The ration posting changed on a morning when the cold felt bored.
Same boards. Same nails. New paper, edges still crisp enough to cut skin if you brushed it wrong.
Men stood close to it anyway, reading numbers like they could talk the ink into mercy.
Li Shen didn't read for comfort. He read for timing.
The sect had a way of tightening without announcing it—one line on the ration sheet, one new stamp at a window, and suddenly everyone's "normal" became expensive.
Bai Ren was in the line, a bucket hook over one shoulder, looking like he'd been born there. Lime dust in his hair. A face that said tired in the safest way.
He leaned in as Li Shen passed and spoke without stopping his hands.
"New ration posting," Bai Ren said, like he was commenting on weather.
Li Shen nodded once.
Bai Ren added, a half-smile already in place, "Good news: they're cutting nothing. Bad news: they're cutting everything that isn't written down."
Li Shen didn't answer. He didn't need the poetry.
He watched the line instead.
Who stood too close to the clerk. Who stood too far. Who watched other people read.
Bai Ren caught his eye and made his grin wider, brighter, dumber.
"I'm happy," Bai Ren said, loud enough for two men behind them to hear. "Because happiness is free."
One of the men snorted. "Idiot."
Bai Ren nodded like it was praise. "Exactly."
Li Shen walked on.
Tired people got ignored.
Problems got moved.
—
By the time the forge bell rang, the sun was already low.
Winter had shortened daylight down to a ration too.
The corridor into the forge tasted wrong as always—oil smoke, metal scale, breath scraped raw by heat. The warmth hit him like a debt: comforting now, paid back later.
Line Three was running escort hardware again.
Chain links. Clasps. Tolerances tight enough that mistakes didn't look like mistakes until they failed somewhere else, far away, in someone else's hand.
Meng stood at the edge of the line, not supervising like an elder, not working like a servant—just present in the way practical men were present when something mattered.
Li Shen set his kit down. Jig where it belonged. Tongs aligned. Dip rack clean.
The oil bucket caught forge light like dark water.
He checked the stone base where he'd scratched the count last cycle, and added a new mark.
Not a prayer. A clock.
A quench runner passed, glancing at the oil bucket, then away like seeing it too long might implicate him.
Li Shen didn't call him back.
He didn't need to.
The Hundred-Dip rule didn't care who looked guilty. It cared who could be named when the oil was overdue for a swap.
He worked.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
Iron Grip came in short clamps when the metal wanted to twist out of true. Pulse. Release. Pulse. Release.
No extra.
Smoke-Sealing stayed in his pocket until the forge air turned from "unpleasant" into "risk." Then one controlled hold, released before his throat turned to sand.
Entry work, done like work.
Two stations down, someone failed a gauge check.
It didn't sound dramatic.
Just a small click when the jig seated wrong.
Then the foreman voice—flat, annoyed.
"Recheck."
A runner came with a strip of paper. A stamp hit it. Red ink.
The worker's shoulders tightened. He didn't argue. Arguing didn't remove rechecks. It only added eyes.
Meng's gaze slid past the incident like he'd seen it a thousand times, then landed briefly on Li Shen's hands.
"Keep the rhythm," Meng said, low enough it was only for him.
Li Shen didn't stop moving. "I am."
Meng didn't look at him as he spoke again. "Rechecks are climbing on other lines."
That was all.
A sentence with no comfort and no exaggeration.
Li Shen filed it where he filed everything useful: not as fear, but as trend.
He finished a clasp, tested it with the jig, and set it aside. Another. Another.
By the time the quench runner returned, Li Shen's count on the stone base had reached the next notch.
The runner hesitated at the oil bucket, eyes flicking to the marks, then to the dip rack.
Li Shen didn't say "it's time."
He just pointed once at the count.
The runner's mouth tightened.
He walked off and returned with someone else—a witness, tired-faced and impatient, carrying a fresh oil pot like it was a burden he hadn't agreed to.
They swapped the oil without ceremony. The old oil went into a sealed drum. The new oil poured in.
The witness watched the pour, then watched Li Shen scratch a new start mark.
No drama.
Just the process refusing to be vague.
—
Two weeks later, the ration sheet changed again.
The paper on the board was different—more smudged at the edges because more hands had touched it. The line felt tighter, not longer. People moved less when they stood. They saved motion like it was grain.
Li Shen noticed because he always noticed.
