[Public interest rising]
[Warning: center attention focused on your next placement]
Wen Yao touched the edge of the board with one finger and then stepped back.
"The next flag will argue," he said.
"Good," Ye Tian said. "We will teach it manners."
They turned away from the board before anyone could ask them to explain their line.
They took the street that did not move underfoot and then the alley that did.
The clean lintel door waited behind them and did not forget.
And the chapter ended with a bell still echoing, a mark spreading where no hand touched it, and a path opening toward a flag that wanted to speak first.
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