By noon, the staging field no longer felt like a test ground.
It felt like a court.
Not the kind with carved thrones and poetry. The kind where outcomes were produced in bulk—quietly, efficiently, and without appeal.
The three stations had eaten the morning batch and spat them out into a holding lane behind a second set of ropes. The children stood in clustered rows under canvas awnings that didn't block the heat so much as trap it. Soldiers paced the perimeter with the bored competence of men guarding a granary.
Li Shen's token was damp in his palm.
Not from rain. From sweat he hadn't noticed gathering.
Around him, the lane held a hundred children, maybe more, all of them scrubbed down to the same essentials: a number, a name written in ink, and whatever the stations had seen when they looked inside.
Qian Mei stood two steps to his left, hands folded in front of her the way her mother had taught her when adults were watching. Her mouth was a straight line. Her eyes kept flicking forward toward the raised platform where attendants moved between desks and screens, carrying stacks of slips like they were carrying a harvest.
Luo Ning stood to his right. Still steady. Still too calm. He watched the robed figures beyond the rope with the same expression he'd had watching soldiers at dawn: attentive, unromantic, unafraid in a way that didn't read like bravery.
Like construction.
Two lanes over, Zhou Liang kept shifting his weight as if he couldn't find a place to put his hope. Every time a voice rose from the platform, Zhou Liang's head snapped up. Every time it wasn't meant for him, his shoulders sank and then lifted again, as if he could force reality to hurry.
Li Shen didn't try to calm him. Not now.
This wasn't a place where words helped. It was a place where words were recorded.
Behind the rope, adults pressed close in the shade of their own fear. Li Shen caught glimpses through gaps in bodies: his father's profile, still and watchful; Qian Mei's parents standing like they'd anchored themselves to the earth; Luo with her arms around herself, eyes hard enough to cut rope.
Li Heng didn't wave.
He didn't need to.
Li Shen could feel him anyway, the way you could feel a wall at your back without turning around.
The platform's central screen—dark wood framed in metal—was blank.
Not empty. Waiting.
A bell rang once. Not loud, but sharp enough to slice through the noise.
Then a voice carried out over the lane. Not a soldier. Not a clerk. Something in between—an attendant trained to speak without sounding like a request.
"Morning batch. Sorting begins. Tokens ready. Names clear."
The crowd tightened in one collective inhale.
Li Shen tasted it: that familiar city flavor of lamp-black, ink, and crushed breath.
Haoyang didn't do suspense.
It did procedure.
---
The first names weren't his.
They rarely were.
The sorting began with a stream of children from the front of the lane—numbers called, a child stepping forward, an attendant taking the token, checking a slip, and pointing with clean economy toward one of several marked paths.
Some paths led toward sect banners beyond the platform.
Some led toward a quieter corner where imperial assistants waited with ledgers of their own.
Some led nowhere obvious at all—just a gate in the fencing where children were told to return to their adults and leave the test grounds immediately.
Not "failed." Not "unworthy."
Unclaimed.
That word lived unspoken in every movement.
The first claim he saw was obvious even from where he stood.
A boy in fine cloth—clan polish, soft boots, posture practiced—stepped up when his number was called. He stood straight, chin level, like he expected to be received.
The attendant didn't greet him. Didn't congratulate him.
He only read.
"Token three-seven-nine. Name: Guo Ren."
A pause.
The attendant's eyes flicked once toward the white banner, as if confirming what everyone already understood.
Then he spoke again, same tone, same weight.
"Immaculate Sword Sect. Outer disciple entry."
The crowd reacted the way a crowd always did when it heard the name of a power: a ripple of restrained sound, half envy, half fear.
Guo Ren's mouth tightened like he was trying not to smile.
He turned and walked toward the white banner where two disciples in pale robes waited with faces that said nothing could surprise them anymore.
No one mocked them. No one even breathed too loudly in their direction.
People didn't survive long if they confused "outer" with "weak."
One name. One claim. One future sealed.
The sorting kept moving.
Li Shen watched, learning faster than he wanted to.
