The board was already crowded when the bell rang.
Not because today was special—rotations weren't special anymore. Not because people were excited. They weren't.
The crowd was there because the year was closing, and the sect always tightened its fingers at the end of a cycle. Quotas. Windows. Eligibility. Holds that multiplied like mold when the air got cold.
A fresh strip had been nailed under the header stamp.
BEAST ROTATION — LOW-GRADE / STAGE ZERO–STAGE ONE
FIELD SEAL REQUIRED FOR STAGE ONE+ CORES
CORES ARE SECT PROPERTY — CREDIT CONVERTED AT DESK
No numbers. No promises. Just the industrial rule: bring it back clean, or it didn't exist.
Li Shen read his line once.
Team Three — Ravine Spur — Support / Tool-Hand
(Field sealing if a core is recovered.)
Nothing about codes. Codes weren't assigned to people.
Codes were assigned to cores.
Bai Ren stood off to the side of the crowd, not on the roster, not in the rotation, just present the way he always was—like a man who understood that information was as real as food if you knew how to chew it.
Lime dust still clung to his sleeves from the yard. Rope burn had carved its signature into the cloth wrapped around his palms.
He looked cheerful.
Cheerful was camouflage.
"Ravine Spur," Bai Ren said, squinting at the board. "The place where the wind tries to remove your skin out of boredom."
Li Shen didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Bai Ren stepped closer, blocking the worst of the wind with his body like it was nothing, and slid something into Li Shen's hand: a pinch of salt wrapped in a strip of cloth.
"Under the tongue," Bai Ren said. "When your hands start doing that polite little shake."
Li Shen closed his fingers around it. "You stole it."
"I stole it from myself," Bai Ren corrected, pleased. "Ethical crime."
His gaze flicked, quick and mild, to the cluster of men near the board who were reading other people's names too carefully.
"Small moves," Bai Ren said softly, still smiling. "Not the big ones. The little ones."
Li Shen's eyes didn't follow the look. "You're sure."
"I'm bored enough to notice," Bai Ren said. Then his grin sharpened, bright and stupid on purpose. "And happy enough to make boredom look like a personality flaw."
Li Shen watched him for half a breath.
Bai Ren shrugged, still light. "When I'm angry, I look like a problem. When I laugh, I look tired."
He said it like a policy, not a confession.
"Tired people get ignored," Bai Ren added. "Problems get moved."
He tapped Li Shen once in the center of the chest—quick, like knocking on wood. "Go be tired somewhere that pays."
The bell rang again. Harder.
Li Shen turned away with the rest of the rotation.
---
Ren Jiao was already at the gate.
He didn't stand like a leader. He stood like a man who wanted a clean log and no surprises. The kind of cultivator who understood that "heroic" was just another word for "uninsured."
Huang Qi was there too, rope coil slung across his back, eyes on the knotwork like he trusted it less than people. Bo Wen stood with a repaired pole strapped to his pack—mended, but still carrying the memory of failure.
Ren Jiao looked at them once.
"No speeches," he said. "Same rules."
That was sentence one.
Sentence two: "Stage Zero is salvage. Stage One is paperwork with teeth."
Sentence three: "If a seal breaks outside the desk, you will not get paid. You will get named."
He handed out the field containers—simple leather pouches lined with thin metal, stamped shallow and ugly. Not magical. Not elegant. Hard to fake. Easy to log.
Then tags: narrow slips, a wax tablet wrapped in paper, and a small press with an embossed pattern that looked cheap until you realized cheap patterns were exactly what stayed consistent.
Lastly, tools.
Li Shen received a hand axe—short-handled, more workshop than weapon. The edge had been maintained for hide and bone, not for glory. He checked it once, tested the weight, and slid it into his belt.
Ren Jiao's eyes paused on him. "Tool-hand."
Li Shen nodded.
"You seal if we get one," Ren Jiao said. "Code goes on the core only. No core, no code."
Huang Qi made a sound that could have been a laugh if it had warmth in it. "Support seals again," he muttered.
Ren Jiao didn't look at him. "Support makes fewer enemies."
That ended the discussion.
They moved out.
---
The path beyond the walls was hard-packed and slick with frost. The sun was pale and low, doing nothing but stretching shadows. The wind came down the ravine in steady sheets, stripping moisture from throats and patience from men.
Li Shen walked near the back, carrying extra rope and a small bundle of repair pins. Support meant weight. Weight meant accountability.
He watched the ground.
Tracks mattered more than rumors. A scuffed patch meant something heavy had dragged. A split hoof print meant boar. A set of clawed marks that didn't match any local animal meant "do not improvise."
They passed the first marker stone, then the bent pine. The same route. The same cold. The same quiet that always thickened before contact.
Ren Jiao raised a hand.
Stop.
He crouched, pressed two fingers to the crusted earth, and stared at the prints as if he could read them like a ledger.
"Fresh," he said.
Bo Wen shifted his grip on the pole net. "Stage?"
