The morning after the caravan, Pinebrook wore the mood of a gambler who had just cheated the table—excited, nervous, waiting for someone to shout. The Chen had retreated from steel, but now their power sat behind ink. Notices multiplied like weeds, red-stamped sheets nailed to doors and walls: fines recalculated, levies adjusted, "official warnings" written in the magistrate's hand but smelling of Chen ink.
Wu Tian read one aloud at the gate.
"The Wu clan is hereby ordered to surrender property sufficient to satisfy damages caused by civil disturbance, failure to comply with tribute, and obstruction of lawful authority."
Aunt Mei spat in the dirt. "They want us to pay for not dying."
"They want the town to get used to reading lies," Wu Tian said, tearing the notice free. "If paper shouts louder than blood, then people will stop hearing the truth."
He walked to the inner wall, dipped his brush, and added to his growing ledger:
East road caravan protected. Bandits in Chen cloth. Grain vouchers given to temple. Fine demanded: lies. Numbers: false.
The strokes were steady, blacker than rain, harder than excuses. People gathering in the square stopped pretending not to read.
Cultivation: Qi Sensing, Stage 9.Talent: Low.Perks: Minor Recovery, Pulse Step, Iron Grip, Steadfast Breath, Flowing Strikes, Battle Trance, Qi Sight, Minor Blood Surge.Bloodline: None.
The lattice hummed in his mind, but Wu Tian didn't announce it. He was stronger now, every cut and bruise turned into forward motion. Yet the Chen's weapon today was not steel, and perks did not strike ink.
At midday, the magistrate himself appeared. He was not a warrior—thin shoulders, soft hands—but his robe gleamed, and behind him walked Chen retainers with swords bare. He did not look at the wall; he looked only at Wu Tian.
"You deface Heaven's steps. You defy the magistrate's orders. You incite unrest," the man recited, each word precise, as though reading from a scroll inside his skull.
Wu Tian met his eyes. "We write numbers. If Heaven dislikes them, scrub them. If you dislike them, explain them. But don't call truth unrest."
The magistrate's jaw tightened. "Pinebrook will not fall to rebellion."
"Then stop stealing from it," Wu Tian said simply.
Murmurs spread. For once, no one shushed them. Even Madam Lin stood tall in the square, shawl faded but chin proud. Old Bai leaned on his hammer like it was punctuation. The fisherman's oar rested against his shoulder. The town was listening.
The magistrate gestured sharply. Retainers stepped forward. But before they could move, the monk on the temple steps spoke.
"This ink remains," he said, voice calm but heavy. "Until Heaven judges it false, the temple will not scrub what the people have accepted."
The square froze. The retainers hesitated. The magistrate's face flushed. He snapped his sleeve and stormed away, his men trailing in silence.
The crowd broke into whispers, louder now, freer. Wu Tian exhaled, shoulders easing. They had won today—without a spear thrust, without a stone thrown.
That night, the Wu compound felt different. The walls still bore scars, the gate still leaned, the pear tree still groaned—but the air held something new. Not safety. Not victory. Something like belief.
Wu Feng sat with his spear across his lap. "They'll come harder next time," he said.
"They always do," Wu Tian answered. "But so will we."
Wu Ping tossed a stone in the air, catching it with a grin. "And the town's with us now. Even Heaven's watching."
Wu Liang traced knots in his rope, eyes sharp. "Then we make them pay for every step."
Wu Tian looked at the ink on the wall, at the faces of his clan, at the stars beyond the pear tree's broken branches. He remembered Earth—shifts where lies were printed on pay stubs, debts written as numbers you couldn't erase. Different world, same weapon. Paper cut deeper than knives if people let it.
But he would not let it.
"The Wu do not bow," he whispered, and the night seemed to answer.
The day after the magistrate blinked and turned away, Pinebrook felt like a room that had just learned it had windows. People still moved cautiously, but their eyes were up. The new notices on doors and walls were neat and red-stamped; the ink on the temple steps was blacker, somehow louder, as if the stone had decided to raise its voice without asking anyone's permission.
