The next morning, the yard looked the same.
Grain sacks stacked like dull hills. Rope coils under warped boards. Oil jars tucked deeper than they used to be, as if darkness could make them last longer. Men moving like they had debts in their bones.
But Old Han's mouth was set differently.
Not angry.
Contained.
Like a man who'd been reminded that his yard was not the only machine in the world.
Li Shen noticed it the way he noticed everything: without asking for meaning.
He stacked rope under the lean-to, kept his head down, and let work do what it always did—erase the space where curiosity could grow.
The old man was still there.
Cap low. Cloak bundled. Hands tucked like any older laborer who didn't want to spend warmth on strangers.
Ordinary, if you didn't know ordinary could be chosen.
Li Shen saw him pause at a stall selling needles and thread, pick up a packet, then put it back without buying.
Testing supply.
Not shopping.
He saw him glance once toward Stonehide's mark near the fork, then away.
Measuring influence.
Not fearing it.
By noon, Old Han called Li Shen to the side with two fingers, sharp and impatient.
"Back room," Han said. "Now."
No explanation.
No bargaining.
Li Shen nodded once and moved.
Shen Yu's eyes followed him from the shed opening, expression flat. He didn't ask questions. He didn't offer warnings.
In this place, being called away was either trouble or opportunity.
And both could kill you if you handled them wrong.
The back room smelled of rope and damp wood. The air was colder than the shed but cleaner.
Old Han stood near the door like a guard, arms folded.
The old man sat at the small table with his hands on his knees, posture relaxed but not loose. Not a merchant waiting to be pleased.
Someone waiting to be complied with, without needing to show it.
Li Shen stopped two paces in.
He didn't bow like a disciple.
He didn't swagger like a fool.
He stood the way a laborer stood in front of a man who might decide whether he ate tomorrow: still, attentive, replaceable.
Old Han spoke first.
"This is my boy," he said, as if Li Shen was a tool he rented seasonally. "Li. Works. Doesn't drink. Doesn't fight."
The old man's gaze dropped to Li Shen's hands.
Not his face.
Hands told you what a person really did: rope burn, grain dust, cracked skin, callus patterns. Ink-smudge under one nail from charcoal.
His eyes moved once to Li Shen's posture.
Then to his breathing.
Slow. Controlled. Not a cultivator's breath—nothing mystical—but disciplined enough to register.
Finally, he spoke.
His voice wasn't old in the creaky way.
It was old in the way stone was old: worn smooth by being used.
"You mentioned him," the old man said to Old Han.
Old Han didn't deny it. He didn't apologize.
"I let people know he exists," Han replied. "That's all."
The old man nodded once. Then, without looking away from Li Shen's hands, he said something that cut the yard's ego clean.
"Don't imagine you pulled my road," he said.
Old Han's jaw tightened.
The old man continued, calm and flat. "I was already coming through this line. I check markets when routes tighten. I check habits when boys multiply. I check hands when private marks start pretending they're law."
He looked up at Old Han.
"Your message didn't change my work," he said. "It only made it efficient."
Old Han held the stare. He didn't like being reminded he was a node in someone else's map, but he could accept reality when it was profitable to accept it.
The old man reached into his cloak and set something on the table.
A thin wooden slip and a folded paper with a dull red stamp pressed into it.
Not a letter with warm words.
A summons.
The stamp wasn't for beauty. It was for permanence.
Li Shen's eyes flicked to it and away.
Old Han didn't touch it yet. "What is that."
"An intake notice," the old man said. "A date. A gate. A name."
Old Han's voice stayed hard. "For what."
The old man didn't say the name immediately.
Names made people stupid.
He said the category first.
"This region has an institution," he said. "They expand when they need hands. They contract when they don't. Right now, they're expanding."
He paused just long enough for the weight of it to land.
Then he said it plainly.
"Gray Pavilion."
The words did not brighten the room.
They didn't sound like opportunity.
They sounded like work.
Old Han glanced at Li Shen once, as if gauging whether the boy would do something foolish like smile.
Li Shen didn't.
The old man's eyes held on that emptiness for a fraction longer than necessary.
Good.
"They're taking servants," the old man continued. "Not disciples. Don't confuse the two."
He spoke without shame or reverence. Just procedure.
"You will work," he said. "You will carry. You will clean. You will obey. You will be tired on purpose."
Li Shen's stomach tightened—adjustment, not excitement.
Old Han asked, "How many."
The old man's mouth barely moved. "Enough that you've heard jokes about it."
Old Han's eyes narrowed.
"The jokes aren't information," Han said.
"They're noise," the old man agreed. "But noise starts when a wave is big enough to reach villages without trying."
He tapped the stamped paper once.
"Intake is in two steps," he said. "First: show up. Second: survive the first month."
Old Han asked, "Why him."
The old man answered without decoration.
