The buffer zone had no welcome.
It had lanes.
It had bells.
It had men and women in plain uniforms whose faces had forgotten curiosity, moving through the crowd the way water moved through stones—finding gaps, applying pressure, never stopping.
Li Shen learned the layout the way he learned everything: by watching where the flow did not break.
The first yard was intake: tags checked, bundles counted, names ignored.
The second yard was distribution: teams formed, loads assigned, mistakes corrected with poles and shouting.
The third yard was where the buffer turned into its real purpose.
A courtyard wide enough to swallow noise.
Packed earth. Long sheds. Racks of tools. Water lines. Latrine trenches cut in the distance like scars that never healed.
And bodies.
So many that the mind stopped trying to count and began to categorize.
Some were already here—faces that looked older than they should after only a week on the record. Others arrived in fresh waves through side gates, led by assistants who didn't bother to make eye contact.
Different prefectures, different dust.
Same tired eyes.
A bell rang—thin and sharp.
The yard shifted.
Not into chaos.
Into function.
"Teams!" an overseer barked, voice flat from repetition. "Tags up. Mouths shut."
Hands rose, wooden tags visible.
A uniformed servant moved down the line with a slate, marking chalk in front of certain groups: one stroke, two, sometimes none.
Li Shen felt the urge to look at his own mark.
He didn't.
Looking too hard made you noticeable.
Noticeable made you expensive.
He stepped forward when his number was called.
"Sixteen," an assistant said without looking at him. "Carry lane. Supply run."
Li Shen nodded once.
He had barely taken three steps when he heard a voice behind him—too loud, too alive.
"Carry lane?" the voice repeated. "You mean the 'break your back and thank us' lane."
A few heads turned before they remembered not to.
Li Shen turned just enough to see the speaker.
A boy—older than a child, younger than a man. Broad shoulders for his age, face sun-darkened, mouth quick. He wore exhaustion like an insult and refused to let it win in silence.
He caught Li Shen looking and grinned like that was a victory.
"You heard me," he said. "They're not even pretending it's training."
Li Shen didn't react.
Not with his face.
But his mind filed the boy under a category that mattered:
risk.
The assistant snapped, "Tag. Name."
The boy lifted his tag with exaggerated obedience. "Bai Ren."
"Lower your voice, Bai Ren," the assistant said.
Bai Ren tilted his head. "Why? You'll work me less if I whisper?"
A ripple—half laugh, half fear—passed through the line.
The assistant's gaze sharpened. He didn't hit Bai Ren.
He didn't need to.
He made a small chalk mark on the slate and moved on.
Bai Ren's grin faded a fraction.
He had learned something without being told what it was.
Li Shen turned back toward the carry lane.
Behind him, Bai Ren fell into step anyway—still talking, but quieter now, as if the air itself had taught him.
"You're the quiet type," Bai Ren muttered. "That's how you survive, yeah?"
Li Shen kept walking. "That's how you avoid becoming interesting."
Bai Ren huffed. "Interesting is all we have left."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Because Bai Ren was wrong.
Repeatability was what they had left.
They reached the supply racks where damp cloth rolls, rope bundles, and grain sacks sat in piles like the yard's true religion.
A foreman pointed without looking up. "Two per load. Move it to the wash yard. Don't drop it. If you drop it, you carry it twice."
Li Shen lifted his end of a cloth roll. It was heavier than it looked, wet and dense, and it pulled at his shoulders like an argument.
Bai Ren grabbed the other end and made a sound between a laugh and a curse.
"They feed us like we're borrowing food," he said under his breath.
"Save your mouth for eating," Li Shen replied.
Bai Ren blinked, then laughed quietly. "Cold."
Li Shen didn't correct him.
Cold was what you became when you stopped believing the world was fair.
They moved in a line of carriers, dozens of teams repeating the same path until the ground under their feet polished into a rut.
The bell rang again.
Then again.
Time was measured by sound, not by sun.
At mid-day, they were herded toward the ration yard.
Rows formed.
Men and boys on one side. Women and girls on another.
Not out of courtesy.
Out of control.
Li Shen stood in line and watched the other rows in brief glances.
A group of women from the river-prefectures held themselves with a hard, damp steadiness—hair pinned tight, hems darker, eyes watchful. A column of girls—some too young to hide their shaking—stood with bundles almost as big as they were.