Wu Tian walked the square at first light. Cold made his breath small and white. He stopped by the post where yesterday's threat hung. The clerk's handwriting was careful to the point of cruelty.
He read it once. Then he tore it down and rolled it tight.
At the inner wall he dipped his brush and wrote two lines as if he were balancing a ledger. The strokes bit into lampblack and stone.
Fines demand coin for our refusal to die. Paper lies when numbers are weak.
He could feel the town reading, even when backs were turned. Reading was a kind of courage; it made people complicit in the truth. That mattered.
The lattice in his mind hummed, not loud, just steady.
Cultivation: Qi Sensing, Stage 9.
Talent: Low.
Perks: Minor Recovery, Pulse Step, Iron Grip, Steadfast Breath, Flowing Strikes, Battle Trance, Qi Sight, Minor Blood Surge.
Bloodline: None.
He didn't repeat it out loud. He tested the reality instead—legs that settled into stance without wobble, lungs that took orders, hands that did not slip when the world sweated. Qi Sight traced thin ghost-lines across the square: eddies of breath where men held worry in their shoulders, little snags where old injuries lived. He let the information sit without grabbing for more. Knowing too much too quickly was a way to make mistakes fancy.
"Stop staring at air," Wu Ping said, appearing with a sling and an apple he'd stolen from somewhere that forgave him. "It creeps out the chickens."
"We don't keep chickens," Wu Tian said.
"Exactly," Wu Ping said, and tossed the apple core into an alley. A child darted out, snagged it, and ran, grinning like a thief. "What's the plan?"
"Make truth louder than ink," Wu Tian said.
"Louder than paper?" Wu Ping snorted. "You need shouting shoes for that."
"Or a weight," Wu Tian said.
He crossed the square to Old Bai's stall. Hooks and nails hung from a beam like dull fruit. Old Bai looked up from a strip of iron as if he'd expected them and was disappointed to be right.
"You want something to hit men with or something to hit ideas with?" he asked, eyes bright under grizzled brows.
"Both," Wu Tian said. "But I'll start with a set of weights. True ones, not the kind that get lighter when a Chen hand holds them."
Old Bai's mouth tugged. "Temple weights. You plan to invent honesty and nail it to the floor?"
"Something like that," Wu Tian said.
They haggled in the way men do when they aren't really haggling—discussing effort, material, and how much of each could be spared without regret. By the time the sun had climbed a finger width, Old Bai had a list, a look, and a job he would pretend to grumble about while secretly taking pride in every clean edge.
Aunt Mei met them at the compound gate with a ladle like a scepter. "You're collecting more trouble," she said. "At least trouble burns calories. Eat."
They ate. Soup thin enough to look through, bread that fought back. It was fuel, not pleasure. He'd learned on Earth that fuel was what made the next hour possible.
After, he walked the family heads through his idea: a public weighing day at the temple steps. Every measure checked, every sack weighed against stones the temple would keep. No more sacks that left heavy and arrived light. No more measures that changed with the month.
"This is theater," the fisherman said, though his eyes had the hungry light of a man who wanted the play to end differently for once.
"It's accounting," Wu Tian said. "We make their shortcuts expensive."
Madam Lin folded her arms. "You will humiliate men who prefer humiliation private. Bring rope to the square, not for fighting but for pulling carts. If they try to leave, you pull them back. And put your Wu boys between the scales and the knives."
"We're not boys," Wu Ping muttered.
"You are until you come home with wives and bills," Aunt Mei said, and lobbed him a roll he caught without looking.
They set the day—two mornings hence, when even the careful would have heard about it. The monk agreed to hold the steps and keep the temple seal in sight where everyone could see who indorsed the stones. He did not say which side the temple took. He didn't have to.
At dusk, Qiao Ren leaned against the pear tree like a shadow remembering it had bones.
"You've learned to swing a ledger," he said.
"Numbers are what the Chen taught me to fight," Wu Tian said. "I'm just painting with their brush."
