The Circle of Hammer didn't slow down because the Pavilion wanted certainty.
If anything, certainty made it grind harder.
When the notice went up at dawn—fresh ink on a plank nailed beside the tool racks—it didn't say Inspection.
It said Verification.
SEAL CIRCLE VERIFICATION — OUTPUT CHECK (TODAY)
RIVETS / HOOKS / FASTENERS
DISCREPANCIES: DEDUCTION + FLAG
Servants read it the way they read weather: no surprise, just quick mental arithmetic.
Li Shen read it once, then put his attention back where it actually mattered—into heat, timing, and anything that could be blamed on him.
Verification wasn't new. It came in waves. A few accidents. A few complaints. A failure that embarrassed someone who owned better robes.
Then the system tightened until it forgot why it tightened.
The forge didn't punish the guilty first.
It punished the visible.
The Circle of Fire ran hotter than normal that morning.
Bad coal, or metal that carried stubborn impurities—Li Shen couldn't tell which. He only knew the smoke had a sour bite that stuck to the back of the throat and refused to leave.
He kept Smoke-Sealing in short windows, because long windows were a lie at Stage 1.
Seal. Work. Release.
He focused on the only thing the Pavilion reliably paid for: output that could be repeated.
Ash-Bite rivets—small, ugly, necessary.
Not weapons. Not refined tools. Fasteners you only noticed when they weren't there: brace plates, warped frames, cheap clamps, wagon repairs that kept the Pavilion's lower world from shaking apart.
A foreman paced the lane and called quotas like he was reading prayer.
"Two trays per station by third bell," he barked. Then, because foremen loved certainty more than truth, he added, "If you're behind, you don't 'catch up.' You just don't finish."
Grumbles rose, tried to become a protest, and died.
Li Shen didn't grumble. He just measured.
Each rivet head was a small sequence: heat, strike, turn, strike, quench, check. His hands moved with the same discipline he used in cultivation loops—steady enough to be accurate, fast enough to remain worth keeping.
Iron Grip wasn't a performance here. It was an internal brace.
When his tongs wanted to twist under heat, he set his wrist and let structure do what muscle couldn't do all day.
One breath. Control. Release.
He didn't look around for enemies.
He didn't have to.
Forge work had its own enemies: heat, fatigue, smoke—and the quiet hunger of men who wanted the same points under the same ceiling.
Cai Shun arrived before second bell.
He didn't wear a higher robe. He didn't carry a spear. He carried a ledger board under one arm and a bundle of stamped tags tucked into his sleeve, and that made him more dangerous than any mortal with a knife.
He was the one who decided which station got which batch, which crew got which furnace window, whose quota became "flexible" and whose became "strict."
He had the face of a man who'd never swung a hammer for anything but necessity.
His eyes went to Li Shen's tray first.
Not because Li Shen was important.
Because the tray was clean.
"Li Shen," Cai Shun said, like he was reading a line item.
Li Shen didn't stop mid-strike. He finished the rivet, set it down, then lifted his head. "Yeah?"
Cai Shun's gaze moved over the rivets, then to Li Shen's hands. "You've been steady," he said.
It wasn't praise. It was inventory.
Li Shen gave him nothing back—no smile, no gratitude. Just attention.
Cai Shun continued, "Seal Circle's here today. If you're smart, you'll want an issued tag."
Li Shen tapped the tag already tied to his tray. "It's tagged."
Cai Shun's mouth tightened, like he'd expected that answer. "Tagged by you."
"Tagged by procedure," Li Shen corrected, calm.
Cai Shun raised his ledger board a fraction so the ink columns were visible without him having to step into the heat. "There are tags they like," he said. "The ones that match their book without them thinking."
Li Shen understood the offer without needing the rest of the sentence.
Issued tags meant fewer questions. Fewer questions meant fewer deductions. It also meant someone was charging rent on safety.
He asked, evenly, "What's the price?"
Cai Shun didn't smile. He didn't act offended. He acted like this was the most normal transaction in the world. "Two points. Verification day rate."
Two points.
Not ruin. Just the kind of leak that turned a month into a struggle if you let it become routine.
Li Shen said, "I'll manage without."
Cai Shun held his gaze a beat longer than necessary. "You sure? Today isn't the day to get proud."
"It's not pride," Li Shen replied. "It's budget."
Cai Shun gave a small, dry exhale. "Fine. Keep your tags 'procedural.' Just don't come looking for me when a clerk decides your ink looks funny."
"I won't," Li Shen said.
Cai Shun nodded once—an internal note made, not a concession—then moved on.
