Rumors in the servant lanes didn't spread like fire.
Fire needed air.
Rumors spread like damp—quiet, clinging, always present, turning wood soft long before it looked broken.
Li Shen heard the word host three times in two days.
Not shouted.
Not announced.
Spoken the way men spoke when they didn't want the world to record them.
The first time was at Waterline, where supervisors argued over barrel counts and pretended it was only about barrels.
"The slaked lime allotment is wrong," one man snapped, jabbing a finger at a slate. "You want clean stations, you need powder."
The other supervisor didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to.
"You want clean stations," he said flatly, "Then do the work."
The word landed like a weight.
No one explained it.
No one needed to.
Hosting meant visitors.
Visitors meant eyes.
Eyes meant punishment for failure.
Li Shen took the sealed slip he was carrying and kept moving, as if he hadn't heard anything.
Hearing too much and reacting to it was a mistake.
But he filed it.
The second time was at Stores.
A clerk with rope-callused hands and an ink-stained thumb slid a sealed bundle across the counter and muttered to no one in particular:
"They assigned us."
The man beside him—another clerk, older, meaner—answered without looking up.
"Assigned means someone wanted to watch," he said. "That's all it ever means."
Li Shen accepted the bundle, returned a receipt seal, and left before his face could betray interest.
Outside, the yard had changed again.
More rails.
More chalk lines.
A new frame of posts near the sanitation trench—visitor stations taking shape like ribs.
The machine wasn't rumored.
It was visible.
That night, Bai Ren came back from maintenance with clay caked under his nails and chalk dust on his sleeves. He dropped onto his platform and stared at the ceiling until Li Shen finished his ledger entry.
Then he spoke without looking over.
"You know what I heard," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen didn't pretend he didn't. "Tell me."
Bai Ren's mouth tightened.
"It's not every year," he said. "Hosting. It's turns."
Li Shen's charcoal paused for half a heartbeat.
That aligned with what he'd been sensing, but not confirming.
"In turns," Li Shen repeated.
"Three-year turns," Bai Ren said, voice rough. "They rotate who hosts. So nobody can hide forever."
Li Shen didn't write the number down.
Paper was leverage. It could also be evidence.
Bai Ren continued, words pushed out like he didn't enjoy knowing.
"They decided at the last one," he said. "Last Conclave. Elders talked. The bigger sects talked. And someone pointed at us and said: Pavillon Gris hosts next."
Li Shen closed the ledger carefully.
"Who wanted it?"
Bai Ren shrugged, frustrated. "Does it matter? It's the frontier. They all hate each other politely."
Li Shen didn't soften the truth.
"It matters," he said. "Because it tells you why."
Bai Ren's eyes narrowed.
"You think it's a trap."
Li Shen didn't say think. He said what the system implied.
"If you wanted to embarrass a rival," Li Shen said quietly, "you wouldn't challenge them in the training yard."
Bai Ren snorted. "Because they can win fights."
Li Shen nodded once.
"You challenge them in logistics," he said. "Where everything is expensive, visible, and blamed."
Bai Ren let out a slow breath.
"That's disgusting," he muttered. "That's… smart."
Li Shen lay back and stared at the roof beams.
It was smart, because it targeted the part of a sect most cultivators didn't respect until it failed.
The part that servants were forced to become.
Outside, a bell rang. Late shift. Sanitation crew.
The machine didn't sleep.
---
Two days later, Li Shen saw proof the rumor wasn't just gossip.
A directive appeared on the courier counter slate, stamped with a sharper seal than usual.
HOST ROTATION PREP — INTERNAL PRIORITY
Runners: receipts must be returned within half a watch.
Counters: double-check seal marks.
Any delay → points docked.
No explanation.
No apology.
Just the weight of an outside eye already imagined.
The courier clerk handed Li Shen a sealed slip and watched him longer than normal.
"Don't lose it," the clerk said.
Li Shen didn't smile. "I don't."
The clerk leaned closer, voice low and almost tired.
"In normal months," he said, "we don't strangle the lanes like this. We let flow happen. We accept small leaks."
His eyes flicked toward the board where seal paste had been marked restricted last week.
"This," he said, tapping the slate, "is because they're coming."
Li Shen nodded once.
The clerk exhaled.
"Hosting turns the whole sect into a mirror," he muttered. "And mirrors show cracks."
Li Shen took the slip and left.
He ran the errand fast, but not frantic.
Stores. Protocol counter. Waterline. Sanitation.
Seals. Receipts. Time limits.
Half a watch wasn't long.
It forced speed.
Speed forced mistakes.
Mistakes created blame.
A clean runner became valuable in a month like this—not because he was strong, but because he didn't break procedure.
On his third run, Li Shen cut past the herb yard because the sealed slip demanded speed, not comfort.
The racks had multiplied since last month—more frames, more baskets, more hands trying to keep damp from turning into rot.
And in the middle of it, Yun Xue wasn't being moved.
She was being used.
Not as a body.
As a stabilizer.
An attendant stood by a slate while two girls waited beside Yun Xue, each holding a basket too heavy for their wrists to pretend it didn't hurt.
One girl was older than Yun Xue and wore her fatigue like a weapon. The other looked barely past childhood, eyes flicking between the attendant and the ground.
The attendant didn't raise his voice.
