They left before full light.
Not because the road was dangerous—three days to Haoyang and three days back had taught the village what danger really looked like—but because work did not wait for anyone's mood. The sky was still bruised-gray when Li Heng tightened the rope on their bundle and lifted it like it was just another piece of weight to carry.
Li Shen followed a step behind.
He didn't feel heroic. He felt… calibrated. Like something inside him had been tightened after Haoyang and hadn't loosened again.
Li Heng didn't talk much on the road. He saved words the way he saved effort—only used when they mattered.
Their pace was steady. Practical.
By the time the sun broke cleanly over the ridge, the village behind them had already shrunk into a smear of roofs and smoke. The world widened into fields, then into the hard dirt track that led toward Han's bourgade and the yard where Old Han kept his grain, his workers, his rules.
Li Shen had walked this road before.
His feet remembered the dips. His shoulders remembered the weight.
What had changed wasn't the route.
It was the fact that he could no longer pretend the road was leading toward a dream that wanted him back.
He walked anyway.
Because leaving to work was not surrender.
It was survival with a direction.
---
Old Han's yard smelled the same as it always did: grain dust, mule sweat, old wood baked by sun, and the sharp tang of rope fibers rubbed raw.
Two men were already unloading sacks when they arrived. A third man sat on a stool near the scale beam, chewing something tough and watching the gate like he was guarding a border.
Old Han himself stood near the storage shed, hands behind his back, expression bored in the way of people who had learned boredom was a form of control.
His gaze slid over Li Heng first—measuring the shoulders, the hands, the stance. Then it landed on Li Shen and paused for half a breath longer than expected.
Not recognition, exactly.
More like checking whether a tool he had used before had been damaged.
Li Shen kept his face neutral. He did not bow too deep. Not insolent, not eager.
Old Han's eyes narrowed.
"You came back," Old Han said.
It wasn't warmth.
It wasn't accusation either.
It was… inventory.
Li Heng answered without flinching. "Work is work."
Old Han's mouth moved in what might have been a smile if he'd ever bothered to commit to one.
"I didn't expect it," Old Han said, still looking at Li Shen. "Not after Haoyang."
Li Shen felt the words hook under his ribs. The yard didn't know the details—only the result. That was enough.
Li Heng's voice stayed flat. "He eats. I cut wood. The world doesn't adjust."
Old Han's gaze shifted back to Li Heng. He nodded once, slow.
"Terms," Old Han said.
No greetings. No questions about health. No ritual.
Just the part of life that actually moved.
Li Heng set the bundle down and met Old Han's eyes. "Same as before."
Old Han clicked his tongue like the request was mildly offensive.
"The same as before was for a boy who still looked like a boy," Old Han said. "He's taller. Stronger. He can carry more. He costs more to feed if I keep him here."
Li Shen didn't react. This was the game. Old Han would try to squeeze, not because he needed the grain, but because squeezing reminded everyone who owned the yard.
Li Heng didn't argue like a man begging. He argued like a man stating a fact.
"He is not here to be kept," Li Heng said. "He is here to work. You take his labor and you pay in grain. If you want to pretend you're doing us favor, find someone else."
A beat.
One of the unloading men glanced over and quickly looked away.
Old Han's eyes sharpened—not at the defiance, but at the competence. He respected competence. He exploited it too, but respect existed.
"Fine," Old Han said. "Same measure as last time. But no lazy hands. If he slows my yard, you both leave with nothing."
Li Heng nodded. "Agreed."
Old Han jerked his chin toward the scale beam. "Start there."
Li Shen picked up the first sack without being told twice.
He knew the yard's rhythm. He knew where to walk so he wouldn't cross the mule lanes. He knew which men would "accidentally" bump him to test whether he'd drop weight and get blamed for it. He knew which corners hid splinters and which ropes burned if you grabbed them wrong.
He didn't need to "understand" what Old Han's place was.
He already did.
What he needed was to survive it without letting it hollow him out.
So he turned it into something else.
He turned it into training.
---
The first day was loading and sorting.
Not the glamorous kind of sorting Haoyang did with banners and attendants. This was mortal sorting: sack by sack, weight by weight, grain judged by smell and texture, and the thin line between "good enough" and "you're trying to cheat me."
Li Shen carried. He stacked. He counted in his head because counting made him calm.
He watched Old Han's foreman—an older man with rope scars across both palms—mark chalk symbols on certain sacks. Not letters. Not words. Just quick codes the yard understood: this batch goes to the eastern stalls, that batch goes to the river traders, the cleaner grain goes under the back awning where it wouldn't take damp.
Li Shen didn't ask questions.
He watched.
Because watching was a form of collecting.
At midday, he got water and a fist of cold rice. No ceremony. Just fuel.
He ate fast and used the last mouthfuls to test his breathing—quiet inhales, slow exhales, the discipline he'd been forcing into his body since the tomb. Not cultivation. Not magic.
Just control.