"They will answer with ink sharper than men think ink can be," Qiao Ren said. "If your weights make thieves look clumsy, they'll simply write a story where you stole the scale."
"Let them," Wu Tian said. "People in town can still count. They'll see who's talking too much."
Qiao Ren's gaze moved to the well at the edge of the courtyard. "Watch your water," he said, almost idly. "Men who write lies are often willing to mix them."
"Poison?" Wu Feng asked, appearing with a spear and the particular expression of a man who disliked indirect nouns.
"Plenty cheap, if you don't plan to drink it yourself," Qiao Ren said. "Corpse moss steeped in nightwater. Smells like old pennies and looks like regret."
"We'll watch," Wu Tian said.
That night he did not sleep much. He sat under the pear tree and drilled breath until the world settled into a circle. The heat in his belly rose and leveled. Qi Sight whispered a thin map: the well-water's slow flow; the loose peg in the third brace on the gate; the ache in Wu Feng's knee tightening when the air turned colder toward dawn. He didn't chase the barrier to the next realm. He pressed against it the way you press a bruise to learn its edges, then left it alone. He had stacked boxes all night on a warehouse floor once, learning that hurrying made you slower.
Toward midnight, footsteps. Not loud. Not careful enough.
He moved before the sound made a decision. Pulse Step slid him along the wall's shadow. The well's silhouette cut a circle out of the night. A shape crouched there with a jar, moving like a man whose work had always been done in other people's houses.
Wu Tian didn't shout. He went forward and made the world small. The man twisted, blade flicking in a practiced arc meant for throats. Iron Grip locked Wu Tian's hands where sweat wanted to ruin him; the blade rasped past his cheek, scraping skin. He smelled copper, the penny tang Qiao Ren had named. He brought the spear's shaft down at the man's wrist; bone complained and let go.
The man rolled. Good. Not retainer good; one town over good. He came up and threw powder—not in Wu Tian's face, but at his feet, where the cloud would rise on the next breath. Wu Tian stepped, felt the puff kiss his calves, and didn't inhale until the air thinned. The man saw he'd missed and adjusted, quick mind refusing to argue with facts. He lunged for the jar.
Wu Tian planted and drove a heel into the jar instead. Clay burst. A dark slurry washed across stone and into nothing good. The smell was nausea. The man swore, a little too casual for a hired nobody, and slashed again, deeper, this time for tendons.
Flowing Strikes did what it promised. Wu Tian's spear butt met the man's knuckles, then danced up to tap the line under the ear where breath stutters when pain shows up with no explanation. The man sagged and then rallied by reflex, pain making decisions his mind couldn't. He raked the blade across Wu Tian's forearm. Heat flared. Blood slid. Minor Blood Surge woke fully, not a blaze but a narrowing of the world to what mattered: center of gravity, angle of blade, the fact that the man's breathing hitched every time his left foot took weight.
Wu Tian rode the breath. He stepped into the man's space, forearm to wrist, hips turning. The knife scraped harmlessly across cloth. He used the hard circle of the well as a partner that did not object. A twist, a shove, and the man's face met stone. Bones knocked, breath snapped, the blade fell with a clatter.
"Names," Wu Tian said, voice quiet.
Silence.
He pinned the man's arm at an angle that suggested the future would be different if the present made a bad choice. "Names."
The man spat blood onto stone and said nothing. He was brave enough to keep lying; cowardly enough to poison a well. Those combinations were familiar.
Boots. Wu Feng and Wu Ping arrived without fanfare. Aunt Mei with her pan, hair loose, eyes unforgiving. Wu Liang with rope and the competence of a man who had practiced knots because practicing something is a way to convince yourself the world can learn.
They trussed the man and hauled him inside. Aunt Mei doused the well with buckets until the smell thinned. After a moment she brought mint leaves and crushed them underfoot at the well's lip like a refusal.
Wu Tian washed the cut on his forearm in boiled water until it stung in a way that felt honest. Minor Recovery did its work—edges knitting, swelling tamping down. The jar's bruised taste lingered on his tongue as if the air itself had been seasoned.
