The green tag wasn't green because the sect liked beauty.
It was green because it was legible from ten paces.
A strip of dyed cloth reinforced with a thin bamboo core. Two wax stamps. One ink mark. Hung on a cord like a cheap amulet—except nobody treated it like superstition. They treated it like routing priority.
Li Shen received it at a clerk window in the lane outside the forge offices—close enough to smell smoke, far enough that the air stopped tasting like filings.
The clerk didn't congratulate him. He didn't even lift his eyes fully.
"Lane privilege," he said, reading from the ledger. "Rotation-based. Not transferable. If it goes missing, you report same day."
Li Shen nodded once.
The brush scratched. The stamp fell. The clerk slid the tag across.
Then, like an afterthought that wasn't an afterthought at all, he pushed a second slip forward.
"Sign."
Li Shen looked down.
It wasn't a Greyfang contract. It wasn't a warning either.
It was worse.
It was acknowledgment—that he understood what the tag allowed, what it did not allow, and what it made him accountable for.
Signature meant trace.
Trace meant attention.
He signed anyway, because refusing privilege wasn't independence.
It was a provocation.
---
The first thing the tag bought him was time.
Not more hours. A cleaner slot inside hours everyone was already bleeding over.
With the green tag active, he could draw a furnace window at the edge of the morning surge—after the first wave had burned off its impatience, before the midday backlog turned the lane into a choke point. The furnace mouth ran steadier there. The metal lied less. Cai Shun's petty gatekeeping lost leverage.
It also meant people noticed.
When Li Shen stepped into lane three and hung the tag from the nail above his station, the closest workers looked once—then looked again, like their eyes didn't trust the color.
Nobody said congratulations.
They said nothing at all.
Silence was how envy stayed deniable.
Li Shen set his tools down in the same order as always.
Tongs. Hammer. Jig. File. Wire loop gauge.
He drew a slow breath and opened his first Smoke-Sealing window.
Six breaths to seal.
Not held. Not clung to. Just enough to take the bite out of the smoke and keep his throat from turning raw.
Then release.
A green tag didn't change his lungs.
It didn't change his defect budget either.
He still had one defect left before the contract math turned into review.
And now he had something worse than one remaining defect:
He had people watching for the moment he used it.
---
The second thing the tag bought him was pressure.
The Seal Circle didn't announce it. They never did.
They just sampled him twice in the first week.
Eight hooks from the first batch. Eight from the second.
No HOLD. No drama. Just a longer gaze, a thicker paper trail, the kind of attention that pretended to be "standard."
Li Shen didn't respond with anger.
Anger was how you burned control.
He responded with governance.
Micro-test every ten hooks—even when the line felt perfect.
Jig check every twenty—even when the bend looked clean.
Iron Grip only in critical moments—lock, execute, relax—because holding it longer cooked his forearms in a way that turned into tendon tension by nightfall.
Tendon tension turned into tremor.
Tremor turned into defects.
And defects were no longer abstract.
They were a number.
He could feel his Qi behaving the way it had since the pipeline started: gathering denser in his lower abdomen, uneven at times, like rope twisted too hard on one strand.
It wasn't a breakthrough. It wouldn't impress anyone above.
It was stabilization.
Stabilization was the only kind of progress that paid rent at the bottom.
He protected it by treating cultivation the same way he treated contract output:
as a constraint, not a romance.
Smoke-Sealing window.
Work.
Release.
Iron Grip burst.
Execute.
Relax.
Stack them too long and the heaviness behind the navel climbed.
Let it climb and the tremor came.
And the forge wasn't a place where tremor hurt you.
It hurt your numbers.
---
By the end of Week One, the board looked clean.
GREYFANG — PASS — +2
DEFECT COUNT: 1 / 2
GREEN TAG — ACTIVE
Clean numbers didn't mean clean environment.
The green tag made him a magnet for anyone who wanted access without paying for it.
It started with polite requests.
A boy from another lane caught him near the water line outside the dorms, hands clasped like he was asking for food.
"Brother Li," he said, eyes fixed on the ground. "If you get an early window… could you share the furnace mouth for just a moment? One heat cycle. I'll owe you."
Owed favors weren't currency.
They were hooks.
