The hall was a machine of moving light and pressure.
Cross-drafts breathed in measured pulses, snapping the low banners. Shutters rose and fell, carving corridors that opened and closed like gills. Brass rails shone with hand oil and chalk dust. Node carts rolled on polished wheels, their axles ticking like frantic clocks. Ropes hummed at the edges of the course—taut, tuned, unforgiving.
A He-line clerk stepped into Qin Ye's lane, slate out, chin up. "Lane reassignment. Dynamic routing. Please proceed to—"
"Clause 2.1," Qin Ye said without slowing. "Route parity stands."
The clerk's stamp hovered, then fell with a small, defeated thud. "Acknowledged."
The lane cleared in front of him like the surface of a quiet pond.
⸻
His shoulder brushed a cool metal nub in the gate frame, a protruding stud the color of old coins.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: Parity Gate Lintel Stud.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Gate Thread (Lv.1, 25 breaths — predict flip windows & cadence of multi-node gates) + Tri-Sign Beacon (1 use — force synchronized time-stamp across split nodes within line-of-sight).]
A thin line of timing threaded through his skull, crisp and bright. Somewhere deeper, a soft, public chime waited to knit three stamps into one.
He breathed 4-4-2, and stepped in.
⸻
Cluster A waited at the first turn: three palm-nodes in a shallow arc, each cycling amber-blue-green-green, the confirm window as brief as a blink. The rail carts on either side rolled in counter-time, casting flickering reflections across the metal skins of the nodes.
Lin Xiu slid in on Qin Ye's left, the step of her boot whisper-quiet. Yue Hong drifted to the right by proximity, jaw set, eyes tracking the colors with too much tension.
The Gate Thread slid a diagram into Qin Ye's awareness—the overlap would open, then knife shut. Twenty-five breaths. Nineteen. Twelve.
He raised his hand, and let the next exhale carry the count.
His left foot kissed the paint ring around his node.
"Clause 5.4," he said on footfall, Clause Weave binding the format to the step. "Format is valid if audible and logged."
Their palms landed as one.
The nodes sang green. Three circles on the Device Witness overlay pulsed in perfect alignment. A marshal blinked, then stamped, the face-slap quiet and public.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Cite on Step."]
[Reward: +160,000 Spirit Stones; Adjudication Timing +2% (situational).]
They moved as if the floor had a slope only they could feel.
⸻
A half-height shutter slammed down ahead, belching a dust gust that smelled of solvent. The corridor twisted left around an equipment pen; a two-panel station waited at the horn of the turn, panels out of phase by a breath and a half.
Lin Xiu matched Qin Ye's pace without a word. The Gate Thread tightened. There—the overlap would widen a hair on the third oscillation nothing else suggested.
"Pivot on my step," Qin Ye said, his first words since entry.
They fell into a Shadow Duet Step, weight turning on the same line. His right hand kissed the nearer plate as Lin's left reached the far. The green windows clipped together for the briefest possible legal instant. Their palms landed inside it.
A marshal raised a flag. "Asymmetric node timing requires independent verification!"
Qin Ye's next step struck the paint ring. "Clause 7.2. On-frame replay shows lawful sync within the green window." The words rode the strike; Clause Weave locked them to the moment.
The Device Witness orb rewound and slowed. Two green halos swelled and touched. The stamp fell.
They didn't look back.
⸻
The path narrowed. A node cart rolled alongside on its own rail, the target palm-plate drifting by on a lazy pendulum. Yue Hong reached, missed by a breath, and got a red flash and a tiny, humiliating ding in the log margin.
Qin Ye watched the cart's undercarriage. Tick—tick—tick. The Gate Thread marked the cadence a shade early. "Angle from the rail side," he said. "It resets on the third wheel tick."
Yue Hong cut left with a face that wanted to argue and couldn't. The third tick came; his hand landed; green chimed. A curt acknowledgement flicked across his eyes. The trio lengthened into a clean diagonal and held pace.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Correct a Drift."]
[Reward: +190,000 Spirit Stones; Procedural Aid +1% (situational).]
Ahead, a cross-draft indicator spun up from a dead stop.
⸻
The course tried to erase them.
A cross-draft hit, a slab of air that shoved from right to left with the weight of a thrown door. At the same breath, a rolling shutter slid down at waist height, its slotted steel half-hiding the Device Witness orb's line-of-sight.
Qin Ye and Lin Xiu folded into each other's angles, Shadow Duet Step stitching their feet to the same invisible seam. Their shoulders missed the shutter lip by a whisper. Yue Hong's angle widened under panic.
Qin Ye didn't speak. His baton brushed Yue Hong's sleeve with a lawful Blade Nudge, a non-damaging redirect that put the other man's hips back under him and kept the Device Witness view unbroken.
A clerk far down the rail raised his hand. "Halt for safety check—"
"Clause 7.1," Qin Ye said, breath on paint, citation on step. "Audits aren't interrupted by scheduled drills."
Stamp. "No halt."
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Duet Through the Split."]
[Reward: +170,000 Spirit Stones; Duo/Trio Timing +2% (situational).]
The shutter slid up behind them, angry and irrelevant.
⸻
At a choke node, a He-line aide in crisp sleeves tried to slide a body into the triangular space ahead, eyes on the clerk, mouth already forming "efficiency."
Qin Ye let his heel settle.
The Queue Lock Token flashed invisible to anyone but the log. The lane order froze with a soft, public chime. Three wrist passes registered a welded nanosecond across the choke.
