Li Shen's first real errand didn't start with a destination.
It started with a seal.
At dawn, the courier counter was already active. The air was colder than it had been a week ago, the kind of cold that made damp wood sweat and made people move faster without being told.
A clerk sat behind the window with two slates instead of one.
Double verification was still in effect.
Li Shen placed his runner token on the counter and waited.
The clerk looked at the token, looked at Li Shen's badge, then slid out a thin slip of paper with red paste pressed into one corner.
The seal wasn't decorative.
It was permission.
"Stores," the clerk said. "Pick-up. No delay."
Li Shen took the slip and moved.
He didn't run. Running was suspicious unless you were chased.
He walked fast with the rhythm of someone who had learned to spend speed only when it bought safety.
The lane to Stores ran behind the dorm sheds and past a low fence where the ground changed texture—packed dirt becoming stone chips, stone chips becoming flattened gravel.
Maintenance had been working.
Bai Ren's lane.
Rails were going up in places that didn't need rails yet.
Drain trenches were being cut deeper.
Chalk lines marked clean paths and dirty paths.
It wasn't beautiful.
It was disciplined.
And discipline was face.
At Stores, the clerk checked the seal, then disappeared into the back where the air smelled like dry grain and oil and rope.
When he returned, he carried a narrow bundle wrapped in cloth and tied with twine. Another seal had been pressed into the knot—receipt proof that the bundle had been issued.
"Deliver to Counter Nine," the clerk said.
Li Shen nodded once.
Counter Nine wasn't labeled in the main lane.
That was the first new thing.
Most counters had names painted above them. Rations. Hygiene. Tools.
Numbers meant internal circulation—things that didn't need to be explained to outsiders.
It meant he was being sent deeper, not upward, but inward.
He found Counter Nine in a side corridor behind the ration pavilion, where the air tasted cleaner for reasons he couldn't name. Not perfumed. Not holy.
Just… less used.
Two guards stood by the corridor entrance.
Not cultivators. Mortals with better posture, better boots, and eyes that didn't drift.
They didn't stop him. They stopped what he carried.
One held out a hand.
Li Shen offered the slip and the bundle without a word.
The guard checked the seals against a small slate held by the other guard.
He compared stamp marks, then returned the slip and waved Li Shen forward.
"Don't wander," he said.
Li Shen didn't answer.
He didn't need permission to obey.
The corridor narrowed and the stone underfoot smoothed, as if more feet with more authority used it.
There were doors on either side.
Some were plain.
Some had thin brass plates.
None were for him.
He kept his eyes low and his pace even.
Counter Nine was a recessed window in the wall with a small hanging board:
Protocol Supplies — Internal
A woman sat behind it with her hair pinned tightly and her hands stained red from seal paste. She took the bundle, checked the knot seal, then broke it with a practiced twist.
Inside were rolls of cloth—white, thick, and clean—tied in even lengths.
Not servant cloth.
Visitor cloth.
She counted them with a movement that looked like prayer.
Then she handed Li Shen a new slip—already sealed.
"Deliver this to Waterline Supervisor He," she said.
He.
Not the headwoman from the village.
A different He.
A supervisor name.
Li Shen took the slip and left with no reaction.
But something in him sharpened.
Names were rare in lanes like this.
Names meant accountability.
He returned through the corridor. The guards checked his token again, then let him out.
Outside, the yard air hit him like reality.
Smoke. Sweat. Rice steam. Latrine wind.
He crossed the lanes to Waterline.
The Waterline supervisor was a broad-shouldered man with hands that looked permanently wet. His face was blunt, his voice blunt.
He took the slip, read the seal, then spat into the dirt.
"Slaked lime again," he muttered. ""They think white powder fixes everything."
He scrawled a mark and pressed a receipt seal onto Li Shen's paper.
Then he leaned closer, voice low enough not to travel.
"They're building visitor stations," he said. "Not just latrines. Stations. Clean water, hand wash, all of it."
Li Shen nodded once, as if he didn't care.
Inside, he filed the phrase away.
Visitor stations.
That wasn't a rumor.
That was infrastructure.
Infrastructure meant inevitability.
Li Shen returned the receipt to Counter Nine.
