The mountain was still gray when I woke, the world drawn in charcoal and chill. The barracks breathed around me—snores, a wet cough that lost its way, the rustle of a blanket turning over a bad dream. I slipped from my bunk.
Silent Step didn't make me a ghost; it made me polite. Weight placed where boards forgave, breath folded around ribs, robe hem taught not to gossip. Outside, pine and wet stone met me like clean coin.
At the training yard, old posts leaned together, conspirators from a younger sect. I faced the mist and began.
Body Tempering: push breath like a bellows, coax the furnace, flush the grit that clogs bones and temper. Yesterday's reward—the faint sense for impurity—lived like a low note under loud noise. I found it and followed.
My arms warmed first, a slow burn under the skin. A throb near the right kidney pulsed, stubborn. I nudged breath that way without force. Sweat came, honest and a little metallic, like rust washed off a blade. My mind settled into the careful boredom of work done right.
Body Tempering Progress:
Stage: 2 (57% → 60%)
Modifiers:
Impurity Node Sense (+1% efficiency)
Silent Step integration (+micro-stability; lowers wasted motion)
Expected daily gain at current discipline: +1–2%
Two percent is a cliff when you've stared at flat land for years. I smiled despite the ache.
By first smoke from the cookhouse chimneys, my robe was damp and my patience stretched thin. I washed at the well. The cold bit kindly.
Auntie Wen sat on her low stool outside the barracks, mending a sleeve with a needle too fine for the weather. Not anyone's aunt by blood, but the way she scolded stains made the title stick. Her bun held together by stubbornness.
The strings around her were a thicket. White threads to half the barracks—small trades of patching and patience. One red thread cut across them toward the inner path. Ma Long's boys had "borrowed" her labor for "sect contribution," and threatened to throw her stool off the mountain if she called it what it was.
"Auntie Wen," I said, crouching so the words wouldn't travel. "Still two coppers a sleeve?"
"Two," she said, stabbing the thread through cloth with more force than it deserved. "Three if you bleed on it."
"You're still sewing for free when they demand 'rent help,'" I said—light, but with enough weight for the strings to answer.
Her needle paused. She watched my face the way someone watches a window for a shadow.
"They told me," she muttered, voice low, "the inner mountain grows tall when the outer bows deeper. They take my thread and call it virtue. If I complain, I can sew outside the gate." Her eyes lifted. Sharp. Wet. "Call it what you want. I call it coercion."
Special Collection Path: Proxy Petition
Requirement (1/3): Testimony acknowledging rent is coercive
Recording Mode: Open (speaker must speak clearly within Ren Yi's witness)
Optional: Anonymize speaker? (Yes/No). Cost/Benefit: -10% success vs. Inner Disciple pushback; +10% speaker safety
Yes.
Warmth brushed the corner of my vision. Auntie Wen exhaled without knowing why.
Testimony Recorded: 1/3
Speaker: [Anonymized: Outer Quarters Seamstress]
Quality: Clear (A)
Side Reward: Docket Page (x1) — A system page only witnesses you invite can see.
"Thank you," I said.
Auntie Wen snorted. "Don't thank me; I've no coin to pay you back." She shoved a patched robe at my chest. "You bled on this yesterday. Two coppers. Don't make me charge you three."
I laughed, paid her in thanks she pretended not to hear, and headed toward the cookhouse.
Steam hung stubbornly below the rafters. Porridge smelled like water regretting its life choices. Bowls knocked together with the music of mornings made to be endured. Liu Dazhi—round face, big heart that bruised easily—held his bowl like a shield.
Red thread tied him backward to a sack in the contribution hall—pills traded away to meet "rent." His training would slow, then fail, then make him easy to shake for more.
"Dazhi," I said, stepping beside him. "Did you pay rent with your Body Tempering pills?"
His laugh faltered. Eyes cut to the doorway where a patrol might stroll by. "Who's asking?"
"A friend," I said. "And a collector of words."
He blinked. "Collector of… words?"
"Say it with me," I said, keeping my tone as bland as porridge. "The rent is coercive."
His gaze stuck to his bowl until the porridge stopped its small waves. His jaw flexed. "Coercive," he said finally. "They gave choices: stones or pills or bruises. Choices with knives are still knives."
Testimony Recorded: 2/3
Speaker: [Anonymized: Outer Disciple, Kitchen Queue]
Quality: Clear (A-)
Option: Convert to Crowd Whisper (aggregate 3–5 similar statements nearby into one robust testimony). Use now?