Bai Ren noticed because he made noticing look like stupidity.
Bai Ren fell into step with him outside the dorm, carrying a plank offcut under one arm like a trophy.
"You know what's new?" Bai Ren asked.
Li Shen didn't bite. "What."
Bai Ren grinned. "Everyone has a new friend. It's called 'I don't know you.'"
Li Shen huffed once. Not laughter. Close.
Bai Ren lowered his voice a fraction. "The recheck list is thicker."
He didn't say "hold sheet." He didn't use the language that made men panic. He described what he'd seen: a board with too much red ink and not enough space.
Li Shen nodded.
Bai Ren added, still light, "And the yard has a new sport."
Li Shen waited.
Bai Ren's eyes flicked toward the points corridor, then away. "Watching who stays clean."
He shrugged as if it didn't matter. "Boring people are suspicious now."
Li Shen walked on.
His shoulder still tightened sometimes when he lifted the axe. The after-payment from that one clean cut. It didn't get worse. It didn't get better fast either.
He was learning what "repeatable" meant in a body.
—
The rotation that followed didn't give them a core.
It gave them cold.
Ren Jiao didn't pretend that was unusual. The route was the route. The beasts were the beasts. The world didn't owe them a stage-one prize because they wanted one.
They found a thin deer with wrong eyes and too much fight in it for its size. Stage-zero salvage: meat, hide, bone. Useful, logged, but not the kind of salvage that changed anyone's week.
The fight was short.
More chasing than striking.
Li Shen used Grey Step once to cut an angle when the deer tried to bolt past brush. One short correction, then back to plain feet and breath.
No show.
The kill-angle specialist ended it with a clean thrust.
No one cheered.
Ren Jiao glanced at Li Shen's hands out of habit now, the way you checked a tool before you relied on it.
"No core," Ren Jiao said.
Huang Qi spat into the snow. "Of course no core."
Bo Wen muttered, "Waste of daylight."
Ren Jiao didn't raise his voice. "Daylight isn't wasted if you come back clean."
That shut them up.
They returned with stage-zero salvage and the same cold in their clothes.
At the Beast Yard dock, the desk clerk looked at their tag, looked at the log, stamped intake without interest.
No wax. No code. No core to name.
Just a receipt and a small credit that would be split into numbers too small to fight over.
Li Shen didn't feel disappointed.
Disappointment was a luxury emotion. It cost attention.
He felt the ache in his shoulder and the roughness in his throat and the way his stomach stayed empty even after ration porridge.
Those were real.
As they stepped away from the desk, a man from another group watched them with a look that wasn't envy and wasn't curiosity.
It was irritation.
Not at the payout.
At the cleanliness.
Huang Qi noticed it too. He muttered under his breath, "They hate when you give them nothing to argue with."
Ren Jiao didn't look back. "Let them hate. Don't give them dirt."
Li Shen filed the phrase away.
Not as advice.
As a forecast.
—
The soft sabotage came the way soft sabotage always came.
Not as a knife.
As an object placed wrong.
It happened on a forge day when the heat felt thick and the air tasted like metal. When the line was running steady and the only sound that mattered was the rhythm of dip and lift and cooling metal settling into shape.
A tray appeared at the edge of his station.
Greyfang shavings.
Unassigned.
No tag. No strip. No runner mark.
Just sitting there like it belonged.
Li Shen didn't touch it.
He didn't even look at it for long.
He let his hands keep working while his eyes moved once—enough to register: bait.
A lane runner walked past and slowed, pretending to adjust a strap while his gaze flicked at the tray.
"Yours," the runner said quietly, like he was doing Li Shen a favor. "It was left. Just use it."
Li Shen kept his tongs steady. "It's not tagged."
The runner's mouth tightened. "You know what it is."
Li Shen didn't raise his voice. "I know what it could become."
The runner shifted his weight, annoyed. "You're slowing the line."
Li Shen set the piece down, checked it, and only then turned his head.
"Mark it," Li Shen said. "Or remove it."
The runner's eyes hardened. "You don't give orders."
Li Shen didn't blink. "Then don't take the blame."
It wasn't a threat. It was a fact.
For half a breath, the runner looked like he might push anyway—like he might pick the tray up and drop it into Li Shen's lane and walk away.
Then Meng's voice cut in from nowhere, flat and bored.
"Tag it," Meng said.
The runner froze.