The Aurora Plain Sect's banner—deep color, heavy cloth—sat at the platform's far end like an anchor point. People stared at it the way villagers stared at storms: with the knowledge that it could change everything and the certainty that it didn't care about them.
The name shifted depending on who was speaking.
Mortals said Aurora Plain Sect, because that was what you saw: the sect, the banner, the robes.
Kingdom clerks—when they dared to write it at all—called it the Great Sect of the Dawn Plains, because the Dawn Plains were its authority zone, and authority was the only thing states respected.
Same power. Two labels. One hierarchy that didn't ask permission.
The Gray Pavilion's presence was quieter: no towering banner, no dramatic colors. Just a small sign, a low table, and an attendant with a neutral face. They claimed some children in clean, unshowy motions—quick, efficient, as if trying to leave no trace of desperation.
The crowd still went quiet when that sign was named.
Not because people worshipped them.
Because even a mid-tier sect was still a sect, and mortals had a strong instinct for not offending things that could erase them without paperwork.
At the right edge of the platform, a rougher banner hung—less polished, less grand. It read like a practical institution rather than a myth.
That was where the first "useful" children went.
Body-leaning. Strong frames. Sturdy meridians. The kind that looked like labor would become violence if trained properly.
Li Shen didn't know the name yet.
He would soon.
---
"Token seven-five-eight."
Li Shen's head lifted before his mind could stop it.
The number belonged to a boy two places ahead. The boy stepped forward, hands shaking, and then stopped when the attendant's eyes flicked down to the slip.
"Name: Luo Ning."
The lane tightened. Even Zhou Liang went still.
Not because Luo Ning was famous. Because attention had weight, and everyone had felt the way soldiers looked at that child.
The attendant's voice stayed level.
"Step forward. Hold still."
Luo Ning did, like the instruction had been written inside him.
A second attendant approached—not a clerk, not a soldier. A disciple, by the way the robe sat and the way people unconsciously leaned away. The disciple held a small slate and moved it near Luo Ning's chest. The slate didn't glow. It didn't need to.
The disciple's eyes narrowed, not with suspicion but with interest—the kind that meant someone was about to be bought.
Then the disciple looked up, past the ropes, past the crowd, toward a banner that wasn't on the platform.
A banner further back. Darker cloth. A stylized beast-head stitched in old thread.
The attendant announced it cleanly.
"Thousand Beasts Sect. Outer disciple entry."
For half a second, the holding lane forgot how to breathe.
Then sound came in small bursts from the adult crowd—sharp, disbelieving, quickly smothered by the presence of soldiers.
Luo's face beyond the rope went white in a way that made her look suddenly younger than she had any right to be. Her hand shot to her mouth without permission.
Luo Ning didn't react like a child receiving salvation.
He reacted like a child being reassigned.
He turned his head once, searching through faces, and his gaze found his mother. Not pleading. Not panicked.
Just looking.
As if making sure she was still there to be seen one last time.
Luo's shoulders shook once. She tried to step forward.
A soldier's spear butt touched the ground between her feet and the rope line.
Not a strike.
A boundary.
Luo froze. Her eyes stayed locked on her son.
Luo Ning faced forward again. The disciple from Thousand Beasts stepped in, took Luo Ning's token, and replaced it with a new one—metal, stamped with a beast-mark.
Then the disciple pointed.
Luo Ning walked.
Steady.
Not brave. Built.
The lane watched him disappear behind the fencing toward the beast-banner, where another group of children stood—children who looked like they either didn't fear predators or had been taught to pretend.
Li Shen felt something tight in his chest, and he didn't mistake it for jealousy.
It was understanding.
Some people were born with a shape the world wanted.
Some weren't.
Luo Ning hadn't "won."
He'd been claimed.
And the claim carried a price no one here was pretending to measure.
---
The sorting didn't pause for grief.
It rolled on.
More names. More banners.
A girl went to the Aurora Plain Sect—into the Dawn Plains authority line—and her father almost collapsed from relief, held upright by neighbors because the rope line wouldn't let him fall forward.
