Morning in the Beast Yard began with the sound of people acting normal on purpose.
The Conclave still got mentioned the way old storms got mentioned—never with dates, always with habits. During that season everything had doubled: headcounts, inspections, lists, mouths to feed, hands to track. Servants had slept in their clothes and learned to keep their papers dry like it was a second layer of skin.
The visitors were long gone. The extra patrols had been reassigned. What remained was reflex.
People still glanced at corners that held nothing. Still lowered their voices near windows that no longer mattered. Not because the Conclave was "recent."
Because once you've worn scrutiny, your body remembers the fit.
Boots on hard-packed earth. Rope dragged over stone. A clerk calling names like she was checking inventory, not assigning bodies to risk.
Li Shen didn't go straight to issuance.
He went to the points window first.
If the hunt was going to force him close, he wanted one thing that wasn't luck: a reliable cut.
The technique counter sat under a smaller awning than the clinic—paper protected before bodies. A narrow board listed servant-tier forms in tight brush. Most were utilities. A few were traps dressed up as "opportunity."
Li Shen found the line he'd already picked in his head and kept his face blank.
RIVING CUT — SERVANT TIER
APPLICATION: DISABLE / FINISH
COST: 7 POINTS
TRACE: STAMPED
The clerk didn't ask why. Clerks didn't ask why. They asked for tickets.
"Slip," she said.
Li Shen slid his palm ticket forward. She counted the points without looking at him, then pushed a thin packet back—wax-sealed, string-tied, instructions inside, ownership recorded outside.
Paper-layered power.
"Sign," she added, already reaching for her stamp.
Li Shen signed.
The stamp fell.
The packet came back to him like it weighed nothing.
It didn't. It just cost margin.
He tucked it inside his shirt where sweat wouldn't reach it and stepped away before anyone could read his purchase as ambition.
---
In the issuance line, his carcass hatchet hung at his side by its cord tag.
TOOL. ROTATION USE ONLY. RETURN REQUIRED.
A leash you carried in your own hands.
Around him, servants checked "gear" that barely deserved the word: wraps patched twice, knives sharpened down to thin regrets, boots stitched with mismatched thread. Men who had spent the last month selling their margins to survive the clamp.
A cough tore through the line—dry, deep, not even trying to be polite anymore.
Someone answered it with a laugh that wasn't humor. "Don't cough on the beasts. They'll invoice you."
No one laughed twice.
At the counter, the Beast Yard clerk stamped Li Shen's slip without lifting her eyes.
"Group assignment," she said, and slid a second paper across.
ROTATION TEAM — QI CONDENSATION STAGE 1 RANGE
LEAD HAND: REN JIAO
HAND: HUANG QI
HAND: LI SHEN (TOOL ISSUED)
SUPPORT: ROPE / NET
Li Shen read the names once and folded the paper into his shirt.
Ren Jiao and Huang Qi were both older—men with forearm scars that didn't come from heat and tongs. Hunters. Salvage hands. The segment of servant life that treated death like weather because it showed up whether you respected it or not.
Ren Jiao looked Li Shen over without pretending it was casual. His gaze stopped on the hatchet cord tag.
"Tool," Ren Jiao said.
Li Shen nodded. "Tool."
Huang Qi snorted. "Tool means you don't get brave."
"It means I don't get stupid," Li Shen said.
Ren Jiao's mouth moved—almost a smile, then gone. "Good. Stay that way."
---
They marched out through the lower gate with eight teams, a runner ahead with a small flag, two guards watching because procedure demanded eyes on exits.
The foothills beyond the compound weren't wild in a romantic way. They were worked territory: cut paths, stacked stones, old rope marks biting tree bark, blood stains that had been washed and re-bled until the ground stopped pretending.
Low-grade spirit beasts didn't live here because it was sacred.
They lived here because the sect had made it convenient.
Ren Jiao led them toward a shallow ravine where brush grew thick and stone broke sightlines. He didn't explain much. He didn't need to. He pointed. People obeyed because guessing was expensive.
"Boar," Huang Qi said, spitting to the side. "Ashback. Stage One."
Li Shen didn't ask how he knew. He could read the ground: churned earth, snapped roots, a smear of mud at hip height where something heavy had scraped rock.
Ashback boar meant charge. Tough hide. Weight that didn't care about fear.
A spear would have bought distance.
