Old Han's bourgade had always been loud in the same places and quiet in the same corners.
The front room stayed noisy—buyers arguing, coins clicking, men complaining as if volume could lower a price. The back stayed quiet—grain dust hanging in still air, rope stacked like dead snakes, the kind of silence that belonged to storage and rot.
This year, the noise had changed tone.
Not because people had new stories.
Because they had new numbers.
Salt climbed again. Oil climbed faster. Cloth came in duller colors and thinner weave. Nails cost enough that men started pulling old ones out of broken boards and straightening them with stones. Even paper—when it showed up—got treated like a commodity you could hide.
Old Han didn't talk about wars the way travelers did. He didn't trade names of distant kings like gossip.
He talked about routes.
Routes that stopped paying. Routes that paid too well and killed you for it. Carts that came back light. Men who started hiring escorts not because they wanted protection, but because they wanted witnesses.
Li Shen listened to that tone because he had learned what it meant: the world outside the village was shifting, and the village would feel it like a tendon pulled too far.
The bourgade was only a few hours from his village on foot—close enough to sound easy, far enough to make daily travel a lie.
You could walk there in half a day if you walked hard.
You could walk back too.
You just couldn't do that and work a full day and still pretend your body was an endless resource.
So when Old Han's busy season hit—when carts came at odd hours, when sacks had to be shifted fast, when buyers showed up nervous and paid quick—Li Shen stayed.
Not as a favor.
As a function.
Old Han didn't want boys leaving early or arriving late. Not when every hour mattered and every mistake turned into loss.
Li Shen slept where the other boys slept: in the shed.
Not a barn. Not a room.
A shed.
A long, low building with warped boards and a roof that leaked when the rain wanted to make a point. Straw on the floor. A stale smell that got worse at night when sweat and damp and breath collected and had nowhere to go. Boys laid out like tools put away—too tired to speak, too hungry to dream loudly.
He'd slept there when he was ten.
He slept there now at thirteen.
That was what seasons did. They brought you back to the same place and dared you to pretend it was new.
Shen Yu was there again.
He always was, when Han's season ran hot.
Two years ago he'd been "older." Now he was simply… hardened—shoulders broader, face sharper, the kind of boy who didn't waste breath on complaints because he'd learned complaints didn't lower prices. He didn't greet Li Shen with warmth. He didn't need to.
He just shifted half a step on the straw to make space, the way you did for something useful that kept coming back.
Li Shen lay down, stared at the gaps in the roof boards, and listened to the shed settle around them.
Straw shifting. A cough that tried to become sleep. Breath that rose and fell in heavy, exhausted rhythms like one tired animal.
The shed smelled worse after dark.
Not because anything changed.
Because the day's restraint loosened, and the body did what it always did: sweat, breathe, leak.
Morning came as it always did here—without gentleness.
The shed door slammed open and cold air poured in.
Han's voice filled the space with practiced cruelty.
"Up. If I can smell sleep on you, you're already late."
Bodies stumbled into clothes. Someone cursed under his breath. A boy coughed hard enough to gag. Another sat up too fast and swayed, blinking like he'd been struck.
Li Shen stood without rushing. Hunger made him light-headed if he moved too fast. He kept his spine straight anyway, because posture was free and weakness was expensive.
Outside, the yard was already alive.
Reeds. Rope. Sacks. Tools. Motion.
Han paced, assigning tasks with a voice that didn't allow bargaining.
And near the storage shed—always near the storage shed—stood Han's clerk.
Thin. Older. Ink-stained. A ledger tucked under his arm the way other men carried knives.
He watched like a man who believed paper was more real than flesh.
Han pointed, barked orders, threatened costs.
The clerk made sure the costs became numbers.
"Water barrels," Han snapped at Li Shen. "If the men drink mud, they work like mud."
Li Shen nodded once.
Shen Yu fell in on the other side of the first barrel without being asked. His grip was steady. His face was blank.
They carried.
They set the barrel down near the work line.
