The Pavilion didn't announce ladders.
It just placed them where only certain hands could reach.
Li Shen saw it in the same corridor that sold him grain and powder—iron bars, stamped slips, clean ink. The Exchange Counter didn't change. The people passing it did.
A disciple in outer robes walked through the Intendance corridor without stopping.
Not hurried. Not nervous. Not careful in the way servants were careful.
He didn't sign anything.
He didn't present a receipt.
He simply let a clerk see the token at his waist—dark wood, a stamped mark, a thin cord—and the clerk stepped aside as if space itself had rules.
The disciple's eyes never flicked to the bars. He didn't even look at the board of prices. The corridor was a hallway for him, not a throat.
Li Shen kept his gaze down and made his purchase like a servant.
Because that was what he was.
For now.
In the weeks that followed, Li Shen learned a new discipline: spacing.
Not spacing his feet. Spacing his decisions.
Greyhaven had offered options, and options were dangerous because they tempted him into rhythm. Qian Mei had said it simply—no patterns—and Shen Qiu had proved the cost of ignoring it. So Li Shen did what the bottom did best: he took his life apart into pieces small enough to manage, then refused to let those pieces line up neatly.
He stopped going to Greyhaven.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he wanted to keep being able to.
Instead, he worked.
Forge shifts stacked into each other. He traded pride for steadiness. He held Smoke-Sealing in short windows and stopped before his Qi turned thin and stupid. He paid attention to his own body like it was a tool that could be ruined by misuse.
Stage 1 didn't make smoke harmless.
It made smoke negotiable, for minutes, and minutes were valuable.
Some days he could hold the seal long enough to finish a delicate set without coughing.
Some days fatigue made it collapse and his throat burned like he'd swallowed ash.
He didn't pretend that inconsistency was failure.
Inconsistency was the truth.
The forge didn't reward truth. It rewarded results.
So he built results the only way Stage 1 allowed: by cutting waste.
The Exchange Counter became a place he visited the way people visited a well: with a container, with a plan, and with the awareness that every trip was visible.
The corridor always smelled faintly of dried herbs and ink. The iron bars were always cold. The board always read like a polite way of saying this is what you can afford to be.
He kept buying the same three items, staggered and measured:
Qi-nourishing grain ration.
Meridian-warming powder.
Standard salve.
He did not buy extra.
Extra created questions.
And he did not convert points into spirit stones, even when the line on the board sat there like a dare.
POINTS → SPIRIT STONES (LIMITED)
The exchange rate was written with calm cruelty. It wasn't illegal. It was worse. It was insulting on purpose.
If he converted now, he would feel rich for one day and poor for a month.
Points were control inside the walls. Stones were control outside. He didn't have enough control to gamble either.
So he stayed in the servant economy, where everything was priced in fatigue.
The only exception he allowed himself was skill.
Because skill paid twice: it made work safer, and it made him harder to replace.
Combat was where the Pavilion stopped pretending servants were "workers" and admitted they were disposable. Even the safest jobs had moments when someone's hand slipped near heat, when a cart rolled the wrong way, when a man decided a tool was worth more than another man's fingers.
And beyond the wall, the world didn't care whether you were on an errand slip or not.
The technique board for servant-class combat sat two corridors away from the Exchange Counter, pinned under a dull seal that made it look official enough to be used and cheap enough to be ignored.
Most people ignored it.
Most people stayed mortal and hoped the wall held.
Li Shen didn't stand in front of it long. Standing long was a kind of announcement.
He read it once, let the names settle, and walked away like he hadn't been interested.
Then he came back two days later at a different hour, when the corridor was busy enough that no one would remember his face.
The board was short, which was part of the insult.
BASIC TECHNIQUES — SERVANT CLASS (CULTIVATOR ONLY)
REQUIRES: REGISTERED QI
NO SPARRING PRIVILEGES INCLUDED
A list below it looked too small to matter.
It mattered because it was priced in points.
And points were time.
GREY STEP (BASIC) — 12 points
Footwork. Burst distance. One breath only.
IRON GRIP (BASIC) — 9 points
Hand strength. Hold. Twist. Control.
ASH PALM (BASIC) — 10 points
Heat tolerance. Short impact. Burns self if misused.
