The year-end posting went up before dawn.
Not because it mattered to the yard, or to the men who would freeze their fingers hauling water. It went up because the sect liked closure. The same quotas, reprinted with cleaner ink, stamped harder at the bottom, as if pressing a seal into paper could press order into the world.
Li Shen read it while the board was still wet with cold.
LAST QUOTA CYCLE — CLOSE OF YEAR
Under it were the usual columns: ration adjustments, task rotations, points windows, a list of names moved from one line to another with no apology and no explanation.
Forge was listed under the cultivator section the way it always was—quietly, like a trap everyone pretended wasn't there.
His name sat where it hadn't yesterday.
Forge Line Three — Links & Clasps — Support (Cultivator)
Support meant two things. It meant access. It also meant responsibility without authority.
Bai Ren was on the other side of the board, squinting like the paper might change out of embarrassment.
"Ah," Bai Ren said, voice bright with practiced suffering. "The final cycle. I can feel the sect's sense of accomplishment from here."
Li Shen didn't look away from the line with his name. "You're yard."
Bai Ren leaned closer, eyes flicking over the columns. "Yard," he confirmed, as if it were a noble title. "Hauling water, mixing lime mortar, rebuilding the same wall for the third time this month."
He paused, then added in a lower voice, "They're moving people around again. Small moves. Not the kind that makes noise."
Li Shen absorbed that without reaction. "Keep your head down."
Bai Ren's smile didn't falter. "I keep my head down. I keep my jokes up."
The bell for the first shift rang, thin and sharp in the cold air.
They split with the flow of bodies. Bai Ren disappeared into the yard line—boards, rope, buckets, men packed together like they were inventory. Li Shen moved the other way, toward the forge passage.
The closer he got, the warmer the air became, and the worse it tasted.
The forge didn't smell like fire. It smelled like oil, metal, and something faintly alive in the air that didn't belong in lungs. The sect called it "miasma" when they wanted to sound above it. The men who worked here called it "the bite" when they were honest.
The door guard didn't stop him. He didn't need to. Li Shen's cultivation was the only proof required.
Inside, heat hit him in waves, uneven as the breathing of a sleeping beast. The ceiling was high and blackened. Vents cut into the stone walls pulled some of the worst of the air out, but not enough to make it kind. The floor was packed earth gone hard from years of spilled oil and ash ground under boots.
Lines were already moving.
Line One handled heavier pieces—rings and anchors that needed thicker Qi and steadier hands. Line Two was shaping pins. Line Three—his line—was links and clasps, the small components that failed late, not loud.
Those were the ones that got people killed two days after they left the sect.
He found his station: a low bench, a pair of tongs, a tray of unfinished clasps, and a bucket of spirit oil set beside a dip rack. The oil was darker than it should have been, thickened by cold and use. It clung to the metal like syrup.
A chalk mark on the rack read:
DIPS: 63
Under it, someone had added, almost casually:
SWAP AT 100
Hundred-Dip Rule. No exceptions. No arguments. The only mercy in the forge was that some rules were absolute.
Forehand Ruan moved down the line without hurrying.
He didn't need to. The forge had its own urgency. Men who rushed here burned themselves, ruined batches, or made defects that only appeared when it mattered.
Ruan stopped behind Li Shen's station and watched his hands for a breath too long to be casual.
"Support," Ruan said.
Li Shen didn't answer with a question. Questions in the forge were expensive. "Yes, Forehand."
Ruan's eyes flicked to the oil bucket, to the dip rack, to the tray of clasps. Then to Li Shen's hands again.
"End of year," Ruan said, like it explained the shift. "Quotas tighten. People lie."
Li Shen didn't respond. He didn't need to.
Ruan reached into the pocket of his apron and placed something on the bench.
It looked like a bent pin.
Not a talisman. Not a treasure. Just a strip of metal folded into a narrow U-shape, with a shallow notch cut on one side.
Ruan tapped it once with a fingertip. "Jig."
Li Shen's eyes stayed on it. He let Ruan speak.
"Clasps fail late," Ruan said. "Not in the forge. On the road. In the cold. Under load."
Li Shen nodded once. He'd seen the aftermath in Greyhaven: a broken clasp held up like evidence, a man missing two fingers, someone explaining that the failure had been "unavoidable."
