The wall kept its temper. The square breathed like something taught.
"Bone Ravine," Li Jianguo said, not loud. "Cull team - move."
No drums. No speech. Just bodies that already knew which way to lean.
Rana lifted a coil and a sack of iron bits. Yu Peng checked his blade and the edge checked him. Lin Chen arrived with a notebook he had turned into a map by making the white parts important. Wang Lili tore a page from her board and clipped it to a smaller plank - mobile ledger. Dr. Zhang tossed a pouch that said fix small holes fast. Wang caught it and slid it under his belt.
They stepped through the Level-1 barrier one by one, the air thick for a blink and then ordinary. Grass hissed at calves. The moons made soft knives of every blade.
"Left eyes," Li said as the group elongated into a purposeful snake."Clear," a runner answered."Right eyes.""Clear-ish," Yu Peng said, because he didn't believe in perfect."Middle.""Here," Wang said.
They followed a faint dip where water remembered how to move in other seasons. The ravine announced itself by smell before shape - mineral and old bone - then opened as a narrow cut that ran like a seam through the veld. Thorns leaned over its lip, and carrion birds lifted heads as if embarrassed to have been caught waiting.
Rana crouched and put her palm on stone. "Frame here," she said. She didn't ask for permission. She didn't say why. She knew how to make ground keep a promise.
Lin Chen tapped his notebook. "Trip-lines at one and seven body-lengths from the bend - stagger the heights - twenty centimeters and knee." He drew a quick rectangle and shaded corners. "Funnels like this - push to the spikes, not past them."
"English," Rana said without heat."Make the ravine a queue," Lin said. "Edges that decide for them."
They worked without theater. Rana ran twine from stake to stake, tested with her thigh, adjusted with her fist. Yu Peng cut poles that wanted to be braces and taught them obedience. Wang hammered a wedge with a stone because sometimes a stone is the right tool. Iron teeth - bone-spike frames lashed with twine - leaned in at angles that made wolves dislike choices.
"Bell wire," Lin said. "High enough to sing before we see."Rana threaded little stones through loops so bells wouldn't chatter lies. She tied each knot with a habit that despised cleverness.
"Ledger starts now," Wang Lili said at the ravine mouth, pencil ready. "Names, roles, counts. Hunters' sacks weighed going in - weighed coming out. Village share on the tarp. Hunters' share on the tarp. No hands cross tarps."
"Cross my tarp and I'll staple your fingers to the ledger," Rana said lightly, and four men decided they liked both women immediately.
Li checked the sky like it had a watch face. "Pull," he said.
They didn't use a child's cry. They used something meaner and truer - the scent of meat hung low in a torn sack and the faint rattle of bones in a bucket. Rana tapped the bucket twice against stone. The notes traveled down the cut like a rumor that promised work, not glory.
The first gray showed as if it had thought of this place on its own. Then two. Then four. Cautious - not stupid.
"Let them teach themselves," Li said.
A paw found the low line at knee height and taught its owner the lesson of falling in public. The line sang the small bell and everyone in the ravine knew everything at once. Wolves tried to fan left - the spikes asked them to reconsider. A young gray tried to jump high - found the upper line and remembered gravity in front of friends.
"Finish clean," Li said.
The cull wasn't a war. It was work. A step, a cut, a pull - no shouting, no chasing - the blade as sentence, not story. Wolves that made it past the first line found the second and learned humility. Wolves that made it to the brace found their own weight turned against them gently, like a teacher who still liked them.
"Down," Rana said when wood complained, and Yu Peng slid to relieve a brace. Wang took the opening and ended a gray with one line of steel and no flourish. He did not vanish. He did not blink. He knew where feet live and put his own there first.
Crystals began to clink into sacks in a rhythm that felt like income. Wang Lili marked tallies with a small sound of lead on wood. Lin Chen timed springs and resets - trip-lines learned their jobs like apprentices.
"Left flank," Li called, just once, and three bodies became a wall without conversation. A pair of wolves tried to make clever happen at the bend - the spikes let them discover that clever is expensive. The bell wire sang again, then went quiet as the line learned.
"Village tarp," Lili said, and Old Ma - who had decided his job was to be gravity - spread canvas and held corners with his hands. Bodies came out to one side. Knives worked. Crystals clinked to left tarp - right tarp - left - right - each drop announced aloud because saying a number makes it belong. "Two to village, one to hunter," Lili said, because Li had said it three minutes ago and now it was law.
It went well until greed decided to try its luck.
He Qiang appeared at the mouth of the ravine like weather learning to be a man. Not an ambush - a stroll. He didn't walk on either tarp. He walked between and smiled as if he could calm arithmetic.
"Don't crowd the line," Li Jianguo said without looking up.