The aide's smile died. The clerk's stamp came down, hard. The Device Witness overlay wrote the word PARITY across the frame and kept it there a breath too long.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Lock the Queue."]
[Reward: +150,000 Spirit Stones; Clerk Favor +1.]
Yue Hong didn't look at Qin Ye, but his next step matched the cadence without asking how.
⸻
Cluster C blinked to life like a lie.
Three sub-nodes, low and sleek, lit a faint green. A watermark crawled across the glass like oil catching light: Null Crest. The Gate Thread pushed warning pulses through Qin Ye's skull—cadence felt right, hash felt wrong.
A masked supersede ticked at the edge of the registry wall. Proc-Hub Δ whispered in the course code, re-route through ghost.
Qin Ye's left foot touched paint. "Clause 7.3." The words fell with the step, Clause Weave making them format-proof. "Supersedes are barred during public echo transmission."
The Live Ledger Bind at the far wall flared red. The ghost nodes wavered, then flattened into dead glass. The Device Witness stamped the mismatch hash in a corner of the frame and filed it where everyone could see it.
They passed the real nodes like they'd been born knowing where they were.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Deny the Ghost Node."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Chain Continuity +1 (situational).]
The cross-drafts shifted direction, not fast enough to matter.
⸻
The course's heart was a rotating hex.
Three dual-lobed nodes turned in a slow, linked spin around a central post, each demanding two palms while the other two rotated out of reach. Opponents to the left crowded the outer ring, trying to lean their legal shoulder angles into Qin Ye's space and force a desync or a petty reset.
Qin Ye stepped to the pivot.
Center Pin settled into his stance like a nail into seasoned wood. A press from outside turned into something to push against. When a body tried to lean a legal ounce too hard, Vector Lock drank the shove and returned it as root, the subtle planting giving Lin Xiu the perfect quiet half-step she needed to slide a hand through the turning gap.
The Gate Thread drew the rotation ahead in light and breath. He counted under the noise. "Now."
Lin's palm kissed the lobe just as Yue Hong's came down across the ring. Qin Ye's hand landed a half-beat offset at the exact middle of the spin and made the sequence lawful.
A judge's mouth opened for "reset"—and stayed that way. The Device Witness had watched the whole time. No contact with apparatus, no line-of-sight break, no cause. The stamp fell: proceed.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Vector Root Under Rotation."]
[Reward: +200,000 Spirit Stones; Center Retention +3% (situational).]
The hex turned out of their way like a door someone else chose to hold.
⸻
They ran clean.
No halts. No resets. Qin Ye counted his spoken clauses with a miser's care—five beats, three words each, each nailed to paint with Clause Weave. Less than a fistful; the rest, all motion.
The finish arch rose ahead—an old bronze lintel polished by generations of hands, Neutral Bell suspended above, its clapper a black cherry pit in a bright throat.
The registry wall flickered.
Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule: 24h
The hash was the same. Then, for a sliver of breath, a new fragment latticed onto its end, half a character like a nicked blade.
A command flashed like a reflex—revoke Tri-Sign auth—and hit the Live Ledger Bind like spit on iron. The bind flared red. Hash mismatch. Supersede denied.
The perfect triple-sync remained where the public could see it.
[Ding! Optional Objective completed: Finish Multi-Node Run with zero halts, zero resets, ≤3 spoken citations.]
[Reward: Technique Cache (procedural/route, unlocked).]
A small box opened in his mind. Two options glowed, clean as tools in a drawer:
Triad Pulse — 20 breaths of trio cadence lock that resists gate desync (public, legal).
Node Weave — bind node confirm to footfall cadence; widen confirm windows by a hair (logged).
He chose Node Weave. The knowledge ran down his shin and into the ball of his foot like mercury, slick and exact.
⸻
The course exhaled.
A clerk tried to rise into the lane with a "post-run verification"—Qin Ye didn't even look. The stamp fell behind him as if stamped by gravity.
They slowed past the arch, stride for stride for stride.
The standings board thudded into final position for the day. Qin Ye's name took the top row, etched in light. Lin Xiu's sat just below, two columns away. Yue Hong's line climbed higher than morning—his earlier variance note offset by three perfect syncs and not a single post-cluster complaint.
On the registry wall, text printed with deliberate, bureaucratic calm:
Supervisor Arbitration — badge chain review (public).
Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule — 24h.
The new hash fragment—thin as a hair, bright as a cut—stayed.
On the balcony, He Rulong stood like a still storm. His gaze slid over the triple stamp, over the unbroken Device Witness feed, over Qin Ye's heel still inside the paint ring. There was no nod; there was only the weight of a man who had decided a thing and needed the world to know it would happen.
A courier climbed the steps at his back, a sealed slip on a silver tray. The wax seal bore the Null Crest, crossed by a red public audit stamp like a line through a name.
He Rulong didn't touch it.
⸻
The Neutral Bell above the arch ticked.
Once.
Then—almost—the course tried to make it tick again, a ghost cadence under the real one. Two beats overlapped for the space of a coin flip. The Live Ledger Bind caught the wrong one by the throat and pushed it into silence. The rope's hum held a single, knife-clean note that drew a hair across the skin and didn't cut.
[Ding! Core Trials — Day 4 complete.]
[Ding! Main Quest updated — Inner Gate Exam: 3 days.]
They left the course the way they had entered it: on the breath, on the line, on the side of the rules where the light was brightest.