Unavoidable was the word people used when they didn't want to pay.
Ruan pointed at the jig. "You test tension after quench. Every tenth."
"Every tenth?" someone down the line muttered, half to himself.
Ruan didn't look at him. "Every tenth," he repeated, and that was the end of the debate.
Li Shen picked up the jig and felt its weight. It was nothing. It was also a rule you could enforce without a sermon.
Ruan's finger traced the notch. "If the clasp mouth opens past the mark, it goes back. If it closes under, it goes back. Not because it breaks today. Because it breaks later."
Li Shen held the jig up to the forge light and saw the mark—a shallow scribe line, nearly invisible unless you looked for it.
He looked back at Ruan.
Ruan's eyes were flat. Not cruel. Not kind. Just calibrated.
"Measure it," Ruan said. "Or sign your name to a coffin."
Then he moved on.
That was his lecture. One sentence. One tool. One threshold.
Li Shen set the jig beside his tongs and got to work.
He didn't need to warm up. The forge warmed you whether you were ready or not.
He picked up a clasp blank, fed it a measured pulse of Qi, and began shaping.
Iron Grip wasn't a grab here. It was a clamp inside the bones of his hand, a way to stop micro-shakes from turning into slop. Entry still cost. Entry still wanted to flare.
He kept it small.
Pulse. Release. Pulse. Release.
The clasp took form under the tongs. Metal softened, bent, returned to hardness as it cooled. He moved it to the dip rack, counted one under his breath, and lowered it into the oil.
The oil did not welcome it.
It swallowed the metal with a hiss like something offended, and the smell rose sharp—sweet and bitter at once. Heat rolled back into his face. His eyes stung.
He held the clasp steady, not because steadiness mattered in the forge, but because steadiness mattered later.
He lifted it, let the oil drip back into the bucket, and placed it on the cooling tray.
One.
Two.
Three.
The line moved.
He kept the rhythm. He didn't chase speed. Speed wasn't the goal. Repeatability was.
The bell for mid-shift rang. It didn't stop the line. It just reminded the men working it that time was passing whether they earned points or not.
By the time the chalk mark reached DIPS: 72, sweat had soaked the back of Li Shen's robe. His throat was dry—not the brutal sand of Smoke-Sealing, but the slow dehydration the forge demanded from everyone who breathed its air.
He didn't cough. That was a win.
At DIPS: 73, he took the jig in his left hand and selected the tenth clasp from the tray.
Still warm. Warm was important. Warm told the truth. Cold hid it.
He slid the clasp into the jig's U-shape, guided the mouth to the notch, and watched the alignment.
The mouth sat just under the scribe line.
Acceptable.
He exhaled once, quiet.
It would have been easy to skip the test. Easy to trust his hands. Easy to tell himself that his technique was better than the average.
Easy was a lie the forge punished later.
He marked the clasp with a tiny scratch on the inside curve—nothing visible to a buyer, but enough for him to recognize it if he saw it again.
Then he moved on.
Down the line, someone cursed.
A piece had snapped in the oil. Not loudly. Not dramatically. It was a soft crack and a sudden slackness in the tongs, like a promise breaking.
The man holding it—older, stronger, Qi thicker than Li Shen's—stared at the broken piece in disbelief.
Meng, the pragmatist, stepped over and took it from his tongs without ceremony. He looked at the fracture line, sniffed once like scent would tell him the truth, and tossed it into the reject bin.
"That one wasn't today's fault," Meng said, mostly to himself.
The older man bristled. "My Qi is stable."
Meng shrugged. "Your Qi is loud. Your hands are tired. End of year."
Ruan appeared behind them like he'd been there all along.
He didn't scold. He didn't praise. He simply looked at the reject bin and the man's face.
The man opened his mouth.
Ruan held up two fingers—an interruption, not a threat. "Measure," he said.
The older man swallowed the words he'd been about to spend.
Ruan pointed at Li Shen's bench without looking at Li Shen. "Jig."
The older man's eyes flicked over, caught the bent U of metal and the scribe line, and something ugly tightened in his expression—not anger, not jealousy, but the irritation of being shown a solution that implied his failure was optional.
He turned away without speaking.
Li Shen kept working.
He didn't enjoy being right. Being right in the forge meant someone else was wrong, and wrong here had a corpse-shaped shadow.
