The Pavilion measured time in bells.
Servants measured it in soreness.
Li Shen learned to measure it in windows.
A window of smoke-control before his Qi thinned and started leaking into nothing. A window of strength before his forearm trembled. A window of sleep before the dormitory's coughs became loud enough to drag him back into wakefulness.
Stage 1 didn't give him freedom.
It gave him the ability to choose when to suffer.
That was enough to build on.
The first change wasn't dramatic. It was administrative.
After Shen Qiu's "receipt quality" notice, the exchange-errand line at the gate grew slightly longer, and the way people handled paper changed.
Oil stamps became sacred. People tucked receipts inside cloth wraps, inside sleeves, inside anything that stayed dry. A few older servants began copying stamp marks by hand onto scraps as if ink could be duplicated by fear.
It didn't help them.
It helped the Pavilion.
More paper meant more surfaces for mistakes.
Li Shen didn't lecture anyone. The bottom didn't have the luxury of teaching.
He simply stopped treating receipts like proof of purchase and started treating them like proof of survival.
Wax sleeves from the licensed strip became part of his errand kit, used immediately, never shown off. He didn't buy them in bulk. Bulk created rhythm. Rhythm created pricing.
He carried the habit back into the forge without making it obvious. Tags stayed clean. Yield slips stayed dry. His name stayed easy to file.
Not because he trusted Shen Qiu.
Because he respected what Shen Qiu represented: the ability to turn minor friction into a chokehold.
Work stayed work.
The forge didn't care about his planning.
Heat kept moving through stone and metal. Smoke kept biting whenever a batch ran dirty. Screams still happened sometimes in the Circle of Fire, short and ugly, when someone misjudged distance or fatigue.
Li Shen kept his own costs contained.
Smoke-Sealing, one window at a time. He didn't hold it for entire shifts. That was fantasy. He held it for the moments that mattered—delicate sets, heat-treated edges, clamp resets—then let it fall before his Qi started turning stupid.
He watched others make different choices.
Some cultivating servants bought the method the moment they scraped together ten points and treated it like salvation. They coughed less, moved steadier, and looked older slower.
Others refused it and bought cultivation resources instead—grain, powder, low pills—because they believed Stage 2 would solve everything.
Li Shen didn't join either religion.
He had already bought the method. He had already learned its truth: it reduced debt, it didn't erase it.
So he paid both bills.
Grain, powder, salve—staggered. Measured. Never enough to look like ambition, always enough to feel like strategy.
The Exchange Counter saw him often enough that his name was familiar, but not often enough to become a pattern. He rotated days, rotated hours, and let fatigue decide for him sometimes, because fatigue looked honest.
The second change was physical.
Not stronger, not faster—just less wasteful.
Iron Grip settled into his hands in the way a good tool settled: quietly, until one day he realized he was doing it without thinking.
He didn't train it like a fighter.
He trained it like a laborer who refused to tear his own tendons for someone else's schedule.
One breath. Release.
He used it on carry frames when he moved stock between circles. He used it on clamps when they tried to twist under heat. He used it on tongs when sweat made wood slick and mistakes became expensive.
He stopped thinking of it as a "combat technique."
It was grip discipline.
Grip discipline made him harder to injure, harder to steal from, harder to shove aside. That mattered in the dormitory world, where conflict wasn't often fists—it was hands on tools, elbows in lines, silent contests over who got the safer task.
Li Shen became slightly harder to move.
Not enough that anyone complained.
Enough that people chose easier targets.
The third change was sleep.
The River-Jade tea brick didn't cure his lungs. Nothing cured lungs fed on forge smoke.
But one cup at night—bitter, thin, honest—made his coughing fit shorter. The paste didn't heal damage. It made his chest feel less like it was being scraped from inside when he lay down.
The Pavilion sold points and procedures.
Greyhaven sold small mercies.
Li Shen treated those mercies the same way he treated everything else: as leverage with a price.
He didn't talk about it. He didn't share it. He didn't make it visible.
Inside the dormitory, the line between "you found something" and "someone takes it" was thin and reliable.
Bai Ren stayed in the servant world like a weight tied to the floor.
That wasn't an insult. It was a role.
Bai Ren moved between yard tasks—sorting, hauling, water runs—because he had learned the hard way that being absent made your name vulnerable. Even without cultivation, he had a talent for staying close enough to the system to avoid falling through cracks.
His shoulder improved. Slowly. The kind of improvement built from repetition and refusal to aggravate damage.
