The second cut didn't feel like a test.
Tests had edges.
A beginning you could point at. A rule you could memorize. A finish line you could imagine touching if you bled hard enough.
This was softer than that.
Which made it worse.
The buffer belt didn't beat people until they failed.
It assigned until they broke, then it removed the broken parts without ceremony.
Li Shen learned the first real rule on the second morning, before the sky had properly decided it was day.
The bell rang once—thin, sharp, wrong.
A heartbeat later, it rang again.
The dorm shed moved as one organism: bodies rising, bundles tightening, tags lifting into view like identification for cattle.
Bai Ren sat up two rows away, hair sticking up, eyes already irritated.
"That bell hates us," he muttered.
Li Shen didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The bell wasn't emotional. It was scheduling.
Outside, the yard was colder than the shed and smelled of damp cloth, ash, and latrine trench.
Lines formed.
Teams split.
Tags were checked and rechecked as if a person could be lost and found again by counting the same number twice.
A uniformed servant walked the lanes with a slate. Chalk flicked in small strokes. People got redirected without being told why.
Li Shen kept his tag visible.
He kept his mouth shut.
He kept his breath low.
The work started immediately.
Not training.
Not cultivation.
Not even "tasks" in the way villagers used the word.
This was throughput work: move, stack, carry, scrub, haul, dump, repeat—until the body stopped producing motion.
He was placed in supply again.
Cloth rolls. Rope bundles. Buckets. Broken tools that needed moving from one corner of the yard to another so someone higher could pretend the yard was organized.
Bai Ren ended up in the same lane, because fate liked jokes.
He looked at the damp cloth rolls and sighed like he was performing a tragedy for an audience that didn't exist.
"Imagine," he said, lifting his end, "if they used all this effort to make us stronger."
Li Shen adjusted his grip. "They're making the yard stronger."
Bai Ren blinked. Then he laughed—quietly this time, careful.
"Fine," he conceded. "The yard cultivates. We fertilize."
That was the closest to philosophy Bai Ren could manage before breakfast.
They carried until the first ration bell.
The ration yard was function wearing the skin of food.
Lines. Ladles. Counted bundles.
Li Shen watched the women's rows and the men's rows both, because information didn't care about custom.
A girl from Jiangshui spoke behind him—soft, tired, a voice made damp by river air.
"They gave us less today," she said.
Someone answered, sharp. "They give what they need you to survive. Not what you want."
Another voice cut in, older, more controlled. "If you talk about less, you notice less. Eat and move."
Silence returned.
Not because they agreed.
Because an overseer's head turned slightly, and everyone in line remembered that attention was currency they didn't have.
Li Shen ate.
Starch. Salt-lack. No warmth.
He didn't complain.
He wrote it later.
The first quitter wasn't dramatic.
It wasn't a collapse. It wasn't blood. It wasn't a scream.
It was a boy who simply… stopped walking.
Mid-morning, between the water yard and the tool racks, he sat down in the lane like a stone and stared at his hands.
An assistant shouted at him once. Twice.
The boy didn't move.
A uniformed servant walked over, looked down, then held out his hand.
"Tag," the servant said.
The boy blinked up like he'd forgotten what the word meant.
"My tag," he whispered. "I… I'm still here."
The servant didn't argue. "Tag."
The boy fumbled the wooden number off his wrist and placed it in the servant's hand with the care of someone handing over his own name.
The servant made a mark on the slate and nodded once toward a side lane.
"Follow," he said.
The boy stood. Not eagerly.
Like a man following his own execution without resistance.
No one spoke.
No one asked where the lane went.
Everyone already knew the truth in their bones:
It went off the record.
Bai Ren watched him pass and muttered, too low for anyone else to hear, "He just… gave it back."
Li Shen didn't look away from his lane. "He quit."
Bai Ren's jaw tightened. "Quitting is allowed?"
Li Shen's voice stayed flat. "It's encouraged."
They carried cloth again.
Because the machine didn't pause for a human decision.
By the third day in the buffer, the cuts started showing in small absences.
A girl who had stood near the water line was gone.
