Chen period. Nightcrow Division, Statistical Deviation Room.
The room was colder than the pivot chambers—a cold that had soaked into the walls over years, not the chill of outside air but the cold of things long undisturbed. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stuffed with yellowed breathing records; the edges of some papers had already become brittle, crumbling at a touch. The only light sources were the oil lamp on the table and a small auxiliary ice mirror—only palm-sized, set in a wooden frame, its surface glowing with an extremely faint blue light.
The air held the dry smell of aged paper. That smell would cling to your clothes, linger long after you left.
The middle-aged Statistical Officer sat at the table, reviewing the city-wide breathing data from the past three days.
City-wide Gray Zone value: 0.
Everything normal.
His gaze swept across rows of numbers. City West barracks, Zhang Xi, 0.21—0.01 more than yesterday's 0.2. His eyes paused on that line for 0.1 seconds. Then moved on. Continued looking down.
His gaze stopped at the column labeled "Average Breathing Baseline."
0.33.
Yesterday 0.32. The day before 0.31.
He rubbed his eyes. Looked again. Same.
He called up older records—the past three months, the baseline had been stable between 0.30 and 0.31, occasional fluctuations, never a continuous rise for three days.
He didn't frown. Didn't sit up straighter. Didn't make any "aware of anomaly" movement.
He just flipped to a blank recommendation form and picked up a brush.
The brush tip hovered over the paper, paused for half a breath. Then he wrote:
"Recently, the overall city breathing curve has shown a slight synchronous lag phenomenon. It is recommended to increase the standard ritual interval by 0.01 to maintain stable interpretation."
When he reached the "0.34," the brush tip scratched across the parchment—the paper was slightly thicker there, the ink wouldn't absorb, leaving a thin white streak.
He wiped it with his finger. It wouldn't rub off.
He rifled through the documents beside him. When he reached the bottom, his finger paused for a moment—there was a document there, a very faint fingerprint on its corner. Not his.
He didn't think much of it. Continued searching.
Didn't find it. He started filling in the next field.
That white streak remained.
The recommendation was placed in the "Outgoing" basket. He continued his next task.
Late morning. City South Academy.
A young scholar sat beneath a window, holding The Annotated Book of Rites. Sunlight streamed in from behind him, casting very faint shadows of the characters on the page. He recited quietly, his voice soft:
"...Qi follows its principle, movement and rest have constancy..."
When he reached the words "have constancy," his voice stopped.
0.1 breaths.
Not because the sentence was difficult. He himself didn't know why he stopped.
Then he continued reciting.
Outside the window, the sunlight moved as usual.
Late morning. City East Teahouse.
Few customers. Three tables scattered, each murmuring quietly. The proprietor carried a copper pot to refill tea for the table by the window. Tea streamed from the spout, poured into the cup, eight-tenths full——
His hand stopped.
Half a breath.
The customer didn't look up. The conversation at the next table continued. The proprietor looked at the tea in the cup; the surface trembled slightly, then stilled.
He put away the pot. Turned.
No one felt anything was wrong.
Late morning. City Gate.
The Hour of the Rabbit shift changed with the Hour of the Horse shift. The guard who had stood for four shichen handed his spear to his replacement. Received the spear, stepped back one pace, turned, rejoined the formation—that was the rule.
The replacement took the spear.
Then he waited one extra beat.
Not waiting for anything. Just waiting.
Then he stepped back. Turned. Rejoined.
No one asked him why.
Three pauses. Three lengths.
The Statistical Officer's gaze: 0.1 seconds.
The scholar's voice: 0.1 seconds.
The teahouse proprietor's hand: 0.1 seconds.
The guard's extra beat: one beat, but in that beat, 0.1 seconds of waiting.
No one knew—last night Helian Xiang's judgment delay had been 0.1 seconds. No one knew—the half-beat in the Northern Camp's empty space was still 0.1 breaths.
These numbers, at this moment, were scattered in different corners of the city, each existing on its own.
Afternoon. Helian Xiang's pivot chamber.
The ice mirror still ran, faint blue light patterns flowing across its surface. He finished reviewing the third batch of waveforms for the day, placed the last file into the "Verified" basket. On the desk corner lay another document—sent from the Statistical Office, still unopened.
He picked it up.
Recommendation for Baseline Fine-Tuning.
He saw that number: 0.34.
"Baseline slightly increased by 0.01. Confirm?"
His face showed no expression.
He remembered last night's premonition—0.33. Remembered that 0.1-second delay. Remembered the line he had left in his work journal: "Subjective interference could not be fully excluded."
Now the system told him: the baseline is 0.34.
Not his fault. Not the instrument's fault. The baseline itself needed adjusting.
He picked up the brush. Wrote one character in the reply column:
"Approved."
Then he stamped it. The bronze seal pressed down, cinnabar ink oozed slightly. He looked down——
The round seal was no longer perfectly round. Offset by one degree.
Not enough to notice. Not enough to matter. Just enough to be—different from before.
He didn't re-stamp. Placed the document in the "Verified" basket. As his fingers left the paper, they paused at the basket's rim for 0.1 seconds. Then withdrew.
This was the second offset. The first was his own judgment delay. The second was the ink's offset.
Neither was an anomaly.
But both existed.
Midnight. The North. East Three Sentry.
Moonlight. Snow. That wooden stump.
Bo Zhong still sat there, right hand pressing against the dark boundary. From the night they left until now, he hadn't moved that hand. He ate with his left hand, leaned against the stump to rest when tired, and when he woke, his right hand was still in place.
The pulse beneath his palm was steady. Inhale—empty space—exhale. Inhale—empty space—exhale.
The ice crystal flower in the moonlight. Seven petals complete. Six fully formed, the seventh had long since closed.
But tonight——
On the inside of the seventh petal, extremely fine lines appeared. Not cracks. Not growth. A change in direction. The grain that had originally extended outward, at a certain point, turned back and extended inward an extremely short distance.
Bo Zhong didn't look down.
He didn't know when that direction had changed.
But he felt it: the cold beneath his palm hadn't shallowed further. It just maintained.
Maintaining, itself, was a response.
Hour of the Ox. Nightcrow Division. Spirit-Pivot core.
The system automatically generated an announcement:
"Baseline adjustment complete. City-wide breathing stable. New standards effective from the Hour of the Rabbit."
Announcement archived. Unread.
The same moment—City West barracks.
Zhang Xi slept, his chest rising and falling. His breathing depression value appeared on the ice mirror: 0.21.
Not 0.2. Not 0.22. It was 0.21.
The baseline was 0.34.
The Northern depression was 0.33.
His depression was 0.21.
These three numbers, within the same system, separated by three layers of filing shelves, could not see each other. The system did not ask them to. The system only needed them to exist—separately, archived, contained.
No one knew they formed a sequence.
No one knew the space between them—0.13, 0.12, 0.21—was not random.
The ice mirror recorded. Archived automatically.
Filename:
"Ritual Standard · First Day Post-Adjustment Sample"
The ice mirror dimmed. The document rested silently in the archive's depths.
Outside the window, the moon shone as usual.
Breathing continued.
Baselines held.
[CHAPTER 162 END]