At the hub, nobody explained anything.
Explanation was for people who still believed they were being invited.
They stood in lanes cut into dirt by feet and repetition, tags held in hand, bundles tight, faces hollowed into the same shape by five days of pace and quiet fear.
A line of tables waited inside the fence.
Not one clerk—many.
Brushes moved in sequence, each table doing one small piece of work so the whole thing never had to slow down.
"Tag."
Li Shen held his wooden number out.
The clerk checked it against a page without lifting his eyes to Li Shen's face, then made a small mark that meant nothing to anyone who didn't live inside ledgers.
Brush. Ink. Fiber.
A second tag replaced the first—same number, different cut. Smoother edges, drilled hole, cord already tied.
Standardized.
"Keep it visible," the clerk said.
That was all.
No warning. No reason.
Just an instruction that carried the weight of consequence without saying it.
Li Shen looped the cord around his wrist and stepped forward when the next hand tapped his shoulder.
They moved like that for an hour, maybe two—too tired to track time properly, too trained by hunger to waste it.
Then they were pointed toward the wagons.
Not the bourgade carts.
Convoy frames built in matching pairs, wheels reinforced, canvas treated against rain. Axles greased. Lashings identical. The beasts pulling them were work animals, broad and steady, their breath rising in controlled rhythm like they had been doing this route long enough to forget surprise.
Li Shen climbed in with the rest of his lane and sat with his knees drawn up.
No one talked.
Not because they were disciplined.
Because five days had taught them that words didn't buy anything here—not rest, not mercy, not space.
A bell rang once.
The convoy moved.
The road blurred into function.
Stop. Count. Water by ladle. Ration by number.
Road again.
They passed relay points that didn't feel like villages.
They felt like nodes.
Fences too straight to be accidental. Posts carved with simple signs. Keepers who didn't stare at the convoy like it was a miracle.
They treated it like a delivery.
That was worse than awe.
Awe meant exception.
Delivery meant routine.
On the second day, the land began to change in small, telling ways.
The road was maintained.
Not smooth—just cared for.
Ruts filled. Stones cleared. Ditches cut clean.
A road used often enough that someone had decided wasting time on it was unacceptable.
And by late afternoon, Li Shen saw walls.
Not the sect.
Not yet.
Outer works—terraced stone and low watch posts that controlled roads without advertising power. A buffer belt that existed to catch impact before it reached anything worth protecting.
The convoy slowed at a low gate.
A throat.
Uniformed servants checked seals, checked ledgers, checked tags. Their motions were fast and bored in the way only routine could make you bored.
Then the gate opened.
And they rolled inside the buffer zone.
Li Shen stepped down and felt the ground under his feet—packed hard by so many steps it had become something like clay.
He looked up and saw the sect proper higher on the slope, stone layered into the mountain like an older world.
Distant.
Silent.
Watching without needing to show it.
This place below was different.
Wide yards. Long dormitory sheds. Smoke from kitchens that didn't smell like family food—just starch and fuel. Latrine trenches. Water lines. Storage pits. Work lanes carved into the earth by repeated dragging.
And people.
More than at the hub.
Enough that the human eye stopped counting and started estimating.
There were columns arriving even as Li Shen's lane stepped into the yard.
Not from one road.
From many.
A stream entered from the east gate, dust red on their sleeves, eyes rimmed raw as if the wind in their land never stopped scratching. Another came in from the river road, hems damp and dark, the faint smell of fish oil clinging to cloth. A third arrived from the salt line, brine crusted at the edges of their wraps like they had been living too close to bitterness.
Li Shen heard voices—different cadences, different habits of speech—colliding into the same exhausted silence as soon as they crossed the gate.
A boy beside him muttered, half to himself, half to the world, "Where are they even pulling us from?"
The girl in front of him didn't turn. She answered anyway, voice low.
"Jiangshui," she said.
He blinked. "Where's that?"
She finally looked back—eyes tired, calm in a way that meant she'd already run out of illusions.
"Downriver," she said. "Wet winters. Fish oil. We count floods the way you count droughts."
Then she faced forward again, conversation finished.
A man two lanes over barked at someone behind him, irritation sharpened by fatigue.
"You—what prefecture?"
A voice answered, rough, clipped. "Fengkou."
"Wind Pass?" the man repeated, as if the word itself tasted dry.
The speaker shrugged without lifting his head. "Wind eats roofs there. People learn to nail things down."
A uniformed servant walked between the lanes with a slate and chalk, making marks in front of certain lines—two strokes here, one there—then moving on without comment.
No announcements.
No "selected."
Just silent categorization.
Li Shen didn't know what the marks meant.
He didn't ask.
Asking was how you advertised yourself as a problem.
A bell rang.
Thin, sharp, wrong.
Lines broke—into assignments.
Not chaos.
Distribution.
Numbers were shouted. Tags checked. Bodies pointed into lanes.
"Team twelve—water yard."
"Team nineteen—latrine trench."
"Team seven—stone carry."
"Kitchen yard—women's rows, now."
Women and girls moved with the same exhausted obedience as the men, bundled smaller but not spared. Some were older, faces set hard as if fear had become an indulgence. Some were young enough that their hands looked too clean for what the day was about to do to them.
The machine didn't care.
Li Shen's tag was checked and shoved back at him.
"Team sixteen," an assistant said, already bored. "Supply run. Carry. Move."
Li Shen nodded once and stepped into the lane.
He didn't ask where the dormitory was.
He didn't ask when they ate.
He didn't ask how long the day would be.
Those were questions for people who still believed answers were owed.
He adjusted his bundle strap, kept the ledger wrapped against his ribs, and followed the line into a yard where work was already being done—work loud enough to drown thought.
A foreman dumped a stack of damp cloth rolls into his arms.
Heavier than they looked.
The kind of heavy that wasn't training.
The kind of heavy that just consumed you.
Li Shen felt his shoulders protest.
He swallowed it.
Took one breath.
In. Hold. Out.
Then he lifted, stepped, and joined the flow.
No one told him the second cut had started.
No one needed to.
It started the moment the gate closed behind him—quietly, efficiently—
and the work did not slow to let anyone understand.