A carcass hatchet demanded timing.
Li Shen checked his grip and felt the dryness in the haft even after oiling—better, but still thirsty. Wood that wanted to split when stress spiked.
Neglect or malice didn't matter. The result was the same.
If he treated it casually, it would betray him at the worst moment.
---
They set the trap the way the sect always did: not clever, just repeatable.
Rope line across the ravine mouth. Net folded behind brush. Two men with poles to steer, not stop. Huang Qi on rope. Ren Jiao with a short spear that looked too clean for "issuance suspended."
Li Shen didn't stare at the spear.
Staring didn't change inventory.
Ren Jiao pointed to a rock outcrop where the path narrowed. "You stand there."
Li Shen shifted his weight. "Behind you."
"Off-angle," Ren Jiao corrected. "You don't swing first. You swing only if it's slowed and it gives you a joint."
"Hamstring," Huang Qi said. "Or shoulder seam."
Li Shen nodded. "Hamstring or shoulder."
Ren Jiao's eyes stayed on him. "And if you miss?"
Li Shen didn't decorate it. "I get hit."
Ren Jiao nodded once, satisfied with honesty. "Then don't miss."
---
Waiting was the worst part. Waiting gave your body time to rehearse pain.
Li Shen kept his breathing steady—no Smoke-Sealing, no need here. He let the mist sit heavy in his lower abdomen and felt the quiet advantage he refused to name: not strength, margin. A few more seconds before his hands tightened. A few more breaths before his mind tried to sprint.
The brush moved.
Low. Heavy. Deliberate.
Then the boar came out.
Not enormous. It didn't need to be. It was dense—shoulders thick, hide crusted with ash-colored mud, tusks short but sharp, eyes too bright for an animal that had survived long enough to cultivate even a little.
Ren Jiao raised two fingers.
Huang Qi tensed the rope line.
The boar saw them anyway and charged, because Stage One didn't mean clever. It meant confident.
The ravine narrowed. The rope snapped tight across its chest.
For half a breath, the boar's weight hit rope and hesitated, confused.
Then it surged.
The rope bit hard enough to cut into hide. Huang Qi's shoulders jolted. His feet slid.
Ren Jiao stepped in and drove the spear point into the boar's shoulder—not deep, not heroic. A steering thrust. Enough to ruin the line of the charge.
The boar screamed—high and ugly—and slammed into the rock outcrop instead of through the rope.
Stone cracked.
The net dropped.
For one clean moment, the animal wasn't free.
That was all you ever got.
"Now," Ren Jiao snapped—not at Li Shen, at the mechanism. Rope. Net. Poles. Timing.
Li Shen didn't move yet.
He watched for what Ren Jiao had promised: a joint exposed, a line he could take without gambling his whole body.
The boar kicked. The net snagged. One leg splayed for a fraction too long.
Tendon line.
Li Shen stepped in—angled, not straight—out of tusks, into the seam where hide and muscle met the part that failed.
The hatchet's weight tried to drag his shoulder into a committed swing.
He refused it.
Iron Grip flickered in a tight burst—not for strength, for alignment. Wrist. Edge. Angle.
Then he used what he'd paid for.
Riving Cut.
Not a chop. Not a flourish. A short, controlled draw across the exposed tendon—open, then withdraw. No lingering. No second guess.
The blade bit.
Hide resisted, then gave at the seam. There was a wet snap.
The boar's hind leg buckled.
Li Shen was already stepping away as the animal thrashed, screaming into the net.
The hatchet haft shuddered in his hands—an ugly vibration that told him the wood still wasn't perfect. If he'd overcommitted, it might have split.
He hadn't.
He'd cut like a craftsman, not a killer.
Ren Jiao took the opening and drove the spear again, deeper, finishing what Li Shen had made possible.
The boar collapsed with a sound like a sack of grain hitting earth.
Huang Qi sagged against the rope, panting, face grey.
No one cheered.
Cheers were for people who hadn't understood how close they'd come to being meat.
---
They bled the carcass fast, efficient, without sentiment.
Huang Qi looked at Li Shen's hatchet, then at Ren Jiao's spear. "Issuance suspended," he said flatly.
Ren Jiao didn't answer.
Li Shen didn't ask.
Questions didn't change inventory.
Ren Jiao wiped his spear and said, still not looking up, "Your cut was clean."
It wasn't praise. It was a pricing.