"He returns," he said. "He doesn't drift. He doesn't gamble his pay. He doesn't fight. He can sleep on straw and still stand at dawn. That's rare."
He let the sentence settle.
Then he added, quieter, almost contemptuous, "Everyone can carry sacks when they're watched. I want someone who carries when no one cares."
Old Han's gaze sharpened. "You're picking from a wave."
"I'm reducing waste," the old man corrected. "They'll take bodies either way. I prefer the bodies that don't break early."
The words were clean.
The meaning was not.
Old Han asked the only question that mattered to a man like him.
"What does it cost," Han said.
The old man looked at him as if that was the only language worth speaking.
"Nothing," he said. "Not in copper."
Old Han didn't smile. "Then what."
"A consent," the old man said. "A household acknowledgment."
He slid the stamped paper across the table toward Old Han without ceremony.
"And silence," he added. "No boasting. No village performance. This isn't a disciple selection."
Old Han didn't touch the paper yet. "And if he doesn't go."
The old man's eyes didn't soften. "Then his name is struck. Not punished. Struck. And when the next wave comes, he won't be counted."
Counted.
Everything returned to that.
Li Shen swallowed once.
The old man's gaze moved—quick, precise—to the corner where Li Shen's bundle sat.
Wrapped.
Oiled.
Protected.
He hadn't asked about it yesterday.
He didn't ask today.
He only said, "Keep his hands intact."
Old Han snorted. "He works."
"He'll work more," the old man said. "And if his hands split, he becomes slow. Slow becomes expensive. Expensive becomes replaceable."
Old Han's mouth tightened like he'd tasted something bitter.
"Tell me the conditions," Han said.
The old man did. No poetry.
"Dormitory," he said. "Low quarters. Crowded. Clean enough to prevent sickness, not clean enough to feel human."
"Food," he continued. "Rations. Enough to keep you standing, not enough to make you proud."
He let that sit, then added the line that made the system real.
"Everything extra is earned," he said. "Points. Work credit. Internal scrip. If he wants oil, cloth, medicine—he buys it with what he produces. If he wants time, he buys it by being useful."
Old Han's eyes flicked once to Li Shen.
Li Shen kept his face empty, but his chest felt tight.
Points.
Internal scrip.
A closed world.
A world designed to keep you inside.
The old man finished the list with the kind of bluntness that didn't allow misunderstanding.
"He is not promised cultivation," he said. "He is not promised ascent. He is promised work."
Silence landed heavy.
Old Han spoke again, voice lower. "You want to speak to Li Heng."
The old man nodded once.
"I don't take boys without a household's acknowledgment," he said. "Not because I'm kind. Because it prevents noise later."
Noise meant relatives at gates.
Noise meant fights.
Noise meant bad records.
Stonehide cleaned lines with marks.
Gray Pavilion cleaned lines with paper.
Same instinct. Cleaner execution.
Old Han finally picked up the stamped notice. He read it once, eyes scanning like a man reading a debt.
He said, "He has three days home."
The old man didn't care. "Then you send him today."
Old Han's jaw clenched. "He's worked."
The old man's eyes didn't soften. "Then he's used to it."
Old Han exhaled, sharp through his nose, and looked at Li Shen.
"You heard," Han said. "You go home. You tell your father. You come back here at dawn."
Li Shen nodded once.
No questions.
No "thank you."
Gratitude was a kind of attachment, and attachments made you hesitate at the wrong time.
The old man spoke again, voice even.
"Do not tell the bourgade," he said. "Do not tell the shed. Do not feed boys who think rumors are food."
Old Han's mouth twitched. "He doesn't talk."
The old man's eyes flicked once to Li Shen.
"Good," he said. Then he stood, transaction closed.
Old Han moved with him to the door.
Li Shen stayed still until he was dismissed. The old man didn't dismiss him with warmth. He dismissed him with procedure.
"Go," he said.
Li Shen left the back room and stepped into the yard.
The air felt different.
Not lighter.
Heavier.
Because now the world had put a shape around him.
Not "boy."
Not "worker."
A file with a stamped date.
Shen Yu watched from the shed opening, eyes narrowed.
Li Shen didn't look at him.
He picked up his bundle, tightened the oiled cloth around his ledger like it was a vital organ, and walked out of Old Han's yard without turning back.
Behind him, the bourgade kept moving.
Men argued over copper.
Stonehide's mark hung at the fork like an accusation.
Boys whispered rumors like they were prayers.
And Old Han stood at his gate speaking quietly with a man who had stopped pretending to be ordinary.
Li Shen walked toward the road that led home.
He didn't think about Gray Pavilion as a dream.
He thought about his father splitting wood in the yard.
He thought about the silence between them.
And he understood, with a clarity that hit harder than hunger:
The hard part wasn't going.
The hard part would be leaving without breaking the only thing that had ever held him steady.