The village smelled different after the bourgade.
Not cleaner. Not safer.
Just simpler.
No oil jars sweating in the shade. No rope stacks like coiled snakes. No clerk's brush scratching a man into a number.
Just smoke from cooking fires, damp earth where the path dipped, and the steady, familiar bite of pine from the back edge of the village—where the Li house sat closer to the trees because wood wasn't a choice here. It was winter insurance.
Li Shen came in without announcing himself.
He didn't need to.
His father would hear the gate before his eyes lifted.
Li Heng was splitting logs in the yard, sleeves rolled high, axe head rising and falling in a rhythm that didn't change for anyone. He didn't pause mid-swing. He didn't turn and make a performance of relief.
He finished the cut.
Stacked the piece.
Then looked up.
For a heartbeat, his face softened in a way that would have embarrassed him if anyone else had seen it.
"You're early," Li Heng said.
Li Shen set his bundle down. "Han let me go for three days."
Li Heng nodded once, as if "three days" was a concrete unit he could work with.
No questions about danger. No dramatic warnings.
Just logistics.
"What did you eat?"
"Rice," Li Shen said. "Thin."
Li Heng made a sound like he'd already expected that answer. He picked up the axe again.
"Wash," he said. "Then eat."
Li Shen went inside, poured water from the clay jug, and scrubbed the road off his hands until the skin felt raw. The habit came with him now—clean hands before food, clean hands before paper—because damp and dirt were not just discomfort. They were failure.
His ledger stayed wrapped in oiled cloth in his bundle.
It stayed out of sight.
Not because he was ashamed, but because paper didn't survive in open air around curious eyes and careless fingers.
When he came back out, a bowl of rice sat on the bench. Thicker than what he got at Han's. A boiled egg placed beside it like an argument.
Li Heng had not cooked an egg because he wanted to be kind.
He cooked an egg because Li Shen's body was a tool being worn down, and tools broke if you didn't maintain them.
Li Shen ate without rushing.
When he finished, Li Heng slid a cup toward him.
"Drink," he said.
Li Shen drank.
Then Li Heng said, casually, as if it was nothing, "Luo Yao asked if you were back."
Li Shen's eyes lifted.
Not surprised. Just registering.
"She asked you?"
Li Heng shrugged. "She was passing. Saw smoke."
Luo Yao's house sat nearer the village entrance—closer to the path that led to the road, closer to strangers, closer to the part of the village that saw traffic and gossip first. It had always made her feel slightly separate, even when she stood among them.
Li Heng treated that distance like it didn't exist.
It had been his quiet defiance from the start.
"She needs wood?" Li Shen asked.
Li Heng's axe rose and fell again. "Roof beam's loose."
Li Shen nodded.
It made sense.
Storms didn't care about social distance.
Neither did winter.
Later, when the sun started to sag, Li Heng carried two straight lengths of pine toward the front of the village. Li Shen followed with a coil of rope and a wedge.
They didn't speak much on the way.
In the village, words were a currency too. You didn't spend them unless you needed the result.
Near the entrance, Luo Yao was in her yard, sleeves tied back, hair pinned with the same practical care as always. She looked up as they approached, and her face shifted—subtle, controlled.
Relief, buried under composure.
She did not run to them. She did not clutch at Li Shen like a mother reclaiming a lost child.
She was not that kind of person.
And the village had never allowed her to be that kind of person, even if she wanted it.
"Li Heng," she said. "Thank you."
Li Heng set the beam down as if it weighed nothing. "Show me."
Her roofline was one of those village jobs that had been fixed too many times by too few hands. The beam hadn't failed yet, but it had started to threaten.
Li Heng climbed up, tested it with a palm, then with a shoulder, then with a wedge.
Li Shen passed rope, held tension, tied knots the way he'd learned at the bourgade—tight, functional, no wasted motion.
Luo Yao watched him work with a quiet intensity that made other villagers uncomfortable, but Li Heng ignored it.
After a while, she said, not to fill the silence but because it mattered, "He wrote me. Once."
Li Heng didn't ask who "he" was.
He knew.
"He's alive," Luo Yao continued, voice even. "That's all it said."