No threat. No anger.
Just the quiet recalibration of a man who now knew Li Shen wouldn't buy safety from him, which meant Cai Shun would look for profit somewhere else.
As Cai Shun walked away, a figure drifted into Li Shen's peripheral vision—same row, close enough to be "nearby," not close enough to be obvious.
Zhao Kun.
Narrow face. Clean brassard. A habit of standing half a step too close to what wasn't his.
Zhao Kun watched Cai Shun leave, then looked at Li Shen's tray with the kind of attention that wasn't admiration.
His mouth shifted slightly, like he'd tasted something sour.
Li Shen turned back to work and let the heat drown the moment.
Third bell brought the Seal Circle.
Not elders. Not grandmasters.
A clerk with clean hands and two assistants carrying a testing rack and a shallow stone basin.
They set up near the Circle of Seal, where finished work was stamped and logged. The air there was different—less smoke, more ink. Still hot, but calmer, like a room where consequences were written down instead of shouted.
The clerk didn't make a speech. He simply began calling tags.
"Station twelve."
A tray was carried forward. Three rivets chosen at random, rolled between fingers, tapped against a stone plate.
A thin ring.
The clerk made a brush mark. Approved.
"Station nine."
Same procedure.
Then: "Station fourteen."
Li Shen.
He carried his tray forward without hurry. He didn't cradle it like treasure. He didn't shove it like a challenge.
He set it down.
The clerk's eyes flicked to the tag.
And paused.
Not on Li Shen's face—faces were noise—but on the stamp.
This tag was correct.
It just wasn't issued.
The clerk didn't comment yet. He lifted a rivet from the center and rolled it under his thumb like he was checking grain for weevils.
His assistant set the stone basin nearby and poured water into it.
Simple test. Heat reveals weakness. Water reveals cracks.
Three rivets.
First: tapped. Clean ring.
Second: tapped. Clean ring.
Third: tapped—and the sound came back wrong. Duller. Dead.
The clerk's eyes narrowed. He angled the rivet into the light.
A hairline crack at the base of the head—thin enough to hide under fatigue, thick enough to fail at the worst moment.
He set it on the table with a soft click.
"Defect," he said.
Li Shen didn't argue on instinct. He looked at the rivet. Then at his tray.
That crack didn't match his work.
Not because he was special. Because he was consistent. He knew his rivets the way he knew the shape of his own calluses—head shape, flattening at the edge, quench timing.
This one had a rim that was too sharp, like it had been struck at the wrong heat.
The clerk reached for his brush. "Deduction—"
Li Shen spoke before ink became a penalty. "Request retest."
The clerk's brush paused. Not offended. Just slightly annoyed.
"You're asking me to spend more time on your tray," he said, flat.
"I'm asking you to verify a batch," Li Shen replied. "Not punish a single outlier."
The clerk stared at him a moment, weighing tone as much as logic.
Then: "On what basis?"
Li Shen didn't say sabotage. He didn't say someone swapped it. Those were stories, and stories created mess.
He said the only language the Pavilion respected.
"Inconsistency," Li Shen answered. "If my heat cycle was wrong, you'll hear it in more than one. If my quench timing slipped, it repeats. It doesn't appear once and vanish."
A small pause.
Then the clerk selected five more rivets, and this time he didn't pick from the top where hands might have arranged things. He reached deeper.
Tap.
Ring.
Tap.
Ring.
Tap.
Ring.
All clean.
The clerk's eyes returned to the defective rivet.
"Isolated," he admitted. Not generous. Just accurate.
His brush did not move to stamp a deduction.
Instead, he tapped Li Shen's tag with the tip of the brush handle. "This isn't an issued tag."
Li Shen didn't argue the point. He replied with what the tag actually was. "It's complete. Station, time block, quota mark."
The clerk's gaze slid over the ink.
It was complete.
It was also vulnerable.
Behind the line, Zhao Kun's voice slipped into the air—soft, careful, designed to look like concern.
"Funny," Zhao Kun said, "how a crack shows up on the one tray with a personal tag."
The clerk didn't look back right away. "Name."
Zhao Kun hesitated—just long enough to calculate—then stepped forward as if he'd been invited. "Zhao Kun. Station thirteen."
The clerk nodded once. Not approval. Just recording.
"You're suggesting tray contamination?" the clerk asked.
Zhao Kun spread his hands slightly, innocence by posture. "I'm saying defects don't grow on their own."
Li Shen didn't turn to Zhao Kun.
He lifted the defective rivet and held it next to one of his own from the tray.
Side by side, the differences were subtle.
