Li Shen POV
The stele looked older up close.
Not ancient in the storybook way—no mist, no halo, no reverence. Old the way a city gate was old: used until the stone learned the shape of human hands.
A sect attendant stood beside it with a brush, a stack of sealed sleeves, and a face that had been trained into neutrality. His robe was plain gray, but the stitching was clean, and the silence around him was purchased with habit.
A soldier hit the ground once with a spear butt.
"Ten at a time. Tokens ready. No talking."
The internal lane tightened.
Li Shen could feel the pressure of bodies behind him without needing to turn. He kept his eyes forward because looking sideways was how you lost your place. Haoyang punished drift.
Two positions ahead, Qian Mei stood straight. Her jaw was set. She wasn't pretending she wasn't afraid—she was refusing to give fear control of her posture.
Behind Li Shen, Luo Ning didn't fidget. The boy's hand wasn't in his mother's grip because she was behind the fence like every other adult. He stood alone like a child who had never been taught that being small required apology.
Two lanes over, Zhou Liang was visible between shoulders—eyes bright, cheeks flushed, expression too alive for a space this mechanical. His father was behind the posts, mouth moving as if he were trying to speak strength into his son through the air.
The attendant lifted a hand.
"Token."
The first child in Li Shen's group stepped forward and offered the stamped wood with both hands. The attendant glanced once, returned it, and tapped the stele with two fingers.
"Palm. Still. Breathe."
The child placed his hand on the stone.
For a breath, nothing happened.
Then faint lines lit across the stele's surface—thin as hair, precise as written characters, sliding beneath the stone like ink pulled through paper. The child's face twitched. His shoulders rose.
"Still," the attendant said, bored.
The child forced himself to settle. The light dimmed. A brush moved. A stamp pressed down on paper. The sealed sleeve received the slip and was closed with practiced speed.
"Next."
One after another.
No praise. No insult. No explanation. The system didn't perform. It processed.
Qian Mei's turn came.
She stepped in, offered her token, and placed her palm flat.
Her fingers didn't curl. She didn't yank her hand away when the sensation slid into her arm.
Her eyes narrowed—not from pain, but from concentration. She held her breath for half a second, then corrected herself and breathed normally, slow and low.
The stele's lines lit. Stayed. Faded.
The attendant stamped her slip and sealed it. He didn't look up as he waved her aside.
Qian Mei moved without stumbling, but Li Shen caught the way her shoulders loosened a fraction once her hand left the stone—as if she'd been holding herself together with muscle alone.
Then the attendant's gaze landed on Li Shen.
"Token."
Li Shen stepped forward and offered it.
The wood felt warm, rubbed smooth by other hands. A label that had passed through too many palms in too few hours.
The attendant glanced at the number and returned it. His fingers pointed to the stele.
"Palm. Still. Breathe."
Li Shen pressed his palm down.
Cold.
Not winter cold. Not river cold.
Cold like law.
Something slid through him—fine pressure threading into bone, then deeper, toward the place beneath his ribs where his body kept whatever it could keep. It wasn't a pain. It was an inspection.
His instinct was to tense. He forced it down.
In. Out.
The stele's lines lit once—weakly—then flickered, as if the mechanism found the answer disappointing.
A spike of anger rose fast, sharp as a blade: Even stone can look at me and decide I'm not worth the ink.
He swallowed it.
Anger was loud. Loud drew attention. Attention in Haoyang was a resource you did not control.
He stayed still.
The flicker stabilized into a thin glow and then faded.
The attendant's brush moved. Stamp. Slip. Seal.
"Next."
Li Shen stepped aside and didn't look at the sealed sleeve.
If the verdict mattered, it would be read later, when it could hurt with witnesses.
Behind him, Luo Ning stepped forward.
Token offered. Palm placed.
The stele's lines lit quickly—clean, steady, no flicker.
Luo Ning's face didn't change. His posture didn't sag. He looked like a child standing under normal weather.
Li Shen felt the difference like a measurement.
Not jealousy.
Calibration.
Two lanes over, Zhou Liang went next.
He pressed his palm down hard, knuckles whitening as if force could buy outcome. The stele glowed brighter than Li Shen's had, fast and eager.
Zhou Liang's mouth pulled into a grin he tried to suppress and failed.
The attendant sealed his sleeve without reaction.
"Second station," a voice called.
The line moved.
---
The second station sat beneath a heavy awning like a military supply tent, but the structure inside wasn't mortal work. A ring of carved stone surrounded a vertical pillar marked with grooves and characters that looked too crisp to be old—like they were renewed by method, maintained by power.
A sect attendant stood at the ring with red thread coiled around his wrist.
"Token. Stand inside the groove," he said. "Feet in. Hands at sides. Eyes forward."
Children entered one at a time.
The moment a child's feet crossed the groove, the air thickened.
Not like heat. Like density.
