The holding grounds did not sleep. It changed shifts.
Daytime was noise and movement—ropes tightening, batches advancing, names turning into ink. Night stripped the motion away and left the core: bodies, breath, and the thin layer of order that kept fear from becoming fire.
Li Shen lay under the cart cloth with his eyes open.
Not because he couldn't sleep. Because he didn't trust sleep to be safe here.
The ground was hard, packed into a shape by thousands of feet. Someone had tried to soften it with straw; it helped for ten minutes and then became another thing that scratched when you moved.
Beyond their patch, cords divided the field into rectangles like a grid. Each rectangle held clusters: families, neighbors, hired guards, servants with their masters, and lone travelers who had managed to attach themselves to someone with a token.
Soldiers walked the lanes between cords at a steady pace, lanterns hooded so the light didn't carry too far. The lantern glow slid over faces and then moved on, uninterested.
A clerk's tent sat nearer the center—imperial gray, low and plain. The brushwork had finished for the day, but the tent was still there, like a threat: tomorrow, more marks.
Li Shen listened.
Wood snapped in a fire. Someone coughed—a wet, adult cough. A child murmured in sleep and was shushed immediately. A pot hissed somewhere, boiled too hard, and the smell of grain porridge mixed with smoke and wool and sweat.
Haoyang smelled like oil and ink even out here. Like the city had exhaled and the fields had learned to breathe it.
He turned his head slightly.
His father was awake too.
Li Heng sat with his back against a cart wheel, knees drawn up, arms folded loosely. From the outside, he looked like a man resting.
Li Shen knew better. His father's gaze wasn't fixed on one point. It moved in a pattern—lane, cord entrance, the nearest fire, the cluster to their left where an argument had been building, the darker section in the distance where better bowls and cleaner cloth marked the kingdom's people.
Not paranoia.
Coverage.
The kind of attention that kept a village alive when winter ate the weak first.
Across from them, Qian Mei's family had arranged themselves with the same logic. Qian Mei lay close to her mother, but her father sat upright and still, as if sleep would be a luxury he could afford again later.
Luo sat with her son pressed to her side. Luo Ning's eyes were open too, unblinking, staring past the fireline toward the wall as if the stone itself might breathe. He didn't look frightened.
He looked… stable.
Li Shen had seen that steadiness before, in men who had been hungry so long they no longer reacted to it.
He didn't like seeing it in a six-year-old.
A shout cracked somewhere far down the lanes.
Not a fight. An order.
"Fire stays low. No one crosses cord after the bell. Anyone caught outside their section loses their place."
Loses their place. Not punished. Not fined. Not scolded.
Just… removed from the process.
Li Shen understood the weapon hidden in that phrasing. In a crowd this large, being "removed" didn't require violence. It required indifference.
He heard movement nearby—soft steps in the dirt.
A boy passed along the inside edge of the cord, careful not to touch it. He was older than Li Shen, maybe twelve, his clothes too clean for a villager and too plain for a rich house. His hair was tied neatly, his hands tucked into his sleeves.
Clan-adjacent, at least.
He didn't look around like a child in a new place. He moved like someone trained to move without drawing attention.
Two men followed at a distance that was polite but absolute. Guards, relatives, servants—whatever they were, their eyes tracked the boy like he was the asset and they were the ledger that kept him from being stolen.
Li Shen watched until they disappeared into the darker lanes.
He felt no jealousy. Jealousy assumed the world was fair enough to resent.
What he felt was a cold clarity: there were people who arrived here already organized, already protected, already trained to be processed efficiently.
And then there was everyone else.
He shifted slightly. The token in his pocket pressed against his ribs.
He didn't take it out. He didn't need to see the stamped character to remember what it meant.
Tomorrow—or the day after—the city would call numbers.
Numbers would move.
Numbers would be sorted.
Children would be weighed against an invisible standard and assigned a future like a ration.
He thought about the village. About how far away it felt now, even though it was only three days behind them.
About how the fields and the grave and the familiar faces did not follow.
His throat tightened.
Not with fear of the test.
With the awareness that whatever happened next, something had already changed. He could feel it like grit under the tongue.
A low murmur rose near the center of their section. Li Shen tilted his head.
The village children were gathering.
Not all of them—there were too many clusters, too many families. But the ones from their home area had found each other by instinct, drawn together the way sparks drift toward the same ember.
Zhou Liang's voice carried first. It always did.
"…I'm telling you, it's different here. You can feel it. The air is thicker. You breathe and it's like—like you're inhaling importance."
Li Shen didn't move.
He let the words come to him like wind.
"Shut up," someone whispered sharply.
Da Niu's voice—lower, blunt—followed. "If you keep talking like that, someone will hit you."
Zhou Liang huffed. "Who? These guards? They don't even look at us."
"They'll look if you make them," Da Niu said.
