The reset didn't arrive with celebration.
It arrived as a stamp.
Li Shen saw it on the board before he saw Bai Ren, because boards were how the Pavilion spoke when it didn't want to be responsible for tone.
GREYFANG — CYCLE CLOSED
INDEX RESET: 0/2
BONUS CONSOLIDATED
GREEN TAG — ACTIVE
The numbers should have felt like air.
Instead they felt like a latch clicking into place.
A reset wasn't mercy. It was maintenance. It meant the system had rewound the leash, not cut it. The tag stayed. The profile stayed. The attention stayed.
A clerk stood nearby with a brush, updating other lines with the same bored precision he used to update lives. He didn't look at anyone long enough to see a face.
Li Shen read once and stepped away like it was nothing.
He didn't stand there giving the yard a reason to memorize his expression.
Bai Ren drifted into place a moment later like he'd been there all along—hands tucked into sleeves, posture loose, eyes doing the real work.
He stared at the reset line and made a small sound, halfway between amusement and disgust.
"They reset you," he murmured.
"It's a cycle," Li Shen said.
"Yeah," Bai Ren replied. "They love cycles. Makes it feel like rules instead of—" He tilted his head toward the green-tag line. "—instead of ownership."
Li Shen didn't answer. Answers turned into hooks.
Bai Ren's gaze moved across the crowd around the board, the way people stood a little too close, the way shoulders angled toward Li Shen's lane without fully committing to it.
"Now comes the asking," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen shifted his stance by a half-step—not backing up, not squaring up. Just moving off the spine of the crowd so nobody could "accidentally" pin him.
Bai Ren noticed, of course, and didn't comment directly.
"If you refuse," Bai Ren added, voice low, "don't refuse like a proud idiot. Refuse like a clerk. Make it dull."
"They'll still hate me," Li Shen said.
"Hate is cheap," Bai Ren replied. "Leverage isn't. Don't give them anything they can cash."
The first approach came before the day had even warmed the stones.
A runner intercepted Li Shen at the lane junction where the forge corridors met the yard paths—close enough that smoke still lived in the air, far enough that a non-cultivator didn't start coughing on the spot.
Young. Thin. Fast eyes. Not a heavy. A messenger. The kind of boy who carried pressure the way other people carried water.
"Brother Li," he said, and the honorific sounded practiced. "Someone wants a word."
Li Shen didn't stop walking.
"Who?" he asked without turning fully.
The boy fell into step beside him. "Just once. Nothing big."
"If it's nothing," Li Shen said, "you wouldn't be chasing me for it."
The boy's smile tightened. "It's about your window. Lane three. You know."
Li Shen kept his pace even. Stopping was how you got crowded. Crowded was how stories started.
"Rotation is rotation," Li Shen said.
"Not rotation," the boy insisted quickly. "Just sharing. One heat cycle. That's it. One."
Li Shen angled his shoulders slightly, never giving the boy his full front. Grey Step without making it obvious. He didn't look like he was dodging. He looked like he was navigating traffic.
"I can't," Li Shen said.
The boy blinked. "You can. You just don't want to."
Li Shen didn't raise his voice. "If two makers use one window, the sampling line gets muddy. If a clerk asks me later, I can't answer clean."
The boy's eyebrows rose like he'd found something to mock. "Clean. You talk like a ledger."
Li Shen let that sit for half a breath, then said, "Ledgers are what survive here."
The boy tried a different angle, softer. "They'll remember you helped."
Li Shen shook his head once. "They'll remember I can be pulled."
The boy's jaw flexed. "It's just once."
"Once is the opening," Li Shen said. "You don't need me for one heat cycle. You need my name next to yours."
The boy's smile vanished.
For a heartbeat, Li Shen expected a shove or a grab—something impulsive.
Instead the runner slowed, letting Li Shen walk past him as if it had all been casual, as if he hadn't just failed to hook the first loop.
Li Shen didn't glance back.
A second attempt usually came from the direction you watched.
The second approach came dressed up as concern.
It happened at the water line near the dorms, where everyone could pretend they were just thirsty and not listening. The stones there were slick with spilled water and soap. People moved slower, close together, easy to bump.
An older woman from laundry crew stood too close while Li Shen filled his cup. Her hands were raw and cracked, the kind of hands that told a story without words.
"I heard you have the green tag," she said.
Li Shen kept his face neutral. "It's rotation-based."
She nodded like she understood and stayed where she was anyway.
"My nephew is in lane five," she said. "He's been held twice. Points are thin."
Li Shen waited. Silence was safer than sympathy spoken aloud.
Her voice dropped. "He's coughing. Bad. Keeps him awake."
There it was.
Not necessarily a lie. Just a truth shaped into a weapon.
"I can't give him my window," Li Shen said.
