After three days of travel, the road gave the village back to them like nothing important had happened.
The same wind dragged grit across the same fields. The same roofs leaned into the same sky. The same dog barked from the same yard until someone threw a pebble and told it to shut up.
Only the people had changed.
And the village—quiet, small, predictable—wasn't as quiet as it should've been.
They heard it before they saw it: the wrong kind of noise for midday. Not laughter. Not mourning. Voices overlapping too fast, then cutting off as if someone had stepped on a tail. Doors half-open. Faces angled toward the road like the road owed them a verdict.
The news had arrived ahead of them.
Not cleanly. Not with certainty. But enough to make a village itch.
They came in as a cluster out of habit—Li Heng and Li Shen, Qian Mei with her parents—walking the last stretch as if the ground might try to argue with them. There was no cart this time heavy with hope. No crowd around them. No shout of Haoyang! like the word itself could feed a family.
Just footsteps, and the quiet weight of what didn't come back with them.
At the village boundary, the first face they met was the village chief.
He wasn't waiting with ceremony. He was waiting the way a man waited for weather he couldn't stop: standing still, hands tucked into sleeves, eyes measuring.
Behind him lingered two elders—Old Gao and Old He. Old He kept herself a distance to one side—close enough to hear, far enough to avoid being dragged into someone else's grief by accident.
The chief's gaze flicked over the adults first. Then the children. Then—automatically—over their shoulders, as if the road might cough up more names.
It didn't.
The chief's mouth tightened.
"How many?" he asked.
Li Heng answered, because Li Heng always answered when the world wanted a number.
"Our cluster returned," Li Heng said. "The others… stayed."
The chief's eyes cut to Qian Mei.
Qian Mei's mother flinched before she could stop herself.
Unclaimed.
You didn't need to say it. The body said it for you—the way shoulders sat too carefully, the way hands hovered with nothing to hold.
The chief exhaled through his nose. He looked older than he had three days ago.
"Zhou Liang?" he asked, and the name came out almost like a test.
Qian Mei's father swallowed once. "Reedwater Gate," he said. "Outer disciple entry."
The chief's jaw worked as if he was chewing an ugly truth. Reedwater Gate wasn't nothing. It was a ladder. But it wasn't the ladder the village had dared to imagine when the decree was read aloud and the wind had felt like it held a new world inside it.
"And Da Niu?" Old Gao asked, voice rough.
"Stonehide Hall," Li Heng said.
That got a different reaction: a few sharp nods from the men who understood what that name meant in practical terms—hard work, hard training, guards and escorts and bruised knuckles. Not a myth. A living.
The chief's eyes drifted left, toward the small house at the edge of the village—Luo Yao's place.
The door was closed. The yard was neat. Too neat for a home with a child.
Li Shen watched the chief look at it and felt something in his chest tighten, because even before anyone said it, the absence carried a shape.
"Luo Ning," the chief said at last, and he didn't soften the words. This wasn't tenderness. This was duty.
Li Heng's answer was immediate.
"Thousand Beasts Sect," he said.
The name landed like a stone dropped into a shallow bowl. Quiet at first—then the ripples reached everyone.
One of the elders made a small, involuntary sound. Not approval. Not disbelief.
Fear.
Not of Luo Yao. Not of Luo Ning.
Of what it meant for the village to be connected—however thinly—to a Rank 2 sect whose very banner carried predator-weight.
Old He's eyes narrowed. She said nothing. But Li Shen saw the calculation happen behind her expression: what kind of boy gets taken by a beast sect, and what kind of mother does the village become to him?
The chief's gaze sharpened, and for a second Li Shen thought he might ask the question everyone was avoiding.
And you?
Instead, he didn't.
Because Li Shen's face already carried the answer.
The chief's voice lowered. "Go home," he said. "Eat. Rest. The village will speak later."
It wasn't comfort. It wasn't dismissal.
It was triage.
Then the chief's eyes flicked—quick, precise—to Li Heng, and to Qian Mei's father.
"Li Heng. You too," he said. "And you. Inside. Now."
Old Gao stiffened like he'd been singled out, but the chief added, without looking at him:
"Old Gao. If you want to talk, you do it where walls can hear it first."
Containment.
Not ceremony.
Li Heng nodded once, the smallest motion in the world, and followed the chief toward his house. Qian Mei's father came with them. Old Gao, grumbling under his breath, came too.
Li Shen stayed where he was for half a heartbeat, then followed because there was nowhere else to stand without becoming a story.
Old He remained outside. Watching. Listening.
---
The chief's house smelled of old tea, damp wood, and the faint bitterness of herbs kept for winter coughs.
The door shut. The latch clicked.
Only then did Old Gao let himself speak.
"They say the Lin household—" he started, and the words came out sharp, half-mocking, half-afraid. "They say one of theirs got taken by the biggest banner. That's caravan talk. That's the kind of lie people tell to make a bourgade family sound important."