A boy went unclaimed and his mother made a sound like she'd been punched—quickly smothered by the knowledge that crying too loud could turn guards hostile.
Li Shen watched a child be sent to a minor sect without fanfare. The child tried to smile and failed. The smile died in his mouth the moment he realized the sect attendant wasn't smiling back.
Not cruelty.
Indifference.
The only emotion the system consistently produced.
Then—
"Token seven-four-two."
A familiar face jerked up as if the number had slapped him.
Da Niu.
Li Shen hadn't seen him in the lane until now—not clearly. Too many bodies. Too much dust. But when Da Niu stepped forward, Li Shen recognized him immediately, even here.
He looked like the same village brute. Just smaller than his reputation, because Haoyang made every body feel temporary.
Da Niu walked with the stiff confidence of a child who believed strength was always enough because it had been enough in the village.
At the platform, the attendant checked the slip, then nodded once—not toward a grand banner, but toward that rougher sign at the platform's edge.
"Stonehide Hall. Outer disciple entry."
The name landed differently.
Not myth. Not heaven.
Something you could imagine existing on roads: escorts, guards, hard men paid to stand between merchants and knives.
Da Niu blinked, confused for a heartbeat, as if he'd expected a bigger name.
Then his eyes went hard.
He didn't look back toward the rope line. He didn't search for approval.
He lifted his chin and walked toward the rough banner.
Li Shen saw what most people missed: Da Niu's shoulders weren't slumping.
They were settling.
Da Niu had been handed a path that fit him. Not glorious. Not gentle. But real.
Behind the rope, Da Niu's father let out a breath so loud it was almost a laugh. His hands shook as he clasped them together, as if praying without words.
In the village, Da Niu had been a bully.
In Haoyang, he was a candidate.
That was what institutions did: they turned crude traits into assets.
Li Shen absorbed the lesson and didn't romanticize it.
Stonehide Hall wasn't saving Da Niu.
It was buying him.
---
The next names cut closer.
"Token seven-seven-one."
Zhou Liang flinched like the number had hit his spine.
He stepped forward too fast, almost tripped, caught himself, then stood rigid at the platform as if stillness could convince the world he belonged.
His face was too bright. His eyes too hungry.
The attendant read without changing expression.
"Name: Zhou Liang."
The pause that followed lasted half a heartbeat too long.
Not drama. Calculation.
Then the attendant spoke again.
"Reedwater Gate. Outer disciple entry."
A small faction. A minor sect. A name most villagers wouldn't have recognized unless they'd heard it from caravans.
Zhou Liang's mouth opened.
For a moment it looked like he couldn't decide whether to be grateful or offended.
Then gratitude won—because being chosen by anything was still a ladder out of mud.
His eyes flashed toward the rope line, searching for his father.
His father was white-faced with relief. His hands were clenched on the rope so hard his knuckles looked ready to split.
Zhou Liang swallowed, then walked toward the minor banner as if it was a palace gate.
He wasn't thinking about ceilings.
He was thinking about escape.
Li Shen watched him and felt something that wasn't kindness and wasn't contempt.
It was a quiet recognition of what Zhou Liang was, right now:
a boy who had almost been nothing,
and had been offered a thin, precarious something.
That "something" could become a knife later.
Or a chain.
Or both.
---
"Token seven-nine-four."
Qian Mei's shoulders tensed.
She stepped forward when her number was called. Not rushing. Not frozen.
Just moving.
Li Shen watched her the way you watched someone you'd known since dirt and riverwater suddenly walk into a room full of knives.
At the platform, the attendant glanced down.
"Name: Qian Mei."
No pause this time.
"Return to your household. Unclaimed."
The words landed with almost no sound.
Because the attendant didn't raise his voice.
Because Haoyang didn't need to.
Qian Mei's face didn't break.
Not immediately.
She bowed because she'd been taught to bow when adults spoke, even when adults were speaking the end of a dream.
Then she turned and walked back toward the rope line with her head level, as if she'd been ordered to carry water, not told she wasn't worth investment.