One girl in that row looked smaller than the rest, pale enough that the dirt on her cheek made her seem even lighter.
She kept her eyes on the ground as if the ground was safer than people.
When the line moved, she moved with it—polite, quick, trying to take up less space than her body required.
An assistant shoved a ration bundle into her arms with the same boredom he gave everyone else, then—without pausing—hooked a small bucket handle onto her wrist.
The bucket sloshed.
The girl's fingers tightened.
Her shoulders dipped under the sudden weight.
She didn't complain.
She didn't ask to be reassigned.
She only whispered, barely audible, "I can."
Then her knees wavered.
Not dramatically.
Just enough to show the truth: her body was already running on debt.
Li Shen saw it.
He didn't step out of line like a hero.
He did what he always did when something inefficient was about to happen.
He shifted.
When the lines crossed in the narrow corridor between ration yard and task lanes, he angled his path so his shoulder brushed the bucket, then his hand caught the handle for a heartbeat, taking part of the weight as if it had always been his.
No announcement.
No eye contact.
Just correction.
The girl startled, eyes flicking up for the first time—dark, too large in her pale face.
Li Shen spoke without turning his head fully.
"Breathe low," he said. "Slow."
Two words. Then a third, quieter. "Now."
The girl swallowed and obeyed, because obedience was easier than pride when you were about to fall.
She nodded once, small and stiff.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Li Shen didn't answer.
Answering made it a scene.
Scenes were expensive.
They separated with the flow before any overseer could decide it was interesting.
Bai Ren had watched.
He leaned closer, voice low. "You do that a lot?"
Li Shen kept his eyes forward. "I don't let things spill."
Bai Ren's mouth twitched. "That wasn't a thing. That was a person."
Li Shen said, "People spill too."
Bai Ren went quiet for a moment, as if deciding whether to laugh.
Then he didn't.
The bell rang again.
Work swallowed the afternoon.
They carried until their shoulders burned and their hands lost feeling.
They ran supply until their legs became wooden and their minds narrowed to the next step, the next breath, the next bell.
Somewhere in the lanes, someone retched from exhaustion. No one stopped.
A girl cried once near the water line. The sound was cut off quickly—by shame, by fear, by the simple knowledge that crying didn't reduce load.
Near dusk, the yard shifted again.
They were herded toward the dormitory sheds.
The dorms were not rooms.
They were capacity.
Long rows of platforms, straw mats packed tight, air heavy with sweat and damp cloth.
A uniformed servant stood at the entrance with a slate.
"Tag," he said.
Li Shen held his up.
The servant checked, pointed. "Row three. Left."
Bai Ren held his up next.
The servant pointed. "Row four. Right."
Bai Ren grimaced like he'd been sentenced. "Already separating the entertainment from the quiet."
Li Shen didn't smile.
But something in him eased by a fraction, because separation meant structure, and structure meant survivable.
Inside, people dropped bundles like they were dropping weight from their bones.
Some lay down immediately, not caring who watched.
Others sat and stared, eyes open, as if sleep was too risky.
A boy from a different prefecture muttered to someone, "Where are you from?"
A woman's voice answered from the far end of the shed, sharp and clipped. "Yancheng."
"Salt city?" the boy said.
The woman didn't laugh. "Salt makes you thirsty. Remember that."
Then the bell rang again—one last time for the day.
A signal, not an explanation.
A uniformed servant walked the aisle with a pole, tapping the edge of platforms.
"Lights out," he said.
No speech.
No kindness.
No promise that tomorrow would be easier.
Li Shen lay down with his ledger pressed against his ribs, oiled cloth between it and sweat.
The straw scratched his skin.
His hands throbbed.
His shoulders felt like they'd been carved down.
He listened to the shed fill with the sound of breathing—hundreds of exhausted lungs pulling air like it was borrowed.
Bai Ren's voice came from somewhere across the row, almost too low to hear.
"They didn't say it started," Bai Ren whispered, as if talking to himself.
Li Shen closed his eyes.
"They don't need to," he murmured.
Because the second cut wasn't a gate you walked through.
It was a day you repeated.
And repeated.
Until the numbers fit.
In. Hold. Out.
He kept breathing even when sleep came thin.
Outside, in the yard, work continued under lantern light—because the machine didn't stop when bodies wanted to.
And somewhere above, far up the slope, the sect proper sat silent and distant, watching the buffer belt eat people whole without ever having to call it a test.