"Not give," she corrected quickly, as if she'd rehearsed it. "Just… bring him. Let him use your furnace mouth. He's careful. He'll do what you say."
Li Shen pictured it with the cold clarity of ink.
Two hands on one batch.
One tag line.
One liability budget.
If something failed, whose defect would it be?
If something passed, whose bonus would it become?
The Pavilion loved arrangements like that. Confusion created dependency. Dependency created control.
He took one sip of water, buying time without looking like he needed it.
"If he's held," Li Shen said evenly, "he needs clean output on his own line. He doesn't need to be attached to mine."
The woman's eyes sharpened. "Easy for you. You're counted."
Li Shen didn't deny it. Denial sounded like guilt.
"Being counted is why I can't be sloppy," he said. "Sloppy doesn't help him. Sloppy just gives them a reason to stamp both names."
For a moment she just stared, as if deciding whether that was cruel or true.
Then she stepped back, and the look she wore wasn't understanding.
It was a decision.
A remembered decision.
By noon, the rumor had already started climbing.
Rumors moved faster than carts and were harder to stop. They didn't need detail. They only needed a shape people could recognize and repeat.
Li Shen heard pieces as he crossed the yard:
"—green tag and still—"
"—thinks he's above—"
"—coughing kid—"
"—just once—"
No one said his name in full.
They didn't have to.
The yard didn't trade in facts. It traded in convenient narratives.
Li Shen kept walking.
He widened his path by half a meter whenever the corridor narrowed. He didn't bump shoulders. He didn't apologize. He didn't give anyone contact they could turn into a scene.
Grey Step wasn't for fights.
It was for avoiding becoming a story.
At the forge, the asking turned into pressure.
Not shouted. Not explicit.
Just little changes in how space behaved around him.
A runner's cart drifted too close to lane three mid-swing, forcing Li Shen to adjust his stance with hot metal in his tongs. Not enough to injure him. Just enough to test whether his hands would twitch.
He didn't snap at the runner.
Snapping created witnesses, and witnesses created interpretations.
He stepped out at an angle, hips turning first, letting the cart pass through the space where his shoulder had been a second ago. Then he resumed as if nothing had happened.
Iron Grip stayed off until the exact moment precision mattered.
Lock. Execute. Release.
No pride. No stacking.
Later, the cart drifted close again.
This time Li Shen simply stepped away from the furnace mouth and waited.
A pause in a forge was an insult. It meant you weren't scrambling like everyone else. It meant you could afford to be slow.
Li Shen didn't stare at the runner.
He stared at the furnace mouth like a patient man watching a tool do its job.
The runner's face tightened. He pulled the cart away.
Li Shen stepped back in and continued.
From a distance, it looked like nothing.
That was the point.
At end bell, Cai Shun didn't appear.
That absence had weight.
Cai Shun liked being present when pressure moved. His presence let him sell solutions. If he was missing, it meant he was letting the yard do the shaping first—letting resentment and rumor soften Li Shen up until "help" looked like relief.
Li Shen washed his hands at the basin, soot turning water grey, and felt the day's costs in his body:
Legs heavy from Grey Step drills.
Forearms warm from controlled Iron Grip bursts.
Lungs irritated, but not flaring—because Smoke-Sealing had stayed in short windows, released early whenever that heaviness behind the navel started rising too fast.
He still had margin.
Margin was why he could pause without shaking.
Bai Ren found him at the board as the sky cooled and the yard shifted into evening movement.
No grin this time.
"They're saying it out loud now," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen didn't pretend to misunderstand. "About the kid."
"Yeah," Bai Ren replied. "Not 'procedure.' Not 'liability.' Just the clean version. Makes you sound simple."
Li Shen stared at the reset line—0/2, like innocence you had to re-earn every cycle.
"They want me either hated or handled," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's mouth twitched, almost approval. "Good. You see it."
Li Shen finally looked at him. "What's next."
Bai Ren exhaled through his nose. "Next they stop trying to talk you into it."
Li Shen's eyes narrowed slightly. "And start doing it anyway."
Bai Ren nodded once.
Then, because Bai Ren couldn't leave a blade uncovered without making it survivable, he added, quieter, "Don't sleep like you're safe."
Li Shen didn't answer. Answers were loud.
He shifted his stance by half a meter without thinking, keeping an angle even while standing still, as if the yard itself could rush him.
Just once.
That was how it always started.
He turned away from the board and walked toward the dorm lanes—boring on the surface, alert underneath—already choosing routes that didn't funnel him into corners, already deciding where his papers would sit, where his tag cord would be tied, and which shadows he would not allow at his back.
The reset had cleared his defect index.
It hadn't cleared the yard's appetite.
And appetite, in the Pavilion, always looked for the cheapest meal.
Tonight, he intended to be expensive.