He watched the unseen wall, and it watched him back.
The big gray paced the line where air thickened. Rush. Jolt. Recoil. Wang stepped into the beat, shouldered the bundle of dao-sabers, the straps biting into 73 crystals and 73 warm cores, and moved - no drama, no hurry. Wolves flared and slammed into nothing. Their barks skidded along the invisible plane and became spit.
The barrier accepted him like warm glass that thinks you belong. Inside: tents barely staked, tarps flapping like bad thoughts, a square churned to mud by panic. The night smelled of metal, smoke, and the acid of too many heartbeats in one place.
"Water!""Boil - no fuel -""Don't touch his neck - roll -"
Wang flowed with bodies, learned the new currents. Chromatic Camouflage didn't vanish him; it taught eyes to prefer other things. Behind the ration tent, a shallow rut where two stakes had refused earth offered a sly hollow. He knelt, tugged grass back by the roots, laid cloth, and set the bundled dao-sabers down with the patience you reserve for sleeping children. The cores went deeper, wrapped in a soap-clean shirt from the world before. The crystals he split - two small pouches (belt, boot) for "I have a little," the rest under canvas with a stone for memory. He smoothed the grass with careless hands. The ground forgot.
"Eyes up!" The tall man from the crate - Li Jianguo - stood where half the square already looked. "We need a triage lane. If you can't run or carry, you can hold and hand. Water - anything metal, three stones, short flame. Sentries - track, ball, or good night eyes? Walk the inside of the wall. If it sings, say singing and point. Do not go out."
Hands rose. Not enough. More than nothing.
A rectangle of canvas with a red scarf tied to a stake tried to be a clinic. Dr. Zhang Min had already made it obey. Blood to the wrists, clean behind the eyes. "Pressure here," she told a stranger; the stranger did it because her voice had gravity. She flicked a glance at a System Store pane only she could see. "Tape, gauze, scissors."
"Kid cluster here," Sun Jing called. Children and teenagers accreted, two boys tried to be walls and became chairs instead. Sun Jing sorted them with names and calm. Her eyes kept counting the gate.
At a folding table that had been a crate in a past life, Wang Lili conjured paper: notebooks, a marker, a clipboard that breeds lines. "Family names if you have them. Headcount by tent. Anyone with food - declare, we weigh." Gentle voice that let people be who they wanted their children to remember.
Wang let See Through Hearts lift a lens like heat on a road.
Li Jianguo: Resolve; hairline fear; no room for sleep later.Dr. Zhang: Steel and triage math.Sun Jing: Spend me last.Wang Lili: Ledger first; politics after; do not blink.Around them: Help because this feels like church; Help because if I stop I'll hear the wolves again; Help because eyes are on me.
He shuttered the lens. Too much truth makes slow hands.
The Level-1 barrier took a hit that everyone felt in the jaw. "Sing?" a runner called, uncertain. "Not sing," another answered. "Just angry."
A boy from the hunt stumbled in, scalp split, clutching an aluminum bat as if it were a passport. "I had -" The sentence blew away."Here," Dr. Zhang said, and his hands obeyed before his brain could. Wang was already there, passing gauze, then scissors, a shadow that had tasks.
Two pale moons climbed. A dented wok found three stones and decided to be a pot. A flame coughed and agreed to work.
A man with the wrong kind of smile arrived with He Qiang - shoulders wide, knuckles like punctuation. The man set down a wooden tray and it became a table because he placed it with confidence.
"Exchange," he said. Oil in the word. "Beast crystals for ration tokens. Tokens buy pooled Store access - faster, bulk rates, less waste. We keep the line moving." Gao Fei.
He didn't shout. He made listening feel like a favor he was doing you.
"Who authorizes tokens?" Wang Lili asked, pen already poised.
"Village, of course," Gao said, smile warm enough to soften iron. "Through you." He turned the warmth to her. "Ledger queen. Can't do it without you."
"Then we won't," Lili said lightly, without smiling back. "Receipts. Public board. No 'fees' unless voted."
"Tiny maintenance," Gao said, rolling the word like candy. "A skim so the table doesn't collapse. Buy tape with tape, you know?"
He Qiang set a palm on the table edge and made the wood look smaller.
Wang tested the stall. He drew one pouch, counted three crystals into his palm, and let them catch firelight like bait. "How many tokens?" he asked, voice middle-gray.
Gao appraised the chips, turned his smile down to businesslike. "At current burn? Three crystals buys you -" He named a number that hid a fee in its middle. Not obscene. Just addictive.