But the clerk wasn't mortal, and he wasn't new to failure.
Li Shen pointed with a finger, not dramatic, just precise. "Look at the rim. That head's sharper. Struck cooler. Mine flatten here because the final set happens at this heat."
He indicated the shaft. "And there's a twist line. That happens when someone pulls early out of quench. You can feel it in the grain if you know what you're touching."
He didn't claim brilliance.
He claimed repetition.
The clerk took both rivets, turned them under the light, and his assistant leaned closer.
Zhao Kun's expression tightened, just for a heartbeat.
The clerk reached for a small iron pick and scraped lightly at the base of the defective rivet.
A thin flake lifted.
Under it, the surface was darker—oxidized differently.
Different heat.
The clerk didn't accuse anyone.
Accusations created paperwork and conflict, and conflict didn't help output.
He did what the Pavilion loved most.
He revised procedure.
"Station fourteen," the clerk said, voice empty again. "Batch approved."
Li Shen nodded once, as if approval was simply the expected outcome of correct process.
The clerk continued, "Defective piece will be logged as foreign. Verification-day tags must be sealed—either at issuance or at table."
He pulled out a small pad of red wax and pressed a dot onto the twine knot of Li Shen's tag. Then he stamped it with the Seal Circle mark.
A tiny adjustment.
A new rule.
A tighter cage—built because someone had tried to use a gap.
Zhao Kun didn't get punished. Not publicly.
But his attempt had just made everyone's day harder forever.
Li Shen lifted the approved tray and carried it back without looking at Zhao Kun even once.
Zhao Kun's eyes stayed on him anyway.
Cai Shun watched from the edge of the Circle of Seal as Li Shen returned to the lane.
His face didn't change.
But his gaze paused on the wax seal for half a breath longer than it needed to.
Li Shen understood the message.
You didn't buy safety from me. You forced the system to make safety more expensive.
That kind of competence was inconvenient.
Inconvenient things got remembered.
At shift end, the points sheet went up.
Men drifted toward it like they weren't desperate, like they were just "checking." Li Shen didn't rush. He washed his hands first.
Soot bled into grey water. Under it, his skin looked older than it should for his age—stained by heat and rope and the slow costs of staying functional.
Bai Ren was already at the board. Yard work put him close to posted numbers, and Bai Ren lived by posted numbers like other men lived by meals.
He didn't look up at first. He read.
Then, as Li Shen stepped beside him, Bai Ren spoke low.
"Your line held," Bai Ren said. "They didn't dock you."
Li Shen scanned.
His points were clean. No deduction. No flag.
But there was a small extra mark beside the Seal Circle approval column:
VERIFIED.
Not a reward.
A label.
Labels weren't comfort. Labels were a pin pushed into paper.
Bai Ren's voice dropped another notch. "I heard the talk before it finished. People were already counting your loss."
"They like stories," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren gave a faint nod. "Yeah. And you didn't feed them one."
Li Shen's eyes slid briefly to Zhao Kun's name.
Normal points. Normal line. No visible penalty, like nothing had happened.
That was the Pavilion's favorite way to handle friction: let it stay unofficial until it became useful.
Bai Ren watched Li Shen's face carefully, then asked the only question that mattered.
"What actually happened?"
Li Shen kept it plain. "A bad rivet showed up. Clerk tested deeper. Batch passed."
Bai Ren let that sit for a moment. Then he said, flat, "Bad rivet doesn't just walk in on its own."
Li Shen didn't deny the shape of it. He also didn't say Zhao Kun's name in front of a board.
"Verification days squeeze people," Li Shen replied. "Squeezed people get creative."
Bai Ren's eyes flicked to Li Shen's hands. "And you didn't panic."
"I didn't have time," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's mouth moved like he almost smiled, then decided not to waste the expression. "That 'VERIFIED' mark," he murmured. "That's not them praising you. That's them noticing you."
"I know," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren nodded once, satisfied that Li Shen wasn't being naive. "Good. Just… don't mistake it for safety."
Li Shen looked at the board one last time, then stepped away.
Back to the dormitory. Back to heat. Back to his own internal heatmap.
His points stayed clean. His output stayed verified.
But the forge had taught him something new—simple, operational, and ugly:
At Stage 1, smoke tries to ruin your lungs.
Once you become useful, people start trying to ruin your paperwork.
Li Shen didn't brood over it.
He didn't chase revenge.
He adjusted the system the way he always did:
seal the knot before someone else decides to use it—
and keep moving, because stopping was the only sure way to let another man write your name into his story.