Yes.
I turned enough to catch the wiry boy behind him. "You?"
He flinched, then nodded once. "Coercion. Pay or get unlucky." The word came like pulling a thorn, expecting blood.
A girl with a little scar like a comma near her mouth—Yun Qiaolian, they called her Little Yun when they forgot she had teeth—tipped her chin. "Coercion," she said, not loud, not soft, like setting a stone where it belonged.
Crowd Whisper Activated. Aggregating…
Testimony 2 upgraded to: Robust (A)
Hidden Effect: +2% chance Elder considers aggregated testimony credible when presented via Docket
A palm tapped the back of my head: not hard, not friendly. I turned.
Chen Wu wasn't fat with bad food like Bao Lei; he was lean with bad habits. Runner's build, knife-fighter's stance. It was all in how he let his weight float over one foot and then the other as if rhythm itself owed him. A flash of silver at the robe hem. He liked luck.
"Collecting words?" he asked, almost amused. "I've got one: kneel."
"Two words," I said. "Generous."
A tiny crack curved his mouth. The strings around him were noisy. Favors squeezed, promises dangled. One thread glinted different—tangled with Auntie Wen. He'd borrowed a fine spool and fed her 'tomorrow' twice.
Debtor Identified: Chen Wu
Minor Karmic Debt: 1 high-quality spool of thread borrowed (Auntie Wen). Verbal promise "tomorrow" x2. Status: Past Due.
Optional: Issue Notice of Collection (Proxy) on behalf of Seamstress?
Issue.
Chen Wu's fingers brushed his neck like a gnat bit him. His pupils tightened. "Kneel," he repeated, less edge.
"Return her spool," I said, conversational as weather. "Apologize for the delay. Two days."
He leaned in. Breath mint-sour with iron at the edges. "Since when does an outer-rat tally for sewing grannies?"
"Since Heaven does," I said before I could swallow the line. Then lighter: "Since honesty is fashionable. You could start a trend."
Heads turned, the kind of attention he counted like coins. He drummed fingers on his bowl, weighed the audience, and flicked a smile like a blade's flat.
"Apology today," he said. "Spool tomorrow."
Debtor Acknowledgment: Accepted.
Collection Mode: Public apology OR return item within 24 hours
Side Effect: Debtor caution vs. Collector increases short-term
"Good taste," I said.
His eyes flattened. "Bad weather's coming if you keep asking rent its real name. Bring a roof."
"I'm learning carpentry," I said, and kept my back straight as he drifted off like a shadow that had learned to walk.
I ate fast, left a quarter of porridge on a stone for passing gods or rats with better sense, and headed to the herb terraces.
The terraces climbed the mountain like steps into a cleaner sky. Elder He's hut crouched at the top like a rock that had learned patience. He walked the rows with the care of someone who remembered each plant's first leaf. His hair was fog; his hands were clean knowledge.
No red threads tethered him. Gold crisscrossed like sunlight caught in old water. The ledger did not chirp tips. It only went very, very quiet.
I worked three rows behind him, careful with crowns and roots. The quest pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Bailiff in the Barracks
Testimonies: 2/3 (Docket Pages: x1)
Elder Witness: Not yet secured
Time remaining: 6 days, 11 hours
Secure a witness. The ledger said Elder He was acceptable. The mountain said: Don't be a fool about who you ask to see ink.
Opportunity did not knock; it tripped. Two juniors lugged a sack uphill, the kind full of rent that rattled like teeth. One slipped. A spirit stone popped free and bounced toward the yangroot bed where it would drag the soil's temper sideways for weeks.
Silent Step taught more than silence. It taught where not to plant your foot. I slid into the bed between the roots, plucked the stone before it bit down, and held it up so light ran through it like water.
"Watch your feet, fool—" the junior began.
"Watch your sack," I said, mild. "It's overeaten fear. It's leaking."
Elder He stopped.
He turned, slowly, as if the air had requested care. His gaze took in the stone, the sack, the juniors' faces, then rested on mine. He didn't look at the hands I held in front of me, where the ledger said a Docket Page weighed the morning down.
"What did you say?" he asked, soft enough to make wolves bristle.
I bowed. "Elder, some outer disciples have spoken. That rent is collected as coercion. I ask you to witness a record of their words. Anonymized."
His eyes weighed me, not the air between my palms. After a silence stretched thin and thinner, he extended two fingers and touched what only we two could feel.