Wang tilted his head as if learning a new currency. "Receipt?"
"Of course," Gao said smoothly and produced one before Lili could. He Qiang's eyes tracked the crystals. Lili's pen scratched: a mirror of Gao's number, a note of difference, a tiny underline.
Wang took the tokens, pocketed two, left one on the table like a tip, and walked. He became background again, a useful smudge.
Canvas and shadow made a pocket wide enough for privacy. He opened the Store pane in the quiet of his head.
[Gold] 0 → Exchange → [Gold] 30[Purchase] Water filter x2 (basic).[Purchase] Field antiseptic pouches x6.[Purchase] Canvas roll (3×5m).[Purchase] Twine (heavy) x2 spools.[Confirm] Yes.
White icons ticked themselves into the world like simple decisions - weight in his pack, not spectacle in a square that had had enough of miracles.
He closed the pane and became hands again.
At the clinic, he set a canvas roll beside Dr. Zhang's foot, antiseptic pouches under her elbow, a pair of shears he hadn't bought but had somehow had. She didn't look up. "Filters next," she said to no one."Two," he said to the air, and left them by the water bin. A volunteer blinked at the gift and kept moving. Sun Jing got the twine spools with, "For lines and kids." She nodded once, serious as church, and tied a loop that would catch a running child without shaming them.
Back at the exchange, Gao Fei's table had grown a gravity well. People with shaking hands prefer to queue; it feels like a plan. He Qiang drifted sideways, intercepting, guiding, discouraging questions with a smile that had weight.
"Public board," Wang Lili said, and raised a sheet where numbers would learn honesty or be caught lying. "Post receipts. If you can't write, say your name and I will."
Gao's smile didn't change, but his eyes did the math: Not today, then. Later.
Wang ghosted the perimeter and listened to the village learn itself. Old Ma - hands like shovels - calmed elders into tasks that mattered: boil, tear strips, sit where watching helps. A teenager cried and pretended it was smoke. Two men argued about firewood and then went to get it together because their voices had embarrassed them.
The wolves tested the wall again. A shiver went through the square like a blade with cloth on its edge - still sharp if you lean. A runner hesitated."Walking is the job," Li Jianguo said without looking away from his count. "Don't make me say it twice." The runner walked.
Wang eased toward the barrier's inside curve where moonlight made faces honest. He let See Through Hearts flicker - just enough to check for rot. A man with a clean shirt and eyes that counted other people's pockets: opportunity first, then safety. A woman with a tight jaw: will break rules to feed two kids and confess later. He stacked these in his head like game pieces, not to punish - just to know where weight would tip.
He drifted back to the cache, not to fuss, only to make sure the earth still forgot the shape of dao-sabers and wealth. It had. The stone sat where he'd told it the story of its new job. He didn't touch it.
"Headcount!" Li Jianguo called. The word fell heavy. The square went quiet in the way crowds do when math is about to hurt.
Wang Lili raised the clipboard. "As of now: six hundred eighty-nine present. One hundred twelve injured, thirty-seven severe. Children… eighty-three signed to Sun Jing. Missing…" She didn't finish. The ink did. People learned the shape of the number by watching her face.
A sound like a held breath broke at the wall."*Sing - *?" a runner tried."Not sing," another said, firmer. "Just … learning our shape."
Gao Fei waited the respectful count of three, then lifted his voice like a hand. "With pooled tokens we can get proper tents, bulk meds, lanterns that sip, not drink. We need trust to move fast."
"Trust has a ledger," Wang Lili said, still gentle. She held up the board. Names, numbers, arrows. "We'll move fast where the village can see the ground."
Gao smiled and let the crowd choose the voice that felt like safety. He had patience; you could hear it in the way his shoes didn't scuff.
Wang carried a filter to the water bin and fitted it while a man with shaking hands tried to help but only managed to hold a cup at the right height. "There," Wang said, and the man nodded at there like it was a good word.
The big gray outside paced its lesson into younger bodies. It changed speed twice and watched who flinched at which rhythm. Behind it, a darker thing paced slower. Wang marked the silhouette and pretended not to.
"Lanterns high," Li Jianguo said, lifting one himself until the light made the square choose steadiness. "Sentries," he called, voice level. "Walk. Breathe. Name singing if you feel it. We hold here."
Lanterns rose. Feet started their loops along the inside of a wall you couldn't see.
The wolves answered the light with distance and promise.