At DIPS: 81, the oil began to look tired.
Not exhausted. Just drifting. A slight film on the surface, tiny flecks of char. Small changes that became big changes if no one respected them.
Li Shen noted it anyway.
He was support. Which meant, by default, that if the oil went bad and a batch failed late, the blame would roll downhill until it hit someone it could stick to.
He took the jig again.
Tenth clasp.
This one sat slightly over the scribe line.
Not much. A hair's breadth. A mistake you could talk yourself out of.
He didn't.
He placed it in the reject bin.
A cultivator at the next station noticed. "That's a good clasp," he said, voice rough. "It'll hold."
"It'll hold today," Li Shen replied.
The man snorted. "Everything holds today."
Li Shen didn't argue. He selected another clasp and tested it. This one aligned clean.
He worked tighter for the next few pieces—not rushing, but correcting the angle of his wrist, correcting the way he lifted from oil so the drip didn't pull the mouth subtly out of true as it cooled.
The corrections were small. The kind you couldn't see unless you lived in the work.
By the time the chalk mark reached DIPS: 90, his hands were steady in a new way.
Not stronger. Just cleaner.
And his dantian—heavy, loaded—didn't feel like it was slipping.
That was the real proof.
Not that he could do the work. That he could do it again tomorrow.
At DIPS: 99, the line slowed.
Everyone watched the chalk number as if it were a god.
Not because they respected ritual, but because the Hundred-Dip Rule was one of the few things in the sect that acted like justice: it applied the same way to everyone.
Ruan walked to the oil bucket and struck the rim with his knuckle. "Swap."
No one argued. Two men lifted the bucket with thick gloves and carried it toward the disposal pit. Fresh oil arrived in a sealed cask with a stamped tag.
The tag was the forge's version of scripture: a number, a source, and a seal no servant could imitate without losing their hand.
Li Shen watched it set down. Watched the tag. Watched the clerk on the edge of the forge—one of the seated ones—write the swap into a log without lifting his eyes.
Paperwork didn't run the forge.
It followed it like a shadow.
The second oil bucket looked almost too clean. The surface was smooth, reflecting the forge light like dark water.
The line restarted.
In fresh oil, the hiss was sharper. The smell was cleaner. The dip felt more consistent, the way a blade felt when it was actually sharp.
The difference was not subtle.
Li Shen understood then why the rule existed. Not as tradition. As measurement.
Fresh oil didn't forgive sloppy work. It revealed it.
He used the jig on the tenth clasp again.
Perfect alignment.
His throat was still dry, but his cough stayed down. His eyes still stung, but less. His chest still felt loaded, but stable.
Qi2 didn't make him powerful.
It made him repeatable.
That was the point.
Near the end of shift, a runner came through with a small stamped wooden tile and a bundle of tags.
"Inspection," the runner said, voice flat.
Not an audit. Not a trial. Just a check—one of the sect's quiet teeth.
Meng handed over the batch tray for Line Three. The runner counted pieces with fast fingers, checked two at random with a tool that looked like a thin metal fork, and marked something on a strip of paper.
He paused at Li Shen's station, eyes flicking to the jig on the bench.
He didn't comment. But he looked.
Looking was a kind of record.
The runner stamped the tray tag and moved on.
Meng exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for an hour. "Fewer rejects," he said, almost grudging.
Someone down the line scoffed. "Fewer rejects means more work."
Meng wiped his hands on his apron. "Fewer late failures means fewer funerals."
Ruan returned to the line one last time before shift end. He stopped by Li Shen without ceremony and glanced at the reject bin.
It wasn't empty. It also wasn't overflowing.
Ruan's eyes moved to the jig, to the tray, to Li Shen's hands.
"You slowed," Ruan said.
Li Shen didn't deny it. "I measured."
Ruan nodded once. That nod was worth more than praise. Praise attracted attention. A nod was just acknowledgement.
"End of year," Ruan said again, as if the words were a reminder and a warning in one. "People will try to make numbers look right."
Li Shen understood what he meant. If quotas tightened, someone would try to pass bad pieces to meet them. If the batch failed later, someone would need a name to attach to the failure.
Support names were easy names.
Ruan's gaze held Li Shen's for a breath.
"Keep measuring," Ruan said. "Keep your tags clean."
Then he walked away.