A tiny sentence that should have felt like comfort.
It didn't.
It felt like distance becoming official.
Li Heng drove the wedge in with one clean strike. "Alive is better than not."
Luo Yao's mouth tightened. "Yes."
Li Shen kept his eyes on the rope.
He had met Luo Ning again two years after the Sorting, but Luo Ning was already more symbol than boy. The village spoke of him as if his body had become proof that the world still had openings—rare, dangerous openings.
But a servant position wasn't that.
A servant position was a different kind of opening.
Smaller.
Dirtier.
Still valuable, if you knew how to use it.
When they finished, Luo Yao handed Li Heng a small bundle—cloth, folded tight.
Li Heng didn't take it immediately.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Patch cloth," Luo Yao said. "Oiled."
Li Shen's gaze flicked, fast.
Oiled cloth wasn't fancy.
It was survival for paper and skin.
Luo Yao held it out again, firmer this time. "Your hands crack in winter. You still split wood like you're trying to punish the season."
Li Heng took it, because refusing would turn it into a social battle and he didn't fight those.
"Thank you," he said.
Luo Yao's eyes shifted to Li Shen. "You look taller."
Li Shen didn't know what to do with that observation. He nodded once.
Luo Yao's gaze sharpened slightly, as if she wanted to say more, but she didn't. She wasn't trying to own his story.
That was why the Li house had become one of the few places she could breathe.
As they walked back toward the rear of the village, they passed the Qian house.
Qian Mei's mother was in the yard with a basin, kneading cloth under water. She looked up and her face broke into something warm, immediate.
"Li Shen!" she called, wiping her hands on her apron. "You're back."
Qian Mei appeared a heartbeat later, stepping out from the doorway with the quiet confidence of someone who had stopped being a child without noticing the exact day it happened. Her eyes went first to Li Shen's shoulders, then to his hands.
She didn't ask if he was okay.
She asked the question that mattered.
"How much is salt now?" she said.
Li Shen blinked once.
That was not what most people asked.
"Higher," he said.
"How much higher?"
Li Shen gave her the number in copper, because that was the honest answer.
Qian Mei's mother made a sound under her breath. "Robbery."
Qian Mei didn't react emotionally.
She absorbed it.
Then she asked, "Oil?"
Li Shen told her.
Her brow furrowed—not in fear, in calculation.
Qian Mei's mother glanced between them, half amused, half concerned.
"You're turning into your father," she told Qian Mei, but her voice held pride too. "Counting before eating."
Qian Mei didn't look away. "If we don't count, someone else will count us."
Li Shen recognized that line.
Not the words.
The logic.
He had built it for himself because no one would do it for him.
Seeing it in someone else was… strange.
Qian Mei stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Those papers you used to keep—when you were little. The lists."
Li Shen didn't answer. He didn't deny.
Qian Mei continued anyway, like she'd already decided the truth and didn't need permission. "I started doing it. Not like you. Just… prices. What comes in. When it disappears."
Li Heng paused beside them, shifting the oiled cloth bundle under his arm, and watched his son the way he always did when something important happened: quietly.
Qian Mei's mother wiped her hands and said, "Luo Yao and I talked today."
Li Heng's gaze flicked, mild surprise.
"She came by," Qian Mei's mother said. "Brought thread. Good thread. Not the kind you find here."
Li Shen's eyes narrowed slightly.
Thread.
Good thread didn't appear by accident.
It was the kind of item that showed up when trade lines bent, when someone knew a person who knew a person, when a household had a contact outside the village.
Or when someone had a son in a sect and knew how to leverage distance.
Qian Mei's mother smiled. "She's practical. People treat her like she's a problem, but she's just… alone."
Li Heng's voice stayed flat. "She's not alone."
The statement was simple.
It was also a quiet slap to the village's instincts.
Qian Mei's mother's smile turned softer. "I know."
She reached under her bench and pulled out a small wrapped bundle. "Take this."
Li Shen looked at it.
Food. Dried strips of something. Probably meat, thin but real.
He hesitated.
Taking charity created debt.
Debts were dangerous.
