The bell hadn't rung yet.
That was the point.
Li Shen sat on the edge of his plank and let the dorm's cold finish the job of waking him. Deep winter cold—dry enough to bite the inside of his nose, sharp enough that even the blankets felt thin. The air tasted like old wood and too many bodies breathing through the same night. Somewhere down the row, someone coughed—wet, stubborn, practiced.
No one spoke. Talking cost heat. Heat cost food.
He reached under the plank, found the small cloth-wrapped bundle, and unknotted it without looking around.
Breath tea.
The bowl wasn't really a bowl—just a chipped ceramic piece he'd kept because the crack didn't reach the rim. He poured the hot water slowly, watched the pale leaves unfurl like something reluctant. Steam rose thin and clean, and for a second the dorm smelled like nothing at all.
There had been no message with it. There never was.
Just the same silent delivery: a tray that didn't belong in the yard, placed where it wouldn't be seen from the windows, near the corridor that led into Elder Yan's shadow. He hadn't looked up when he'd taken it. He hadn't needed to.
Do not show at windows.
He drank.
The heat moved into his throat, then down into his chest like a measured hand pressing a bruise. Not a miracle. A tool. It softened the rasp. It did not remove the fact that his lungs were lungs, and the forge air was forge air, and his body was still paid in full every day.
He took two more sips and stopped.
Overdoing anything was still overdoing it. Even "help."
He set the bowl aside, wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, and let his breath fall into a steady count.
The bell was still silent. That was also the point.
He stood, pulled his outer robe on, and moved to the patch of floor between two planks where the boards didn't creak as badly. His hands were already rough. The skin on his fingers had thickened and split and thickened again; the lines were deeper now, packed with charcoal dust that never fully left.
Time left marks. The sect didn't need to.
He didn't stretch like someone performing. He placed his feet, loosened his shoulders, and exhaled once.
Smoke-Sealing.
He didn't "activate" it. He made space for it.
A thin warmth gathered behind his sternum, then sank low. His dantian answered with the familiar weight—a stone settling into mud. The technique pulled at his breath first, always. It wanted the lungs.
Entry was loud. Entry was hungry. Entry made itself known.
He worked around that the way a man worked around a bad tool: not by pretending it wasn't bad, but by keeping it from biting him.
Inhale—slow.
Hold.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
The dryness arrived at four like it always did, a fine sand in the throat. That was the tell. That was the cost.
He didn't panic at it. Panic was wasted air.
He held through it.
Five.
His throat tightened, not painfully—just enough to demand attention. Six. The tea's warmth was still there, faint in his chest, keeping the rasp from turning into a claw.
Seven.
He released before eight.
Not because he couldn't hold longer. Because the release was part of the work. Because he'd learned the hard way that "more" was a trap if it made the next set worse.
He exhaled. The warmth drained from his lungs like water pulled from cloth. He took two normal breaths—real air, not technique air—and listened to his body.
Dantian: heavy, but stable.
Hands: steady.
Throat: dry, but not raw.
No cough.
That was progress.
Not the kind you could brag about. The kind you could build on.
He did it again.
The second set cost less. That was not a mood; it was measurable. The sand in his throat arrived half a breath later. The tightening took longer. The release didn't leave him hollow.
He repeated until the bell rang.
When it did, it cut through the dorm like a blade through cloth. Planks creaked. Men sat up. A few swore softly. Someone laughed once, sharp, because laughter was cheaper than despair if you could afford it.
Li Shen stepped back into his robe as if he'd been doing nothing at all.
He wasn't hiding. He was minimizing.
The yard did not reward displays.
Outside, the morning air bit harder than the dorm's stale cold. Frost clung to the shadowed edges of the courtyard where the sun never reached. The dirt was stiff underfoot. Breath came out in thin white threads and vanished.
He crossed the yard with the rest of them—servants, bodies, backs bent under future labor—and kept his eyes where eyes were allowed. Not toward the windows. Not toward the higher corridors. Not toward anything that had no tolerance for being seen.
The ration sheet had been re-posted overnight, a fresh piece of paper nailed to the same plank. The sect loved the act of updating.
Li Shen read it anyway.
Same grain allotment. Same salt. Same oil share for lamps.
At the bottom, a new stamp had been pressed hard enough to bruise the paper fibers.
CLOSE OF YEAR CYCLE
No mercy increases. No surprise reductions. Just a reminder that time was a ledger too.
Bai Ren was already there, leaning in with his hands behind his back like he was inspecting a priceless painting instead of a list of how little they were worth.
"Look at that," Bai Ren said, voice low but bright. "They stamped the suffering this time. Very festive."