The first child's knees flexed reflexively. His breath hitched. His eyes widened as if his body had suddenly remembered gravity had teeth.
He fought not to collapse.
The attendant watched without expression, tied red thread around the sealed sleeve, stamped it, and waved the child out.
Qian Mei stepped in next.
The pressure hit her hard enough that Li Shen saw her shoulders twitch. Her fingers curled once, then flattened. Her jaw tightened, and she forced her breath low.
She held.
The attendant's gaze ran over her posture like a diagnosis. Red thread. Stamp. Done.
Then Li Shen's token was checked, and he stepped into the groove.
The pressure landed like a weight dropped onto his skeleton.
His knees wanted to fold. His lungs felt smaller. His heartbeat turned loud and ugly inside his ribs.
He widened his stance within the groove and lowered his center of gravity the way his father had taught him on muddy ground: Don't fight the force. Build around it.
In. Out.
The pressure didn't feel like pain. It felt like the system asking a simple question with a brutal tone:
How much can your body hold before it lies down and admits the answer?
The pillar's surface flickered faintly—lines crawling upward, pausing, stalling. Li Shen felt sweat gather at his spine. His throat tasted metallic.
He did not drop.
He hated that he had to be proud of something so small.
The attendant tied red thread around his sealed sleeve anyway. The stamp came down.
No reaction. No visible judgment.
Just documentation.
Li Shen stepped out with legs that felt heavier than when he entered, and he kept his face blank because weakness here became rumor.
Luo Ning entered behind him.
The pressure hit him too—but the boy's body didn't react the same way. His posture stayed unusually stable. Not stiff. Not brave. Stable the way some animals were stable under threat because their nervous system didn't waste motion on panic.
The pillar flickered cleaner.
Red thread. Stamp.
Then Zhou Liang entered his ring two lanes over.
He held for a moment—then his breath caught. His knees shook visibly, pride fighting physics. He didn't fall. He didn't look calm either.
The stamp came. The sleeve was tied. He staggered out half a step, recovered, and pretended it hadn't happened.
Li Shen didn't smirk.
Mockery was a luxury of people with margin.
A bamboo rod hit the ground again.
"Third station."
And the lane was pushed toward the darkest structure in the staging field: a long tent with layered curtains and soldiers standing at attention like they were guarding an animal they didn't fully trust.
---
The Beast Pressure Hall swallowed sound.
Inside, the air smelled of damp cloth, metal, and something else—faint, sour, primal. Posts were driven into the ground in rows, each with a number inked at the top. Children stood at them like offerings arranged for inventory.
A sect attendant walked the aisle with a bamboo rod and no impatience. That was worse than anger.
"Token. Post. Stand. Do not speak."
Li Shen found his number and stepped to his post.
Across the hall, he saw Qian Mei at her own post—chin level, eyes forward.
Two posts to Li Shen's right, Luo Ning stood smaller than all of them and still looked inconveniently stable.
Two lanes over, Zhou Liang was visible again, shoulders lifted too high, breath too fast.
The attendant lifted his rod.
The pressure arrived.
Not Qi in the way meditation described it.
This was instinct made external. Predation pressed into the air until the human body remembered it was edible.
Li Shen's stomach dropped. His heartbeat slammed. His skin tightened as if trying to become armor. His mind threw images at him in rapid succession like it was trying to find a door out of reality:
The house going quiet.
His mother's cough.
Winter wind grinding grit into breath.
His father's hand on his shoulder at the gate.
His body wanted to run.
His mind wanted to bargain.
Neither mattered.
He forced his breath down.
In. Out.
He didn't pretend he wasn't afraid.
He refused to let fear choose movement.
The pressure came in waves. A circling presence. Testing which bodies folded first. Watching who tried to hide panic by locking joints and who broke by fighting too hard.
Somewhere left, a child made a small desperate sound and bent at the knees. The bamboo rod tapped the ground beside their post.
"Stand."
The child forced themselves upright, shaking.
Qian Mei's shoulders trembled once. She swallowed hard, then steadied. Li Shen could see the strain in her neck muscles even from here.
Zhou Liang two lanes over started strong—then his breath caught. His eyes widened, and for half a second he looked like he would bolt. He didn't. He stood. But the confidence drained out of his face like water out of a cracked bowl.
Then, without warning, the pressure sharpened.
It wasn't stronger everywhere.
It was selective.
A few children stiffened as if something had stepped closer to them specifically.
Luo Ning did not.
The boy's posture stayed stable. His eyes stayed forward. He looked like the pressure had become normal weather.
Li Shen felt that difference as a cold fact.
So this is what his physique means.
Not that he was fearless.
That his body didn't spill itself under a predator's shadow.
The wave eased.
Then returned.
Then eased again.
The hall was teaching a lesson without speaking:
Your mind is not the only thing that breaks. Your body has its own limits, and it will betray you if it must.
Finally, the bamboo rod tapped near Li Shen's post.
