He bought it because it was cheap.
A thin booklet behind the points window, stacked like scrap cloth and priced like the sect expected nobody to bother.
TECHNIQUE USE PRIMER — COMPLETION STAGES (SERVANT EDITION)
Cost: 2 points
Policy: no returns after stamping
The clerk slid it across the plank without lifting her eyes.
"Two points for paper," she muttered. "People really pay for this?"
Li Shen took it. Light as nothing. Two points as real as food.
"People pay more for coughing," he said.
That got her to glance up—one quick look, annoyed at being right.
"Fine," she said, already reaching for the stamp. "Lose it and don't come whining."
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The stamp hit. The booklet became his problem.
On the inside cover, the sect had printed a box in the same cold ink as every other rule:
COMPLETION STAGES (TECHNIQUE USE)
Entry — executable; unstable; high cost; visible tells
Small Completion — reliable under work conditions; predictable cost
Great Completion — efficient; low tells; repeatable under strain
Perfection — integrated; minimal waste; reflex-level execution
Li Shen stared at it longer than the page deserved.
He'd been living those lines without names.
Smoke-Sealing that worked, but left his throat dry if he pushed it.
Iron Grip that aligned metal, but turned into tremor if he held it for ego.
Grey Step that felt clean once, then charged him double if he repeated it too fast.
The sect hadn't taught him anything.
It had just labeled the cliff edge he kept walking along.
He folded the booklet into his sleeve like it was contraband.
Not because it was forbidden.
Because anything that looked like intention got noticed.
---
At the yard board, a fresh sheet had been nailed over older postings—ink still dark, edges still stiff.
FIELD NOTE — ESCORT HARDWARE
CLASP SLIP (UNDER LOAD)
HANDLER INJURY — MINOR
RECHECK PRIORITY CONFIRMED
The yard didn't react with shouting.
It reacted with silence.
People read it, then looked away like reading too long might invite the next line to include their name.
Bai Ren was already there, half a step off the crowd, arms crossed like he was waiting for soup to boil. He didn't drift closer. He didn't make it obvious. He just spoke when Li Shen reached the edge of his orbit.
"Well," Bai Ren said, bright as a morning he didn't trust, "your chains got fan mail."
Li Shen kept his eyes on the notice. "Clasp slipped."
"Minor injury," Bai Ren replied. "Major appetite for blame."
Li Shen didn't smile, but he also didn't push the humor away. Bai Ren's jokes weren't weakness. They were airflow.
"Anything else?" Li Shen asked.
Bai Ren nodded toward the paper like it was the least important part of the board.
"Don't read the words. Read the room." He lowered his voice. "Who posted it. Who stood here long enough to see who flinched."
Li Shen flicked his gaze once—fast, controlled.
Two runners "checking" old notices. One of them had clean shoes.
Bai Ren caught the look and gave a small, satisfied nod. "Yeah. That kind of morning."
Li Shen shifted the booklet deeper under his sleeve. "I'm heading in."
Bai Ren leaned back, casual. "Try not to become a lesson. The sect hates lessons."
Li Shen paused half a breath. "I bought a booklet."
Bai Ren blinked, then lit up like he'd just found entertainment that didn't cost him points.
"No," he said. "You didn't."
Li Shen didn't deny it.
Bai Ren grinned. "Two points?"
Li Shen's eyes narrowed a fraction.
Bai Ren laughed under his breath. "Of course it was two points. You bought a glossary for survival." Then, still light, but not empty: "If it has a chapter called 'How Not To Cough Like A Guilty Man,' memorize it."
"I'll tell you if it's worth it," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren waved a hand. "Don't you dare. If it's useful, they'll reprice it to five."
---
The forge air hit him the way it always did—smoke low, heat high, and that faint bite under everything that made the lungs remember.
Lane three was already back on escort hardware.
CHAIN LINKS / CLASPS
RECHECK: HIGH
QUENCH: SPIRIT OIL — 12/100
His stone base marking from yesterday was still there, chalk dug into rough surface:
LOT 3 — NEW OIL — 0/100 — LS
Someone had tried to rub it once. The stone had resisted. The chalk was scuffed, but readable.
Good.
Li Shen didn't look for enemies. He looked for drift.
Smoke-Sealing came on shallow—no dramatic lock, just enough to keep ash from turning each breath into a reportable sound.
Seal.
Work.
Release.
He set the cadence to the work, not to his nerves.
Ten links. Gauge. Quench. Count.
The number by the oil jar wasn't just a rule now. It was a metronome.
A clasp blank came under his hammer.
The shape was simple. That was the trap.
He heated it, set the tooth edge, and brought Iron Grip on in a short pulse—forearm tight, wrist aligned—then off.
He'd been doing it like that for weeks.
But the booklet's words made him watch himself differently.
Entry — visible tells.
When Iron Grip got sloppy, it didn't look like failure. It looked like overholding. Fingers too rigid. Tendons too loud. A tiny tremor you only noticed when you tried to be precise.
He kept it short.
Pulse. Align. Release.
His forearm stayed quiet.
Across the lane boundary, Meng worked without speaking for a while, then finally said, "You're breathing different."
Li Shen didn't glance over. "I'm breathing."
Meng snorted. "Same lungs. Different decisions."
Li Shen checked the clasp bite with the gauge. "I bought a booklet."
Meng's hammer slowed a fraction. "A booklet."
"Two points," Li Shen added.
Meng made a sound between a laugh and a groan. "Two points to read what your tendons have been screaming for free."
Li Shen didn't argue. "It's useful."
Meng leaned in a little, careful not to step into Li Shen's lane like that would make him responsible for the conversation. "What's it call the stages?"
