Morning arrived like steam that remembered the pot is the hero and therefore did not ask for witnesses.
The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone kept its small, steady warmth.
Stay, it said—the way a table says eat before anyone decides to argue.
Lin Yunyao set two cups on the root of the Seventh Pine and unwrapped a square of cloth. Three flat breads waited, browned where the pan had disagreed and then made peace. She left space for a third cup and did not fill it. Some habits are doors; you keep them open to remember you live in a house.
"Today we teach clear," she said.
"Wipe a plan when it tries to be immortal," Yinlei answered. "Use water and knees."
Elder Shi Tianjing climbed the last steps with weather in his knees and patience in his breath. He greeted the cups before the people, as always. In his hands: a clay bowl the color of honest mud, a folded cloth woven with a pale line at knee height, a small wooden squeegee shaped like a flat thumb, and a thin cake of ash soap tied with flax thread.
"Tools for forgetting on purpose," Shi said, laying them on the root. He lifted the bowl. "Water that won't argue." He shook out the cloth. "Stripe at knee for where to bend." He held up the squeegee. "To lift ink without turning humility into a flood." He tapped the soap. "A little sting for old stains."
"And if someone accuses us of destroying knowledge?" Yunyao asked.
"We don't destroy," Shi replied. "We rinse what tried to become a statue in a kitchen."
They went to the kitchens first. Warmth breathed from clay pots. The cook shoved a basket of scallions at Yinlei and pointed at a board that had known sharper knives and forgiven them. He sliced into thin coins, salted once, and stopped before the pot decided it was a river. Yunyao bruised mint and set it at the window so the room would remember to be kind. Li Wei—already there with a loaf wrapped in clean cloth—caught a junior's hurry with two fingers on his wrist.
"Breath first," Li Wei said. "Hand after. Today the room learns to wash its face before it starts pretending to be a portrait."
On the inner path, Elder Wu waited with a ledger and nothing else—confidence, perhaps, that chairs now arrived when summoned. Registrar Han carried a sleeve of blank slips and a stub of chalk. Prefect Pan wore rope where seals used to bully his belt; his fingers remembered slack like a song. Ren tucked brushes into her sleeve; Shu squared his towel with the ceremony of a small general.
"Post the sentence where mouths go," Wu said.
They crossed the yard. The jaw above the door had become a grammar even a tired wrist could hear: Later. Enough. Share. Return. Lend. Borrow. Keep. Enough-for-now. Bind. Beneath the lintel, the shelf kept its small parliament of honest tools: blue ash at Ready, wick at Rest, broom head at Repair, tin tag flipped to go where jobs had surrendered their drama.
Yunyao lifted a fresh board. Ren wrote the day's line in strokes that preferred soap to speeches:
Clear: kneel to the stripe, wet the cloth, lift what has turned into worship; leave what still feeds.
Below, the recipe for knees and hands:
Bend to knee stripe.
Wet—don't drown.
Squeegee once; soap only where ink refuses kitchen.
Say: "Good work stays, worship goes."
Review at dusk: what you spared must feed.
The market arrived with shoulders at the useful angle. Auntie Niu came first, wrists bright with steam, spoon held like an opinion that had learned to wash before dinner. The hawker Zhu followed with his placard—clean side already showing. Tao the miller brought flour ghosts and the smell of grain's compromise with stone. Du the ferryman arrived with rope that accepted its own nouns. Captain Ma's caravan lined the square's edge—wagons like commas that had happily retired from auditions. The capital scribe Lan's coat had made peace with humility. Accountant Bian carried his book of wrists and a bar of worry he hoped to exchange for soap.
"Begin with yesterday," Yunyao said, nodding toward the rope. "We paste recipes where work happens. Recipes shed their skins."
Han clipped off two slips that had earned smudges and sugar: Carry-with count and Lend-with care. Their edges had collected thumbprints like small, stubborn histories. "Not worship," Han said, sniffing like a man learning to bless without nostalgia. "Just dirt."
Shu dipped the cloth, knee stripe a quiet supervisor, and wiped once. The smudges softened. Ren drew the letters back with a slow brush—same words, cleaner edges, humility preserved. "Clear isn't rewind," she said. "It's a fresh ladle for the same soup."