"We hang him?" Wu Ping asked, practical and not entirely joking.
"No," Wu Tian said. "We write him down."
They sat the man in a chair in the courtyard and tied him to it so he wouldn't forget he stayed. When the first gray of morning came, dawn found the scene ready for an audience.
People gathered, as people always do when a story is available. They came with excuses—milk to deliver, nets to mend—and stood anyway. The magistrate's clerk arrived late enough to be outraged and early enough to pretend it had been his idea. Two retainers flanked him with the bored expressions of men who assume their workday will end with a meal.
Wu Tian said nothing at first. He picked up his brush and wrote on the inner wall, neat as balance sheets.
Attempted well-poisoning, midnight. Jar broken, poison spilled. Culprit tied. Witnesses: Wu, neighbors, dawn.
He left a space and turned to the man in the chair. "Speak," he said.
The man stared back, jaw set.
The monk arrived without hurry. He stood by the steps as if they had opinions. Qiao Ren watched from the shade of a stall that smelled like oil and respect.
"Speak," Wu Tian said again, and not because he needed the name. He needed the town to hear a voice.
The man's mouth stayed shut. He had the look of someone who had already been paid and was content to keep the bargain. Wu Tian could respect that and still consider it stupid.
Old Bai heaved up the weights he'd finished by midday: iron puck, iron block, iron brick, each stamped with the temple's seal—circle within circle, simple enough that a man couldn't argue with the shape. The crowd murmured at the sight, a new toy in a town that had learned to clap without hands.
"We'll use these tomorrow," Wu Tian called out. "Every sack, every measure, weighed where Heaven can count with us." He pointed at the man in the chair. "This is the other plan. If ink fails, they poison. If poison fails, they'll come with fire. If fire fails, they'll come with friends they paid extra. Understand that before we begin."
Aunt Mei planted a hand on the chair's back. "You tried to make our children drink death," she told the man. "You did it quiet like someone folding laundry. I would like to hit you with this pan. I won't. Because I promised my late husband I'd use my temper on things that deserve fixing."
The man flinched—first crack. Aunt Mei could do that to stone.
The clerk cleared his throat, decided he'd earned the right to speak. "This is a dangerous slander," he announced. "The magistrate will not stand—"
"We found him at our well," Wu Feng said, voice flat. "We pulled the jar from his hands."
"Liars," the clerk snapped.
The monk's voice cut the air without raising. "Bring the jar."
Wu Ping produced the shards from a sack with the theatrical disappointment of a boy whose toy had been mistreated. The monk bent close, sniffed once, and did not show what he felt about the smell. He looked up at the clerk. "Whoever poured this into the well wished to kill. That is not a religious opinion. It is a fact."
The clerk blanched and tried a different script. "It may be a misunderstanding," he said, aiming for reasonable and landing in puddle. "We should all remain calm."
"We remained calm last night," Wu Liang said, which made a boundary in the air.
The man in the chair weighed his life and decided to spend a few words to buy it longer. "Not Chen," he rasped. "Not… retainers."
"Who, then?" Wu Tian asked.
"River lot," the man said. "Hands who load for coin. Men who don't want new weights. Your weights." He tried to sneer and made a grimace instead. "We have a good thing with the bounce. Your stones kill it."
Bounced measures. Sacks that weighed heavy when the seller agreed and light when the buyer took them home. Bottom-shaved scoops. The oldest theft, gentle enough to pass for forgetfulness.
"You'll speak names," Wu Tian said.
Silence again. The price he would pay for the next word had gone up.
Qiao Ren stepped out of the shade without asking anyone whether it was time. "He's lying and not lying," he said, friendly. "River hands were hired. But men who hate fair weights don't plan poison alone. The Chen will pay for a clean world where their dirt isn't seen." His gaze slid to the clerk. "Perhaps the magistrate's office can provide a list of men who were on duty last night and failed to be where their wives expected them."