Below those were scuffed lines—half-copied names, prices scratched out and rewritten, old ink blurred by too many hands that didn't respect paper.
Li Shen didn't look at the messy ones. Messy lines were traps.
He looked at the clean three and treated them like tools on a table.
Grey Step was expensive, but it changed positioning. Positioning decided whether you bled.
Ash Palm was a lie for men who liked pain, and pain was already free in the forge.
Iron Grip was cheaper, and it fit his life: hooks, tongs, ropes, carry frames, work that punished weak hands until weak hands became broken hands.
More importantly, it had a future.
Techniques in the Pavilion were never truly isolated. They were branches.
Servant-class taught you the handle.
Outer disciples got the blade.
He couldn't afford the blade yet, but he could afford the handle.
Nine points was still a cut.
He waited another week, because if he bought too close to the Greyhaven errand, the timing would look neat. Neat was suspicious.
When the day came, he didn't announce it to himself as a milestone. He walked to the Exchange Counter like he was buying salt.
He slid his points slip through the bars.
The clerk didn't look up.
"Name."
"Li Shen."
"Redemption?"
"Iron Grip," Li Shen said.
The brush paused.
Not because the clerk cared.
Because the clerk recorded deviations.
"You sure?" the clerk asked, voice still bored, but with a thread of something like judgment. "Most of you want feet. Or you want flashy. Hands don't impress anybody."
"I'm not trying to impress," Li Shen replied.
The clerk snorted softly. "That's the first honest thing I've heard today."
A stamp came down.
Nine points disappeared.
In exchange, the clerk pushed a thin bamboo sleeve through the slit.
No teacher. No explanation. Just a cheap red stamp in the corner:
SERVANT-CLASS. ONE BREATH. RELEASE REQUIRED. NO LIABILITY.
The clerk added, like it was a favor, "Don't tear your tendons and come crying at my window. I don't sell new arms."
Li Shen took it and left.
He didn't open it until night.
The dormitory was never truly quiet.
It only traded noise for a different kind: coughs, the small shifts of bodies on straw mats, a man's teeth grinding in his sleep.
Li Shen waited until the oil lamp burned low and most eyes were either closed or too tired to focus.
Then he opened the bamboo sleeve.
The technique was written like the Smoke-Sealing method had been—short lines, hard instructions, no poetry.
Set the wrist.
Sink the shoulder.
Grip with bone, not muscle.
Lock the thumb.
Pull Qi into the forearm.
Hold one breath only.
Release before the tendons scream.
Li Shen read it twice.
Then he stood.
He didn't practice it like a fighter.
He practiced it like a worker.
He used the dormitory's carry frame—the same one he hauled supplies with—because it was weight he could explain if someone asked. He hooked it under a beam and tested the first step.
Wrist alignment.
He realized immediately why people paid points for words.
His usual grip was strength. Habit. Arm.
This grip was structure.
When he set the wrist correctly, the ache moved off his fingers and into the larger joints that could take it.
When he sank the shoulder, his hand stopped trembling under weight that normally made his knuckles scream.
Then he tried to pull Qi into the forearm.
It was like trying to hold water in a cracked bowl.
His Qi was small and eager to leak. It spread into his palm, into his wrist, into nothing useful.
He held one breath.
The technique failed.
His fingers slipped a fraction on the wood.
A small slip, but it told him the truth: Stage 1 wasn't about power. It was about leaks.
He reset.
Second attempt: he aligned again, slower. The alignment gave his Qi a place to sit. Not because he forced it, but because the body stopped fighting it.
One breath.
The carry frame creaked.
His hand didn't slip.
He released before the tendons screamed.
The sensation wasn't strength.
It was efficiency.
He practiced three times and stopped.
Not because he was satisfied.
Because the method was explicit: one breath. Then release.
Anything more was ego.
Ego tore tendons and paid nothing back.
He slept with his forearm warm and sore, not from strain, but from a new kind of control trying to settle into habit.
He built the technique into his life the way he built Smoke-Sealing into his shifts: windows.
Irregular.
Short.
Useful.
Two nights, then none. One night, then three without. Always brief, always strict. He didn't want his neighbors to remember a consistent sound of wood creaking at the same hour. Consistency was an invitation.
During the day, he used Iron Grip where it could hide.