When she reached the fence, her mother grabbed her so hard it looked like she was trying to pull her back inside her own body.
Qian Mei let herself be held. Only for a moment. Then she loosened her mother's grip gently, as if saying: I'm still here. Don't crush me with your fear.
Li Shen's throat tightened.
He wanted to step toward her. Say something. Promise something.
He didn't.
Because promises here were cheap.
And Qian Mei didn't need comfort she hadn't asked for.
She needed time to turn humiliation into a shape she could live with.
Li Shen stored that too.
Another line in an invisible ledger.
Debt: social.
Payment due later.
---
The lane thinned.
Names moved faster now, as if the machinery had warmed up and the people running it had stopped pretending children were human.
Li Shen's token felt heavier with every number that wasn't his.
And then—
"Token eight-zero-three."
Li Shen stepped forward before his mind finished confirming it was real.
He felt Qian Mei's absence like a missing tooth. Felt Luo Ning's absence like a pulled thread. Felt Zhou Liang's absence like a loud door closing somewhere behind him.
His feet carried him into the cleared space in front of the platform.
He held out his token.
The attendant took it, checked the slip, and looked at him for the first time like he was actually seeing a face instead of a number.
Not compassion.
Assessment.
"Name," the attendant said.
"Li Shen," Li Shen answered.
The attendant's brush scratched. Ink moved.
Then the attendant's eyes dropped again.
A pause.
A longer one.
Li Shen's skin prickled.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe wrong. He didn't beg.
He stood the way his father had taught him to stand when adults were deciding whether to be fair.
Fairness didn't matter.
But posture did.
The attendant spoke.
"Return to your household. Unclaimed."
For a heartbeat, Li Shen heard nothing.
Not the crowd. Not the soldiers. Not the banners snapping.
Just the word: unclaimed.
It didn't feel like rejection. Not yet.
It felt like a label being stamped onto his skin.
He bowed, because that was the only move that didn't turn into pleading.
Then he turned and walked back toward the rope line.
He didn't run.
He didn't slow down.
He kept his pace controlled because control was the only weapon a child had left when the world told him he didn't qualify to be bought.
At the fence, his father's eyes met his.
Li Heng didn't flinch. Didn't soften. Didn't look disappointed.
He just reached out and placed a hand on Li Shen's shoulder—firm, anchoring, the same touch he'd used at the gate.
Li Shen swallowed once.
"I'm unclaimed," he said, voice level.
Li Heng nodded once, as if they were discussing weather.
"Then we leave when the batch is cleared," Li Heng said.
No grief. No drama.
Operational love, again.
And it hit Li Shen harder than the word unclaimed ever could.
Because it meant Li Heng had never been buying dreams.
He'd been preparing for outcomes.
Even this one.
---
The sorting continued.
Li Shen stood behind the rope line now, watching the rest of the morning batch be poured into its destinations.
He saw the Gray Pavilion claim a handful of children with middling results—stable bodies, average qi capacity, nothing remarkable. The Gray Pavilion attendant didn't look ashamed. He looked like a man sweeping up what others left behind because sweeping was still better than starvation.
He saw the Immaculate Sword Sect claim another child with sharp eyes and clean breath control—likely trained by a clan, polished for this moment.
He saw the Aurora Plain Sect claim a small cluster in a row, like choosing stones from a riverbed: not many, but each one clean enough to justify the hand reaching down.
Then a disturbance moved through the far lanes.
Not a shout. Not a fight.
A shift in attention.
Li Shen followed it instinctively—toward a child he recognized by posture alone.
The Lin girl.
She stepped up when her number was called. She didn't look around. She didn't search for reassurance. Her parents behind the rope looked like they were holding their bodies together by force, but she moved as if she'd already accepted the cost of being seen.
The attendant read her name without lifting his voice.
"Family name: Lin."
Li Shen's chest tightened at the sound, because it snapped a memory into place: the bourgade accounts, the quiet girl, the family that carried itself like it understood contracts and consequences.