The clerk found an indignation he could afford. "We are not a record for—"
"You are," Qiao Ren said, gentle. "That is exactly what you are."
The square laughed, not loud, not cruel. The clerk shut his mouth and looked like he chose to.
Wu Tian nodded to Wu Liang, who eased the ropes just long enough for the man to flex fingers and rediscover circulation. "You carry your choices," Wu Tian said to him. "I'm not asking you to change them. I'm asking you to say aloud what you did so the town can decide what it is now."
Something loosened in the man's face—not conscience, not confession. Resignation. He mumbled two names. The crowd took the syllables and made them heavy. Someone ran. Someone else stood. A woman went pale and then set her mouth.
"Tomorrow," Wu Tian called to the square, voice climbing. "Weights at the temple steps. Bring your measures. Bring your sacks. Bring your patience. If your weights are honest, we'll stamp them with the temple seal for all to see. If they're not—" He looked at the monk. The man inclined his head. "—we'll stamp them anyway, as lies. And then we'll keep a list."
The clerk tried to step into the quiet after that and found the quiet already taken. He left with the two retainers, not quite in a hurry but equally not in possession of the square. Qiao Ren went with the motion of men who belonged to no group and therefore had an easier time borrowing any of them. The monk collected the iron pucks with careful hands.
When the crowd thinned to the people who would have stayed anyway, Aunt Mei exhaled the kind of breath that empties a kitchen of bad smells. "We'll need more bowls," she said. "If the town is going to live long enough to be hungry."
After she chased the last gawkers off with a chair leg held like a sword, Wu Tian walked back to the pear tree and checked the cut on his forearm. Clean. Raw. Already less angry. Minor Recovery liked being given work.
Wu Feng came to stand; this time he didn't pretend he had just happened to wander there. "You're running a city of words," he said.
"I'm running a small truth and seeing if it's contagious," Wu Tian said.
Wu Feng grunted, which for him could mean approval, doubt, or both. "You push too hard, they'll come with somebody from higher up—someone with talent and a mood."
"Then we'll be polite," Wu Tian said. "And not die."
"Ambitious schedule," Wu Feng said dryly.
All afternoon they prepared. Old Bai delivered the rest of the set: weights for half-measures, quarter-scoops, tiny rounded stones that fit the little scales apothecaries used to shortchange prescriptions. He stamped each with the temple seal as the monk watched and muttered something about honesty being a religion. The weaver sent a length of sturdy canvas to act as a stage for the scale. The butcher met Wu Tian's eye and said nothing while he sharpened the blade he used to cut meat into the size that made men remember they were hungry.
Before sunset, a messenger from the magistrate's office delivered a scroll with careful offense. "The magistrate recognizes the temple's authority to bless measures," it said, all formal. "He does not recognize the Wu clan's right to adjudicate disputes."
Wu Tian dipped brush and wrote underneath, where everyone would see it: The temple blesses, the town judges, the Wu hold the line.
Then he sat and breathed until the thin tremor in his hands slowed. Minor Blood Surge left a residual hum under the skin that felt like the song a rail sings after a train leaves—quiet, insistent. The barrier to the next realm stood there in his belly, patient like a foreman with a clock. Not yet, it told him. Not while your lungs still smell like copper.
He slept three hours. It was enough because it had to be.
Morning came like a crowd opening its eyes. People brought scoops, jars, sacks. Some faces were defiant, some guilty, most worried about the cost of being seen. The Chen merchants arrived with retinue and polish; they looked at the iron stones the way a liar looks at a witness who won't forget names.
The monk stood by the scale. The temple seal lay on a cushion. Qiao Ren watched behind a line of fishermen. The clerk took a position that suggested authority and promised to uphold none.
"Temple first," Wu Tian said, and handed the monk a measure. The man weighed, set, stamped. The sound was a soft bang and a little puff, and the crowd found comfort in it right away. Stamp, stamp. Tea sellers first, because they had cups; apothecaries next, because they lived between sickness and cure; grain merchants after, because that was where it would hurt.
It hurt.