At the bucket line, a chalk diagram from three days ago had evolved into a fresco nobody needed anymore. Arrows and numbers had married arrows and numbers and declared themselves irreplaceable.
"Worship," Li Wei said, pointing, and knelt. He wet the cloth. The chalk bled into new sky. He squeegeed once; the marks lifted. Beneath the fresco, three knee-high dashes remained where hands had trained themselves. "Keep the dashes," Yunyao said. "They still feed."
The ward thread over the eastern terrace plucked—polite, then less. Buckets formed. Zhu shouted the count on three. The seam accepted chalk as compliment. The bell on the sill was handed a towel and continued its dignified retirement. Clear did not interrupt water; it made room for it.
Spectacle arrived disguised as reverence: two scribes from the Office of Records, hats crisp, sleeves whiter than rain, carrying a roll of parchment thick enough to accuse people of living.
"We are here to archive," said the taller, a woman named Miao with a voice like a shelf that wanted to hold boulders.
"Archive what?" Elder Wu asked, genuinely curious.
"Your boards, scripts, slips, chalk marks," Miao said. "For posterity."
"Sit," Li Wei said, and the oiled linen lowered a finger-width. The chalk line brightened. The scribes sat. "Name," Yunyao prompted.
"Miao," said the tall one. "And Ke." They placed the parchment on their knees, where kneecaps can hear arrogance.
"What do you carry?" Yunyao asked.
"A record that will outlast soup," Miao said.
"Read it twice," Elder Shi said.
She did. The first time sounded like salvation with glue. The second sounded like a museum that had mistaken the kitchen for an exhibit. Auntie Niu repeated the bones—boards, slips, chalk, all forever. Knees across the square resisted worship without requiring a meeting.
"Clear," Yunyao said, soft as a rag. "We keep what feeds."
She knelt by the rope, wet the cloth, and wiped one slip—the earliest version of Later, so service can be true—just once. The letters softened enough to be rewritten by the day's hand. Ren traced the same sentence fresh, hardly changing a curve. "Archives," Ren told the scribes, "are for recipes still cooked. Not for fossils."
Ke's mouth fought a smile and mostly lost. Miao eyed the soap. "What if we only copy?" she offered.
"Copy what feeds," Li Wei said. "Knee height. If you must stand on a stool to admire your ink, you've made a god of it."
They walked Miao and Ke to the bucket line, to the ferry planks, to the shelf under the lintel. "If a plan cannot be washed, it has no business near soup," Auntie Niu concluded. Miao made a note and managed not to underline it twice.
From Painted Gate came a guild steward with an altarpiece of a signboard—scroll-cut edges, lacquer thick enough to choke a town. The sign declared, in strokes sharpened for stabbing, that all markets henceforth would be subject to a Superior Efficiency System. The title wore uppercase like a crown with opinions.
"Close for spectacle," Li Wei said. The linen dipped. The chalk line brightened. The steward set his masterpiece on a stool and tried to look innocent.
"Name," Yunyao said.
"Dao," the steward replied. "Steward of Signs."
"And what do you carry?"
"Authority," Dao said, indicating his lacquer with a flourish he had practiced in a mirror. "Also, instructions."
"Worship," Auntie Niu said. "We cook those."
She dipped the cloth, set the knee stripe to her shin, and wiped a corner of lacquer to see if it would listen. It did not. Shi rubbed the ash soap over the squeegee's edge and drew it across a line; the strokes fogged, then softened. Dao gasped like a man who had not seen rain in paintings before.
"Good work stays," Yunyao said, and aimed at three lines that were actually useful—market hours, third bell for returns, knee stripe policy for shelves—and spared them. "Worship goes." She wiped the flourish under "Superior." It left like smoke deciding to be sky. Dao watched his crown become a hat and then a towel with writing on it.
He swallowed. "And if my office complains?"
"Send them to eat," Elder Wu said. "We'll wash their hunger into work."
By first bell, clear had cleaned eight small tyrannies with water and left ten humble sentences that still fed.
At the infirmary corner, a chart of symptoms had metastasized down a wall—ink praising ink about ink. The midwife stared at it the way one looks at a relative who has overstayed a festival. "It helped," she said. "Then it began to think it lived here."
"Clear," Du said. "Knees first."
They knelt. Wet. Wipe. Lift. Ren left three drawings that fit on a hand: cough, fever, bleeding; and three verbs that refused to perform: sit, rest, call. The wall sighed, grateful to be lighter than a diagnosis.
