The first thing Li Shen learned after the registry wasn't a technique.
It was geography.
Not the mountains outside. Not the world beyond the sect.
The geography that mattered here was internal—paths, counters, doors, and the invisible rules that decided who could stand where without being struck for it.
The probation yard had been a filter.
The service registry was a machine.
And now that he existed on its record, the machine began to place him where it could use him.
A board went up the morning after Registry Day.
Not a notice.
A map.
It wasn't drawn like a map. There were no curves of terrain, no poetic names.
It was a list of lanes.
Kitchen & Stores
Water & Sanitation
Ash & Maintenance
Herb Yard & Drying
Courier / Errands
Outer Service Lanes
Each lane had a mark beside it—an ink stamp, a small seal, and below that a string of numbers.
Quotas. Rotations. Points weight.
The numbers didn't ask if people were tired.
They assumed it.
Bai Ren stood beside Li Shen reading it as if staring hard enough would make the words change.
"This is… real," he said, voice rough.
Li Shen's eyes moved to the bottom where a smaller note had been added, almost hidden under the larger strokes.
Conclave Preparations: Priority Lanes Will Change Weekly.
No date.
No explanation.
Just pressure.
Bai Ren squinted. "Conclave."
Li Shen didn't answer with certainty because certainty was expensive here.
But he had heard the word twice already, in the way older servants spoke when they thought no one important was listening.
A word said with the flat dread of people who understood what hosting meant.
Not glory.
Work.
And work that would be watched.
A senior attendant—older than the foremen, not a cultivator, but carrying himself like someone who could ruin a life with a line of ink—walked down the lanes and stopped them from clustering.
"Move," he said, as if still speaking to probation.
The batch shifted into the painted queues. Men and women separated automatically. Old habits.
The attendant's slate clicked when he turned it.
He didn't call names.
He called assignments.
And the way he did it made something clear:
This wasn't about who was good.
It was about where the machine was bleeding.
"Kitchen support. Ten bodies," he said.
A group stepped forward.
"Waterline team. Six."
Another group.
"Maintenance. Eight."
Bai Ren's shoulders tightened as if the word had been aimed at him.
It was.
"Outer service lanes. Four."
That line drew a different kind of attention. Not fear, exactly.
Interest.
Outer lanes meant being near disciples. Being near halls. Being near places where the air felt different.
Li Shen kept his face neutral and his eyes down.
Desire was a scent.
It attracted predators.
The attendant's slate paused.
"Courier support. Two."
Li Shen felt the shift in the space before he moved.
Not because he was special.
Because he was quiet and literate and had already been seen carrying sealed slips without looking curious.
He stepped forward.
Bai Ren's head snapped toward him.
Li Shen didn't look back.
A second person stepped forward—a thin boy with hollow cheeks and a scar across one knuckle. He avoided eye contact like it was a tax.
The attendant noted their tags, marked something, then jerked his chin toward a narrow side lane that ran behind the tool-cage.
"Courier support," he said. "You don't deliver to disciples. You deliver to the people who deliver to disciples. You carry sealed slates. You don't open them. You don't lose them."
A pause.
"Lose one, and you don't exist."
Li Shen nodded once.
The attendant led them to a small counter set under an awning.
A different clerk stood there with a box of tokens—wooden discs stamped with a single character—and a stack of thin paper slips. The slips were rough, but each had a smear of red paste and a pressed seal.
Not valuable like treasure.
Valuable like authority.
The clerk didn't explain the world.
He explained procedure.
"You will receive sealed slips," he said. "You will hand them to the counter listed. You will return with a receipt seal. No seal, no proof. No proof, no points. No points, no food."
He slid two tokens across the wood to Li Shen.
One disc marked Runner.
One disc marked Counter Access—only valid on specified lanes.
Li Shen took them carefully and tucked them inside the fold of his belt.
Bai Ren would have put them in his hand like trophies.
Li Shen treated them like a knife.
Tools weren't shown.
They were used.
The courier lane didn't move fast at first.
It moved precise.
The first slip sent Li Shen to waterline, not because water was glamorous, but because it was the earliest failure point in any large system.
A runner who couldn't count buckets didn't belong near anything more sensitive.
