The road did not soften after the fight.
The mist thinned into a wet haze, rain turning from needles to a patient drizzle that never fully stopped. The straps grew heavier as mud clung to them. Every few hundred steps, Deng Kai's crate shifted a finger-width, and he corrected it without looking down.
He did not change his grip, but his shoulder betrayed him in small ways. The right side lagged when they adjusted pace. When the road dipped, he compensated with his legs instead of his arm, jaw set tight enough that the muscle twitched beneath the skin. He did not ask for relief.
No one offered it.
Yao Jing stayed close enough to catch a slip before it became damage, but she never touched the crate unless it actually moved. Her attention remained where it mattered: seals, straps, footing, spacing. When Deng Kai's breath shortened, she stepped half a pace nearer, closing the gap without making it obvious.
Cao Renyi said little. When he did speak, it was only to keep the road orderly.
Xu Qian felt his own cost in a different way. The fight had left his meridians with a dull, uneven heat that refused to settle. It wasn't the clean pain of a cut. It was the wrong kind, the kind that came from forcing circulation through a body that still fought itself. Whenever he lifted and rebalanced the load, he felt qi leak in thin, useless threads where it should have held.
He did not force it again.
He guided what remained with care, accepting a slower rhythm. The road did not reward effort. It only punished mistakes.
By mid-afternoon, the outer wall of Qingshi City came into view. It was low by sect standards, thick stone weathered smooth by years of traffic. The gate guards were not cultivators. They were men with spears and tired eyes, doing their work because the city required it.
They glanced at the sect marks on the crates and waved them through without asking questions.
Inside, the streets were narrow and damp, roofs pressed close above. The city smelled of wet wood, cooking oil, and smoke trapped by low clouds. Shops kept their doors half-closed against the rain, lanterns burning faintly even in daylight.
The registry node sat off the main road in a plain building with a heavy door and a lintel carved with simple characters. Inside, the air was thick with ink and old paper. Clerks worked at narrow desks, brushes moving in steady rhythm. The work did not hurry for weather or blood.
Cao Renyi placed the transfer slip on the counter. The clerk compared stamps and times without expression. He looked at the crate seals, then at the ledger, then at the seals again.
"Damage?" he asked.
"None," Cao Renyi replied.
The clerk marked the ledger. His brush did not hesitate.
Only then did his eyes lift, briefly, as if acknowledging that people existed in addition to cargo. His gaze paused on Deng Kai's shoulder, the way he held it too still.
"Transport injury?" the clerk asked.
"Yes," Cao Renyi said.
Another mark. Smaller.
"Room three," the clerk said. "When your turn comes."
They waited on a bench against the wall. The corridor outside the treatment rooms smelled of boiled herbs and damp cloth. Two other teams sat further down, quiet and tired, each with the same look: cargo delivered, bodies still paying.
Deng Kai remained standing. Yao Jing stood beside him, not close enough to look like comfort and not far enough to look like indifference. Xu Qian sat, hands folded loosely, and worked his breathing into something steady. He guided qi in a slow loop, not to heal but to prevent further loss.
It stabilized nothing. It simply kept him from spiraling.
When their turn was called, Deng Kai went in first. Cao Renyi followed to speak for the ledger. Yao Jing stayed in the corridor. Xu Qian waited.
The treatment room was not a sanctuary. It held a table, a basin, and shelves lined with jars marked in neat script. The man behind the table looked older than the corridor made him seem, his hair white and his posture slightly bent. His eyes were sharp.
Physician Lu did not greet them.
He took Deng Kai's arm, pressed along the shoulder, rotated it with practiced firmness, and listened to the breath that hitched as bone protested. Deng Kai hissed once and then went still, as if refusing to give the pain anything to hold.
"Strain and displacement," Physician Lu said. "You held weight past tolerance."
"I know," Deng Kai replied.
Physician Lu glanced at the registry mark, then back at the injury.
He applied a bitter-smelling salve that stung on contact and bound the shoulder tight enough that Deng Kai's posture shifted immediately. The pain eased from sharp to dull, from scream to warning.
Physician Lu did not offer reassurance. He did not ask how it happened. The ledger already answered the only question that mattered.
"Two days without load," he said. "After that, light duty only. Any faster and you'll lose range permanently."
Deng Kai nodded once. No argument. No gratitude.
Cao Renyi accepted a stamped slip and tucked it away. "Logged," he said, and that was the end of it.
They returned to the corridor. Yao Jing's eyes flicked to the bind and then to Deng Kai's face, reading whether he could keep moving.
Deng Kai flexed his fingers slowly. "It's fine," he said.
"It's recorded," Cao Renyi corrected, and they left the registry building.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a wet mist. The streets were busier now, not because people wanted to be out but because life continued whether the sky cooperated or not. Shopkeepers hung damp cloth to dry. A butcher wiped his hands on an apron already stained beyond saving. Couriers ran under oiled capes, heads down.
Yao Jing took the receipt for returned straps and disappeared into the registry annex with the same quiet efficiency she had shown on the road. She did not ask whether they would wait. She assumed they would.
Xu Qian expected Cao Renyi to take them back to whatever cheap lodging transport teams were assigned. He expected the day to close in the same dry manner it had been processed: stamped, recorded, and discarded.
Cao Renyi surprised him.
He stopped in front of a low building tucked between two warehouses, steam curling from a vent in the roof. A wooden plaque hung above the door with plain characters burned into it.
Public Bath.
Deng Kai blinked at it as if the words were out of place. "We're… done?"
"We're logged," Cao Renyi said. "That's the same thing, for now."