Two boys, Jiao and Min, had turned their rotation slip (today: Jiao; tomorrow: Min) into a banner pinned at eye height with added drawings of dragons and a dramatically large numeral three. Shu tapped the knee stripe under the jamb. "Your game learned pride," he said. "Wipe."
They wiped. The dragons retreated to a corner of the next slip where dragons belong—kitchen doodles, not laws. The rotation remained, readable at knee height, which is where fairness goes to drink.
A problem arrived that wished to be complicated: a visiting philosopher in a robe that enjoyed adjectives and a beard that had known two poets and one map. He announced that written rules must never be erased because all ideas deserve immortality.
"Close for spectacle," Li Wei said, automatic as breath. The linen dipped, the chalk brightened, the philosopher sat and became lighter by half his robe's weight.
"Name," Yunyao said.
"Shen," he said. "Of the Fifth Hall."
"What do you carry?"
"A thesis about mercy to ideas."
"Read it twice," Elder Shi said.
He did. The first reading sounded like kindness to ink. The second sounded like cruelty to wrists. Auntie Niu put the cloth in his hand. "Kneel," she said, not unkind.
He bent to the stripe—beards must obey knees, too—and wiped one corner of the bucket diagram's old fresco. It lifted like a mistake grateful to be corrected by love. He laughed, startled by the pleasure of a plan that didn't mind bathing.
"Clear," he said softly, as if the word were a brush that had stopped shouting. "I accept."
By midmorning, the square shone with a deeper kind of clean: not sterile, only un-impressed with itself.
— The rope's slips read fresh.
— The jamb's knee stripe no longer bore announcements of private genius.
— The ferry planks kept their toes behind paint, not pride.
— The shelf's tin tag flipped to go at a touch and stopped pretending to be a medal.
— The market hours stayed—the sentence that feeds; the crown under them washed away—the sentence that starves.
The Office of Coordination's spokesman Fu—yesterday's net now practicing rope—returned with a revised chart that was mostly blank. "I deleted everything we worshipped," he said, almost ashamed and then relieved. "Please tell me what to leave."
"Leave what feeds," Yunyao said, and tapped three knee-high places: bucket count, lane bells, shelf pegs. Fu wrote only those, large enough to read and small enough to live beside.
The Office of Claims clerk Yao arrived with a regulation about stamp placement and a long preamble whose only job was to adore itself. "Clear?" he offered, already reaching for the cloth like a recent convert to a religion of soap.
"Clear," Ren agreed, and together they wiped the preamble until it apologized for having been born. The regulation at knee height remained: no stamp without a shadow on the rope.
At second bell, the ward thread forgot to be stubborn. The bucket line moved like a sentence that no longer had to pretend to be poetry. The square did not look new; it looked edible.
"Bring it to the arch," Shi said softly to Yinlei, the way a grandfather asks for water after good bread because good bread deserves to be escorted.
They chose the clay bowl of water, the knee-striped cloth, the flat wooden squeegee, the ash soap tied with flax, and three saved sentences:
— Open for service; close for spectacle.
— Return with stories; repay with repair.
— Enough-for-now: stop here for now.
At the arch, the stone had written nothing. It had learned to rest from telling people what they already knew. Yinlei set his left palm on the cool and his right over the mark. He did not ask with his mouth.
What do you want?
Down, the ear answered, pleased in that quiet way rooms are pleased when walls wash their faces. Then—with the hush of water that knows where to go:
Clear.
They knocked. Two light beats and a pause. The door opened because it wanted to be a door. The obelisk stood in the middle of enough. The crystal held Mu Qingxue standing the way water holds reflections it intends to keep. Her eyes went to the bowl, the cloth's knee stripe, the squeegee, the soap—tools that had decided to make memory behave.
"Ask first," she said.
What do you want? Yinlei asked the ear again.
Clear, the ear repeated, delighted to be a verb that keeps houses from becoming museums.
They descended. The under-room waited like a kitchen between rushes. The low chair kept its angle. The trough held water to purpose. The drum did not need to be touched to keep time.
Yunyao set the bowl on the stone so the ear could see its surface not admire itself. She unfolded the cloth and laid the knee stripe across her lap. She set the squeegee at the rim of the trough, the ash soap beside it like a conscience that doesn't gossip.