The Docket Page unfurled like a transparency in sunlight, all ink and edges only witness and petitioner could see. His gaze moved with the same patient care he gave first leaves.
When he finished, he breathed out through his nose like a kettle considering a boil. "Coercion," he said, the word simple because it fit. "I witness these words were spoken."
Elder Witness Secured: Elder He
Bundle Validated: 2/3 Testimonies + Witness
Interim Reward: Investigator's Thread — +10% chance to reveal hidden clause in an unfair practice (one-use)
He looked at the juniors. "Stones don't sprout anew when spilled," he said. "Unlike boys, who can learn." He moved on, the world relaxing a fraction around his back.
I slid the rescued stone into their sack in a way they couldn't pretend not to see. Their faces wore a thin film of fear.
My hands shook only when Elder He shrank to a careful shadow at the top of the terrace. The Investigator's Thread sat in my mind like a spool waiting for a knot to offer its throat.
One more testimony.
I found it where gossip and shame ran downhill together—the latrine path. Little Yun leaned against the wall, fists tight, chin up. A fresh bruise bloomed high on her cheek, purple punctuation under a sentence she hadn't finished.
"Who?" I asked.
"Bao Lei," she said. Voice steady. "He said my brother broke a bucket, so our rent is double for the month because 'discipline tax.' I asked double what. He slapped me."
The red string that tethered Bao Lei to me thrummed, plucked by his own habits.
"Do you want him to apologize?" I asked. "Public, with witnesses."
"I want him to bruise," she said, even. "But I'll take an apology. With witnesses." She straightened away from the wall. "Say it. Make it count."
"The rent," I said, keeping my tone from flinching, "is coercive?"
She looked at me with a clean clarity anger sometimes grants. "What else? Give me the word that makes it right."
Testimony Recorded: 3/3
Speaker: [Anonymized: Outer Disciple, Scarred Cheek]
Quality: Clear (A)
Quest Updated: Bailiff in the Barracks — All requirements met.
Submit Petition?
Requirements: Docket Pages (x1–x3), Elder Witness (Secured), Venue: Hall of Internal Affairs (morning hours)
Risk: Retaliation potential (Moderate). Suggested Protections: Leverage Bao Lei tether; Channel Elder He's acknowledgment.
One-use Aid Available: Investigator's Thread (Reveal hidden clause)
Yun watched me read a page only I could see and didn't ask. "You going to swing at the Hall?" she said.
"Yes."
"Good." She nodded once, a soldier to a plan. "If they sneer, I'll bring faces. A bruise looks better than a ledger when truth is cheap."
The ledger, perhaps in a mood, flickered a hint I didn't expect.
Future Path Teaser: Heavenly Bond Contracts — Locked (Requires: Court of Vows encounter; Partners with lawful vows). Effects unknown. 0/5 bonds.
I tucked the hint away. Not now. Not yet.
We returned uphill with the gravity of tasks that wanted to be done. On the path, a Pill Hall apprentice in white-and-blue crossed the terrace, carrying a tray of porcelain vials as if the mountain balanced on them. She had a calm that didn't beg to be noticed. A name tugged at a memory not mine—Lin Xue. The ledger stayed quiet, like a clerk who has already sharpened a quill for later.
Near the outer gate, a girl with ink-stained fingers bartered with a caravaner over crates stamped with guild seals. Laughter bright, eyes checking sums faster than breath. The ledger gave me nothing but a sense the city had veins I hadn't mapped. Later.
Now: the Hall.
The day popped like dry pine on a fire. Rumors passed like coins. Bao Lei avoided me with the skitter of a roach that's learned the sound of a boot. Chen Wu didn't bother avoiding anything; he looked at me with the casual interest of a man who had drawn an outline and was waiting for a reason to fill it with chalk.
When the sun cut hard bars across the barracks, I lay on my bunk and stared at the beam where the ledger liked to hover.
Petition: Ready for Submission
Reward on Success: Heavenly Bailiff's Seal (Fragment) x1; +5% Collection Success vs. Higher Realm targets (3 days)
Hidden Clause: Investigator's Thread can expose a Bond Clause in Ma Long's practice. Use during submission to prompt Elder Council inquiry.
If this worked, I'd earn a fragment and paint a target on my back. If it failed, dust would settle—and dust kills slow. Collectors spend risk to buy leverage, then leverage to pay down fear. I folded the thought the way I folded breath for tempering.
Outside, the mountain exhaled. Inside, ink waited to bite.