A man from Fengkou who coughed all night was gone.
A woman from Yancheng who had warned someone about salt was gone.
No announcement.
No list read aloud.
Just a missing body and the lane moving around the hole as if the hole had always been there.
Li Shen saw how it worked: disappearance was cheaper than discipline.
There was no punishment to witness, no example to learn from.
Only the knowledge that if you became a problem, you stopped being counted.
In the yard, a boy stole an extra ration bundle.
He didn't do it bravely.
He did it with shaking hands and desperate eyes because hunger made the brain stupid.
The moment he hid it under his robe, he was caught—by another boy, not by an overseer.
Because poverty trained you to notice theft the way hunger trained you to smell food.
The thief hissed, "Don't."
The other boy hissed back, "Give it."
A hand grabbed a sleeve.
Then a shove.
Then a punch—ugly, fast, thoughtless.
The second punch was the mistake.
A uniformed servant stepped into the lane like the lane had called him.
No running. No shouting.
He pointed at the thief.
"Tag."
He pointed at the boy who threw the second punch.
"Tag."
He looked at the crowd forming around them and added, "Anyone else wants to be involved?"
The crowd dissolved instantly.
People stepped back so fast it looked like a coordinated drill.
The two boys stood, breathing hard.
The thief tried to speak. "I—"
"Tag," the servant repeated.
They handed them over.
The servant didn't drag them.
He didn't hit them.
He just turned and walked toward a side lane, holding their numbers like receipts.
The boys followed.
The fight ended without drama.
The consequences were cheaper than drama.
Bai Ren watched, eyes bright with anger that had nowhere to go.
"That's it?" he whispered. "No beating?"
Li Shen shifted his bundle strap higher. "They don't need to teach you. They need to reduce you."
Bai Ren's mouth opened, ready to argue.
Li Shen's eyes flicked once toward the overseer's line.
Bai Ren shut his mouth.
He was learning.
Yun Xue kept trying to disappear.
Li Shen saw her twice the third day and three times the fourth, always in the wrong place in a lane, always taking on the full weight of a load like she thought pain was proof.
The first time, she carried a bucket that made her wrist bones look too sharp.
Her breathing was short, high in the chest—inefficient.
When an assistant barked at her to move faster, she whispered, "I can," and tried to speed up.
Her knees wavered.
Li Shen didn't step out.
He didn't call her name.
He didn't even look directly at her for long.
He angled his path so his shoulder brushed the bucket again and took just enough weight to smooth the wobble.
Not kindness.
Stability.
Yun Xue's eyes flashed up for one heartbeat—gratitude and shame mixing into the same expression.
Li Shen said nothing this time.
His silence did the work.
Bai Ren noticed anyway, because Bai Ren noticed everything that looked like a story.
He leaned in later, when the lane bent around the storage pit.
"She's going to break," he whispered.
Li Shen answered without looking at him. "Then she's removed."
Bai Ren frowned. "That's… it?"
"That's the system," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's voice softened, unexpectedly. "And you just let it happen?"
Li Shen paused for half a step.
He didn't like how that sounded inside his own head.
"I'm not letting it happen," he said. "I'm not making it expensive."
Bai Ren stared at him, then looked away, jaw working like he was chewing something bitter.
"Cold," he muttered again.
Li Shen didn't correct him again.
On the sixth night, sickness started spreading.
Not plague, not dramatic.
Just coughs.
Fever.
The kind of illness that grew when people were packed close, washed too little, slept too cold, and worked too long.
A boy near the far end of the shed shivered so hard his straw mat rattled.
His friend tried to cover him with an extra cloth.
The cloth was taken at morning inspection because cloth was inventory, not compassion.
By noon, the boy couldn't lift his load.
His arms shook, his eyes unfocused.
He tried to hide it by moving faster.
He dropped a rope bundle.
The foreman didn't shout.
He pointed.
"Tag," he said.
The boy's lips parted. "I'm sick."
The foreman didn't change expression. "Tag."
An assistant took the wooden number, wrote a mark, and guided the boy toward a narrow lane near the latrine trench where other sick bodies sat in a line like discarded tools.