Li Shen kept his voice neutral. "Rotation is rotation."
The boy's jaw tightened. "But you have the tag."
Li Shen didn't raise his tone. "And you don't. That's the boundary."
The boy walked off stiff-backed, and Li Shen felt the first new layer settle around the tag:
resentment.
Week Two was worse.
An older worker stopped him in a corridor where wash steam condensed on stone and made everything feel damp and close.
"I heard you got held and still passed," the man said.
Li Shen didn't answer. Silence was safer than denial.
The man leaned in anyway. "You know what that means? You're protected now."
Li Shen met his eyes. "Protected by what?"
"By usefulness," the man said, like it was a joke that had teeth. Then the smile fell away. "My cousin's in lane five. He's short on points. His kid's coughing. If you can pull better windows, he can cut scrap, keep more points for medicine."
Li Shen recognized the structure immediately.
Not a favor.
A moral hostage.
"I can't transfer the tag," Li Shen said.
"I didn't say transfer," the man replied. "I said use it."
Li Shen held his gaze. "No."
For a moment the corridor felt like a furnace throat—tight, hot, and waiting for someone to flinch.
Then the man stepped back and spat to the side. "Fine."
He walked off.
Li Shen could already hear the rumor forming in the gap behind him:
Green-tag Li Shen refuses to help a coughing child.
The sect trained people to weaponize pity because pity cost nothing to manufacture.
Li Shen went back to his bunk and sat without lying down.
He let his breath drop, slow and controlled. Release, not clench.
At Qi Stage One, the worst mistakes were emotional.
They didn't kill you fast.
They just pushed tremor into your hands tomorrow.
---
Bai Ren delivered the wider picture the way he always did: not with drama, with positioning.
He found Li Shen near the points board at the end of Week Two, leaning in just enough to read without looking like a man who needed numbers to breathe.
Bai Ren's grin was lazy. His eyes weren't.
"So," Bai Ren said, "you're famous."
Li Shen didn't look up. "I'm visible."
"Same disease," Bai Ren replied. "Different label."
He tipped his chin toward a knot of servants standing too close together, heads bent, voices low. "They're debating whether you're lucky or dangerous."
Li Shen finally looked at him. "Why would I be dangerous?"
Bai Ren's grin sharpened. "Because if you get reviewed, people connected to your lane get audited. Audits don't care whose hands did what. They care what pattern the paperwork suggests."
Li Shen felt his jaw tighten.
Bai Ren continued, tone still light like he wasn't laying explosives. "Also, someone's saying you're the reason the vendor list got sealed tighter. Because you 'complained' during the HOLD."
"I didn't complain," Li Shen said.
"I know," Bai Ren replied. "That's why it spreads. It has just enough structure to feel true."
Li Shen kept his eyes on the board. "Who's pushing it?"
Bai Ren shrugged. "Not a name. A gravity. Toward Zhao Kun's orbit."
Li Shen didn't react.
Reacting was expensive.
Bai Ren leaned in a fraction. "Expect a test."
"A test like sabotage," Li Shen said.
"A test like social sabotage," Bai Ren corrected. "They'll ask you for access. They'll ask you for procedure 'just once.' If you bend it, it stops being a favor. It becomes leverage."
Li Shen exhaled slowly.
Bai Ren's voice dropped. "If you want to stay boring, stay boring. That's your only armor."
Then he snapped back to casual. "Also—if you die, I'm still taking your points."
Li Shen stared at him. "If I die, you'll be reviewed for knowing me."
Bai Ren's smile flickered, then returned. "See? Famous."
---
Week Three brought the test.
Not a broken hook. Not a HOLD stamp.
A tag check.
Li Shen showed up for his morning window and found a junior clerk in lane three with a sealed ledger and a clean brush. Not the usual sloppy boy. A different type.
The clerk glanced at the green tag and nodded like he'd confirmed a prediction.
"Show your technique stamps," he said.
Li Shen didn't hesitate.
Hesitation looked like guilt.
He pulled the slips—Smoke-Sealing and Iron Grip—kept folded inside his apron lining. Faded ink, intact stamps.
The clerk checked them against the ledger without expression.
This wasn't about catching a fake.
It was mapping.
He handed them back. "Continue."
Li Shen asked the only safe question. "Why now?"