Qian Mei's mother held it out without flinching. "Not charity," she said, reading him too well. "You carried water for us when the well froze last winter. You fixed our fence. You don't remember because you don't count that kind of thing."
Li Shen took it, because refusing would make it bigger than it needed to be.
"Thank you," he said.
Qian Mei watched him the entire time.
Then she asked, "At the bourgade… are men paying for safety now? Like a service?"
Li Shen's throat tightened a fraction.
So she had heard something.
Maybe not the name.
Maybe just the shape.
"Yes," he said. "They're putting prices on road sections."
Qian Mei's eyes sharpened. "That means winter will be worse."
"Probably," Li Shen said.
Qian Mei's mother's face tightened. "What does that mean for us?"
Li Shen could have said, It means you pay more.
He could have said, It means you eat less.
Instead he said the truth that mattered to a village.
"It means supplies come slower," he said. "And people who can't wait will start doing stupid things."
Qian Mei's mother shivered as if the air had cooled.
Li Heng shifted his weight. "We prepare," he said.
That was his only answer to most of life.
Prepare. Split wood. Stack it. Fix what you can.
The next day, the village moved like it always did: slow, routine, pretending the outside world was just weather.
But small changes kept leaking in.
A traveler passed through and didn't stay the night, even though his cart was heavy—too cautious.
Two boys from a neighboring hamlet showed up asking for work and left when they realized the village didn't have spare food to exchange for labor.
And at midday, the Chief called a short meeting by the well.
Not a formal assembly.
Not a speech.
Just the kind of gathering that happened when the air started to taste like a harder season.
The Chief was not a wise man.
He was a man with responsibility and limited options, which made him dangerous in a quieter way.
He stood with his hands behind his back and said, "Prices are rising in the bourgades. Routes are shifting."
Someone grumbled. "We're not traders."
The Chief looked at him without warmth. "We still eat."
A few murmurs, then silence.
He continued, "Some people are saying things. About sects needing hands."
A laugh rose instantly—one of those laughs that existed to keep fear from getting ideas.
"Hands?" a man called. "What are we, a basket of hands?"
The Chief let the laughter roll for a moment, then cut it clean. "I didn't say it was true."
That mattered.
He wasn't selling hope.
He was acknowledging noise.
Then he said, more quietly, "But if something comes—anything—we don't spit on it because it isn't a disciple's robe. A servant in a rank-two sect is not the same as a disciple."
A few heads nodded automatically.
They all knew Luo Ning's name.
They all knew what a disciple looked like when he came home.
A servant was a different category. Different power. Different shame.
The Chief kept going, his voice practical. "It's not glory. It doesn't make us important. But it's a thread tied beyond the village. Threads matter when winter bites."
Li Shen stood at the back, hands at his sides, face empty.
He didn't like people talking about threads.
Threads turned into expectations.
Expectations turned into pressure.
Pressure turned into mistakes.
But he couldn't deny the logic. Not here.
In a small village, even weak leverage was still leverage.
After the meeting, Li Shen returned home and found Li Heng repairing the handle of a tool with the same focus he used for everything.
Li Shen sat, took out his ledger only after checking the doorway, and opened it with care.
He wrote one line.
Home: three days.
Then another.
Wood: stack increased.
And then, after a moment of hesitation, he added:
Village: noise about "hands" in sects. treated as joke. noted.
Li Heng didn't look up. He didn't ask what Li Shen wrote.
But when Li Shen wrapped the ledger again, Li Heng's hand paused for half a second, and he said, as if it was nothing:
"That cloth—use it."
Li Shen nodded.
Li Heng returned to his work, and the sound of his knife scraping wood filled the space between them.
Outside, the village kept moving in its small circle.
Luo Yao carried thread to Qian Mei's mother like it was normal.
Qian Mei stared at prices like they were a puzzle she could solve with enough attention.
The Chief tried to turn rumors into preparation without letting them become hope.
And Li Shen sat with a book wrapped in oiled cloth, feeling the strange weight of something he couldn't measure yet:
Not a chance.
Not a destiny.
Just the sense that the world was tightening, and that some doors opened only when people started to panic.
He didn't want those doors.
But he was learning, line by line, how to walk through them without breaking.