Li Shen stepped beside him. "It's the same."
"Exactly," Bai Ren said, pleased. "Consistency. A sign of excellent management."
His eyes flicked sideways to Li Shen's face, quick and casual. He was checking in. Bai Ren did it without making it a question.
Li Shen gave him the smallest nod.
Bai Ren's shoulders loosened as if that was all he needed. He turned back to the sheet and sighed with theatrical exhaustion.
"If I ever become important," Bai Ren said, "I'm going to demand new paper every week just so I can feel alive."
"You'll demand a chair," someone behind them muttered.
"And cushions," Bai Ren agreed instantly. "And I'll be humble about it."
The line moved.
They filed toward the food window. The bowls were warm from being stacked near the pot, not because anyone cared if their hands froze. The porridge was thin enough to reflect the sky. A few flecks of grain floated like they were trying to escape.
Li Shen sat with Bai Ren at the same low plank table they'd used for weeks. Same corner. Same draft from the door seam. The table had a gouge in it shaped like a blade edge; it caught crumbs and kept them.
Bai Ren blew on his bowl and made an appreciative noise like he'd been served something rare.
"Mm," he said. "Today's water has ambition."
Li Shen took a spoonful. Warmth. Salt. Not enough. He ate anyway.
Across the table, a new face sat hunched over his bowl, eating like he expected someone to take it away. Younger than Li Shen by a year, maybe two. Hands too clean. Eyes too alert. He looked like someone who had arrived from somewhere that still believed in fairness.
Bai Ren noticed him too. He didn't stare. He just angled his voice slightly so it would reach.
"First week?" he asked, as if asking about weather.
The boy hesitated, then nodded. "Third day."
"Good," Bai Ren said, cheerful. "You're already old."
The boy blinked, unsure whether to be offended.
Li Shen didn't intervene. Bai Ren didn't need it.
"What's your name?" Bai Ren asked.
"Hu—Hu Yao."
"Hu Yao," Bai Ren repeated like it was a title. "Listen. Eat faster when the line is long. Eat slower when it's short. It's the only power you have here."
Hu Yao looked down at his bowl, then back up, and something in his shoulders shifted. Not hope. A reduction of panic.
Bai Ren glanced at Li Shen. "See?" he said softly. "Mentoring."
Li Shen kept eating. "You told him to chew."
"Chewing is strategy."
They finished. The bell for labor rang again—different tone, different meaning—and the table emptied like a tide turning. Men stood, bowls scraped clean because leaving grain was a sin you paid for later.
At the yard board, the day's assignments were posted.
Li Shen read the board without moving his face.
Forge rotation was listed under the cultivator section, as always. Names he recognized. Names he didn't. The forge list moved like weather: stable enough to predict, unstable enough to kill you if you ignored it.
The yard work list was longer today. More bodies on transport. More on mixing lime mortar. More on hauling water from the lower cistern.
Bai Ren leaned in and whistled under his breath. "They're rebuilding something again."
"They're always rebuilding something," Li Shen said.
"Yes," Bai Ren agreed. "But today it's angry rebuilding."
Li Shen looked at the names. His name wasn't on the yard list. It wasn't on the transport list either.
It was on the "miscellaneous" line, scribbled in a hand that didn't bother with straight strokes.
Li Shen — workshop support.
Not forge.
Not yard.
In-between.
That was a knife with no handle. It meant he would be pulled where needed, and blamed where convenient.
Bai Ren saw it too. His smile didn't falter, but his eyes sharpened.
"Workshop support," he read. "That sounds like you get to support everyone's bad decisions."
"It means I go where they point," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren shrugged as if it didn't matter, and that shrug was an act of violence against the place trying to make everything matter too much.
"Then point yourself first," Bai Ren said, light. "Drink your tea. Breathe your breaths. Let them have the rest."
Li Shen didn't answer. He didn't disagree either.
They split with the flow of bodies. Bai Ren toward the yard. Li Shen toward the side passage that led to the workshop storerooms, away from the forge doors that stayed shut to anyone who couldn't survive the air inside.
The storeroom smelled of oil and old wood and metal filings that never fully settled. Crates were stacked with tags stamped in ink: numbers, categories, ownership.
A clerk—one of the "serving servants" who got to sit—handed Li Shen a list without looking at him.
"Carry these to the workshop," the clerk said. "And don't lose the tags."
Li Shen took the list. His eyes scanned it.
Oil casks.
Cloth bundles.
A box of small tools—tongs, scrapers, measuring pins.
He didn't ask why. Asking why was for people with leverage.
