Wu Jin chose ceremony because ceremony was the last language the city still pretended to understand.
At noon, beneath a sky dulled to a colorless glaze, he walked to the Gate of Auspices with a reduced honor guard. The banners of Ling An were raised, freshly mended, their threads catching what little light remained. Bells were rung—not the deep bells of alarm, but the thinner chimes of continuity. Clerks read proclamations affirming markets, weights, courts. A king's voice, steady and measured, promising order.
Zhou officers stood at the edges of the square, uninvited and unopposed. Southern envoys lingered farther back, faces solemn, hands folded as if at a memorial. Imperial clerks from Liang took notes.
The crowd watched.
They did not cheer.
They did not jeer.
They waited.
When Wu Jin stepped forward to pour the ceremonial libation—wine to stone, stone to earth—the wind shifted. The liquid did not splash.
It slid sideways.
A ripple ran through the square as if the ground had shrugged.
Somewhere behind the crowd, a child laughed once, then stopped.
Wu Jin held the cup a heartbeat too long. He finished the rite anyway. Applause followed, scattered and uncertain, like rain that could not decide to fall.
Zhou's senior observer inclined his head politely.
The Southern envoy murmured condolences for the "strain of transition."
The proclamation ended.
Nothing had changed.
Wu Jin returned to the palace with the taste of dust in his mouth, understanding at last what the veil had done. It had not erased his authority.
It had rendered it optional.
Across the city, Wu An watched from a rooftop, the ceremony unfolding as geometry rather than meaning. Lines of sight. Distances. Reaction times. He felt the being inside him settle into a colder alignment—not approving, not condemning.
Selecting.
"Now?" Liao Yun asked quietly.
Wu An nodded.
The disruption was not loud.
There were no cannons.
No marching.
At three separate districts—chosen not for strength but for function—Wu An moved.
In the Grain Ledger Ward, Black Tigers seized the audit house at the moment Zhou clerks completed their counts. Ink spilled. Seals vanished. Ledgers burned in controlled fires that left the walls untouched. The clerks were escorted out unharmed, confused, carrying nothing but memory.
In the Wells Quarter, Golden Dragons fired a single volley into the air—not at people, not at buildings—shattering the signal lamps Zhou had hung at intersections. Darkness fell unevenly. Patrol routes lost their rhythm.
At the North Silk Exchange, Wu An himself walked through the hall and cut the cords that held the balance beams. Scales toppled. Measures rolled. Merchants froze as if the idea of equivalence had been insulted.
No blood.
No slogans.
Just the removal of calculation.
Zhou reacted immediately—efficient, contained. Units redeployed. Observers withdrew from public corners. Southern envoys sent messages with faces carefully composed.
The veil shuddered.
Not torn.
Cracked.
The tower answered.
A localized distortion rippled outward from its base, folding a single street into a curve that returned on itself. A courier ran for two minutes and arrived back where he started, breathless and convinced he had been chased by himself.
Wu Shuang felt it like a hook under the ribs.
She staggered, catching herself against the stone, breathing shallow. The cadence she had altered wavered, then stabilized in a harsher key.
"You're letting him scar it," the Lord Protector said, watching the tremor's echo fade.
Wu Shuang lifted her head. Her eyes were steady.
"He's removing the polish," she replied. "Not the structure."
The Lord Protector considered this. His displeasure was precise, contained.
"Polish hides seams," he said. "Seams invite leverage."
"Or collapse," Wu Shuang said softly.
Far to the south, the Southern King rode at the head of a column that did not look like an army.
White canopies.
Incense wagons.
Carved standards wrapped in silk.
Priests rehearsed hymns. Scribes practiced phrasing. Engineers measured streets and gates for processions. The Emperor's colors flew above it all, unchallenged.
A rehearsal without an audience.
"Not yet," the envoy reminded him gently. "The city must feel the absence before it welcomes the return."
Back in Ling An, Wu Jin received the reports in quick succession—the burned ledgers, the darkened lamps, the ruined scales.
He closed his eyes.
"He's right," he said to no one. "He's tearing out the arithmetic."
General Han hesitated. "Shall we denounce it? Arrest someone?"
Wu Jin shook his head. "No. If I condemn it, I validate the veil. If I bless it, I become complicit."
He opened his eyes, weary and clear.
"Let it stand."
Across the rooftops, Wu An watched Zhou units pause, recalculating in the absence of their instruments. The being inside him tightened—not satisfied, not hungry.
Attentive.
Shen Yue joined him, her voice low. "You made them blink."
"Yes," Wu An said.
"And now?"
He looked toward the tower, where the light had sharpened, edges newly visible.
"Now we see who needs the veil more than we do."
Above them, the sky dimmed again, not with clouds but with anticipation.
The ceremony had failed.
The disruption had succeeded.
And somewhere between the two, the city began to understand that its next transformation would not be announced by bells or banners—
but by the moment when everyone realized the rules had changed, and no one could remember who had written them in the first place.