Men drank fast, as if the day might decide to revoke water later. Someone splashed his face. Someone else poured the last mouthful over his hands like it could wash exhaustion away.
The clerk's brush scratched across paper in short bursts. Marks. Tallies. Names. A system that didn't care about breathing.
Later, when the yard had thinned for a moment and the storage door stood half-open, the clerk flicked his chin toward a stack of sacks.
"Move the millet," he said without looking up. "Left pile. Not the damp one. Han won't pay rot."
His voice wasn't cruel.
It was indifferent.
Li Shen shouldered the smaller sack and slid it forward. The rope bit into his palm.
His hands didn't flinch anymore.
Pain had become static.
The sack scraped against the floorboards, and something underneath it resisted—soft at first, then stiff.
Paper.
Li Shen paused.
Paper didn't belong in the cold corner of a storage room unless it was either worthless or dangerous.
He crouched and pulled the sack aside.
A pile of old sheets lay pressed together by humidity and time, edges curled, ink blurred into bruises. Someone had wrapped it once in cloth, tried to keep it dry. The cloth had failed. Everything failed eventually.
On top of it sat a bound ledger.
Not the clean kind clerks carried. This one was warped, swollen along the spine, stained where water had seeped and dried and seeped again. Dust sealed the edges like a thin crust, as if the room itself wanted it forgotten.
Li Shen lifted it.
It was heavier than it looked.
Not because it held value.
Because it held years.
He opened it.
Numbers. Columns. Old Han's handwriting—tight, impatient, corrected over itself when the world refused to stay stable. Names. Debts. Grain in, grain out, copper paid, copper missing. Entire months reduced to a few lines and a hard strike-through.
Some pages were soft at the corners, damp once and never fully dry again. Some had faint tooth marks where insects had tested the fiber and moved on.
Li Shen turned further in.
Blank pages.
Not clean blank. Not beautiful. But blank enough to hold something that wouldn't scatter under a bed and disappear the first time the wind found a crack.
His chest didn't flare with excitement.
He didn't think treasure.
He thought container.
A voice came from the doorway behind him, low and dry.
Shen Yu.
"If you're picking through Han's rot," he said, "pick something that won't rot you back."
Li Shen didn't answer. Not because he was offended. Because answering was wasted motion.
He turned one more page, checking the thickness, the number of usable sheets, the way the binding held despite everything.
Shen Yu watched for a heartbeat, then left. In Han's yard, curiosity was only allowed if it didn't slow your hands.
The clerk finally glanced up.
His eyes hit the old ledger, then slid away as if it wasn't worth the attention.
"That one," he said, tone flat, "isn't on my list."
Li Shen waited, because waiting cost less than guessing wrong.
The clerk added, almost lazily, "If Han started over, it's scrap. Don't put it near food. Paper molds."
That was permission, the way this place gave permission.
As logistics.
Not kindness.
Floorboards creaked again.
Old Han stepped into the shed's shadow, hands tucked into his sleeves, eyes sharp.
"What are you digging for?" he asked.
Li Shen didn't hide the ledger. Hiding was for children who thought possession was the same as safety.
He held it up.
Old Han stared at it for a moment, then made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"That thing," Han said. "Still alive."
He took it, flipped a few pages, thumb dirtying the paper without caring. His eyes scanned the crossed-out lines like he was reliving irritation from years ago.
"Useless now," he muttered. "Wrong year. Wrong counts. Too many changes. I started over."
He tossed it back to Li Shen like it was a sack of spoiled beans.
"If you want it, take it. Don't keep it in my grain room."
Li Shen caught it, the weight settling against his forearm.
Old Han's gaze narrowed. "What are you writing these days?"
"Notes," Li Shen said.
Han watched him the way a merchant watched a cart wheel—deciding whether it would hold on a mountain road.
"Paper is money," Han said finally. "And money is smaller than time."
He stepped out, already done with the subject.
"Bring the sack. And close the door. Mice don't care about your discipline."
Li Shen obeyed.
