CHAPTER 213
### The Fringe
The dead zone fringe western approach looked different from two months ago.
He noticed it immediately through the domain.
Not vegetation — the terrain was the same scrub and low-growth of the transition zone's northern edge. But the spiritual quality was different.
The between quality propagation reaching this territory had changed the air character.
Not dramatically.
Subtly.
The way a room changes when someone opens a window.
He walked through it and the domain read the change continuously and what the change said was: the fringe is not a boundary anymore.
It used to mark the edge of something.
Now it was just land that happened to be at the northern limit of the growing season's reach.
"Pei Song," Bing Xi said.
"Yes," he said.
He read the direction Bing Xi was indicating.
Two li east.
The section Pei Song had been practicing in for months.
And Pei Song himself.
"He knows we are passing through," Jian Yu said.
"He will want to see the grey blade," Bing Xi said.
"We do not have time—"
"Half a li deviation," she said. "Twenty minutes."
He counted.
Three days from the cluster at the current pace.
Two days through the fringe.
One day margin when they arrived.
Twenty minutes would not close that margin significantly.
He deviated half a li east.
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Pei Song was at the section's edge.
He was doing the morning exercises.
He did not stop when they arrived.
He finished the sequence.
Then he turned.
He was thirty-one. He had the specific quality of someone who had been in one place for a long time and had let the place work on him — not the quality of the place imposing on him, of him and the place arriving at something together.
He looked at Jian Yu.
At the grey blade.
"The color is gone," Pei Song said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The archive update," Pei Song said. "I read it. The between quality fully incorporated."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"And the blade is grey," Pei Song said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Pei Song looked at the grey blade for a moment.
"The child in the village said it looks like it wants to be a different color," he said.
Jian Yu looked at him.
"That message went through Shen Bo's relay network," Pei Song said. "I read it."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Like finding a good stick," Pei Song said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Pei Song looked at the section.
"The section knows me," he said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"I have been here for five months," Pei Song said. "Five months of morning exercises at the same spot. The section feels me coming before I arrive."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The One Continuous Project document," Pei Song said. "My name is in it."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"I have read it seven times," Pei Song said.
He said it flatly.
Seven times.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Pei Song looked at the grey blade one more time.
"The faction leadership," he said. "They are moving east."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"They will not come through here," Pei Song said.
"We do not think so," Jian Yu said.
"But if they do," Pei Song said.
He looked at the section.
At five months of morning exercises built into the pathway structure.
"I am still here," Pei Song said.
Not dramatically.
The flat accuracy of someone who had made a choice and was not reconsidering it.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
He looked at Pei Song.
At the section.
At the five months of staying visible in the pathway structure through the domain.
He committed.
He kept walking.
Twenty minutes.
He had used nineteen.
The road continued.
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