The bourgade learned to speak in half-voices.
It started the day after the requisition—after the cart had creaked away, after the thin cultivator had looked through people like they were fog, after the yard had returned to work as if work could stitch a hole shut.
At first, it was just the small changes.
Men who usually lingered at the roadside to argue about grain prices didn't linger. Mothers called their children inside sooner. The butcher stopped hanging meat outside and moved it to the back room, where it could be guarded by a locked door and a bad temper.
Then the rumors arrived, thin and sharp as winter air.
"They tracked it into the ravine."
"No, it came down from the ridgeline—like it was pushed."
"I heard it bit through a spear shaft."
"I heard the cultivator froze the blood in its mouth."
Every version grew in the telling. Every version ended the same way:
They're gone. They're fighting. We're waiting.
Waiting was its own kind of labor.
Han didn't allow waiting.
"Buckets," he said in the morning, as if the word was an order that could keep the world stable.
Li Shen carried water until his shoulders warmed and his fingers went numb. He stacked firewood until his arms felt like rope. He coiled actual rope until the fibers bit his skin and left red lines that hardened into calluses over the next days.
He didn't ask about the soldiers.
He listened.
That was the rule of places like this: the people who talked the most knew the least. The people who watched learned enough to survive.
In the evenings, when the yard quieted, he sat under the lean-to with a scrap of cloth in his hand and the small sachet tucked under his shirt, pressed against his sternum.
A bit of dried herb. A twist of thread. A smell that didn't belong in Han's yard.
It wasn't magic. It didn't glow. It didn't heal anyone.
It was just proof that his mother had been real.
When the night wind came down from the hills, he held the sachet once—briefly, like touching a scar—then went back to knotting rope because knots were something his hands could understand.
Weeks passed.
Not cleanly. Not in neat blocks.
Time moved in the bourgade the way it moved in poor places: by weather and food and the number of lines Han added to his ledger. The air lost its softness. Mornings arrived with a thin bite. Smoke stopped rising straight from chimneys and started clinging low, as if the sky were pushing it down.
Han's ledger gained new lines.
Not because Han became generous.
Because fear created transactions.
Men came to borrow salt and promised double repayment "after the soldiers return." Women traded cloth for dried roots because cloth was warmth and warmth was life. Someone tried to sell a cracked talisman—an old scrap of paper with faded ink—to three different customers in the same day until Han's clerk ran him off with a shovel.
Li Shen watched it all and learned the simplest lesson first:
When danger rises, truth becomes a luxury.
---
The soldiers came back at dawn on a day that felt wrong.
Not because the sky was strange—just pale and ordinary.
Because the bourgade heard them before it saw them.
Boots on hard ground.
A cart axle that sounded worse than before.
A horse whinnying, sharp with pain.
Han was already at the gate when the unit limped into view.
They were fewer.
Not by much. One or two missing could vanish into accounting in a place that wasn't counting.
But the bourgade counted.
Li Shen counted too, without meaning to.
Twelve had left.
Ten returned.
One soldier walked with his arm bound to his chest. Another had his head wrapped in cloth that was already stained through. The captain's scar looked darker, as if the skin around it had been scraped raw.
And on the thin horse rode the cultivator, posture unchanged.
He didn't look tired.
That was the first thing Li Shen noticed.
Not because he was strong.
Because he didn't carry the same weight as the rest of them. Not the weight of knowing that if you fell, you might not get back up.
The cart creaked into the yard and stopped.
Han didn't ask how it went.
He didn't waste words on questions that wouldn't feed anyone.
He looked at the missing men and said, "Two."
The captain's jaw clenched. "One died on the slope. One died on the way back."
Han's clerk's brush paused over the ledger page.
Han nodded once, like a man acknowledging a broken tool. "Families?"
"One had a wife in the lower row," the captain said. "One had a father near the east fields."
Han said, "Write their names."
The captain's gaze flicked toward the storeroom. "Grain."
Han's face didn't change. "Half a cart was taken. You want more."
The captain opened his mouth.
The cultivator spoke first. "He will give more."
It wasn't a threat. It was a decision.
The captain swallowed the argument like it tasted bad. "We bled for the road."
Han replied, still calm, "And my yard will bleed for the winter."
The cultivator's eyes slid past Han's ledger, uninterested. "This bourgade survives because the road stays open. The road stays open because the beast is driven back. You want to survive? You pay."