The woman took it, checked the seal, then slid two points tokens back across the wood.
Minimal payment. Maximum responsibility.
He turned to leave.
She stopped him with a single sentence.
"Courier support is not courier," she said, eyes on the slate, not on him. "You carry paper. Paper carries blame."
Li Shen didn't respond.
He didn't need the lesson. He had lived it.
By midday, he had done three runs.
Stores to Protocol.
Protocol to Waterline.
Waterline to Sanitation.
Sanitation to Maintenance.
Each errand moved him along the edge of the sect's true body, like blood skimming along the surface of muscle.
He didn't see disciples.
Not directly.
He saw the ecosystem that kept them clean and fed and above the mud.
Once, on a return run, he passed an open archway.
The air beyond it felt different.
Not warmer.
Not brighter.
Denser in a way his lungs recognized before his mind did, like stepping into a room where incense had burned for years and soaked into the walls.
He didn't cross the threshold.
The guards didn't need to tell him.
The threshold itself did.
A servant who crossed without permission didn't get punished.
He got removed.
Li Shen lowered his eyes and kept walking.
But his body remembered the density like a taste.
A reminder that the world above him wasn't myth.
It was just gated.
That evening, he crossed paths with Bai Ren near the maintenance rails.
Bai Ren's shoulders were dusted with chalk. His hands were raw. A hammer sat in the crook of his elbow like an extra limb.
He spotted Li Shen and jerked his chin toward the sealed slips in Li Shen's hand.
"You're carrying those again," Bai Ren muttered.
Li Shen nodded once.
Bai Ren leaned in, voice low.
"Did you see anything?"
Li Shen's answer was honest, but not romantic.
"I saw counters," he said.
Bai Ren's face twisted in disappointment. "That's it?"
Li Shen glanced at the rails, at the new drainage cut, at the chalk lines that were multiplying like veins.
"That's everything," he said. "Counters mean they're preparing to be watched."
Bai Ren scowled. "Watched by who."
Li Shen didn't pretend to know.
But he knew enough.
"Other sects," he said. "Merchants. People who count."
Bai Ren spat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist like he could scrub the thought away.
"They're turning the whole place into a stage," he said.
Li Shen's voice stayed low.
"A stage needs staff," he said.
Bai Ren stared at him.
Then he gave a quiet laugh that wasn't humor.
"It's disgusting how you make it sound reasonable."
Li Shen didn't argue.
Reasonable was how systems killed you.
At ration time, Yun Xue passed through the lane that led to the herb yard, carrying a basket that looked too large for her frame. Her steps were careful, balanced like she had learned exactly how to distribute weight so her lungs wouldn't collapse.
Bai Ren watched her go with a frown.
"She's going to break," he said.
Li Shen didn't contradict him.
He watched Yun Xue's hands—steady, precise—adjust the basket strap once, then continue without complaint.
"She hasn't yet," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's jaw tightened.
"That's not a compliment," he muttered.
"No," Li Shen agreed.
That night, Li Shen opened his ledger and wrote by the tiny oil flame, shielding it with his shoulder.
Courier support runs: Counter Nine / Protocol.
New: guards + internal corridor. air denser near archway.
Visitor stations discussed (waterline). infrastructure confirmed.
Rule: thresholds enforce themselves. don't test them.
Then, after a pause, he added:
Body remembered "less poor" air. not enough. but real.
Across the shed, Bai Ren rolled onto his side and whispered into the dark.
"Why do you write everything like you're not human?"
Li Shen didn't look up.
"Because bodies lie," he said. "Paper doesn't."
Bai Ren was silent for a moment, then asked a softer question.
"And if paper lies too?"
Li Shen capped the oil bottle.
"Then you need more paper," he said.
Outside, the hammering continued. Rails. Drains. Chalk lines.
The sect wasn't announcing the Conclave.
It didn't have to.
Every sealed slip Li Shen carried was a thread in the net being tightened.
And as the days stacked, he understood what the woman at Counter Nine meant:
Courier support wasn't prestige.
It was proximity to consequence.
If something failed during hosting, no one would blame the sky.
They would blame the hands that moved the seals.