He carried the millet.
Then he carried the ledger.
One fed the body.
One fed the method.
He didn't take the ledger into the shed that first night.
Not because he feared theft—half-starved boys stole food, not paper.
Because damp killed paper faster than fire in a place like this.
He wrapped it in cloth and kept it in the back room under a board, where the air stayed drier and careless feet didn't step.
The days ran hard.
Water. Sacks. Fence repairs. Rope coils. Splinters. Cuts that bled and sealed. Meals that tasted like starch and patience.
The clerk's brush kept moving.
A man complained once—older, with split knuckles—"We work all day and the ledger still says we owe."
Shen Yu muttered back, "That's the point." The kind of truth you didn't say if you wanted friends.
Li Shen didn't join either side.
He watched.
He learned.
Because the clerk didn't record effort.
He recorded outcome.
And recorded outcome was what the world bought.
Evening came. Bowls were counted. Yard hands collapsed into sleep. The shed filled with exhausted breathing.
Li Shen lay on his back and stared at the roof beams.
Sleep didn't come quickly.
So he did the one thing he could do with a body that wouldn't stop aching and a world that wouldn't stop charging interest.
He controlled one small part of it.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Again.
And again.
At first it was only air.
Then, somewhere deep—below hunger, below pain—he felt something else. Not warmth exactly. Not strength.
A thin, stubborn steadiness.
As if a thread inside him had been pulled taut and refused to snap.
He didn't romanticize it.
He measured it.
He wrote it on scraps when he could steal ten minutes under the lean-to.
Breath count.
Work.
Train.
Food.
Sleep.
He didn't call it cultivation.
Not out loud.
He called it not wasting pain.
Senior Sister Wei's correction sat in his head like a rule you didn't argue with:
Pulse (morning).
Lower abdomen.
Stop markers.
Li Shen hadn't forgotten.
He just hadn't had a container that could survive.
Now he did.
When the rush finally broke—when Old Han's face looked less like a drawn bowstring and more like a tired man—Han waved Li Shen off with two fingers.
"Go," he said. "Three days. Then you're back."
No warmth.
Just scheduling.
The clerk didn't look up. He only wrote something down, because release was also a number in a system like this.
Li Shen retrieved the ledger at dawn.
He kept it wrapped tight against his ribs under his outer cloth like a brick he couldn't afford to drop.
By midday he was back in the village, shoulders tight, hands raw from rope, legs stiff from the road.
His father was splitting wood.
The axe rose and fell with the same rhythm it always had. Winter didn't care what price salt had reached. Trees still needed to be cut.
Li Shen didn't make a speech.
He stepped inside, washed his hands, ate whatever was put in front of him, and waited until the house sank into silence.
That night, when Li Heng's breathing turned heavy with sleep, Li Shen sat on the floor and placed the ledger in front of him.
It landed with a dull thud.
The cover was ugly. The edges were swollen. The smell of damp paper rose when he cracked it open.
He didn't flinch.
He turned the filled pages slowly.
Old Han's life sat there in ink: grain and debt, copper and shortage, the pressure of needing numbers to line up even when the world refused to.
Li Shen read enough to understand the structure.
Then he stopped.
He didn't tear pages out. That would've been waste. And waste was a sin when you lived like this. Old numbers weren't sacred, but they were instructive—proof that even a man who treated the world like a ledger still got punished when the world changed faster than his ink.
Li Shen took a thin cord, wrapped the first section shut, and tied it with a clean knot.
Archive.
Not a shrine.
A reference.
Then he flipped to the first usable blank page.
The paper was rough. One corner carried a faint watermark of old damp. The margin had a bite mark where something small had tested it and given up.
Li Shen set the charcoal beside it.
He didn't hesitate long. Hesitation was a luxury.
He wrote what he could control.
At the top of the page, three lines—Wei's nails, placed into the world without permission:
Pulse (morning): ___
Lower abdomen: ___
Stop markers: ___
Under that, his own structure, the one he'd already been building on scraps:
Breath: 140. urge at 90.