Across the yard, a boy about his age stumbled under a sack and cursed loudly. A foreman's stick tapped the boy's shoulder—not hard, just enough to remind him he was seen.
The boy straightened with fear.
Li Shen straightened with habit.
Different motivations. Same posture.
He wondered how many people in this world learned discipline because they wanted power—and how many learned it because they didn't want pain.
---
On the second day, Old Han's yard did what it always did.
It tested him.
Not through words.
Through friction.
A sack was shoved toward him by a man with quick eyes.
"Take this to the back shed," the man said.
Li Shen's hands hooked under the rope.
The sack was heavier than it should have been for its size. Packed wrong. Dense.
He felt it immediately.
He didn't complain. He didn't refuse. He adjusted his grip so the weight sat closer to his center, and he walked.
Halfway there, the man's voice called out behind him, too casual.
"Don't drop it."
It wasn't a warning.
It was a trap dressed as concern.
Li Shen didn't look back. He kept walking.
Because he knew the game: if he dropped it, it would be "his fault." If he asked why it was packed like that, it would become "his attitude."
So he carried it, and he made sure the foreman saw him set it down properly.
When he returned, the man who had handed it to him stared a moment longer than necessary.
Then he grunted and looked away.
Test passed.
No applause.
Just a new baseline of how hard they'd try next time.
Li Shen went back to work like nothing had happened.
Inside, something cold settled into place.
Not anger.
A map.
---
At night, they slept in the corner space Old Han allowed to workers who stayed for the season—canvas overhead, ground hard, the smell of grain settling into hair and cloth.
Li Heng lay down, back to the bundle, eyes open for longer than sleep should allow.
Li Shen rolled onto his side and stared at the dark.
He should have been exhausted.
He was.
But exhaustion didn't erase thoughts. It made them sharper.
Haoyang's word still sat inside him: unclaimed.
Not shouted. Not dramatized.
Stamped.
He squeezed his fingers once, then forced them to relax.
He didn't want to become the kind of person who lived inside a label.
He wanted to become the kind of person who rewrote one.
He took a small scrap of cheap paper from the bundle—something he'd brought without telling anyone, because some habits were private—and a sliver of charcoal.
Not a ledger.
Not numbers to impress anyone.
Just lines.
He wrote down what mattered to him.
How many sacks he carried before his breath broke.
Which grip burned less.
How long it took his heartbeat to settle after a heavy load.
Which mistakes made foremen watch him.
It wasn't cultivation.
But it was an early version of the same instinct:
If the world wouldn't hand him a method, he would build one from what it gave him.
He folded the scrap and hid it under cloth like it was contraband.
Then he lay still until sleep took him like a blunt object.
---
They didn't stay long enough for the yard to become normal.
That was the point.
This work was seasonal. Temporary. A pulse of effort traded for grain and survival.
When the term ended, Old Han's foreman weighed out payment with the same bored precision he used for everything else. A few sacks, tied tight, marked with chalk so no one could claim they were "light" later.
Old Han watched from a distance.
He didn't praise Li Shen.
He didn't need to.
He nodded once at Li Heng instead, as if saying: your boy didn't waste my yard.
That was the closest thing Old Han gave to approval.
Li Heng returned the nod like it cost nothing.
Then they left.
No goodbye speeches. No promises of next year. The road didn't care about vows.
It only cared about feet.
---
The trip back wasn't a story.
It was movement.
When the village roofs finally appeared again, Li Shen felt his stomach tighten in a way he didn't enjoy.
Home wasn't comfort anymore.
Home was responsibility.
They walked through the gate path, past the familiar fences, past the places where boys used to shout and throw stones.
Some children looked up as they passed.
There were gaps in the groups. Games that ended too early.
Names that weren't being yelled anymore.
Li Shen didn't slow down.
Li Heng didn't either.
They carried the sacks inside.
They set them where grain belonged.
They did the practical acts first, because practical acts were how you stopped grief from eating your day.
Only after the bundle was down and the rope was loosened did Li Shen finally exhale like he'd been holding his breath since Haoyang.
Li Heng glanced at him once.
Not pity.
Assessment.
"You held up," Li Heng said.
Li Shen's mouth moved. He wanted to answer with something solid.
He couldn't find it.
"I… did the work," he said finally.
It sounded thin.
Li Heng didn't press. He didn't fill the silence with comfort.
He only nodded, as if thin answers were still answers, and then he turned toward the woodpile—because tomorrow would come whether they liked it or not, and winter never asked permission.
Li Shen watched him for a moment.
Then he turned away, the charcoal scrap hidden in his sleeve like a secret.
His body hurt. His hands were raw.
And underneath it all, the old hunger was still there—quiet, persistent, refusing to die:
Not to be strong for the sake of being strong.
To have the kind of strength that made leaving stop feeling like abandonment…
…and start feeling like preparation.
He stepped into the house.
Behind him, the axe bit into wood with a clean, final sound.