Holding a heated piece steady with tongs for one critical moment when the metal wanted to twist. Catching a slipping clamp before it snapped and sprayed sparks. Twisting a stubborn rivet without stripping it.
One breath.
Release.
The technique didn't turn him into a fighter.
But it turned his hands into a better tool.
And better tools earned more points without begging for them.
That mattered, because spending nine points had weakened him in a different way.
He felt it at the Exchange Counter the next time he came: the smaller number beside his name, the reduced options, the delay between what he wanted and what he could afford.
Buying a technique wasn't just purchasing power.
It was choosing what you couldn't buy next.
Grain, powder, salve—those were maintenance.
Technique was investment.
And investments always made you vulnerable in the short term.
The forge collected its own payment.
Midway through the month, the Circle of Hammer received a batch of metal that ran hotter than usual—impurities, the foreman muttered. Bad source. The kind that smoked wrong when it hit the coals.
Servants complained under their breath. Complaints didn't change the batch.
Li Shen didn't complain.
He watched.
The smoke off that metal wasn't just thicker. It had a sharper bite, like something sour hiding under the ash.
He used Smoke-Sealing in short bursts and paid in Qi fatigue. He watched the older workers coughing into their sleeves and recognized the future they were too tired to plan around.
Then the batch demanded a mistake.
A clamp slipped.
Not his clamp.
A neighboring worker fumbled, sweat making his grip unreliable, and a half-heated piece jerked sideways like a living thing.
If it hit the floor, it would be ruined. If it hit someone, it would scar. Either way, someone would pay.
Li Shen moved without thinking about heroism.
He caught the clamp handle with his bare hand.
The heat bit through the wood. Pain flared instantly.
His reflex screamed to let go.
Instead he set his wrist.
Sank his shoulder.
Pulled Qi into his forearm the way Iron Grip demanded.
One breath.
The clamp stopped slipping. The metal steadied.
The worker regained control, eyes wide, and in the same moment Li Shen released, because the technique demanded release and his tendons agreed.
He stepped back as if nothing had happened.
His palm throbbed. The skin would blister.
But the metal didn't fall, and no one shouted, and the foreman didn't walk over with questions.
That was what he wanted: a win that left no witness except his own body.
Later, when he rinsed his hand under cold water, Bai Ren saw the redness and said nothing at first.
Then, low, "Forge got mean."
Li Shen flexed his fingers carefully. "It always was."
Bai Ren's expression didn't change much. It didn't need to. The dormitory was full of men whose lives were defined by things that were "always" true.
But Bai Ren had something Li Shen valued: an eye for how truth turned into damage.
"You're buying food with points," Bai Ren said finally, voice kept flat. "And you're buying… other things."
Li Shen didn't deny it. Denial was a waste.
"It's paid for," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren gave a short, dry huff. "Paid for with points."
"And time," Li Shen added.
Bai Ren nodded once, slow. "Right. Less comfort now. Less helpless later."
That was all the support they offered each other—acknowledgment of the math.
By the end of the month, Li Shen's cultivation sessions were still not glorious.
He still sat in the dark with a bowl, warm grain in his stomach, bitterness of powder on his tongue, sweat cooling on his back as his Qi snagged and loosened and snagged again.
Some sessions ended with nothing but frustration.
Some ended with a small change he could feel the next day: less burn behind the navel, fewer coughs when smoke thickened, a steadier breath when he sealed.
The technique didn't make him stronger in a way anyone could admire.
It made him weaker less often.
That was a kind of strength the Pavilion couldn't take away with a stamp.
And yet, the paper still mattered.
Every time he walked past Intendance, he remembered the disciple's token and how the corridor had opened for him like a door.
No signatures.
No receipts.
No narrow window where a clerk could decide his week.
Li Shen didn't romanticize it.
He understood it.
Paper was a leash for people who could be dragged.
The stronger you became, the more the leash had to be replaced by something else—favor, politics, whispered decisions in rooms Li Shen would never enter.
But that was a higher problem.
For now, his world was simpler.
At Stage 1, paper could still hold him by the throat.
So he built what he could build:
small techniques, stacked carefully, purchased with real cost, practiced in windows, applied where no one would call it cultivation—
until the day the corridor didn't narrow around him anymore.