"Out."
Li Shen stepped back once, then turned and walked out at a controlled pace. Running would be an admission. Stumbling would be memory for people who watched.
Outside the tent, daylight hit him like a slap.
A sect attendant took his token, checked his number, and handed him a thin sorting token in return—different wood, thinner, marked for later processing.
No explanation.
Just the next tool.
Qian Mei emerged a moment later, pale but upright. She was breathing carefully, like her ribs had learned a new weight.
Luo Ning walked out looking almost normal, as if the hall had been a lesson he'd already studied.
Then Zhou Liang came out.
His face was flushed. His eyes were bright in the wrong way—too much relief, too much adrenaline, too much unspent fear. He looked around as if searching for someone to tell him he'd done well.
No one did.
They were herded into a holding pen that felt quieter than any place in Haoyang had the right to be.
Children sat with sorting tokens clenched in fists like they might dissolve.
Adults behind fences stood with faces carved into stillness.
Li Shen did not look for Li Heng.
He didn't need to.
He could feel his father's attention like a boundary—present, controlled, unable to interfere.
A horn sounded—deep, final.
The pen tightened.
"Sorting begins," a sect attendant called from the platform.
Li Shen's sorting token bit into his palm.
Everything before had been measurement.
Now came allocation.
---
Lin Ci POV
Lin Ci had been told to breathe slowly.
She had been told that panic made the body waste itself.
She had been told a hundred things by people who needed her to succeed because the household needed leverage.
None of that mattered when the stele's cold slid into her palm and the city became a machine that could label her for life.
Station One was not dramatic.
That was the point.
The stele accepted her hand the way an abacus accepted beads: without emotion, with total certainty that it would deliver a number.
Lin Ci forced herself not to tense.
In. Out.
The lines lit across the stone—thin, steady, controlled.
The attendant stamped a slip, sealed it, and waved her forward without looking at her face again.
No praise.
Good.
Praise created illusion. Illusion was how families got ruined.
Station Two was worse.
The moment she stepped into the groove, the air thickened and her body tried to react like a human body was supposed to react—knees flexing, breath hitching, heart panicking at invisible weight.
She refused.
Her uncle was not here. He was sheltered at home, breathing shallowly in a bed that cost money every day even when no coins were spent. Her parents were behind fences and posts, useless for anything except watching.
If she failed here, the household would still have contracts and debts and an illness that didn't care about dignity.
If she succeeded, the household would gain access.
Not miracles.
Access.
She held.
Her breath stayed low. Her hands stayed flat. Her eyes stayed forward.
The attendant tied red thread around her sealed sleeve, stamped it, and sent her on.
Then came the Beast Pressure Hall.
Rumors had described it like a spectacle. Lin Ci realized immediately that rumors were made by people who hadn't stood inside it.
The pressure arrived as a certainty of predation.
Not violence.
Not pain.
A wordless message pressed into the nervous system: You are food.
Her stomach dropped. Her throat tightened. Her skin crawled.
For a blink, she saw her uncle's face—lighter every month, breath shallower, eyes trying to pretend he wasn't measuring the distance to death.
She swallowed the image down.
This was not the time for grief.
Grief was a private tax. Haoyang did not give refunds.
She stood.
In. Out.
The pressure came in waves—circling, testing, stepping closer to certain posts. Some children shook. Some fought not to cry. One child across the hall made a small broken sound and nearly folded.
The bamboo rod tapped beside them.
"Stand."
They stood.
Lin Ci did not look at them again.
Looking was a way to share collapse.
She could not afford shared collapse.
The wave sharpened once, and she felt her body try to betray her—knees wanting to bend, breath wanting to break.
She held anyway.
When the rod tapped near her post—
"Out."
—she walked out without running.
Outside, a sect attendant checked her token and handed her a thin sorting token in return.
She turned toward the pen and saw, for a heartbeat, the Li boy from the bourgade.
She still did not know his given name.
She only knew the family name and the shape of him: quiet, controlled, too operational for ten, eyes that looked like they were already filing the world into categories.
Their gazes met once.
No warmth.
No hostility.
Just recognition that they were both being processed by the same machine.
Then he looked away, as if to refuse the city even the smallest emotional leak.
Lin Ci understood.
In Haoyang, emotion was a visible resource.
And visible resources were taxed.
She sat in the pen with her sorting token in her fist and waited for the part that actually mattered.
---
Li Shen POV
The platform attendant lifted a slate board.
The field went silent fast enough to feel unnatural.
"Batch Thirty-Two," the attendant said. "Step forward when your number is spoken."
Li Shen's mouth went dry.
He wasn't thinking about glory.
He was thinking about outcomes:
Which sect claimed which profile.
Which children were sorted into what kind of life.
Which ones walked back out with sealed sleeves that meant nothing except not selected.
The attendant's eyes dropped to the slate.
The first number left his mouth.
And the sorting began.