He walked the lane past the dorm sheds, past the ration pavilion, past the latrine trenches where white chalk lines marked "clean" and "not clean."
Even the stink was being categorized.
Even rot had to be managed.
At the waterline counter, a supervisor took the slip, checked the seal, and handed him a small wooden marker with a notch cut into it.
"Deliver this to sanitation," the man said. "Tell them we need chaux by midday. The drain slope is wrong."
Li Shen didn't ask why the slope was wrong.
It didn't matter.
He ran the marker to sanitation, received a second seal, and returned it.
Receipt.
Proof.
The machine exhaled.
He did it again.
Kitchen to stores. Stores to ash pit. Ash pit to maintenance.
Every lane had its own smell, its own rhythm, its own failure mode.
Kitchen was heat and grease and low voices.
Stores was dust and quiet counting.
Ash pits were smoke and dead-eyed endurance.
Maintenance was the sound of wood being measured and cut to exact lengths—not because it was pretty, but because chaos was costly.
By noon, Li Shen understood the hidden map better than the posted one:
If the sect cared about face, it cared about what visitors touched.
Food.
Water.
Cleanliness.
Order.
Not the heroic parts.
The parts that made everything else possible.
When he returned to the courier counter, the clerk marked his slate with two clean seals and gave him a small increment of points.
Not much.
But points were a language.
And the machine had just spoken his name without ever saying it.
Across the yard, Bai Ren was working maintenance.
Not fighting.
Not posturing.
Holding a wooden rail in place while two older servants hammered stakes into the ground.
A simple job.
But the rail created a line, and the line prevented a crowd from becoming a crush.
Bai Ren caught Li Shen watching and jerked his chin toward the rails.
"Look," he muttered when Li Shen passed close enough. "They're building the paths like they already expect too many feet."
Li Shen glanced at the stakes.
New.
Fresh-cut.
Measured.
"They do," he said.
Bai Ren's mouth tightened. "That word again."
Li Shen didn't pretend ignorance this time.
"The Conclave," he said quietly.
Bai Ren spat to the side, careful not to hit a marked lane.
"Hosting," he muttered. "So they're turning us into furniture they can show off."
Li Shen kept his voice low.
"Furniture that doesn't squeak," he said.
Bai Ren's lips twitched once. A laugh that didn't have room to be happy.
On the south side, Yun Xue's lane was visible for half a breath between shed walls.
She moved among racks and baskets, hair tied back, sleeves pinned, hands working with the same slow precision.
Her corner looked cleaner.
Not polished.
Not "pretty."
Just… less wasted.
A supervisor passed, glanced at her racks, and didn't stop.
Not because he didn't notice.
Because he didn't need to correct anything.
That was the closest thing to safety the sect offered.
Li Shen completed two more deliveries before dusk.
Each one widened his mental map.
Each one taught him the difference between being inside the registry and being inside the sect.
A servitor could spend years here without ever stepping past the lowest terraces.
But a runner, even a minor one, moved along the edges of better air.
Not enough to transform him.
Enough to teach his body what "less poor" felt like.
That night, in the dorm shed, Bai Ren threw himself down on his platform and stared at the ceiling like he wanted to burn a hole through it.
"You're walking everywhere now," he said. "You're going to see things."
Li Shen didn't answer with excitement.
Excitement was a weakness. It made the ledger sloppy.
He took out the tokens, checked the stamps, then tucked them away again.
"I'm going to carry paper," he said.
Bai Ren snorted. "Paper's not a weapon."
Li Shen's charcoal moved across his page in the dim lantern light.
Courier lane: sealed slips. receipts. tokens issued.
Lanes map: food / water / sanitation / rails.
Conclave note: priority lanes weekly. pressure rising.
Air difference: near counters less poor. body noticed.
He closed the ledger and lay back.
Outside, hammering continued even after dark.
Rails went up.
Drains were dug.
Chalk lines marked clean from unclean.
The sect didn't announce what it was preparing for.
It didn't have to.
The machine was already reshaping the ground under their feet.
And Li Shen, now officially recorded, was being moved—quietly—toward the places where a single missing seal could cost the sect face.
He didn't feel proud.
He felt alert.
Because in a world run by Qi, paper still decided whose hands were allowed to touch the future.