The clerk's brush paused for half a heartbeat. "Rotation audit."
Rotation. The Pavilion's favorite word. It let them do anything without admitting intent.
Li Shen stepped into his window, but the message had already landed.
His tools weren't just tools anymore.
They were profile.
Profile meant someone higher could decide he was:
too optimized, too stable, too valuable—
or the opposite:
too visible, too risky, too audit-heavy to keep near the pipeline.
At the bottom, both interpretations could ruin you.
---
That week, he almost spent his last defect.
Not in a dramatic failure.
In something worse: a near-failure that only he noticed.
Day Five, tempering. The heaviness behind the navel climbed too fast.
Not pain. Not sickness.
Just that internal weight that said: you stacked too much.
He had sealed too long during a dense smoke hour. He had held Iron Grip through two bends because the iron fought him and he'd wanted to win.
His forearms felt hot in a way that wasn't "tired."
Technique-hot.
He reached for the file and his fingers did something microscopic.
A tremor.
So fine no one else would have seen it.
He saw it.
He stopped.
He didn't push through. He didn't perform toughness for anyone watching.
He released Smoke-Sealing completely and let the smoke bite for a minute while his lungs protested.
He relaxed Iron Grip and flexed his fingers until tendon tension backed off the edge.
He drank water.
He sat down on the stone beside his station like an old man.
Two workers glanced at him, surprised.
Rest looked like weakness.
Li Shen didn't care.
Weakness recovered.
A defect stayed in ink.
He resumed only when the tremor was gone.
The hook he finished was clean.
The one after that was clean.
And the batch passed.
---
The board at the end of Week Three posted the same tidy lines.
GREYFANG — PASS — +2
DEFECT COUNT: 1 / 2
GREEN TAG — ACTIVE
Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
He understood what the green tag really was.
Not an advantage.
An audit funnel.
A way to turn reliability into a monitored asset.
Pass, and they tighten the leash with privilege and paperwork.
Fail, and they tighten it with review.
Either way, the leash tightens.
That was the model.
---
Two days later, another Greyhaven relay arrived.
Short. Stamped. Legitimate.
> Escort fees up again.
Grain moving early.
Copper being hoarded.
Keep purchases small and clean.
—Qian Mei
No names beyond necessity. No drama beyond what was real.
Li Shen folded it and didn't show anyone.
Information was like points: once you spent it, it belonged to someone else.
But the note did something that mattered.
It reminded him this wasn't only a social pressure problem anymore.
When escort fees rose, people fought.
When copper got hoarded, people stole.
When grain moved early, villages starved in the gap.
The world outside tightened.
The sect responded by tightening procedure.
And inside that squeeze, servants tore first.
He needed a way to stay un-torn.
Not by power.
By position.
By angles.
By exits that didn't require violence.
---
He made the purchase the same day, before doubt could rot it into delay.
At the internal exchange window, he slid six points across and asked for a footwork manual thin enough to look like nothing.
The clerk raised an eyebrow. "Grey Step."
Li Shen nodded.
The clerk stamped the slip, stamped Li Shen's account record, and passed the packet under the bar.
Trace. Profile. Another layer of "optimized."
Li Shen felt the cold logic immediately:
Buying Grey Step made him more watchable.
But it also gave him something he didn't have yet.
Exit angles.
Half-meters.
Spacing.
The ability to leave a problem without turning it into a fight.
He tucked the packet into his shirt and walked back into the yard, where men clustered around boards like moths around heat.
Bai Ren spotted him and drifted over.
"What's that?" Bai Ren asked, tone casual.
Li Shen didn't show the packet. He didn't need to. "A way to not get trapped."
Bai Ren blinked once, then smiled—small, approving, sharp. "Good. Because people are starting to circle you like you're a pot of porridge."
Li Shen exhaled slowly, feeling the dense cord behind the navel settle with the release.
One defect remaining.
A green tag on his chest.
A new technique in his shirt.
And a week ahead that wouldn't be kind.
He didn't need kindness.
He needed margins.
So he headed back toward the forge lanes with the packet hidden and his breathing measured—already rehearsing the first rule of Grey Step without reading a single line:
Don't retreat straight.
Don't stand where the weight falls.
Always keep an angle.