Tianhui entered the Jade Harmony Pavilion's eastern branch office at the hour of the Snake, when the morning bureaucracy was in full operation and a single visitor would attract the least notice.
The building was three stories of polished limestone, with Pavilion insignia carved above the entrance. A jade circle enclosing three interlocking rings, the symbol of commercial harmony. The ground floor was a public lobby. Merchants waited on wooden benches, holding numbered tickets, while clerks behind a long counter processed trade permits, cargo manifests, and tariff calculations. The air smelled like ink and paper and the nervous sweat of people waiting for approval.
Tianhui did not take a ticket. He walked to the counter and placed Zhou's sealed letter in front of the nearest clerk.
The clerk looked at the letter. He looked at Tianhui. He opened the letter, read it, and his expression went blank. He was not authorized to make decisions about what the letter implied.
"One moment." He disappeared through a door behind the counter.
Tianhui waited. He studied the lobby. The merchants on the benches were divided into two visible categories: those who came here regularly and knew the process, and those who did not. The regulars sat with patient boredom, their documents already organized. The newcomers fidgeted, sorted and re-sorted their papers, glanced at the counter with the anxious frequency of people who believed that looking at authority would make it move faster.
The clerks processed at a steady pace. No rushing. No delays.
The clerk returned with a woman.
She was mid-thirties, wearing a grey robe with a jade-green sash that marked her as a mid-level Pavilion official. Her hair was pulled back in a practical style. Her face was composed, professional.
Her Qi signature was Foundation Establishment Stage 7. Strong for a bureaucrat.
"I am Liaison Chen," she said. "You have a reference from Master Zhou."
"I do."
"Master Zhou is a valued partner. His references carry weight." She studied him. "He says you are a capable cultivator looking for work. He says you defended his caravan against five rogue cultivators on the Heishan approach."
"That is correct."
"He says you are registered as Qi Condensation Stage 8, and that this registration is inaccurate."
Tianhui said nothing.
Liaison Chen smiled slightly. "The Pavilion values transparency. But we also value capability. If Master Zhou believes your displayed level is incorrect, we will base our assessment on observed behavior rather than registration."
"I am not here for work," Tianhui said.
Her smile held, but the warmth behind it cooled by a degree. "Then why are you here?"
"To trade."
"We are a trading organization. What are you selling?"
"Information."
...
She took him to a room on the second floor. Small, clean, with a desk, two chairs, and a window that faced an interior courtyard. No formation arrays on the walls. At least, none that an ordinary cultivator would detect. Tianhui identified three concealed recording arrays and a Qi dampening field around the room's perimeter. Standard security for a trading office that handled sensitive exchanges.
Liaison Chen sat behind the desk. She placed a blank receipt on the surface and set an ink brush beside it.
"Proceed," she said.
Tianhui calculated. He needed to offer enough to establish credibility without revealing the methodology behind his observations. The method was 7th-Path-level analytical perception compressed to appear as clever deduction. He would offer conclusions and keep the method.
He chose three pieces.
"First," he said. "The Thunderpeak Sect has been mining spirit-iron from the Baihei deposits west of Lanyang for approximately eight months. They are doing so without declaring the extraction to the Eastern Domain's resource compact. Their output is being transported northeast through an irregular route that avoids Pavilion-monitored trade roads."
Liaison Chen's expression did not change, but her hand paused over the receipt. A fractional hesitation. She had not known this. Or she had suspected it and lacked confirmation.
"How do you know this?"
"The Thunderpeak Sect increased recruitment of D-grade aptitude cultivators six months ago. D-grade cultivators are not combat-effective. They are mining-effective. Three mining operations would require approximately two hundred additional workers. The recruitment numbers are consistent with three simultaneous extraction sites, of which the Baihei deposits are the most accessible from the Thunderpeak Sect's territory. I confirmed the transport route by observing that merchants on the Lanyang western road referenced increased cart traffic on the Baihei ridge path. Traffic that has no legitimate commercial explanation, since the ridge path does not connect to any market."
Silence. Liaison Chen wrote on the receipt.
"Second," Tianhui said. "The Guan family's silk caravan that was reported lost to banditry near the Southern Marshes three weeks ago was not taken by bandits. It was seized by the Xu family of Langfeng as settlement for a debt that the Guan patriarch defaulted on two years ago. The goods are currently stored in the Xu family's secondary warehouse on Canal Street, fourth block."
Liaison Chen looked up. "That is a Pavilion-insured shipment. If the Xu family seized it..."