He stopped favoring his arm in obvious ways, but Li Shen still saw the tiny tells: the way Bai Ren chose two-handed loads instead of one heavy side, the way he slept on his back when the dormitory got crowded, the way he rolled the joint at dawn like he was checking inventory.
Bai Ren's value wasn't in strength.
It was in information.
Not gossip. Not rumors about elders and secrets.
The useful kind: who was charging what, who was watching what, who had started moving with the confidence of someone backed by a group.
He delivered it the way he delivered everything else—without decoration.
One evening, while they washed their faces, Bai Ren said, almost casually, "The rope sellers in Greyhaven… they've shifted."
Li Shen kept his eyes on the cracked basin water. "Shifted how. Moved because they wanted to—or moved because someone made them?"
Bai Ren flicked water from his fingers, like he didn't want the answer to stick to his hands. "Pushed. You can see it in the gaps. East stalls are tighter, and the men standing there aren't browsing. They're just… standing."
Li Shen didn't need the name to form in his mouth for it to exist. "Hearthscale."
Bai Ren's silence was agreement. Then he added, quieter, "It's not the shouting kind. It's the kind you pay because you don't want to learn what 'no' costs."
Another night, Bai Ren spoke from the dark without turning his head. "A servant from the grain corridor got docked."
Li Shen opened his eyes. "For what. Bad count?"
"Receipt was perfect," Bai Ren said. There was a faint edge to his voice, like the perfection offended him. "Stamp was clean. Paper was dry. The timing wasn't."
Li Shen waited.
"He signed out, took too long, signed back in with no sacks," Bai Ren continued. "Said he got scared. Said he turned around before the market because he felt eyes on him."
Li Shen understood immediately.
Fear wasn't punished because it was shameful.
It was punished because it was unverifiable.
Paper didn't care why you failed.
Paper cared that failure looked like choice.
"They marked him," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren didn't answer, which was answer enough. After a beat he muttered, "He won't go out again."
Li Shen didn't argue. That was the point.
The system didn't need to forbid exits.
It only needed to make the cost feel uncertain.
Yun Xue became a ghost in increments.
At first she was simply late.
Then she began leaving earlier.
Then her bedding started looking less used, as if her nights were being spent somewhere else more often than not.
When she did appear, she didn't walk like a servant who had run errands.
She walked like someone who had been made to stand still for long periods—hands folded, posture corrected, legs aching from restraint rather than labor.
She also smelled different.
Not better.
Different.
Herbal steam. Clean linen. Medicinal bitterness clinging to her sleeves.
Li Shen didn't ask questions that could get her in trouble. He only watched for the truth that showed itself.
One dusk she slipped into the dormitory long enough to take a small bundle from under her mat and replace it with a different one—new cloth, tighter stitching, the kind of bundle a servant couldn't afford without a patron.
Her eyes flicked up when she noticed Li Shen watching.
She froze in place like a child caught stealing.
Then she remembered she wasn't stealing.
She swallowed and stepped closer, stopping at a distance that kept her safe.
"Senior—" she started, and her voice caught on the word like it burned. She glanced around, too fast, too practiced. Then she corrected herself, smaller: "Li Shen."
"Yun Xue," he replied, neutral. Not cold. Careful.
Her gaze dropped to his hands.
Not admiring.
Worried.
"I… I heard you're still in the forge," she said, like she needed to say it aloud to make it real. "They keep saying it's a punishment posting, but… they also say you're… surviving it."
"I'm working it," Li Shen said.
She nodded too quickly, then tried to slow herself down, like she'd been taught that eagerness was a mistake.
"And it—" She hesitated, then forced the words out anyway. "Does it hurt as much as they say?"
Li Shen exhaled softly. "It doesn't hurt like one thing. It hurts like a bill. It shows up every day."
Yun Xue's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "That makes sense," she whispered, and the way she said it made it clear it didn't feel fair, even if it made sense.
She fumbled in her sleeve and produced a small packet—thin, pale paper, folded carefully.
"I'm not supposed to…" she said fast, stumbling over herself. "I'm not supposed to give people things. Not like this. But it's not— it's really not a 'thing.' It's just tea. For the chest."
Li Shen didn't take it immediately.
Not because he was proud.
Because accepting gifts created threads, and threads could be pulled.
He looked at the packet, then at her face.
Yun Xue's eyes were wide, anxious, sincere—no calculation, no casualness. Someone offering what she could without fully understanding the economy she was stepping into.