Another child's laugh—thin, nervous—slipped between them.
Li Shen heard Qian Mei shift. He felt her gaze flick toward him, like a question she didn't want to ask out loud: Are you going over there?
He didn't answer immediately.
Because the decision mattered.
This was the kind of place where small decisions had costs. Go talk to them, and you risk being seen as movement. Stay still, and you risk losing your village thread too early.
Li Shen exhaled once, controlled.
He stood.
His father's gaze snapped to him immediately. No surprise. Just a recalibration.
"Stay inside the cord," Li Heng said, low.
"I will," Li Shen answered.
Li Heng's eyes held him for a beat longer, then released.
Permission, in the only form his father used: practical boundaries.
Li Shen walked toward the group.
The other children saw him and quieted, not because he was loud but because he was… weight. Even at ten, he had developed that unspoken gravity. The kind that came from not wasting words.
Zhou Liang's face brightened instantly. Relief and excitement, tangled together.
"Li Shen," Zhou Liang said, as if he'd been waiting for him to make the night feel real. "Did you see the wall? Did you see how high it is? That's not a wall, that's a statement."
Li Shen looked at him and saw the cracks already forming.
Zhou Liang wasn't stupid. He was hungry for a story where hunger got rewarded.
That hunger would either make him useful or break him.
"We saw it," Li Shen said.
Da Niu stood slightly behind Zhou Liang, arms folded, as if his body could replace a weapon he didn't have. He nodded at Li Shen, a small, respectful gesture that would have looked ridiculous in the village and looked perfectly normal here.
A few other village kids hovered nearby—faces Li Shen recognized but didn't know well enough to name without effort. They watched him like he was an anchor they could tie themselves to.
Zhou Liang leaned in, voice dropping conspiratorially.
"They say the test takes days," he whispered. "Days. That means thousands of kids. That means… there have to be sects everywhere."
"They're not everywhere," Li Shen said. "They'll be where the sorting happens."
Zhou Liang blinked. "Same thing."
"No," Li Shen said, and his tone was flat enough to cut through fantasy. "Not the same."
Zhou Liang's mouth opened, then closed. He didn't like being corrected, but he needed someone to steady the story. Li Shen could see it.
A girl's voice—one of the smaller ones—asked softly, "Do you think someone from a sect is walking among us right now?"
Da Niu snorted. "If they are, they don't care."
Li Shen didn't answer the question directly. He looked past them, toward the lane where soldiers moved like metronomes.
"If they walk among us," Li Shen said, "they're looking for problems, not talent."
That quieted the group.
Because it was true.
Talent didn't need to be hunted in a field. Talent was brought to the front and displayed.
Problems were what the empire needed to remove before morning.
Zhou Liang swallowed.
Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he tried to reclaim the narrative.
"My uncle says if you just barely meet the threshold, a sect will still take you," Zhou Liang said. "Because they can train you. It's not like they need only monsters."
Li Shen watched the flicker in Zhou Liang's eyes.
He wasn't bragging.
He was trying to protect himself from tomorrow.
Li Shen could have lied. It would have been easy. A soft lie, a village kindness.
He didn't.
"They'll take you if you're clean enough to be worth feeding," Li Shen said. "If you're not, they won't."
Zhou Liang's face tightened. "You don't know that."
"I do," Li Shen said. "You can hear it in the way the guards talk. They don't say 'opportunity.' They say 'forfeit.'"
Da Niu shifted uncomfortably.
The smaller kids looked down.
Zhou Liang's voice rose, sharp. "So what, you're saying we're all doomed?"
Li Shen held his gaze. Didn't flinch.
"I'm saying this place doesn't care if we feel special," Li Shen replied. "So you shouldn't build your heart on that."
For a second, Zhou Liang looked like he might explode.
Then he didn't.
He deflated.
His shoulders dropped, just slightly.
And Li Shen saw the real fear behind the noise.
Zhou Liang whispered, "But… it's Haoyang."
As if the name itself was supposed to guarantee a miracle.
Li Shen didn't soften.
He only adjusted the framing, because that was the difference between cruelty and clarity.
"It is Haoyang," Li Shen said. "That's why you can't afford to be stupid."
Zhou Liang's jaw worked. He nodded once, too fast.
A promise he hadn't earned yet.
Li Shen turned slightly and looked at Qian Mei, who had followed at a distance. She didn't join the circle. She stood just outside it, arms folded, gaze calm.
She met his eyes.
In that look was something sharp: I'm here. I'm watching. Don't carry everyone.
Li Shen understood.
He didn't say it. He stored it.
One of the other village children spoke—quiet, almost ashamed.
"My father said… if we don't get picked, we should be grateful we got to see the city."
Zhou Liang scoffed weakly. "That's what people say when they don't expect anything."
Li Shen's tone stayed even.
