By the time the first thaw turned the yard into a shallow swamp, Grey Step had already rewired Li Shen's nights.
Not with inspiration.
With iteration.
The manual was thin. Cheap paper, dry ink, zero romance. It didn't sell speed or dominance. It sold a single deliverable that sounded pathetic until you understood the margin it created:
Half a meter.
Half a meter was the difference between getting pinned and having an exit lane. Between a sleeve being caught and a hand sliding off cloth. Between a shove becoming a scene and a shove becoming noise that happened to someone else.
He trained where training could be misfiled as survival.
In the corridor behind the dorm wash tubs, where steam slicked the stone and everyone walked carefully anyway. In the yard's shadowed corner where broken baskets were stacked, where odd steps looked like a man avoiding mud and splinters.
He ran drills until his calves burned, then kept going until burn became weight.
No aura. No flare. No "technique posture."
Just the quiet brutality of forcing his body to pick a different default.
Angle out. Don't retreat straight.
Step outside the line, not back into it.
Turn hips before shoulders.
Keep the exit in sight even while you're looking at a face.
The first week, his breath failed before his legs did.
Grey Step didn't tax Qi the way Smoke-Sealing did. It taxed oxygen—short, sharp inhales that made his ribs feel too small. The manual didn't comfort you about it. It stamped the constraint in plain language:
> If you cannot breathe, you cannot keep the angle.
He learned to stop before his lungs started grabbing. He learned to cool down without slumping—because slumping looked like damage, and damage invited "help."
He learned to make the whole process boring even to himself.
Boring meant low audit surface.
Low audit surface meant survivable.
---
The purchase hit paper the same day.
Not the technique name, not a banner. Just a line item in the internal exchange ledger that rotated onto a public sheet:
Footwork Manual — 6 pts
Li Shen let his eyes touch it for half a beat longer than safe, then detached.
Trace existed now. Trace meant profiling. Profiling meant someone deciding what category he belonged in.
The compound didn't punish competence.
It punished patterns.
Bai Ren found him near the board in the afternoon, when the mud was thick enough to swallow sandals and the air smelled like wet cloth and old smoke.
Bai Ren's eyes flicked to the entry. His mouth shifted.
"Look at you," he said. "Buying mobility."
Li Shen kept it flat. "Cheaper than lung powder."
Bai Ren's grin widened. "That's the bleakest budgeting I've ever approved."
He leaned in as if he was just reading. "Good timing. People are watching you more. Watching turns into crowding."
Li Shen didn't ask for proof. Bai Ren was proof. He was a sensor glued to the bottom layer.
"Who," Li Shen said anyway.
Bai Ren shrugged. "Same orbit. The ones who think your tag means you're public infrastructure."
Li Shen's jaw tightened. "It doesn't."
"No," Bai Ren agreed. "It's a leash. They just want to hold the other end."
Then his tone flipped back to light, like he hadn't just mapped a threat network. "Also—if you eat mud practicing whatever-that-is, I'm laughing."
Li Shen didn't look at him. "Don't watch."
Bai Ren's grin sharpened. "I don't watch. I listen. Different skill set."
---
The first time Grey Step saved him, it looked like nothing.
It happened in the ration line.
A shoulder bumped him from behind—too firm to be accidental, too controlled to justify a fist. The intent was in the timing. It was a probe, not an attack.
Li Shen didn't turn straight.
He didn't step back.
He took half a meter sideways—out of the line's spine, out of the channel where pressure could stack—and let the second bump hit empty air.
The man stumbled into the person ahead. A curse snapped. Heads turned. The line rippled.
Li Shen stayed still, hands down, face blank, as if the world had misfired around him without touching him.
Boring.
Safe.
The man who'd tried it glared over the new argument, but didn't follow.
Following meant being seen choosing a target.
Grey Step wasn't offense.
It was denial-of-engagement.
---
In the forge, the technique mattered in a different register.
He didn't "practice" between furnaces. That was how you got assigned to dangerous work under the label of "initiative."
But Grey Step changed how he carried weight. How he pivoted around the station. How he avoided collisions when runners shoved carts too close to the lane.
Angles meant fewer sudden saves.
Fewer sudden saves meant fewer moments where Iron Grip had to be held longer than design spec.
And that protected the only number that mattered right now:
defect budget.
His technique governance stayed strict.
Smoke-Sealing in micro-cycles:
Seal. Work. Release.
Never long enough for his chest to turn dry and tight. When he felt the heaviness behind the navel climb too fast, he released early and let smoke bite for a minute rather than letting fatigue become tremor.
Iron Grip in bursts:
Lock. Execute. Relax.
Only on the bend. Only on the eye. Only on extraction.
Not because he feared "power."
Because he feared the kind of error that turned into ink.
The week ran without a HOLD stamp. No public mess. No names said out loud.
Samples pulled once.
Eight hooks.
PASS.
The board posted the same clean numbers he'd learned not to worship:
GREYFANG — PASS — +2
DEFECT COUNT: 1 / 2
GREEN TAG — ACTIVE
Nothing changed.
So everything changed, quietly.
---
At night, his legs logged the real cost.
Grey Step packed his calves with a dense heaviness, like wet sand under skin. Not injury. Not pain. Just load—enough that stairs felt longer and the yard's uneven stone started writing itself into his feet.
He sat on his bunk and worked his thumbs along shin and calf until the ache spread into something manageable.
He kept his breathing plain—no Smoke-Sealing. Smoke-Sealing was a work valve. Using it at rest was how you turned a tool into a dependency.
He still guided Qi anyway, slow, controlled, and felt the cord behind his navel hold shape a little more evenly than it had two weeks ago.
Not stronger.
More stable.
Stability was what the forge rewarded.
Stability was also what the sect audited.
He wrote a short entry by weak lamplight, keeping it operational:
> Week Δ: Grey Step drills (night). Legs heavy, breath short.
One bump avoided. No scene.
Forge: PASS. Sampling normal.
Techniques: windows clean. No stacking.
Defect remaining: 1.
He added one more line and stopped.
> Trace exists. Act boring.
He blew out the lamp and lay back, letting the dorm settle into its cough rhythm.
In the dark, he could still feel the angles in his feet.
Half a meter.
Not victory.
Margin.
And right now, margin was the closest thing he had to safety.