"Then the Pavilion has paid an insurance claim on goods that were not lost but confiscated by a party with a legitimate financial claim. The insurance payout went to the Guan family, who used it to settle a different debt. The entire operation was staged to extract Pavilion capital through the insurance mechanism."
Liaison Chen set down the brush.
"Third," he said. "Your Port Director Fang has been diverting two percent of import tariff revenue into a personal account managed through a tea merchant named Sun in the Bridge Quarter. The amounts are small enough to avoid triggering your standard audit thresholds. The total over eighteen months is approximately four hundred silver."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"The tea merchant Sun purchases supplies at prices that exceed market rate by a consistent margin. The surplus goes nowhere. Sun's inventory does not increase proportionally with his purchasing volume. The margin matches the difference between declared and actual tariff revenue at the port, which is publicly posted on your audit boards. The correlation is exact to the second decimal."
Liaison Chen sat back in her chair. She looked at him for a long time. Her Qi signature remained steady, controlled, but the muscles around her jaw had tightened. She was recalculating. The man in front of her was not a caravan guard looking for work. He was something else.
"You observed all of this in... how long have you been in Langfeng?"
"I arrived yesterday."
Liaison Chen did not respond immediately.
"What do you want?" she said.
...
"I want information," Tianhui said. "Three questions, answered honestly."
"What questions?"
"First: who is the strongest cultivator in the Eastern Domain, and what is their cultivation level?"
Liaison Chen considered this. The question was sensitive. Cultivation levels were strategic intelligence. But the information was not closely held. Anyone with connections could learn it.
"The strongest recorded cultivator in the Eastern Domain is Sect Master Zhong Shan of the Thunderpeak Sect. Sixth Path. He achieved this level seventeen years ago and has not advanced since."
Sixth Path. The highest tier in the current era's cultivation hierarchy. Seventeen years without advancement, which meant he had hit a bottleneck. Likely a fundamental one. The gap between the 6th and 7th Paths was not a matter of resources or technique. It was a matter of understanding. Of Resonance comprehension.
In his era, a 6th-Path cultivator was a competent professional. Useful. Not exceptional. The strongest in the Eastern Domain was a man Tianhui's students would have considered mid-tier.
"Second question," he said. "Has any cultivator in recorded history, not rumor, not legend, recorded history with verifiable documentation, achieved the 7th Path?"
"No."
He had expected this. The answer confirmed what he had inferred from Lanyang's market gossip. But hearing it stated flatly, by an intelligence professional with access to the Pavilion's archives, made it concrete.
"In the past three thousand years, two cultivators have reached the 6th Path," Liaison Chen continued. "Both in other domains. Both are deceased. The 6th Path is considered the theoretical maximum of cultivation in the current era. There is no verified technique, no manual, no formation sequence that has been demonstrated to produce advancement beyond the 6th Path."
"The 7th Path is considered impossible?"
"The 7th Path is considered theoretical. The Sapphire Court has published papers arguing that a 7th Path is mathematically consistent with the underlying Resonance frameworks, but no one has demonstrated it. The cultivation community treats those papers the way it treats most Sapphire Court publications. With polite academic interest and no expectation of practical application."
Tianhui absorbed this. The Sapphire Court published on the 7th Path. They understood the mathematics, or at least the outline of the mathematics. This moved the Sapphire Court from "quiet" to "the most interesting faction in the Eastern Domain."
"Third question," he said. "What is the current state of knowledge regarding the Sovereignty Mandate?"
Liaison Chen's expression shifted. She had expected a different third question.
"The Sovereignty Mandate," she said, "is a historical doctrine from the Ancient Era. It holds that the Resonance framework of the universe periodically produces a cultivator capable of achieving full harmonization, the 7th Path, and that this achievement confers a metaphysical authority called Sovereignty. The Mandate supposedly restructures the cultivation framework around the Sovereign's Resonance, establishing a new era."
She paused. "That is the academic summary. In practice, no Sovereignty Mandate has been active in recorded history. The last verified reference to one is approximately thirty thousand years old, from the collapse of what the Sapphire Court calls the 'Greatest Era.' The details are fragmentary and contradictory."
"Is anyone pursuing it?"
"Pursuing what?"
"The Mandate. Is any faction, any cultivator, any organization in the Eastern Domain actively working toward Sovereignty?"
Liaison Chen looked at him. The calculation behind her eyes was visible. She was deciding how much to reveal. The three pieces of intelligence he had given her were worth considerably more than three questions. She owed him. And curiosity was a factor. The questions told her something about who she was talking to.