Li Shen made the decision the only way he could at the bottom: he made it look like nothing.
"Don't hand it to me," he said quietly. "Just… leave it. Under my mat. Like you never spoke."
Relief hit her face so fast she couldn't hide it. "Okay. Yes. I can do that."
She placed the packet where he indicated, careful, almost ceremonial, then stepped back as if proximity itself might get her in trouble.
She lingered a heartbeat too long.
"Are you—" she began, then stopped, swallowed, tried again. "Are you… managing?"
Li Shen didn't lie. "I'm managed," he said. Then, because she looked like she might interpret that as a promise, he added, softer: "It's enough."
Yun Xue nodded hard, like she was holding onto those two words with both hands.
Then her eyes flicked toward the door, and the clock inside her chest started ticking again.
"I can't stay," she whispered, almost apologetic.
"Then don't," Li Shen said. "Go while you can still leave without anyone counting it."
She left with the careful speed of someone who had learned that lateness wasn't a mistake, it was an invitation to be corrected.
After she was gone, Bai Ren's voice came from his mat, low and dry.
"She's changing," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen stared at the spot where Yun Xue had been standing. "She's being moved."
Bai Ren didn't argue. After a moment, he said, "Same thing, different ink."
Li Shen didn't answer, because that was true enough to be dangerous.
Time passed the way it always passed at the bottom: by accumulation, not announcement.
Weeks slid into each other.
Li Shen's cultivation sessions stayed short and ugly. They weren't cinematic.
He ate his grain ration in measured portions until warmth settled behind his navel. He drank meridian-warming powder until his throat tightened and heat crept through channels that still felt bruised from smoke.
Then he sat in the dark and ran Qi in circles until it snagged.
When it snagged, he didn't force it anymore.
Forcing it made his chest tighten and his breath thin and stupid.
He held, breathed, guided.
Smoke-Sealing taught him that leaks weren't solved by anger. Iron Grip taught him that structure carried load better than strength. Those lessons transferred into cultivation the way real lessons did: silently.
Some nights he felt nothing but frustration.
Other nights he felt a small shift—the snag loosening sooner, the loop traveling farther, the warmth moving without resistance for one extra breath.
That extra breath didn't look like power.
It felt like capacity.
Capacity was what Stage 2 was built from.
He didn't tell himself he was close.
Telling yourself you were close was how you rushed and tore something inside.
He simply kept the routine intact without letting it become a ritual others could observe.
Near the end of the stretch, the Pavilion posted a new notice.
Not on the mission board.
Not on the technique board.
On the service board—the one that dealt in work too unpleasant to dignify as "cultivation."
The notice was written in clean ink and sealed with a stamp that made it official enough to be enforced.
SALVAGE DETAIL — DAYLIGHT ONLY
ROAD CLEARANCE / CARRIAGE SUPPORT / TAG & HAUL
CULTIVATOR SUPERVISION PROVIDED
BONUS: POINTS + TICKET (AS ASSESSED)
PRIORITY: FORGE / YARD / REGISTERED QI
Servants clustered around it like moths around heat.
Not because they wanted danger.
Because the word bonus meant the system was admitting something:
Risk had a price.
And sometimes, if the math was right, it paid.
Li Shen read the notice once and stepped away.
He didn't sign up immediately. Immediate meant eager. Eager meant visible.
He walked back toward the forge lane with his posture steady and his hands clean.
Behind him, the board stayed crowded.
In front of him, heat waited.
Bai Ren caught up beside him without making it look like a conversation. He didn't look at Li Shen; he looked straight ahead, like the air might be listening.
"Road clearance," Bai Ren said softly, like he didn't want the words to spread.
Li Shen didn't respond right away. Silence didn't commit.
Bai Ren kept going anyway. "If they're offering tickets, it's not because they suddenly felt generous. Something happened out there. Something messy enough that even cultivators don't want to be the ones hauling it."
Li Shen's eyes stayed on the path. "They don't pay bonus for nothing."
Bai Ren gave a quiet, humorless huff. "Exactly. Which means somebody already bled for free."
Li Shen let that settle.
Because the Pavilion didn't offer bonus points for "opportunity."
It offered them to purchase risk at a discount.
And if salvage tickets were now part of the servant world, it meant the next step up wasn't going to be handed to him.
It was going to be dragged out of the dirt, one rope pull at a time, under someone else's supervision—
while paper watched, and Greyhaven listened, and the difference between profit and punishment came down to whether your name stayed clean.