Li Shen nodded once. "The tool held."
Ren Jiao's eyes flicked to the haft tag. "It was supposed to."
Huang Qi exhaled, almost a laugh. "Lots of things are supposed to."
---
Back inside, the processing line was where the hunt stopped being "risk" and became "accounting."
Carcasses didn't return as trophies.
They returned as inventory—weight, parts, core, credit.
Teams queued behind a long table stained dark from a hundred conversions. A runner stood at the front with a brush and a ledger board. Two salvage hands waited behind with hooks and knives. A clerk sat under a small awning to the side—protected from sun and blood the way paper always was.
Ren Jiao placed the rotation slip down first.
The runner scanned it, then looked at the boar. "Ashback. Stage One," he said, unimpressed, and checked the cord tag tied to the carcass leg. "Team three. Ravine route."
He signaled.
The salvage hands hauled the boar up by its harness. The carcass rose heavy and swung once before settling.
A weight plank creaked.
"Two hundred and ten jin," the runner called.
Huang Qi blew out a breath like the number was both relief and insult.
The runner wrote. "Parts."
The salvage hand went to work—practiced, fast, brutal. Hide peeled. Meat opened. Value separated into categories.
"Tusk set—two."
"Hide—intact."
"Blood—low contamination."
Then his eyes flicked to the back leg.
"Tendon—one clean cut."
His gaze touched Li Shen's hatchet tag for a heartbeat, then moved on. Time saved was cost saved.
Then the salvage hand went deeper, searching with two fingers for the hardened knot that formed once spirit flesh crossed into Stage One.
He pulled it out and held it up.
No glow. No heroic light. Just a dense dark stone the size of a quail egg, slick with blood and stubborn with contained pressure.
"Core," he said. Then, after a thumb press and a squint: "Stage One. Complete. Low clarity."
The clerk wrote it down anyway.
BEAST CORE RECOVERED — QI CONDENSATION STAGE 1 (COMPLETE)
GRADE: LOW (CLARITY)
NOTE: SEALED FOR FORGE / ALCHEMY CHANNEL
The core went into a small ceramic cup lined with cloth. A runner looped string around the lid, tied a narrow tag.
E-17-39.
Wax pressed down. Stamp bit. The code was copied into the ledger. No ceremony.
No one "kept" cores.
Cores kept you—inside procedure or inside a grave.
Huang Qi stared like he'd been hoping for more and hated himself for it. Ren Jiao didn't comment.
Complete didn't mean valuable.
Complete meant it couldn't be dismissed.
That alone made arguments cheaper.
The clerk tapped the distribution lines with the back of her brush.
LEAD HAND: 60%
HAND: 25%
HAND: 15% (TOOL ISSUED)
Li Shen read it and felt a small tightening that wasn't anger.
It was the price of being listed as "tool."
On paper, it made him support even when his cut had opened the finish.
Ren Jiao didn't argue. He just nodded, the way men nodded when they understood rules and chose to keep breathing anyway.
"Sign," the clerk said.
Ren Jiao signed with a rough stroke.
Huang Qi signed.
Then the clerk's eyes finally lifted—past Li Shen's face, onto the hatchet tag again.
"Tool return condition recorded," she said. "If the edge is chipped beyond tolerance, deduction applies."
Li Shen nodded. "Understood."
The runner beside her leaned in and murmured something too low to catch. The clerk's brush moved.
For a fraction of a second the stroke shape changed—shorter than it should have been. Not "complete." Something clipped. Something that could later become "disputed."
Li Shen didn't speak.
He did something boring.
He slid his journal out from inside his shirt and opened it to the line he'd written before leaving: team names, issuance category, ravine route, time mark. Who saw what, when.
He didn't shove it at her. He didn't make it confrontation.
He simply placed it where her eyes could land on it without losing face.
The clerk's brush paused.
Her eyes flicked to the journal. Then to the ceramic cup code. Then to the runner.
She didn't apologize. Nobody apologized here.
She corrected the stroke cleanly, as if she'd always meant it.
Then she stamped the slip:
PROCESSED — CREDIT PENDING POSTING
"Posting at dusk," she said. "If no dispute is filed."
Ren Jiao took the slip back without expression.
Li Shen closed his journal and tucked it away again, dry against his skin.
He hadn't "won."
He'd prevented a cheap loss.