The chief gave him a flat look. "It is talk," he said. "Until it isn't."
Old Gao snorted, but weaker this time. "You really believe the decree's banner would reach down for merchants?"
Qian Mei's father hadn't sat. He stood with his hands clasped as if they were the only thing keeping him from shaking apart.
"It's not talk," he said.
The chief's eyes narrowed. Skepticism first. Not anger. Not disbelief. Just the refusal to be moved by noise.
"Tell me what you actually saw," the chief said.
Qian Mei's father swallowed once. "I saw the token they replaced," he said. "Stamped. Sealed. Not ours."
Old Gao leaned forward despite himself. "And?"
"And I saw how the attendants spoke when that line came up," Qian Mei's father said. "They didn't call it like Reedwater Gate. They spoke like they were reading something official. Like the words had weight."
The chief didn't blink. "Keep going."
"The Lin child didn't return to the rope," Qian Mei's father said. "She went behind the curtain. The old token was taken like it never existed. And the men near that banner—soldiers didn't stare at them. Soldiers watched everyone else."
For a second, the chief didn't move.
Then his face changed—not in fear, but in calculation. The kind that arrives when a rumor becomes jurisdiction.
He exhaled slowly.
"All right," the chief said.
Old Gao opened his mouth, hungry for the story.
The chief cut him off before a sound could form. "No names outside," he said. "No boasting. No envy. No questions. If that banner reached down, it wasn't for our entertainment."
He looked at Li Heng. "You heard what I told you at the boundary," he said. "The village will speak later."
Then his gaze slid to Qian Mei's father. "And when it does, it speaks carefully."
Old Gao's jaw flexed, frustration and awe fighting for the same space.
"Fine," he muttered, like obedience tasted bad.
The chief opened the door.
Outside, the village noise felt louder now, like the air itself had been waiting.
The chief stepped out first.
He didn't address the villagers. He didn't give them the story.
He gave them the shape of control.
"Go back to your work," he said to the nearest cluster. "If you have a mouth full of questions, you keep it closed until evening."
They didn't like it.
They obeyed anyway.
As Li Heng turned away with Li Shen, the chief spoke to Old He in a voice that tried to sound steady.
"Send someone to sit near Luo Yao's house," he said. "Not to watch. To be there. When she returns."
As if presence could soften the impact of the Thousand Beasts Sect's shadow.
Li Shen kept walking.
He didn't know yet how to look at that closed door without feeling as if the village itself had been rearranged by a decision made far away.
---
Home looked the same.
That was the first cruelty.
The yard still held Li Heng's stacked wood. The fence still leaned where it always leaned. The door still stuck on the bottom hinge in the same stubborn way.
Inside, the air was colder than it should have been for this season, because the house no longer carried certain kinds of warmth. Even when the hearth was lit, the rooms felt like they were waiting for a voice that would never return to fill them.
Li Heng set their bundle down and immediately began doing what he always did after a journey.
He made the place functional again.
He checked the water. He set the food where it wouldn't spoil. He hung their outer cloth to air out the road-dust. He moved like a man who didn't trust the world to stop spinning unless he kept his hands on something solid.
Li Shen stood near the table, watching him.
He'd imagined this moment on the road back—imagined his father asking him what the stations were like, what the stele had felt like, what the banners looked like. Imagined himself describing it with clean words, as if explanation could turn humiliation into data.
Now that they were here, the words didn't line up properly inside him. They jammed. They turned sharp.
Li Heng didn't ask, not right away.
He finished the necessary tasks, then sat on the low bench with his elbows on his knees.
He looked at Li Shen.
Not as a judge.
As a man checking if his son was still present in his own body.
"You ate?" Li Heng asked.
Li Shen nodded. "At the holding grounds."
"Enough?"
Li Shen hesitated. "Enough."
Li Heng's eyes didn't blink. He saw the lie and didn't waste energy stabbing it.
"Tell me what matters," Li Heng said.
Li Shen stared at the floorboards for a moment, because looking directly at his father felt like risking an uncontrolled crack.
"What matters?" Li Shen repeated.
"Yes."
Li Shen swallowed. "They didn't… hate me," he said, and he heard how strange it sounded the moment it left his mouth. "It wasn't personal."
Li Heng's mouth tightened. "It never is."
Li Shen's fingers flexed once at his side. "They didn't even—" He stopped. Started again. "They didn't look at me like a person. The attendants looked at a slip. They said the word. Unclaimed. And it was… clean."
Li Heng nodded once, as if Li Shen had just confirmed a weather report.
"And the others?" Li Heng asked.
"Zhou Liang—Reedwater Gate. Da Niu—Stonehide Hall. Luo Ning—Thousand Beasts Sect."