Ren Jiao didn't pretend certainty. "Could be zero. Could be one. Depends on what it's been feeding on."
They moved again, slower, angle-adjusted.
Li Shen's throat started to dry. Not the sand of Smoke-Sealing—he hadn't used it yet. Just cold air cutting him from the inside.
He didn't spend Qi on discomfort.
He saved Qi for risk.
The ravine narrowed. Brush tightened around the path. Sound died the way it did when the world was deciding whether it wanted you back.
Then the boar came out of the brush like a thrown stone.
Ashback. Low-grade, but wrong in the ways that mattered: thicker shoulders, pale ridges along its spine like frost had grown into bone. Breath steaming in harsh bursts. Eyes too alert.
Stage One beasts always looked like that.
Not mythical. Just out of place.
The first spear thrust went wide.
Not because the man was incompetent. Because the boar moved like it had learned.
It hit the undergrowth, turned, and charged.
Ren Jiao stepped aside at the last breath, guiding its line with a minimal shift. Huang Qi threw the rope loop.
The loop caught the shoulder, not the neck.
Bad.
Neck was control. Shoulder was a fight.
The rope snapped tight. The boar screamed—a sound like metal tearing—and surged anyway, dragging two men a step.
Ren Jiao barked one word. "Anchor."
Li Shen moved.
Support wasn't a title. It was a function.
He fed slack smoothly so it didn't jerk—jerks broke wrists. He planted his feet and wrapped the rope twice around his hand with cloth between skin and fiber.
Iron Grip.
He didn't announce it. He applied it.
A clamp tightened inside his forearm, clean and ugly, bone deciding to be iron for a moment. The boar surged again and the pull translated into his shoulders, then into his spine. His dantian took load—heavy, sinking.
He felt the fine tremor waiting behind his fingers like a threat.
He kept it waiting.
Pulse. Release. Pulse. Release.
The pole net went over the boar's head and shoulders. It bucked hard enough that Bo Wen's repaired pole flexed and groaned, but it held.
Ren Jiao took the line for a breath—just long enough.
Li Shen stepped in on the boar's blind side.
One short Grey Step to change angle. Nothing flashy. Just position.
He brought the hand axe up, felt the familiar tension gather along shoulder and wrist—Riving Cut wasn't a flourish. It was a commitment you paid for with joints later.
One clean chop into the soft pocket behind the foreleg.
Not deep. Not dramatic. Precise.
The boar's front end buckled. Its thrash turned into weight instead of momentum.
Li Shen was already backing out as the kill-angle specialist slid in to finish, blade low and efficient.
Blood steamed in the cold.
The boar convulsed once, twice, then its strength went out like a rope released.
No one cheered.
Cheering was for people who believed the fight was the point.
Ren Jiao pressed a hand to the carcass, listened, then nodded. "Done."
Li Shen released Iron Grip.
The clamp loosened. His hand became a hand again.
The tremor arrived late—fine, controlled, the aftertaste of load. He flexed his fingers once, slow, and let it settle. His throat was dry now, but it wasn't sand. It was work.
He could handle work.
Ren Jiao looked at the wound, then at Li Shen's axe. "Clean."
Huang Qi spat into the snow. "My rope's burned."
Ren Jiao's eyes flicked to Li Shen's palm where cloth had darkened from rope bite. "Tag if we have it."
That was the real question.
The kill-angle specialist opened the skull with care—small cut, pry, gentle lift. No hacking. No performance.
And there it was.
A small cloudy core nested in meat and bone, damp with blood and cold. Not glowing. Not singing. Just present.
Stage One.
Complete.
Low clarity.
Ren Jiao leaned in. "Don't chip it."
The specialist held it up between thumb and forefinger like it might bite. "I'm not a child."
Ren Jiao's voice stayed flat. "Children drop things. Adults break seals."
Li Shen opened the field pouch. The metal lining caught the light in a dull, practical way.
"Core status?" he asked.
"Complete," Ren Jiao said. "Low clarity. Blood-tainted."
Li Shen lowered the core into the pouch without letting it touch the edges. Closed it. Tightened the tie cord until it bit.
Then the tag.
He wrote with a stub of charcoal:
Core code: E-17-39
Team: R.J.
Stage One core — complete
Low clarity / blood-tainted
The code existed now because the core existed now.
He looped the tag through the pouch cord.
Wax next.
The wax tablet was hard from cold. Good. Hard wax held clean impressions. He warmed the surface with his palm just enough to soften it—body heat, not Qi—and pressed the wax bead onto the knot. Thick enough to crack if anyone tried to untie it without witnesses.
Then the press.
He held it steady. Pressed once. Firm.
The embossed pattern sank into the wax. The imprint caught the lantern light for a moment, clean and sharp.
First barrier against swap.
Li Shen sat back and looked at Ren Jiao. "Sealed."
Ren Jiao nodded once. Confirmation, not praise.