"Your father isn't wrong," he said. "Seeing the city is information. Information is leverage."
They stared at him.
Da Niu frowned. "What does that mean?"
Li Shen hesitated.
Because this was another decision. How much to teach. How much to keep.
Then he chose a small, controlled piece.
"It means," Li Shen said, "when we go back, we'll know what the world actually looks like. That matters."
Qian Mei's mouth twitched, almost a smile.
Zhou Liang looked unconvinced. But he was listening.
The group fell quiet again. Not comfort. Not warmth.
A shared tension.
Li Shen let it sit. He didn't try to fix it. Fixing emotions was a village habit. Here, it was expensive.
A bell rang somewhere near the clerk tents—dull metal, heavy.
The lanes shifted.
Guards' voices rose.
"Back to your cords. No wandering."
The village kids broke apart quickly, like they'd rehearsed being obedient. Even Zhou Liang didn't argue.
As Li Shen turned to go, Zhou Liang caught his sleeve.
"Li Shen," Zhou Liang whispered, and the bravado was gone. "If… if I get in. If I do. I'll—"
He didn't finish. He didn't know what promise to make. He didn't know what kind of person he'd be if the world finally told him yes.
Li Shen looked at the hand on his sleeve, then at Zhou Liang's face.
He didn't offer a vow. Vows were currency, and Zhou Liang was broke.
But he gave him something else: a boundary.
"Tomorrow," Li Shen said. "Walk when they call. Don't look for your father in the crowd. Don't look back. Just walk."
Zhou Liang swallowed, then nodded.
Li Shen stepped away and went back to his cluster.
Li Heng watched him return without question. His father didn't ask what was said. He didn't need the details. He needed the outcome: Li Shen came back. Li Shen stayed inside the cord. Li Shen didn't create problems.
Li Shen sat down.
The dirt was cold through his trousers.
For a moment, he let his shoulders loosen.
Not collapse.
Just… release.
He reached into the bundle and touched the small sachet once, through cloth.
A worn square of fabric that used to smell like bitter herbs.
A thing that had delayed the inevitable and still mattered because it had been hers.
He didn't open it. He didn't need the smell.
He only needed the weight—proof that something in his life had been held together by hands that cared.
He withdrew his hand and stared at the lantern-lit lanes.
On the far side of their section, a cluster of merchant-like people whispered to a man in a simple robe that wasn't quite sect cloth. The man's posture was calm, his gaze measuring. A recruiter, perhaps—minor, not powerful enough to demand, but present enough to collect what the big nets missed.
Rank 1, maybe. Or a training house that wanted to pretend it wasn't.
They didn't look toward Li Shen's cluster.
They watched the children from the edges. The ones who stood straighter. The ones who didn't cry. The ones whose families had the discipline to keep them clean.
Li Shen's stomach tightened.
Not because he wanted their attention.
Because he understood the mechanism.
Tomorrow, the "real" test would begin.
But the sorting had already started.
It started with who had enough food to keep a child's face from looking hollow.
It started with who had enough cloth to keep a child warm enough to sleep.
It started with who had enough knowledge to stand in the right lane when the rope moved.
Li Heng shifted beside him. Quiet. Controlled.
Then, in the darkness, his father spoke.
"Do you still have it?"
Li Shen didn't pretend not to understand.
He nodded once. "Yes."
Li Heng didn't ask to see it.
He only said, "Good. Keep it inside. Don't show anyone."
Li Shen looked at him. "Why?"
Li Heng's eyes stayed on the lanes.
"Because if they see you have something," Li Heng said, "they will decide it can be taken."
Li Shen felt the truth of that settle into his bones.
Not paranoia.
Operational reality.
He leaned his head back against the cart wheel and let his eyes half-close.
Before sleep took him fully, Li Shen caught a familiar outline across two corded sections—cleaner cloth, quieter posture, the kind of family that knew how to stand still and not invite attention.
The Lin family.
And their daughter—the quiet one from Han. He didn't know her given name. In a place like Han, people didn't trade names quickly unless they meant something. But he remembered her anyway: the way she watched instead of performing, the way she kept her breath even when others tried to fill the air with noise.
Here, in Haoyang's holding grounds, that habit didn't read as shyness. It read as calibration.
She sat between her parents, face composed, hands folded neatly in her lap. Not a beauty—too young for that to be more than a future possibility—but there were already hints of a shape cultivation might sharpen later.
Her gaze never drifted toward the fires or the shouting. It stayed forward, toward the lanes. Toward the mechanism.
Li Shen looked away first.
Not because he didn't care—because he understood the rule of this place: recognition is not access.
The bell rang again, heavy and final. Fires lowered. Voices thinned. Bodies turned inward.
The holding grounds became what they were built to be: storage.
Li Shen closed his eyes. Tomorrow, Haoyang would start calling numbers—and every number would be treated like a commodity.