Driven back.
Not killed.
Li Shen's chest tightened.
He didn't know why the words hit him harder than "two dead."
Maybe because driven back meant it could return.
Maybe because driven back meant this wasn't the end of anything. Just another loop.
The captain made a short motion toward the cart. Two soldiers pulled aside a stained tarp.
Something dark and matted lay beneath.
At first Li Shen thought it was a bundle of fur.
Then he saw the curve of a jaw. Teeth like narrow knives. A foreleg bent wrong, bone pale through torn flesh.
The beast's body—only part of it. A severed limb, hacked off at the joint and dumped like proof.
The bourgade inhaled.
Li Shen didn't.
His throat went tight as if his body refused to take air that close to death.
The captain said, "It's wounded. Deep. It ran. It won't be back this week."
"This week," someone whispered.
Han stared at the limb without flinching. "And after?"
The captain's eyes went flat. "After, it depends on whether it finds easier prey."
Li Shen heard that and felt his mind jump, uninvited, to his father's back bent over a woodpile, hands rough, lungs working in cold air.
Easier prey.
The cultivator dismounted. Li Shen's eyes flicked—without permission—to the man's waist.
There was an oilcloth bundle tied there. Small. Plain. Wrapped with the careful attention people gave to things they did not want stolen.
The cultivator kept one hand near it as he walked, casual in the way predators were casual around their teeth.
The captain followed his gaze and looked away.
Not because he hadn't seen it.
Because looking too long was an invitation to remember who owned what.
The cultivator stopped in front of Han. "Payment," he said.
Han's jaw tightened, but his voice stayed controlled. "Half a cart. You already took half."
The cultivator's gaze pinned him. "Full cart."
A long pause.
The yard held its breath.
Han looked at the soldiers, then at the cart, then at his storeroom. He didn't look at the faces beyond the gate.
Because if he looked at the faces, he might be forced to choose between them.
"Half a cart now," Han said. "Half a cart when the road proves it stays open."
The air thickened slightly—just enough for Li Shen's skin to prickle, like standing too close to a storm.
Then the cultivator said, "Acceptable."
The captain exhaled slowly, like he'd been holding that breath since the slope.
They started moving sacks.
Li Shen moved with them.
Not because anyone ordered him to.
Because his body had learned that refusing to move didn't change anything. It only made you easier to break.
As he lifted a sack, he saw one of the returning soldiers sway where he stood, face gray beneath dirt. Another soldier steadied him by the elbow.
The bourgade was used to seeing injuries.
But this was different.
This was the price of being between mountains and farms.
Between beasts and grain.
Between sects and mortals.
---
Later, when the unit had taken what it came for and the cart had creaked away again—heavier with food, lighter with lives—the yard didn't return to normal.
It couldn't.
Han's ledger sat open on the table.
It looked like a wound that kept being reopened.
Li Shen stood nearby, hands still dusted with grain powder, and watched Han write.
Not poetry.
Numbers.
Names.
Debts.
Han's clerk cleared his throat. "The families… we should send something."
Han didn't answer immediately. He finished one line, then another. Only then did he say, "We will send grain."
"From the yard?" the clerk asked.
Han's eyes lifted, hard. "From where else?"
The clerk swallowed.
Li Shen looked down at his hands.
He thought of the two missing men.
He thought of the oilcloth bundle at the cultivator's waist.
He thought of how quickly blood turned into payment.
A small voice—naive, still alive in him—said: It's unfair.
A colder voice, already growing teeth, answered: Fair isn't part of the system.
He turned away before he could show his face.
He went to the tool shed and began sorting broken handles by thickness, as if wood could give him answers.
He was halfway through when Shen Yu came in, rubbing his arms for warmth.
"You saw it," Shen Yu said quietly.
Li Shen didn't look up. "Everyone saw it."
Shen Yu hesitated. "The limb… it's real."
Li Shen's fingers tightened on a cracked handle. "Yes."
Shen Yu swallowed. "People will talk."
"They already are."
Shen Yu leaned closer, voice lowering. "My aunt says the beast came down because someone found something in the hills. Something it was guarding."
Li Shen's mind flicked—unwanted—to that oilcloth bundle. Small. Protected. Private.
He said, flatly, "Your aunt likes stories."