At the last name, Li Shen saw the smallest shift in Li Heng's eyes. Not fear for Luo Ning. Not envy.
Awareness of consequence.
"That's a big shadow for a small village," Li Heng said quietly.
Li Shen nodded.
Li Heng held the silence for a moment, then asked the question that sat underneath all the logistics.
"And you?"
Li Shen's throat tightened. He hated how simple it was.
"Unclaimed," he said, voice steady, because he'd practiced steadiness all the way back.
Li Heng's gaze didn't drop. "Good," he said.
Li Shen blinked, confused despite himself.
Li Heng didn't explain it as comfort. He explained it as a fact.
"Now we know exactly where you stand," Li Heng said. "Not where stories say you should stand. Where you stand."
Li Shen stared at him.
"I wanted—" Li Shen started, and then stopped because the sentence had too many endings. I wanted to be taken. I wanted to be enough. I wanted to bring something back that proved Mother didn't die for nothing.
Li Heng spoke before Li Shen could choke himself with unfinished words.
"You didn't lose your name," Li Heng said. "You didn't lose your legs. You didn't lose your mind in the crowd. That matters."
Li Shen felt something twist in him—anger, shame, gratitude, all tied together.
"That's not—" he tried.
Li Heng cut him off, not harshly, but firmly.
"It's not what you wanted," Li Heng agreed. "It's what you have."
Li Shen's mouth opened, then closed again. He realized, with a cold kind of clarity, that he didn't have a clean reply.
He didn't have a plan that made sense yet.
He had only a wound and a father who refused to let that wound turn into a grave.
Li Heng stood. "We work tomorrow," he said. "Like we always do. The village will talk. Let them. Words don't feed anyone."
Li Shen nodded, because nodding was all he could do without breaking.
Li Heng reached for the kettle, then paused.
"Sleep," he added, and the word wasn't a suggestion. It was an instruction meant to keep a child from becoming stupid with exhaustion.
Li Shen forced himself to nod again.
He went to his corner of the room, laid down, and stared at the ceiling until the dark felt thick enough to lean on.
Sleep didn't come.
Not cleanly.
Not the way it did when the biggest fear in your life was winter, or hunger, or a fever that might or might not pass.
This fear had shape.
It looked like a platform. It sounded like a bell. It tasted like ink.
It was the fear of having been measured, recorded, and categorized—then discarded because the category didn't pay.
Li Shen lay still and tried to force his breathing into the slow rhythm he'd watched from clan children in the holding grounds. In. Out. In. Out.
It didn't calm him.
But it gave his mind something to do besides replay the attendant's voice.
Return to your household. Unclaimed.
He didn't cry.
But in the dark, his hand found the fold of cloth where the small sachet was kept, and his fingers pressed it once, hard, like he was testing whether it could still hold anything at all.
---
Morning came like a tool.
Li Heng was up before the light fully settled, and Li Shen rose because lying still felt too much like drowning.
They worked.
Not as punishment.
As structure.
Li Heng took the axe and split wood with the same mechanical precision he'd used since Li Mei died—each swing clean, each breath controlled, each motion refusing to admit that the world could tear things away without reason.
Li Shen carried cut pieces to the stack, then carried water, then carried more wood, then carried what needed carrying because if he stopped, his mind would start ripping itself open again.
At one point, he realized he was counting.
Not wood. Not trips.
Breaths.
Four steps per inhale. Four steps per exhale.
He didn't know why he was doing it. He only knew that the pattern made the day feel less like freefall.
People began to come by.
Not in a crowd.
In singles and pairs, like they didn't want to be seen caring too much.
The village chief stopped once, spoke to Li Heng in a low voice, and left without looking at Li Shen for more than a heartbeat. Not because Li Shen didn't matter. Because staring made things sharper.
Qian Mei passed on the path with a basket in her hands, her face calm in the way people looked calm when they were holding themselves together by force. She met Li Shen's eyes for half a second.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing useful came out.
So he nodded once.
She nodded back.
Not comfort. Not apology.
Just a shared acknowledgment: We came back.
Da Niu's father returned by midday, alone, and the village shifted around him. Men clapped him on the shoulder too hard. Women spoke with bright voices that didn't match their eyes.
"He'll eat better now," someone said.
"He'll become a man," someone else said.
Da Niu's father nodded like a man taking blows in place of his son. He didn't smile. He didn't weep.
He just kept repeating, "Stonehide Hall," like the name itself was the only proof that Da Niu hadn't been swallowed by the city and forgotten.
Zhou Liang's father returned later.
That was harder.
Because Zhou Liang's father carried it wrong.
He walked faster than he should have, eyes too alive, like he expected Zhou Liang to suddenly appear behind him and shout his name.
When he realized he was alone in the road and no one was walking behind him, his shoulders dipped.
Then he straightened them again as if posture could cancel reality.