Work: wood / water.
Train: stone carries (2 rounds).
Food: thin rice.
Sleep: woke once.
He paused.
Then he filled the empty lines the way a clerk filled a form—without romance, without apology:
Pulse (morning): fast. steadier after noon.
Lower abdomen: dull warmth after 60; fades after work.
Stop markers: vision narrowing; tongue dry; hands shaking.
Stop markers.
Not pride.
Not mood.
The moment the body started lying.
He added a final line at the bottom, small and decisive:
Tomorrow: keep breath same. reduce stones by one trip.
One variable.
One change.
Li Shen closed the ledger and rested his palm on the cover.
It felt like a brick.
Not a weapon.
Not yet.
But it could hold weight. That alone made it valuable.
Over the next weeks, the ledger became part of him.
It sat by his sleeping space when he was home.
When he returned to the bourgade, it didn't go into the shed with the boys. It stayed wrapped and hidden in the back room where damp and careless hands couldn't eat it.
Li Shen stopped trusting the sachet as his main system. He didn't throw it away—nothing was thrown away. He used it as a carrier, a temporary pocket, while the ledger became the spine.
He transferred the old scraps slowly.
Not all of them.
Some were too smeared, too torn. Some were written on paper already used twice, charcoal lines ghosting over old ink. Those went into the archive section—folded, tied, kept as proof of early days when his method had been a pile of loose thoughts.
Others he recopied cleanly.
The act took time.
That was the point.
Because as the pages filled, he could see patterns.
When he could see patterns, he could stop wasting pain.
Spring came late.
The river swelled and dropped as if it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be generous. Fields greened unevenly. Men talked about planting like planting meant certainty.
By summer, Old Han's bourgade felt different.
Not louder.
More tense.
Old Han argued with a buyer one afternoon, voice dry and sharp.
"You want last year's price," Han said. "Go find last year's road."
The buyer spat and left.
Old Han turned and saw Li Shen watching.
"Write that down too," Han said. "Not the words. The reason."
Li Shen didn't ask what he meant.
He understood.
The war was far enough to be called rumor.
Close enough to change the price of rice.
And when rice changed, everything else followed—work, hunger, the way men looked at one another when a sack was left unattended.
Opportunity rose with the danger.
Old Han took a contract to deliver dried grain and rope to a nearby outpost. The pay was higher than it should have been. The risk was higher too.
He didn't send Li Shen.
Not out of kindness.
Out of calculation.
Li Shen was useful alive.
So Li Shen stayed where he belonged: work, train, record.
His breath count climbed slowly, not as a leap but as a grind—145, 150, 155. He marked the urge. He marked the pulse. He marked the warmth that came and went like a nervous animal.
Some days the lower abdomen felt empty no matter how many breaths he forced through his ribs.
On those days, he wrote it down anyway.
Some days the warmth came early, sharp and clean, and he wanted to chase it.
On those days, he read the stop markers and stopped.
One variable at a time.
One change.
The ledger filled.
Not with destiny.
With work.
In the bourgade shed, boys still slept on straw and breathed like broken bellows. Shen Yu still came back every season. He grew broader, more tired, more efficient. He talked less. When he did talk, it was usually to cut through someone else's foolishness.
The clerk still wrote.
Ink still sank into paper like a verdict.
Li Shen still got tired.
He just stopped letting tiredness be meaningless.
By the time the first cold wind returned, the sachet in his sleeve sat lighter. Not empty—never empty—but no longer strained like it was about to burst.
The scraps weren't his foundation anymore.
They were his past.
One night, back in the village on another short release, he closed the ledger and set it under a flat stone to keep it safe from drafts.
The house creaked.
His father coughed once in his sleep and turned over, exhausted in the way only men who never stopped moving could be.
Li Shen stared at the dark ceiling and listened to the wind.
Somewhere far away, kings were killing each other.
Here, the price of salt kept climbing.
And Li Shen kept building something the wind couldn't scatter.