Li Shen hesitated, then said them like inventory items:
"Entry. Small Completion. Great Completion. Perfection."
Meng tasted the last word like it was poison sugar. "Perfection," he repeated. "They really print that where servants can see it."
"They print it," Li Shen said. "They don't fund it."
Meng nodded once, practical again. "So where are you?"
Labels were dangerous. Labels became claims. Claims became taxes.
Li Shen answered with cost, not pride.
"Smoke-Sealing is cheaper than it was," he said. "Less throat burn. Still not quiet."
Meng listened like a man judging a blade with his thumb. "So… still Entry."
Li Shen didn't confirm. He didn't deny.
"And Iron Grip?" Meng asked.
Li Shen rotated the clasp, felt the tooth seat. "Clean, if I don't overhold."
Meng's mouth twitched. "So you're renting Small Completion on good days."
Li Shen kept working. "That's fine."
Meng grunted, approving in the only way he knew—by not mocking it.
---
Cai Shun passed behind them mid-shift, silent as smoke.
He didn't stop at every lane. He stopped at the lanes that could cost him.
He stood behind Li Shen long enough for the heat to notice the extra body.
"How's Lot 3," Cai Shun asked.
Li Shen didn't look up. "Within tolerance."
Cai Shun's voice stayed smooth. "Field note came back."
"I saw," Li Shen said.
Cai Shun's eyes flicked to the quench jar. "Keep your count clean."
Li Shen answered like he was repeating policy, not negotiating. "Hundred dips. Swap under witness."
Cai Shun's mouth tightened, almost imperceptible. Visibility irritated him.
Then he said, "Forehand Ruan will do spot checks."
Li Shen's hammer didn't change. "Understood."
Cai Shun lingered half a breath longer—just enough to make it pressure—then moved on.
Meng waited until Cai Shun's footsteps blended into the forge's constant noise.
"Spot checks," Meng murmured. "That means somebody's hunting for a soft hand."
Li Shen didn't respond.
He didn't have a soft hand anymore.
He had a hand trained by smoke, paper, and the simple fact that failures always found a place to sit.
---
Forehand Ruan arrived near mid-shift, not with a speech, but with a ledger strip and a bored face that meant she'd seen too many men try to outrun rules.
She checked the oil count first. Then the stone base writing. Then the seal.
Her eyes paused on the responsibility strip—now named—then moved on without comment.
She picked up a clasp, tested the bite with a tool that looked older than her patience, and put it back.
"Fine," she said.
One word. Not praise. Clearance.
Li Shen kept moving. He didn't thank her.
Ruan's eyes dropped to the corner of his sleeve where the booklet edge peeked out.
She didn't reach for it. She didn't ask permission. She just said, like she was talking to the forge itself:
"That little book won't make you better."
Li Shen didn't stop hammering. "It might make me cheaper."
Ruan's mouth curved—barely. "It'll make you honest. That helps more."
He risked one question, carefully. "Small Completion—what does it look like in work?"
Ruan didn't look at him. She watched the clasp under his hammer.
"It looks like doing it twice," she said, "and still having hands tomorrow."
Then she walked away.
That was the closest thing to teaching the forge offered.
---
By end of shift, Li Shen's throat was dry but not raw. His forearms were tired but not shaking. His lower abdomen held that familiar heaviness—Qi fatigue, not damage.
Stage 2 didn't make him a different man.
It made him a man with a wider margin before he fell apart.
He washed until ash stopped living under his nails.
On the way back toward the dorm lane, a runner cut across his path and pressed a small packet into his palm without slowing.
No explanation.
Just a sealed fold and a thin slip.
The seal wasn't a forge mark.
It was clean. Corridor-clean. The kind of stamp you saw on private clinic trays that didn't sit in servant lines.
Yan's wing.
Li Shen didn't stop walking. Stopping made you interesting.
He slid the packet into his sleeve and read the slip later under the dorm's dull lamp.
BREATH TEA — NIGHT USE
DO NOT SHOW AT WINDOWS
No signature.
No name.
Just help that refused to call itself help.
He set the packet beside his bowl and didn't let himself think Yun Xue's name out loud.
Names were hooks. Hooks got pulled.
---
That night, he opened the booklet on his bed plank like it was a map.
Not a dream map.
A work map.
He read the completion box again, then the sections written for servants: tells, overuse signs, recovery intervals.
No mysticism. No heroic promises.
Just brutal practicality.
He sat cross-legged, back straight enough to keep his lungs honest, and ran Smoke-Sealing without smoke.
Seal.
Hold.
Release.
At Entry, the hold always came with a dry edge, like his body argued the seal. Tonight, the dryness came later.
Not gone. Later.
That was margin.
Iron Grip next—no metal, just alignment.
Pulse in the forearm.
Release.
At Entry, the pulse left a faint tremble if he repeated too quickly. Tonight, he spaced it with breath, and the tremble didn't come until later.
Later was survivable.
Grey Step last—only two steps along the dorm aisle, careful not to turn training into a rumor.
Entry Grey Step worked, but it charged breath. He stopped before it charged him twice.
Then he brewed the breath tea.
It tasted like bitter leaf and clean ash.
He drank slowly and felt his chest loosen—not Qi, not breakthrough—just the body unclenching.
When he finally wrote in his journal, it was two lines, no table:
> Servant Edition primer acquired. Completion stages clarified.
Smoke-Sealing: still Entry, cheaper hold. Iron Grip: clean only in short pulses.
He paused, then added the line that mattered for tomorrow:
> Small Completion isn't a title. It's a cost you can actually afford.
Outside, the dorm settled.
Somewhere in the yard, the field note still hung on the board, ink drying into future questions.
Li Shen let it hang.
Tonight, he didn't train for their paper.
He trained for his lungs.