At the third sack, the weight supposed to be one measure came up light. Not a lot. Enough that a family's bowls passed a night thin. The merchant protested. The scale did not argue, it just sat there in a quiet that made the protest look loud.
"Stamp it as false," Wu Tian said.
The monk hesitated—then did. The seal hissed and bit. The crowd exhaled. Some cheered; the clerk tried to smile in a way that made it look like this had been the plan.
Then the fourth sack was correct. Then the fifth was light again. Then one was heavy, which made the square laugh because honest mistakes looked funny when the default had been theft. The heavy sack's owner blushed and took back the extra. The light sacks' owners did not blush, which was a lesson too.
A man shoved forward—a river hand, shoulders broad, jaw set. He thrust his scoop into the monk's hands, daring the seal. The scoop rang true. He looked genuinely surprised and then annoyed because being right by accident feels like a lie. He shoved a second scoop across. The seal kissed it. Also true. He stared and then looked behind him, face closing when two men he'd arrived with refused to meet his eyes.
"Where's the one you use at the docks?" Wu Tian asked.
The man held very still. The square held still with him.
"Bring it," Madam Lin said, voice the kind that had made children change direction for thirty years. "Or stay home next festival."
The man swallowed, the way you do when you realize which group you want to still eat with. He disappeared and came back with a scoop a shade smaller than its twin. The monk weighed it. The scale's arm settled on a truth everyone could see.
The monk lifted the seal, and the man nodded once. The stamp came down. A small hiss. A small mark. A small victory collected by a town that had learned to feel them.
The clerk unfurled a new scroll, ready to reclaim the stage with good paper. "By decree of—"
Old Bai coughed on purpose. The sound cut cleanly through the square. He pointed to another merchant whose sacks were consistently light by a finger-width. The merchant's ears went red; he whispered something to his apprentice that sounded like a bad instruction pretending to be a joke. The apprentice shook his head and looked at the ground.
"Stamp," the crowd chanted softly. Not loud. Not a riot. A civic act.
The monk stamped.
And then the Chen sent their play.
A young man in clean traveling robes parted the crowd with the kind of arrogance borrowed from upstairs. A narrow sword hung at his side; his hair was tied in the style of men who near mirrors more than windows. Behind him, two retainers made a path.
"Which of you is Wu Tian?" he asked, voice crisp. "I am Chen Hao, outer disciple of the Mountain River Hall. I am here to challenge you before the temple as custom allows, to settle this unrest with proper contest."
Wu Tian tasted the words like old tea. Duel by custom—legal theater that allowed the strong to frame resistance as impiety when it lost and order when it won. If he refused, gossip would make it treason. If he accepted and lost, Chen ink could write the town back into silence.
Wu Feng's grip tightened on his spear. Wu Ping's sling rolled like a nervous habit.
The monk's expression did not change, which was its own opinion.
"Not today," Wu Tian said, and murmurs sparked like dry grass. He let them breathe three counts and then continued, voice clean. "Today belongs to the town. We weigh measures. We stamp truth. I will not turn a day of order into a day of blood. You want a contest? In three days. On the old training ground by the river. Not at Heaven's steps."
Chen Hao smiled in a way that had made more than one village girl angry with herself for a week. "You hide behind ink."
"I stand in front of it," Wu Tian said. "If you think I hide, you can say it again in three days when there's room for shouting."
The monk inclined his head, tiniest bow. "The temple approves. This is a day for weights."
Chen Hao's smile thinned. He looked at the clerk as if the man might produce a decree that made time reverse. The clerk found the exact right moment to remember an appointment elsewhere and failed to produce the paper. Chen Hao turned on his heel and left, but he left a promise behind him. The square felt it and decided to hold its cheer until it could be earned twice.
By noon the stamping was half done and the town's rhythm had found itself. Men who had stolen in handfuls out of habit trudged away red-eared, their scoops bearing a mark that would lose them profit and gain them possibility. Women who had counted bowls across months stood with arms folded and watched without mercy. Children memorized the sound of the seal.