He moved.
The work was physical, repetitive, and cold enough to keep the mind clear. Each cask was heavier than it looked. Oil sloshed inside with a slow weight, like something alive that refused to be hurried.
By the time he set the last crate down, his shoulders burned.
That burn was also time. That, too, was cost.
He didn't cultivate in the workshop. Not openly. Not here.
He waited until the short pause between deliveries, when the corridor traffic thinned and the clerks disappeared into their own paperwork nests.
Then he stepped into the shadow beside a crate stack, where the light didn't reach, and did one controlled pulse.
Iron Grip.
Not to grab. Not to show. Just to test.
The technique rose behind his wrist like a muscle waking. He fed it a measured breath and felt it tighten around the bones of his hand—not externally, not theatrically, but as a clean internal clamp.
He flexed his fingers once.
The tremor that used to arrive immediately did not arrive.
It waited.
It would come later, if he pushed. It always would. Entry still cost.
But the delay was real.
He released. The clamp loosened. His hand returned to being a hand. He rolled his fingers, loosened the joints, and listened to the dull heaviness in his dantian.
Not pain.
Load.
Load meant capacity was being used. Used meant it could be trained.
At midday, the yard bell marked the half-shift. The sound echoed off the stone and died quickly, like everything else.
Li Shen took his bowl of water and drank where no one would mistake it for leisure. The rim was cold enough to sting.
Bai Ren found him anyway.
He always did. Not because he was tracking Li Shen like a guard. Because he was good at being in the right places without being in the way.
He leaned against a post with a bundle of rope slung over one shoulder, face smudged with dust, eyes bright.
"Good news," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen looked at him.
"I didn't die," Bai Ren said. "The yard tried. I refused."
Li Shen's mouth moved a fraction. It wasn't a smile. It was the shadow of one.
Bai Ren took that as permission to continue.
"They're mixing lime mortar like it's war," he said. "And the foreman is counting shovels like they're coins."
Li Shen nodded once. "Anything else?"
Bai Ren's gaze flicked past Li Shen to the corridor behind him, checking sightlines the way people checked weather.
"The board shifted twice," Bai Ren said quietly, still casual. "Not the big lines. The little ones. Names shuffled. Like someone's trying to make sure certain people don't stand next to certain people."
Li Shen drank again. The water was cold enough to hurt his teeth.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure I'm bored enough to notice," Bai Ren said. Then, because he was Bai Ren, he added, "Also, Hu Yao cried into his porridge this morning. Quietly. Like a professional."
"Did you say something?"
"Of course," Bai Ren said, offended. "I told him crying is a waste of salt. He laughed. Then he cried again. Progress."
Li Shen set his bowl down and looked at Bai Ren properly. "Stay out of trouble."
Bai Ren made a face. "That's not actionable."
"Try."
Bai Ren straightened, rope shifting on his shoulder. "Alright," he said. "I'll only get into small, affordable trouble."
He started to leave, then paused and lowered his voice into the range where the world had to lean in to hear.
"You're alright?" he asked.
Li Shen didn't answer with words.
He touched two fingers to his own chest, once, where the warmth of the tea still lived faintly, and then dropped his hand.
Bai Ren's expression softened. He nodded. No more questions. That was the contract between them.
When the afternoon shift ended, the cold returned hard. The yard emptied. The workshop doors closed. The forge air bled out through cracks like a breath you didn't want.
Li Shen returned to the dorm.
The ration sheet was different again.
Not in content. In paper.
A new sheet nailed over the old. Same numbers. A fresh stamp at the bottom, the ink still darker than the rest.
CLOSE OF YEAR CYCLE
The sect's idea of time was to re-stamp what already existed until it felt like control.
He read it anyway.
Then he sat on his plank, pulled out his worn booklet, and turned to a clean page.
He didn't write a diary entry. He wrote data.
He kept it tight. If someone found it, it wouldn't be worth stealing for gossip.
Smoke-Sealing: seven holds clean. dryness at four. release before eight.
Iron Grip: tremor delayed. pulses clean x five.
Breath tea: effective. do not overuse.
Work: workshop support. moved oil. tags intact.
At the bottom, he wrote the only line that mattered, the one that would keep him from lying to himself:
Same order. Every day. Until it breaks.
He closed the booklet and slid it back under the plank.
Outside, the bell rang for night.
Inside, the dorm settled into the familiar rhythm of bodies trying to recover enough to be used again tomorrow.
Li Shen lay down and stared into the dark without drama.
He had a routine now.
Routines didn't save people.
But they changed the math.
And he was done being powerless in his own arithmetic.