Xu Qian hesitated. The idea of stopping, of sitting still with nothing demanded of him, felt wrong. The road still lived in his muscles.
Deng Kai noticed. He gave Xu Qian a look somewhere between annoyance and relief.
"Relax," Deng Kai said. "We already carried the crates. Stop walking like you're still under them."
Cao Renyi pushed open the door before Xu Qian could answer.
Inside, the air was warm and wet, heavy with mineral scent. The entrance hall had two corridors branching away, marked clearly. Men. Women. No ambiguity. No excuses.
They went into the men's side.
The changing room was plain. benches, hooks, baskets, a worn floor that had been scrubbed so many times the wood had lost its grain. A notice board sat near the inner door with rules written in large characters.
No fights. No disturbances. No crossing.
Violators will be reported to the city guard.
Below it, someone had added a smaller warning in darker ink.
Walls are warded.
Deng Kai stared at the sign, then looked at Cao Renyi. "You're reading that, right?"
Cao Renyi's mouth twitched. "I can read."
Xu Qian didn't know what he expected next. Maybe silence. Maybe a return to duty. Instead, Cao Renyi unfastened his robe like a man shedding a burden rather than clothing.
"You'd be shocked how many people think rules are suggestions," Cao Renyi said, voice lighter than Xu Qian had ever heard it. "The ward doesn't care what you think."
Deng Kai let out a short laugh that sounded like something he hadn't done since before the mountain. "So you've tried."
Cao Renyi glanced at him. "I've observed. You'll learn the difference, if you live long enough."
They washed quickly at the basin stones before stepping into the steam room beyond. The spring itself was cut into stone, water dark with minerals, surface rippling gently. Heat rose in slow waves.
Xu Qian lowered himself in carefully, expecting pain, expecting his body to rebel. The water closed around him, and the tension in his shoulders loosened without permission. His breath deepened. The ache in his meridians didn't vanish, but it blurred at the edges, no longer the only thing he could feel.
For the first time since induction, his body stopped bracing.
Deng Kai sank with a groan that turned into relief halfway through. "That's… actually worth something," he muttered, leaning his head back against the stone.
Cao Renyi eased in like someone who knew exactly how much heat his muscles could take before it became a problem. He rested his arms along the rim, eyes half-lidded, and for a moment he looked less like a senior outer disciple and more like a man who had simply gotten tired.
"Don't mistake this for healing," Cao Renyi said, as if reading Xu Qian's thoughts. "It's not medicine. It's comfort."
Deng Kai scoffed. "Comfort sounds like medicine."
"Comfort is a pause," Cao Renyi replied. "Medicine is a bill."
Xu Qian almost smiled. He didn't. The warmth made his face feel unfamiliar, as if expression were something he hadn't used in too long.
Steam condensed on their skin and ran down in slow lines. The room was quiet except for distant water sounds and the soft murmur of men talking in another pool.
Deng Kai glanced toward the inner wall separating the corridors, then quickly looked away. "The warded walls thing… city guard reports… that's serious?"
Cao Renyi's eyes opened a fraction. "It's serious because it's cheap. The guard likes easy work."
Deng Kai grunted. "So no peeking."
Cao Renyi's voice went dry again, but the edge carried amusement. "If you want to lose an arm in a public bath, I won't stop you. I'll just make sure the ledger says it was your idea."
Deng Kai laughed once, a real sound this time, then winced when the movement tugged his shoulder. He settled back, jaw tight again.
Xu Qian listened to them, to the way the words changed shape in steam. It was strange to hear the world spoken about without fear. Strange to see Cao Renyi loosen without collapsing.
The warmth did not make Xu Qian stronger. It did not clean his foundation. It did not fix the damage in his meridians.
But it did something else. It reminded him what his body felt like when it wasn't being demanded from.
When they finally rose, water streaming off them, the ache returned sharper at the edges, as if the spring had only borrowed it for a while. Deng Kai rolled his shoulder carefully and hissed under his breath. Xu Qian's meridians flared with the old heat the moment he tried to guide qi.
The relief had been real.
So was the limit.
They dressed in silence. When they stepped back outside, the city had changed tone. The rain had eased into mist. Lanterns were being lit along the street, small points of warmth against wet stone.
At the registry node, shutters were closing. Clerks packed brushes and sealed ink pots. A bell did not ring. Instead, a man lifted a lantern at the doorway and hung it in its hook, the light declaring the end of work more clearly than sound ever could.
Yao Jing waited near the annex door, dry and composed as if steam and fatigue were things that happened to other people. She handed Cao Renyi the returned strap receipt without comment. Her eyes flicked once to Deng Kai's bind and then away.
"Lodging?" she asked.
Cao Renyi nodded and led them down a side street to the cheap quarters assigned to transport teams, rooms that smelled of damp straw and old soap. Nothing here was pleasant. It was only sufficient.
Inside his room, Xu Qian sat on the edge of the bed and let the quiet settle.
He guided qi once, slowly. The warmth from the spring made circulation feel smoother for a few breaths, then the familiar leakage returned, indifferent to comfort. The pain in his channels stayed what it had always been: consequence, not cultivation.
He opened the Foundation Sword Refinement Manual and read a passage he had marked earlier. This time he didn't try to apply it. He read it like a warning, noting the assumptions built into every line.
Clean retention. Stable response. A body that obeyed.
He closed the book.
Pain didn't mean progress.
Relief didn't mean progress either.
Outside, lantern light steadied in the mist as the city settled into night. Xu Qian lay back, eyes open for a long time, and listened to the quiet proof that the world continued without caring whether he had learned the lesson or not.