After, after the square emptied, after the monk put the seal away as if tucking a sword into a scabbard and prayed the kind of prayer men make when they plan to work after, after Aunt Mei bullied three merchants into leaving meat behind "for the temple's soup which lives at my house," after Old Bai sat on his own crate and looked pleased to the point of dangerous health—after all that, Wu Tian went home and sat under the pear tree.
He did not try to break through. He did not push. He breathed and let the day stand up inside him. Qi Sight showed him the lines left by the morning—weights, measures, a town's lungs expanding, the way fear had slid back one foot and gotten ready to argue again later. Minor Blood Surge was quiet, a banked ember. Battle Trance was a memory of clarity he could borrow if he had to. The barrier to the next realm waited with the patience of a landlord who had learned a rent schedule by heart.
"You're napping with your eyes open," Wu Ping said, flopping down and stealing a heel of bread from a basket that had been guarded poorly.
"I'm resting like an adult," Wu Tian said.
"Adults snore," Wu Ping said. "Do you think you can beat that pretty boy in three days?"
"Depends on the ground," Wu Tian said. "Depends on whether he's as good as his haircut."
"You'll need a new trick," Wu Feng said, seating himself with the careful disrespect of a painful knee. "Sword boys love clean lines. Mess up the lines."
"Rope," Wu Liang said, from a neat coil that had not formed by accident.
"Not at the temple," Wu Tian said. "At the river it's just water and mud and whatever we bring."
Aunt Mei thumped them all with a spoon considerate of skulls. "You will eat hot food before you plan hot death," she said. "I am not feeding a wake because you wanted to be clever on an empty stomach."
They ate. It tasted better than it had any right to taste—thin soup, tough bread, the feeling of a morning banked as credit against an afternoon that might spend it too fast.
Later, when shadows were long and the square had traded noise for the soft scuff of evening, Qiao Ren came to the gate and tapped it with one knuckle.
"Three days," he said. "You know what that means."
"A lot can change in three days," Wu Tian said.
"A lot can break," Qiao Ren said. "The Chen will not send a fool. Chen Hao will be High Talent or better, trained smooth. He will aim to beat you fast and clean, because a long fight tells a story and he does not like the plot you write."
"Then I will make it long and ugly," Wu Tian said.
Qiao Ren's mouth did a small thing that could be affection if you were generous. "You're very good at expensive," he said. "Try not to die being thrifty."
"I'll charge for the attempt," Wu Tian said.
Qiao Ren's gaze slid past him to the weights stacked by the door. "The standard of stone," he said softly. "It seems small. It isn't. You understand why?"
"Because it makes cheating public," Wu Tian said. "No room to pretend."
"Because it lets people be honest without having to be brave every time," Qiao Ren said. "Bravery is a currency too. Towns run out if you force them to spend it on every purchase."
He left before Wu Tian could decide if that was wisdom or warning. It could be both.
Night found the pear tree. Wu Tian settled under it like a man returning to a table where a friend was waiting. He breathed. The heat rose. The barrier in his belly softened a hair's width, as if time had decided to meet him halfway because he had spent it loud in the morning. He didn't chase. He held the edge and let it teach him the shape of the door.
Tomorrow, he would drill until his feet found mud without looking. He would spar with Wu Feng with a stick against a sword-length of wood until timing was a thing in his bones, not his head. He would ask Old Bai to show him where a blade chips if you hit it wrong and how to make "wrong" look like "sudden." He would have Aunt Mei boil willow until his arm stopped arguing and started agreeing. He would have Wu Liang tie a loop under his elbow that let his spear hand torque without feeling like a need.
He would make the fight long. He would make the lines messy. He would make the river part of his plan. He would write the next chapter with sweat and patience and make the Chen pay for commas.
He was Low Talent.
He had a town with a seal and a wall that did not wash.
He had a family that stood where he asked and argued when he needed it.
He had a fight in three days he could not afford to lose.
He closed his eyes and let breath pull the world into a circle again.
For now, it was enough. And tomorrow, he would make more.