Shen Yu stared at him. "Don't you?"
Li Shen paused.
He thought of his mother, scolding him for kneading dough like it was a conspiracy.
He thought of his father sitting by a cold hearth like gravity had become optional.
He thought of a cultivator's hands—how easily they could shift a man's fate with a word.
"I used to," Li Shen said. Then he went back to sorting handles as if that ended the conversation.
But his chest was tight.
Because he realized something he didn't want to realize at ten:
The stories were real.
They just didn't belong to people like him.
---
That evening, a peddler came through the yard gate with a cart full of cheap cloth and dried fish that smelled like it had died twice.
Han let him in because Han wanted information more than fish.
The peddler talked like all peddlers did—too much, too fast, half true.
He had been to the village roads. He had seen faces Li Shen hadn't seen in weeks.
He had news.
Li Shen didn't ask for it. His body still leaned toward the man anyway, the way iron leans toward a magnet.
The peddler's eyes scanned the yard hands and landed on Li Shen. "You," he said, pointing. "You're Li Heng's boy."
Li Shen's throat tightened. "Yes."
"Your old man's still breathing," the peddler said cheerfully, like that was a compliment. "Cutting wood and cursing the sky. Same as ever."
Li Shen felt something in his ribs loosen, just slightly.
"The kids are asking about you," the peddler continued. "Zhou Liang's been puffing up like a rooster, telling anyone who'll listen that he'll be the first cultivator from your row of houses. Qian Mei told him he's an idiot."
Li Shen almost smiled. Almost.
The peddler chuckled. "She said you promised her something. Said you were too stubborn to forget."
Li Shen's fingers clenched.
He had promised.
A small thing, spoken on a dirt path, because at ten the small things were what held you together.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of chalk he'd found in Han's storeroom weeks earlier—cheap, half-cracked, not worth much unless you'd never had chalk.
He held it up. "Take this to Qian Mei. Tell her… tell her I remember."
The peddler blinked, surprised by the seriousness in a child's voice. Then he shrugged, pocketed it. "Done."
Li Shen hesitated, then added, lower, "And tell my father… I'm working. I'll send grain when Han pays."
The peddler's expression softened slightly. "He knows. He's not blind."
Li Shen nodded once.
Debt social, paid forward in chalk.
Not enough.
But real.
---
Two nights later, the first frost arrived.
It didn't announce itself with drama.
It simply made the trough skin over with ice thin as paper.
Li Shen broke it with the edge of a bucket and watched the shards float like small dead things.
He carried water anyway.
His hands cracked along the knuckles. The pain wasn't sharp. It was dull and persistent, like a reminder that bodies had limits whether you respected them or not.
Han watched him work in silence.
Then Han said, without looking directly at him, "The families of the two soldiers will receive grain tomorrow."
Li Shen's mouth went dry. "From the yard."
Han grunted. "From the yard."
Li Shen thought of his father's winter.
Thought of the half cart already taken.
Thought of how the ledger kept bleeding.
He said, carefully, "I can help carry it."
Han finally looked at him. "Why?"
Li Shen didn't pretend.
"Because," he said, "if a man dies keeping beasts off the road, his family shouldn't starve for it."
Han's eyes narrowed. "That's not your debt."
Li Shen met his gaze. "It becomes everyone's debt if the road collapses."
For a long moment, Han didn't speak.
Then he said, flatly, "Fine. You'll help. And you'll pay for the time you lose."
Li Shen nodded. "Write it down."
Han's mouth twitched, almost like a smile that had forgotten how. "You really are learning."
Li Shen didn't feel proud.
He felt cold.
But beneath the cold, something else moved—small, stubborn, unkillable.
A pattern.
A truth that had been carved into him since the night the house went quiet:
No one was coming to save you.
So you learned how to keep people alive anyway.
Even if all you could do was carry grain to a house that had lost a man.
Even if all you could do was remember a promise and send a piece of chalk down a road that might not stay open.
Outside the yard, the wind shifted, colder, and the hills beyond the bourgade remained dark and indifferent.
Somewhere up there, the beast was still breathing.
Wounded.
Driven back.
Not gone.
And Li Shen, ten years old with cracked hands and a sachet against his chest, understood something he hadn't fully understood before:
If power existed, it belonged to those who could pay for it.
And the price was always collected—whether you agreed to it or not.