"Read," she said.
Yinlei read the board's sentence and the recipe for knees and hands. He read the three saved sentences. He spoke, Good work stays, worship goes, and the drum between his ribs obeyed like a room that had finally had enough of its own speeches.
Pressure arrived—librarian, priest, and clerk in one coat—enthusiastic to embalm. It tried to lacquer the words onto stone. It tried to rename water as danger and cloth as vandal. It offered to certify memory against kitchens and to certify kitchens against memory.
Yunyao dipped the cloth—wet, don't drown—lift while you turn, and wiped one stubborn corner of a phrase that had started to call itself law. Letters softened; meaning remained. She drew the squeegee once; the extra shine left without applause. She touched the soap to the place where an underline had been sharpened into a spear. The spear became a line became breath.
"Thank first," she said to the room. "Then move."
The pressure, disappointed to learn it would not be allowed to own tomorrow, wandered off to inventory a cathedral.
"Name gently," Qingxue said.
They named sentences that had learned to wash without confessing to crimes. They named plans trimmed to recipes, rules kneeling to knee stripes, posts that refused to become sculptures, banners that agreed to be towels, charts that accepted retirement without ceremony. They named the market as a house that would rather be clean than commemorated. They named clear as a craft: the mercy that keeps rooms from worshiping their former victories.
The trough answered with a ring no bell could steal.
"Tomorrow," Qingxue said, lowering her hand, "teach set: how to let what you've washed dry in wind and not in pride. Write it where sun finds the sill."
"We will," Yinlei said.
They climbed. Shadow became hallway. Elder Shi leaned where doors like to consult grandfathers. He smelled clean water, ash, and the relief of letters that had remembered their job.
"How many?" he asked, which is how he asks who.
"A bowl that refused to be a mirror," Yunyao said. "A cloth that teaches knees how to read. A squeegee that lifted worship and left recipes. Soap that apologized for stains. A steward who watched lacquer become sentence. Scribes who copied what still feeds. A philosopher who got his beard wet and laughed. A market that can wash itself. A house that stayed a kitchen."
"Enough," Shi replied, which is how he says good.
They crossed the yard. The corridor looked newer without being young, like a face that had stopped shouting. On the shelf under the door, the tin tag flipped to go where three little slips had dried and returned to hands. The knee stripe at the jamb glowed faintly with the day's attention. On the rope, the slips breathed. The bucket line did not pose. The ferry planks accepted toes behind paint. The sign from Painted Gate now read simply: Market Hours: first bell to dusk, third-bell returns; shelves at knee.
Auntie Niu washed her stall's board, sparing prices and scrubbing slogans. Zhu wiped his placard until only soup and time remained. Tao washed chalk handprints from a post and left the knee pin shining. Du rinsed the ferry's name—Old Willow—until it looked like a friend again and not an ancestor demanding incense.
At the pine, evening chose a color that forgave everything it touched. They tore the breads and salted them and ate without correcting the recipe. The mint made their fingers smell like useful promises. The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone warmed like a lamp in a room that had decided to survive by being ordinary well.
Li Wei brought the slate and asked—by the handle, not the blade—"May I write?"
"Write," Yunyao said.
He wrote in the careful script of someone becoming honest with letters:
Clear: kneel; wet; lift worship; spare what feeds.
Good work stays; worship goes.
Wet—don't drown.
Squeegee once; soap where ink refuses kitchen.
Review at dusk: what you spared must feed.
Later, so service can be true.
Enough, so rooms stay honest.
Share, so mercy has edges.
Return, so gifts walk home.
Lend, so tools travel with care.
Borrow, so mouths knock in the right key.
Keep, so holding doesn't become hoarding.
Enough-for-now, so tomorrow survives.
Bind, so ideas are pulled, not posed.
Open for service; close for spectacle.
Convert threats to requests.
Bridge with slack; don't tighten.
Keep names.
Serve first.
Walk slower. The house will still be here.
Yinlei added one small line beneath, for tomorrow:
Set to sun—dry where the sill meets wind; no drying on altars.
Night cooled the root of the pine. Crickets practiced until they believed themselves. The Seventh Seal did not crack. It learned to wash plans like bowls and filed the knowledge where plain things go when they intend to outlast applause.
Clear.