The shift bell rang.
Heat didn't leave the forge immediately. It clung to skin and hair and lungs like a second layer. When Li Shen stepped out into the corridor, the cold hit him so hard his teeth ached.
His hands smelled like oil no matter how hard he scrubbed them. The smell would follow him into sleep. It always did.
He didn't go straight to the dorm. He stopped at the wash basin, broke the thin ice at the edge with his knuckles, and washed anyway.
The water burned.
Behind him, footsteps crunched on frozen dirt.
Bai Ren appeared with rope marks on his palms and a dusting of pale powder on his sleeves—lime dust, clinging to cloth and hair like a second skin. It made him look older in the hard winter light.
"Good news," Bai Ren said, as if announcing a festival. "The wall still exists."
Li Shen splashed water over his wrists. "They didn't bury you in it."
"Not yet," Bai Ren said. "They keep trying, though. It's flattering."
He leaned against the post beside the basin, watching Li Shen scrub oil from under his nails.
"You smell like you fought a fish," Bai Ren observed.
Li Shen didn't look up. "Oil."
"Same thing," Bai Ren said cheerfully. "Slippery. Angry. Hard to wash off."
Li Shen rinsed his hands again. The water ran dark, then less dark, then only slightly dark. Enough. Nothing was ever fully clean.
Bai Ren pulled a small wooden bowl from his sleeve and offered it, as if it were a gift.
Inside was a pinch of salt he'd stolen from his own ration. Not much. Just enough to make water feel like it did something.
Li Shen took it without comment and tipped it into his mouth, followed by a swallow of cold water.
Bai Ren's eyes flicked to Li Shen's face. Checking. Always checking, without making it a burden.
Li Shen nodded once.
Bai Ren's shoulders eased.
"Board's weird," Bai Ren said, keeping his voice light. "Names moved. Not the big moves. The little ones. Like someone's playing with who stands next to who."
"I saw," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren made a face of mock disgust. "Of course you did. You see everything and say nothing. It's unsettling."
Li Shen let the smallest edge of amusement touch his mouth and vanish. "You talk enough for both."
"Someone has to," Bai Ren said, then hesitated as if deciding whether to spend a truth.
He did.
"I wasn't like this last year," Bai Ren said. He tapped his own chest with two fingers, the way people did when pointing at something they didn't want to name. "The jokes. The—"
"The positive," Li Shen supplied, not unkind.
Bai Ren snorted. "Yes. That."
Li Shen waited. The wind scraped over the yard, carrying the sound of shovels biting frozen ground.
Bai Ren shrugged, rope shifting on his shoulder. His smile came back, but the reason behind it was visible now.
"When I'm angry," Bai Ren said quietly, "I look like a problem. When I laugh, I look tired."
He spread his hands, palms up, as if presenting a simple equation.
"Tired people get ignored," he added. "Problems get moved."
Li Shen watched him. No judgment. Just understanding.
Bai Ren's bright tone snapped back into place like a scarf pulled tight. "Also," he said, "I decided someone in this place should stay human on purpose. I can afford it. You"—he nodded at Li Shen's oil-stained hands—"you've got other math."
Li Shen didn't argue. He didn't need to.
They walked toward the dorm together, their breath coming out white and thin, disappearing into the year's last cold.
Inside, the ration sheet had been replaced again. Fresh paper. Same numbers. A new stamp at the bottom that read CLOSE.
The sect's idea of time was to reprint it until it felt permanent.
Li Shen sat on his plank, took out his worn booklet, and wrote what mattered.
Not a story. Not an explanation.
Just proof.
Forge Line Three: Batch 112. jig test every tenth. rejects: 4.
Oil swap at 100. fresh oil reveals slop.
Iron Grip: pulses clean under heat. tremor delayed.
Throat dry, no cough. recovery stable.
At the bottom, he added one line, simple and ugly in its honesty:
Measure it. Or pay later.
He closed the booklet and slid it under the plank.
Outside, the wind scraped at the dorm like a file.
Inside, the men settled into sleep like tools put away until morning.
Li Shen lay down and let the day's heat leave his bones.
Tomorrow, the numbers would still exist.
So would the work.
So would the rule that mattered most:
If you couldn't measure it, you couldn't repeat it.
And if you couldn't repeat it, the sect would replace you.