Meng didn't look up from his own work. He didn't need to. His authority wasn't a title. It was that he could make your day longer with one word.
The runner swallowed, reached for a strip, and stamped the tray with a quick, ugly motion that made it clear he resented the act.
He dragged the tray away like it was heavy.
Li Shen went back to the work without pause.
No triumph.
No glare.
Just the process refusing to accept a loose object.
And still—he felt it.
A presence at the edge of the line.
A silence that lasted too long.
Somebody had watched the moment and stored his name.
He didn't look for who.
Looking was how you invited the next move.
—
By the time the thaw began, it didn't feel like warmth.
It felt like mud.
Snow softened at the edges of stone and turned to slush that clung to soles. Water started to run in thin lines down walls where it had been frozen in place for months. Nights stayed cold. Days became wet.
Li Shen's breath held better now than it had at the start of winter.
Not because the air was kinder.
Because his body had learned to pay less for the same work.
His tremor still arrived late, not early. His throat still roughened if he got greedy with holds. His shoulder still tightened on days when he used the axe too cleanly.
He could live with those costs.
What he couldn't live with was pretending his points weren't leaking.
It wasn't one bad day.
It was a pattern.
A thin trend line drawn by small purchases and necessary fixes.
The kind of trend that killed you slowly if you called it "fine."
That evening, he stood at the supply board and watched men argue over cloth like it was meat.
He didn't argue.
He bought what kept him functional.
He didn't buy what made him comfortable.
No extra salt. No lamp oil beyond ration. No small treats people paid for when they wanted to feel like life was bigger than the sect.
He walked away with less weight in his sleeve and more weight in his decisions.
Bai Ren caught up to him near the dorms, carrying a bundle of thin boards tied with rope.
"You look like you lost a fight," Bai Ren said cheerfully.
Li Shen glanced at the boards. "What's that."
Bai Ren's grin widened. "A victory."
Li Shen waited.
Bai Ren shifted the bundle and kept walking. "They're reinforcing the yard wall near the dorm side. Not the stone. The wooden braces. Someone decided it's cheaper to stop collapses than to replace men."
He said it lightly, but his eyes were sharp. He was always sharp when the sect admitted cost.
Li Shen nodded once. "You're on it."
Bai Ren's smile turned almost proud. "I volunteered."
"You don't volunteer," Li Shen said.
"I do when it annoys people," Bai Ren replied, pleased. "Also when it makes me feel like I'm moving forward."
Li Shen didn't comment. He didn't have to. He understood the need for forward motion.
Bai Ren hesitated for half a breath, then added, quieter, "I tried your breathing again."
Li Shen's steps slowed a fraction. "And."
Bai Ren made a face like he'd tasted spoiled porridge. "And I saw stars. Then I saw my lunch. Then I decided cultivation is a scam."
Li Shen didn't laugh, but something in his chest eased.
Bai Ren bumped his shoulder lightly with the boards. "Don't worry. I'm keeping my positivity in the physical world where it belongs."
He tilted his chin toward the yard. "Tomorrow I build braces. If I can't move Qi, I can still move wood. It's honest."
Li Shen watched him for a moment.
Bai Ren added, too quick, too bright, "Also, people are talking again."
Li Shen didn't ask "who." He asked the only useful question. "About what."
Bai Ren's grin stayed in place. "About how someone keeps refusing free mistakes."
Li Shen looked away.
Bai Ren shrugged, as if it was nothing. "You're annoying."
Li Shen walked on.
Bai Ren followed, still smiling like a fool, carrying boards like they were nothing, looking tired enough to be ignored.
It was a strategy.
It was also, somehow, kindness.
—
Later, when the dorm had settled and the wind had turned wet instead of sharp, Li Shen pulled his ledger out.
Not to narrate.
To anchor the real.
To protect the real.
To optimize the real.
He wrote a single entry and stopped.
Dorm wall — two-week review
Fact: oil swaps logged; rechecks rising on other lines; one stage-zero return, clean log.
Cost: shoulder tight (axe); throat rough if greedy; tremor still late.
Action: if two-week net stays thin, cut comfort—keep maintenance.
He closed the ledger and slid it back under the plank.
The rule wasn't inspiring.
It was survivable.
Outside, water dripped somewhere in the dark like the world counting time out loud.
Inside, Li Shen lay still and listened.
The thaw had started.
His second stage wasn't done yet.
And the system was already deciding what kind of person he would be when it was.