They stripped what mattered quickly—stage-zero salvage, hide and meat, logged because the sect liked complete accounting even when it was cheap. Huang Qi muttered about rope loss and cold, but his hands didn't stop.
By the time they finished, the sun was dropping behind the trees. Snow in the shadows turned blue.
Daylight leaving wasn't poetry.
It was danger.
They headed back.
---
The Beast Yard wasn't a yard.
It was an intake dock.
A long table under lantern light. Two clerks with ink-stained fingers. A ledger thick enough to kill a man if dropped. Stamp blocks in a tray. A thin metal plate set beside it with a grid of hardened wax impressions—reference patterns worn smooth by a thousand checks.
Ren Jiao placed the sealed pouch on the table with both hands.
The desk clerk didn't look at Ren Jiao.
He looked at the wax.
He leaned in, tapped it lightly with a pick.
Dull sound.
Intact.
He held the imprint at an angle, compared ridge lines to the reference plate, checked the depth like he was judging metalwork.
Li Shen watched without blinking.
This was where victories were downgraded.
The clerk finally looked up. "Core code."
Ren Jiao answered. "E-17-39."
The clerk flipped the rotation log page, found the line for Ravine Spur, and tapped it once.
"Team present," he said.
His eyes moved to Li Shen. "Sealer?"
"Me," Li Shen said.
The clerk looked at Li Shen's hands—rope bite, axe grip calluses, oil-stained nails that never fully cleaned. Then back to the wax.
"Seal consistent," he said.
That sentence was not kindness.
It was the difference between credit and suspicion.
He stamped the ledger.
INTAKE — BATCH 112
A second stamp hit a small wooden tile and slid across the table.
Yield ticket.
Not a reward. A receipt.
A runner carried the pouch into the back room without breaking the wax. It would be opened under witnesses, under ledger lines, under the kind of light that made lies expensive.
The clerk spoke the classification like it was a weather report.
"Stage One. Complete. Low clarity. Blood-tainted."
Then he wrote something on a narrow strip and flipped it onto the table.
"Credit posted to team account," he said.
Ren Jiao leaned in. "How much."
"Thirty-one points."
No one reacted for a beat.
Thirty-one wasn't wealth. It wasn't nothing either.
Ren Jiao nodded once. "Split standard."
The clerk's pen didn't slow. "Leader thirty percent. Specialists twenty. Support fifteen."
Paper decided.
Li Shen's share became a number in his head without permission.
The desk would round.
Five.
Huang Qi muttered, "All that for five points," like saying it aloud could renegotiate the universe.
Ren Jiao didn't correct him. "If you want more," he said flatly, "bring back cleaner."
That ended the emotion.
They were released.
---
Li Shen returned to the dorm with his palm wrapped tighter than before.
Rope bite swelling. Not badly. Enough to matter.
His throat was rough. His lungs felt used. His dantian felt like a stone carried all day and set down carefully at night.
Stage didn't make the work easy.
Stage made the work survivable.
Bai Ren was waiting near the entrance like he'd timed it to the bell. Lime dust on his hair. Face tired in the way he liked—tired enough to be ignored.
"You're alive," Bai Ren said, pleased. "That's terrible for morale."
Li Shen stepped past him. "Yard?"
"The wall remains undefeated," Bai Ren said. "Also I stole you heat."
He offered a chipped bowl. Not tea. Just hot water.
Li Shen drank. Warmth hit his throat and made him aware of how dry it was.
Bai Ren watched his eyes, not his mouth. "Points?"
"Thirty-one team credit," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren whistled softly. "So you earned… five."
Li Shen didn't deny it.
Bai Ren's grin sharpened. "How much did you spend today to earn them?"
Li Shen looked at him.
Bai Ren lifted his hands, innocent. "I'm tired," he said. "I ask stupid questions."
Li Shen didn't correct him.
Inside, the dorm was warmer, which meant it smelled worse. Men settled down with bruises hidden under sleeves, coughs swallowed because attention was expensive.
Li Shen sat on his plank, pulled his booklet from under the wood, and opened to a page he'd kept blank on purpose.
He wrote without decoration.
ROTATION — stage-one core
Team credit: 31
My share: 5
He paused.
Then drew two columns with clean lines.
IN | OUT
Under IN: 5 points.
Under OUT, he started listing what the day had eaten.
Salt (owed).
Cloth wrap (ruined).
Rope bite ointment (needed).
Axe edge (will need stone time).
Sleep debt.
He didn't write "fatigue."
He wrote what fatigue did.
tremor late
throat rough
shoulder tight (Riving)
He closed the booklet and slid it back under the plank.
Bai Ren's voice came softly from the next plank over, like he didn't want the dorm to overhear him being human.
"You're counting too hard," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen stared at the ceiling. "I'm counting right."
Bai Ren hummed, satisfied. "Good. Count. Just don't forget to eat."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Outside, the wind scraped the dorm walls like a file.
Inside, five points sat in his head like a stone you couldn't set down.
Not because it was heavy.
Because it wasn't enough unless he made it enough.