Some were coughing.
Some were just staring.
No one told them if they'd be treated.
No one told them if they'd be returned.
They were placed in a holding bin.
Li Shen watched it from his lane and felt something in his stomach tighten.
Not fear for himself.
A cold understanding: sickness wasn't an event. It was a filtering method.
That night, he wrote by a stolen candle stub, charcoal lines blunt:
Sleep: short. cold.
Cough: present in shed.
Rule: sick lane = removal without saying removal.
He stared at the words.
Then he added one more line underneath, smaller:
Avoid wet clothes. Keep hands clean. Don't share cloth.
It wasn't virtue.
It was mitigation.
Bai Ren almost got removed on the seventh day.
It happened in the wash yard.
A supervisor—a young-looking servant with older eyes—accused Bai Ren of moving too slowly.
It wasn't true.
Bai Ren had been moving at the same pace as everyone else.
But the supervisor wanted speed, and speed always found someone to blame.
"You," the supervisor snapped. "You're dragging."
Bai Ren's head snapped up. "I'm carrying two loads like everyone else."
The supervisor's eyes narrowed. "You're talking."
Bai Ren's mouth opened. Pride surged in him like a flame.
Li Shen saw it, and he saw the line that flame would cross.
He stepped in—half a pace, not enough to look like defense, just enough to place himself at Bai Ren's side.
"Tag visible," Li Shen said quietly, not to the supervisor—to Bai Ren.
Bai Ren blinked, confused.
Li Shen added, even quieter, "Not worth it."
The supervisor looked at Li Shen, then at Bai Ren, reading the situation like a person used to minimizing trouble.
His gaze lingered on Bai Ren's face.
Then he made a small chalk mark on his slate and walked away.
Bai Ren exhaled like he'd been holding his breath under water.
For a moment, he looked genuinely shaken.
"Did he—" Bai Ren whispered. "Did he just mark me?"
Li Shen nodded once. "Yes."
Bai Ren's jaw clenched. "For what?"
Li Shen's answer was simple. "For being expensive."
Bai Ren stared at his own hands, then spat into the dirt—anger with nowhere to go.
"I hate this place," he muttered.
Li Shen didn't disagree.
Hate didn't change the schedule.
He lifted the next load.
The month didn't arrive in a single wave.
It arrived in erosion.
The buffer belt became a landscape of repeated motion and controlled disappearance.
Some people quit.
Some got sick.
Some got removed for theft or fighting.
Some simply slowed enough times that the system decided they would cost more than they produced.
The yard didn't celebrate reduction.
It optimized.
At the end of the eighth day, Li Shen noticed something small and terrifying:
The dorm shed smelled different.
Not less sweat—still sweat.
Less bodies.
The air wasn't as dense.
The breathing wasn't as loud.
Two rows of straw mats near the far wall were empty.
Not cleaned.
Not folded.
Just… unused.
Li Shen lay down that night and listened to the silence filling in around the missing breath.
Bai Ren's voice drifted across the row, quieter than usual.
"How many do you think are gone?" he asked.
Li Shen didn't answer immediately.
He didn't guess.
He didn't dramatize.
He did the thing he always did: he treated it like a countable problem.
"I don't know," he said. "But the shed holds less now."
Bai Ren swallowed. "That's a terrible way to say it."
Li Shen closed his eyes. "It's an accurate way."
A small sound came from the women's section—half cough, half gasp.Then a whisper, almost inaudible, from a small girl."I can."
Li Shen didn't move.
He didn't speak.
He only pulled one breath low and slow, steady enough that if she was listening—if she was learning—she could match it.
In. Hold. Out.
Repeatable.
Not heroic.
Survivable.
Outside, lanterns still glowed in the yard, because the machine didn't stop when bodies wanted to.
And inside the shed, the ones who remained lay in their narrow spaces and understood the truth that made the second cut sharper than any road:
You didn't fail once.
You failed by accumulating small costs until the system decided you weren't worth keeping on the record.
Li Shen pressed his ledger tighter against his ribs and fell into thin sleep with one thought hard and clear enough to count:
Don't be expensive.