"Rack Line Twelve and Thirteen," he said, tapping the slate. "Same standard. Higher turnover. Less waste."
His gaze settled on Yun Xue like he was assigning a tool to a job.
"You," he said. "You keep them clean."
Yun Xue's eyes widened a fraction, as if she hadn't expected to be pointed at directly.
Then she dipped her head too fast—too polite.
"Yes. I… I can."
The older girl's lips curled.
"She's in charge?" she muttered, not quite whispering.
The attendant's expression didn't change.
"She's responsible," he corrected. "If your racks mold, I dock points. If they rot, I move you to waste line. If you argue, I dock more."
He marked the slate and slid two small wooden tags across the table—plain, stamped only with the rack numbers.
Responsibility that weighed more than the wood it was carved into.
Yun Xue took them with both hands like they might crack if she was careless.
The younger girl swallowed.
"What do I do?" she whispered.
Yun Xue looked at the racks first, then back at the girl, as if checking the world was still where it was supposed to be.
"Um… please," she said, voice soft and earnest. "Spread thinner. And… turn on the second bell. Not when you remember."
It wasn't command.
It was instruction delivered like a request.
The older girl huffed and started to lift her basket high, twisting the strap the wrong way.
Yun Xue stepped forward too quickly, fingers catching the strap before it bit and tore.
"Sorry—" she blurted, immediately, as if saving the basket had been rude. "Not like that. It… it tears. Then everything spills."
The older girl froze, eyes narrowing.
"Don't touch my—"
Yun Xue's face flushed. She withdrew her hand like she'd been burned.
"I'm sorry," she said again, too fast. "I just… if it spills, they'll blame you. And then they'll blame me."
The older girl stared at her, thrown off by the lack of malice.
"Why do you care?" she hissed.
Yun Xue hesitated, as if the obvious answer should have been obvious to everyone.
"Because… we all pay," she said quietly. "Points. And… they get angry."
She glanced toward the attendant like she expected him to be listening.
He wasn't. Or he pretended not to be.
Because results mattered more than feelings.
The younger girl nodded quickly and started spreading her stems thinner, copying Yun Xue's motion like it was a lifeline.
The older girl scoffed, but adjusted her grip anyway—smaller movement, less twist.
Yun Xue exhaled, relief visible, then immediately tried to hide it like relief was also a mistake.
Li Shen didn't stop.
He couldn't.
His slip was sealed and the half-watch rule didn't care about herb racks.
But as he moved past, he saw the thing that mattered:
Yun Xue wasn't breaking.
She was learning how to hold a line.
Not with force.
With method—and a naive honesty that didn't understand why anyone would choose chaos.
Later that week, Bai Ren caught up with Li Shen at the edge of a newly dug drain, holding a shovel like it weighed nothing.
"They're building a guest corridor," Bai Ren said. "Maintenance saw the plan. Guest corridor. Like we're a city."
Li Shen glanced at the chalk lines marking the corridor path. "Because we will be. For a week."
Bai Ren's lips pressed together.
"You know what else they said?" Bai Ren asked.
Li Shen waited.
Bai Ren's voice dropped, suddenly serious.
"They said some sects will come just to watch us fail."
Li Shen didn't doubt it.
"Then we don't," he said.
Bai Ren stared. "We? We're servants."
Li Shen met his eyes for a heartbeat.
"Yes," he said. "That's why it's us."
Bai Ren's throat worked.
He looked away, jaw tight, then spat into the dirt with controlled disgust.
"They're using us as a wall," he muttered.
Li Shen didn't deny it.
Walls were the only reason roofs stayed up.
---
Dispatch day came again ten days later.
The procurement carts lined up near Stores, heavy with barrels and sealed crates.
Li Shen used the route the way he used everything—deliberate, measured.
He paid the fee again and wrote another short letter.
Not because he wanted to write.
Because connection was a resource, and resources required maintenance.
This time he wrote even less.
Father,
Work increased. Hosting preparations are real. Do not worry. I am eating. I am training.
If anyone asks, say nothing. Keep quiet.
—Shen
He didn't explain why keep quiet.
If the village talked too loudly about a servant inside a sect, it could attract the wrong kind of attention.
And attention, like envy, traveled faster than carts.
He sealed the letter, paid the tokens, watched the pouch get strapped under the driver's seat.
When the carts rolled out, the yard looked emptier in a way that wasn't calm.
Like a mouth missing teeth.
That night, Li Shen wrote his summary by the shielded oil flame.
Host rotation: every 3 years. decided last Conclave. assigned to Pavillon Gris.
Prep pressure rising. verification tight (temporary). speed demands. mistakes punished.
Training: daily split. markers stable. no chase.
Observation: Yun Xue responsible for two rack lines + two girls. method holds.
He closed the ledger and lay back.
Bai Ren whispered into the dark, not angry now—just honest.
"So we're hosting because someone wanted us to choke."
Li Shen stared at the beams.
"Probably," he said.
Bai Ren's voice tightened.
"And if we choke?"
Li Shen's answer was simple.
"Then the people above us lose face," he said. "And the people below pay for it."
Silence filled the shed.
Outside, hammers struck late again.
Rails rose.
Drains deepened.
Slaked lime waited in sacks.
The sect didn't need to announce the Conclave.
The rotation had already decided.
And the machine had already begun turning servants into proof.