That was the low world's version of victory.
---
Tool return was a second gate.
Li Shen presented the carcass hatchet at the adjacent counter. The clerk there didn't care about beast weight or cores.
She cared about tags.
Cord. Stamp. Edge.
The blade had a small notch—nothing fatal, just enough to be used if someone wanted to be strict.
Li Shen didn't explain. Explanations were stories. Stories could be punished.
He offered a fix.
"I can hone it to tolerance," he said. "On the public stone."
The clerk looked at him like she was deciding whether letting him touch it created liability for her.
Then she jerked her chin toward the grind stone bolted to a post—public, visible, controllable.
"Three minutes," she said. "Don't get creative."
Li Shen nodded once.
He set the edge to stone and moved with boring precision—angle consistent, pressure light, strokes counted. He didn't chase sharpness. He chased tolerance.
When he handed it back, the notch was gone and the edge was honest.
The clerk stamped the return slip.
TOOL RETURNED — NO DEDUCTION
A small margin saved.
---
As they crossed toward the wash lane, Bai Ren waited near the drain like he lived there.
His eyes went to the blood on Li Shen's sleeves, then the hatchet cord tag, then past him toward the processing table—toward the sealed cups and the runners carrying them away.
Bai Ren opened his mouth like he was about to make a joke, then didn't.
"Remember Conclave season?" he said instead, quiet. "Sleeping in boots. Clerks everywhere. Stamps for breathing."
Li Shen rinsed his hands and watched red spiral into the drain. "We're not back to mercy. We're just back to quotas."
"Quotas are mercy compared to clamp," Bai Ren muttered.
Li Shen didn't disagree. He said, "Quotas still kill people. They just do it slower."
Bai Ren nodded toward the board frame where postings would go up at dusk. "Did it pay?"
"It produced a core," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's eyes sharpened. "Full?"
"Stage One. Complete. Low clarity."
Bai Ren exhaled. "So it's worth enough to make people dishonest."
Li Shen glanced toward the processing awning. "That's the part I'm pricing."
Bai Ren's mouth tightened. "And the tool?"
"It wanted me close," Li Shen said.
"And you?"
"I didn't give it a straight line."
Bai Ren's expression eased by a fraction. "Good. If they can't get you in the forge, they'll try to get you outside it."
Li Shen's gaze tracked the runners moving sealed inventory into corridors that didn't belong to servants. "They'll try to get me wherever the paper is."
Bai Ren's eyes stayed on the stamp frame. "Paper's everywhere."
A runner approached—young, forgettable, efficient. He didn't look at Li Shen's face. He looked at the hatchet tag and the dried blood and decided this needed to be quick.
He held out a small packet wrapped in clean cloth. A clinic stamp sat on the fold—not the public clinic. A smaller mark, quieter. A corridor stamp.
"Delivered," the runner said.
Li Shen didn't take it immediately. "From who."
The runner's mouth tightened, the way mouths tightened when names belonged to higher hallways.
"Elder Yan's quarter," he said. Then he added, like he wanted to survive the exchange: "Not a gift. A charge. Don't lose it."
Li Shen took the packet and didn't open it here.
Bai Ren leaned in, eyes on the stamp like it had teeth. "So that corridor's paying attention to you now."
Li Shen kept his face empty. "That corridor doesn't 'pay attention.' It keeps accounts."
Bai Ren's mouth twitched. "Same thing. Different knife."
Li Shen tucked the packet inside his shirt.
---
At dusk the board updated, and the yard got its only version of closure: numbers where everyone could see them.
Team credits posted in a column under the rotation header. Parts credit. Deductions listed like weather.
Li Shen found his line and read it twice to make sure it hadn't been clipped.
Not a fortune. Not a miracle.
A measurable gain.
Enough points to buy wraps and powder and still keep a thin strip of margin for training—assuming the clamp didn't swallow it.
Bai Ren drifted beside him again, eyes on the numbers, not on Li Shen.
"Not bad," Bai Ren said.
"It posted," Li Shen replied. "That's the win."
Bai Ren snorted softly. "You're getting boring in new ways."
Li Shen kept reading until he saw the line beneath the credits that mattered more than the credit itself:
DISPUTE WINDOW: OPEN — ONE NIGHT ONLY
The hunt had paid them.
Now the system was offering everyone a chance to take it away.
Not with knives.
With paper.