"Reedwater Gate," he said to the people who gathered, too loud. "Outer disciple. He made it."
Someone praised him. Someone praised Zhou Liang. Someone said this will change your whole household.
Zhou Liang's father nodded and nodded and nodded.
And in the middle of all that noise, Li Shen watched the man's hands.
They were shaking.
Not from grief.
From the effort of holding pride and fear in the same grip without letting either fall.
It was then Li Shen understood something that made his stomach go tight:
being chosen didn't end a story.
It just moved the story into a place where parents couldn't follow.
By afternoon, the village had a new map of itself.
A house with a child in Stonehide Hall became an asset people smiled at too politely.
A house with a child in Reedwater Gate became a hope people tried not to jinx.
And the house at the edge—the one with the neat yard and closed door—became a silence people circled around.
No one said Luo Ning's name loudly.
But everyone thought the same two words in private.
Thousand Beasts.
Like saying it might summon something with teeth.
---
That night, Li Shen went out alone.
Not far.
Just beyond the yard, where the wind could hit his face without walls trapping it.
He stood in the dirt and listened to the village settle into sleep.
Somewhere a baby cried. Somewhere an old man coughed. Somewhere a dog barked twice and then quieted.
Normal sounds.
They should have been comforting.
Instead, they made him feel like a ghost standing in the middle of a life that had moved on without him.
He thought about Haoyang.
About the stele and the rope lines and the attendants who spoke like cutting paper.
He thought about Lin—the Lin girl—walking beneath the biggest banner without smiling. He still didn't know her given name. He only knew the shape of her calm.
He thought about Luo Ning walking away from his mother like a reassignment.
He thought about Zhou Liang trying to smile his way through terror.
He thought about Qian Mei standing unclaimed and not breaking, not in public.
And then, inevitably, he thought about himself.
Not as a tragedy.
As a calculation.
He had come back with nothing the village could point at and say this is why we sent him.
No banner. No token. No new name that carried authority.
Unclaimed.
At ten.
He felt shame try to climb up his throat, hot and stupid.
He crushed it down—not because he was strong, but because shame was a luxury that didn't build anything.
Behind him, the door creaked.
Li Heng stepped out without speaking, as if he'd known exactly where Li Shen would end up when the day became too quiet.
He stood beside his son, not close enough to touch, not far enough to be absent.
Li Shen waited for a question.
Li Heng didn't give him one.
He just looked out at the village the way he looked at fields: assessing what had changed and what still needed doing.
After a long moment, Li Heng spoke.
"They will talk about Luo Yao," he said.
Li Shen's head turned slightly. "Because of Thousand Beasts Sect."
"Yes."
Li Shen swallowed. "She'll come back."
Li Heng glanced at him. "You're sure."
Li Shen hesitated. Then forced himself to say the truth as he saw it.
"It's the only place she actually knows," Li Shen said. "And the only place where… her son might ever come back to."
Li Heng's eyes narrowed, not skeptical—thoughtful.
"Good," Li Heng said again, and this time Li Shen understood what he meant.
Good: you're seeing the real world, not the storybook version.
Li Shen stared out at the dark houses.
"What do I do?" Li Shen asked, and the question came out rawer than he intended.
Li Heng didn't answer quickly.
When he did, it wasn't an inspiring speech. It was a blade of a sentence.
"You stay alive," Li Heng said. "You stay useful. You learn what you can learn. And you don't let a city's slip of paper decide what you become."
Li Shen felt the words hit something inside him.
Not hope.
Direction.
But direction wasn't enough to stop the ache.
"I don't know how," Li Shen admitted, and it cost him to say it.
Li Heng's mouth tightened. "Neither do I," he said.
Then, after a pause that made Li Shen's chest tighten, Li Heng added, quieter:
"But we will do what we can do."
It was the closest thing Li Heng had to comfort.
Li Shen nodded once.
His throat felt too tight.
He didn't have a clean reply. He didn't have a vow worth making yet.
So he did the only thing he could do without lying.
He stood beside his father in the wind and let the silence press against him until it became something he could endure instead of something that ate him.
Behind them, the house waited—quiet, stubborn, still standing.
And out at the edge of the village, Luo Yao's closed door stayed closed.
For now.
Li Shen didn't know it yet, but that absence had a countdown built into it.
Three days.
Then the village would have to learn how to look at one of its own and not know what to do with the shadow she brought home.
And Li Shen—unclaimed, angry, still alive—would have to decide what kind of person he was when someone else's life became too heavy for the village to carry.
He went back inside without another word.
Sleep came in fragments.
And in the gaps between those fragments, Haoyang's bell kept ringing in his head—patient, indifferent, still sorting children into categories long after he'd walked away.
Unclaimed.
For now.
But the word no longer felt like an ending.
It felt like a problem.
And Li Shen had always been the kind of person who couldn't leave problems alone once he understood their shape.