"Just helping carry," He Qiang said, and his hand did exactly that - lifted a sack from a hunter who looked grateful to be lighter. Five steps later the sack relaxed by Gao Fei's feet where a second table had arrived with quiet cleverness - water, a cloth, a pen that wasn't Lili's. The pen wrote a number that didn't go to any board.
"Back," Lili said, voice mild. Her pencil didn't pause. "That's village tarp."
"Flow," He Qiang said pleasantly, putting the sack down in the wrong place and patting it like a dog that had done a trick.
Wang saw the angle from three details - the pen without a board, the new cloth that wanted to be a table, the way two men pretended to be resting exactly where a line could form.
He didn't look at Gao. He walked to the sack and lifted it back to the village tarp as if it were simply heavy and he had hands. He Qiang let him - then set his palm on Wang's shoulder without squeezing. A test, not a fight.
"Friend," He Qiang said, smile easy. "Don't make me look like an ass in front of my boss."
"Don't make the ledger look hungry in front of the village," Wang said, same mild.
The space around them thickened the way air does when people fear they will be asked to choose a team with their faces.
Li Jianguo didn't rush the moment. He watched if the village could keep its own rules without being told.
He Qiang moved his hand from shoulder to wrist - not a grab, a caution. "We can do this neat," he said. His fingers were the size of decisions.
Wang stepped half a shoe to the left and turned his wrist the way you open a jar no one else can open. The hold dissolved like bad string. He put his other hand on the sack and did nothing else that could be named. The move looked like politeness if you wanted peace - like a promise of embarrassment if you wanted a fight.
He Qiang blinked. Something old in him respected the trick and resented the audience. He tested again - a little faster, a little harder - the start of a shove he could apologize for later.
Wang arrived where the shove wanted to land before it landed. He set his foot where He Qiang's weight wished it had been, encouraged a half-step that put the big man off his own spine, and placed two fingers against a tendon that whispered stop to the rest of the arm. The gesture was so small it couldn't be called force.
"Walk it back," Wang said softly enough that only He Qiang heard.
A wolf bell sang as if to mark the beat. The line finished a pair of grays that had failed the lesson. Rana tightened a knot with her teeth and spat twine.
"Gentlemen," Gao Fei said finally - all hospitality. "No need to bruise our good work. I'm only making sure the hunters aren't punished for winning."
"Nobody punishes hunters," Wang Lili said, still writing. "We pay them with numbers, not favors."
Gao spread his hands. "Then post my numbers too. I'll run an auxiliary table - speed, not theft."
"Post to my board or it isn't math," Lili said. She tapped the small plank. "Your pen writes prettier - mine counts."
Li let two more wolves become meat before he spoke. Then: "Temporary split - two village, one hunter - holds until dawn. Auxiliary table stands if it posts to Lili's board. He Qiang - hands on wolves, not sacks. Anyone touching tarps without saying the number goes home without a share."
He didn't raise his voice. The ravine carried it to every ear because everyone wanted a rule to be guilty under.
He Qiang looked at Wang's fingers still resting against nothing in particular and found they were sufficient reason to comply today. He rolled his shoulders like a man who had remembered a different job and went to drag a carcass with a grunt that let the fight leak out into the stones.
"Bell," Lin Chen warned, and a new pair of grays tried the bend and learned the same old lesson. The line finished them. Old Ma held the canvas with a palm that was a village in miniature. Yu Peng laughed once - not joy - kinetic relief that the math had worked.
Crystals clinked in their rhythm. "Village," Lili called, dropping two on the left tarp. "Hunter," and one on the right. She wrote names - not all the way, only the parts people wanted to be known by - and the ravine remembered who had done what today.
Gao Fei stood near enough to smell the meat and far enough to disclaim ownership if the ledger bit. He adjusted his smile by increments and stacked jars on his auxiliary table like patience. His eyes kept count of favors owed and not yet asked.
The cull wound down not because the ravine had run out of wolves - because the sky had shifted tone and the birds had hunched like a sentence bracing for a comma.
The new sound came soft and low - not the silver needle of pups, not the eager drum of the pack. A depth. A metronome that the bones felt first.
Wang looked up the cut where thorn leaned. A silhouette paused just beyond the lip - wider shoulders, slower breath - the kind of presence that made younger bodies behave without understanding why.
No one said Level-2. The ravine said it for them by remembering to be quiet.
"Reset what we can," Li said. He did not hurry. He did not let his voice change shape.
Rana's hands moved faster anyway. Lin's pencil drew a new rectangle that accounted for weight. Lili pinned the last receipt of the run and wrote one extra word under village: enough. She underlined it once because the word liked the attention.
Wang stepped without making it look like stepping, bringing himself to the point of the bend where a heavier thing would test a rule it wasn't afraid of. He let his hand rest on the top of a stake as if it were there to be leaned on.
Outside the cut, the deep howl rolled again - a measured thing - and all the small bells along the wire forgot they existed.