"The Celestial Mandate Court," she said. "Their name is not coincidental. Their leader, Li Wei, believes the Sovereignty Mandate is approaching. He claims prophetic lineage. He says his family has maintained a continuous oral tradition from the Greatest Era and that the signs of an approaching Mandate cycle are present."
"Do you believe him?"
"The Pavilion does not have a position on Li Wei's claims. Officially, we consider the Celestial Mandate Court a legitimate political faction with unconventional religious beliefs."
"Unofficially?"
A pause. Then: "Unofficially, Li Wei is the most dangerous person in the Eastern Domain. Not because he's powerful. He's 4th Path, Stage 9. Sect Master Zhong Shan could kill him in direct combat. Li Wei is dangerous because he believes something, and he makes other people believe it too. He has converted three minor sects to his banner in the past five years. His follower base is growing. The Pavilion watches him the way you watch a fire. Not because it's burning yet, but because you can see it might."
Tianhui looked at her. She had just described the fundamental mechanism of charismatic power with a precision that most cultivators in his era would not have matched. She was a Pavilion clerk in a regional office. She spoke about power the way his colleagues had spoken about power.
He had not expected to find this caliber of analysis in a branch office.
...
Tianhui left the Pavilion office in the late afternoon.
The street outside was busy. He walked through the crowd toward the Bridge Quarter, processing what he had learned, integrating it into the model he was building.
The world was open. More open than he had dared to hope. The strongest cultivator in the Eastern Domain was a 6th-Path practitioner who had stagnated for seventeen years. The theoretical maximum was 6th Path. No one had achieved 7th Path in thirty thousand years.
He had achieved 7th Path before his imprisonment. The proofs were in his mind. The Axiom set was complete. The cultivation framework he had mastered was so far beyond the current era's understanding that there was no meaningful comparison.
He could, theoretically, achieve Sovereignty. He had the knowledge. He had the completed proof-set. What he lacked was a body capable of sustaining it. His current degraded state could barely maintain 3rd-Path operations. Rebuilding to full capability would take years. Perhaps decades.
But he was the only person alive who knew the complete path.
The Celestial Mandate Court's Li Wei believed he was destined for Sovereignty based on prophecy and faith. Tianhui had already done it based on proof.
Two possible reactions existed to this situation. The first was to announce himself. Step into the political arena, declare his capabilities, and reshape the power structure through sheer superiority. This was the fastest path and the most dangerous. In his degraded state, he could not back the claim with force. A coalition of 4th and 5th Path cultivators acting together could kill him before he recovered enough to defend himself.
The second was to remain hidden. Build quietly. Use Li Wei's existing movement as cover. Let the Celestial Mandate Court draw attention while Tianhui rebuilt in the shadow of someone else's prophecy. When his body recovered enough to sustain Sovereignty-level operations, the landscape would already be shaped by Li Wei's disruptions. He could step in at the optimal moment.
The second path was slower. It was also correct.
He walked through the streets of Langfeng and began planning.
...
He returned to the inn. Fuxi was in the common room. She had bought noodles.
He stopped in the doorway. She was sitting at a table in the corner with a bowl of noodles in front of her, chopsticks in her right hand. She had gone to a noodle shop, ordered food, paid for it, carried it back to the inn, and sat down to eat. By herself.
The bowl was half empty. She was eating at a normal pace. Not mechanically. Not slowly. Eating.
This was the girl who, three weeks ago, would not eat unless he put food in front of her and said the word.
He sat across from her. Outside, the evening was beginning. The canal reflected the orange light of the city's formation lamps as they activated one by one, spreading from the center outward.
"How was your day?" he asked.
She looked at him. The question was new. He had never asked her about her day before. He gave instructions. He provided information. He did not make conversation.
She considered the question for what seemed like a long time.
"Different," she said.
He waited to see if she would add anything. She didn't. But the word itself was more than she would have offered yesterday. "Different" contained comparison. It contained evaluation.
"Yes," he said. "It was."
He ordered wine. It was marginally better than last night's. He drank it slowly.
Through the window, Langfeng glowed. The formation lamps cast the streets in warm light. People moved through it.
He had found what he needed from this city. A contact in the Pavilion. A confirmed understanding of the power landscape. A target in the Sapphire Court, whose published papers on 7th-Path mathematics suggested someone inside understood more than the rest of the world thought was possible. And Li Wei's Celestial Mandate Court, gathering followers toward a Sovereignty he could never achieve.
He drank his wine. Fuxi sat across from him, watching the light on the canal.
Tianhui could see what was coming. He had seen it for thirty thousand years, from the darkness below the well.
He could wait.