The attendant's gaze flicked toward the Aurora Plain banner—toward where the Dawn Plains authority was made visible as cloth and silence.
"Step forward," the attendant said.
A disciple in sect robes approached—real sect robes this time, not an imperial assistant's uniform. The disciple's eyes moved over the girl once, quick and clinical, then nodded as if confirming a calculation already completed.
The attendant announced it.
"Aurora Plain Sect. Outer disciple entry."
Somewhere behind the rope line, someone breathed the other name like a superstition.
"Great Sect of the Dawn Plains…"
The rope line behind her shuddered.
Her mother's hand went to her mouth.
Her father's eyes closed for half a second, and when they opened again they looked wet in a way that embarrassed him. He didn't wipe them. He couldn't spare the movement.
The Lin girl didn't smile.
She bowed.
Then she turned and walked toward the Aurora Plain banner with the same controlled steps she'd used walking to the platform—like she understood that being claimed by a powerful sect wasn't a happy ending.
It was a new set of rules.
As she passed the fence line, her gaze flicked once—not toward Li Shen, not searching for him, just sweeping across the crowd like a person taking inventory.
Her eyes passed over him without recognition.
Li Shen didn't take it personally.
She didn't know his given name. He didn't know hers.
In Han's bourgade, they'd been two children in the same world.
In Haoyang, they were classified into different categories.
That was what the city did.
It didn't create rivals.
It sorted them.
Still, Li Shen felt it: the quiet, ugly bite of comparison.
Not about beauty. Not about status.
About the gap between "unclaimed" and "claimed."
A gap so wide it might as well have been a canyon.
---
When the last name of the morning batch was read, the platform attendants didn't congratulate anyone.
They didn't announce totals. They didn't summarize the day.
They simply rang the bell again and began calling the next token range.
Haoyang didn't stop for outcomes.
It processed them.
Soldiers opened a side gate in the fencing, and the unclaimed children were directed back toward their households. Claimed children were redirected toward their sect's intake lines, where new tokens were issued and old ones were confiscated like they'd never mattered.
Li Shen watched Zhou Liang vanish into Reedwater Gate's line, posture already changing as if the sect's attention was rewriting his spine.
He watched Da Niu join Stonehide Hall's cluster—bigger boys, harder faces, a handler who looked like he'd break a child's fingers to teach him discipline and call it kindness.
He watched Luo Ning disappear among the Thousand Beasts recruits, swallowed into a world where "pressure" wasn't a test module but a daily language.
He watched the Lin girl step under the Aurora Plain banner—the Dawn Plains authority made tangible—and disappear behind a curtain where the air itself seemed cleaner.
And he watched Qian Mei standing with her family, unclaimed like him, eyes fixed on nothing.
Li Heng's hand remained on Li Shen's shoulder.
Not holding him back.
Holding him together.
"Come," Li Heng said.
They moved with their cluster out of the test grounds, back toward the holding fields where carts and bundles waited. Around them, other families did the same—some silent with relief, some silent with grief, some loud with a kind of triumph that sounded dangerously close to arrogance.
Li Shen kept his eyes forward.
He could taste the city's truth again: ink, stone, people.
Classification.
Haoyang had assigned him one.
Unclaimed.
For now.
And the worst part—the part that burned under his ribs like a swallowed coal—was that he understood something new:
The world hadn't rejected him because it hated him.
It had rejected him because, at ten years old, he didn't look profitable.
That was cleaner than malice.
And far harder to fight.
Li Shen walked beside his father as the rope lines and banners receded behind them.
He didn't cry.
He didn't collapse.
But his fingers kept closing and opening at his side, as if his body was trying to learn how to hold a future that wasn't being handed to him.
Behind them, the bell rang again.
Another range was called.
Another batch stepped forward.
And Haoyang—patient, indifferent, endlessly hungry—kept sorting children into lanes, papers, categories, outcomes.
Li Shen didn't look back.
Not because it didn't hurt.
Because pain was not new.
What was new was clarity.
And clarity, he knew, could be used.