The gear window smelled like wet hemp and consequence.
Not the rope itself—rope always had that sour, animal bite when it stayed damp too long—but the layer under it: sweat from hands that already expected to be blamed, and ink from people who made blame official.
The return counter sat under a slanted roof that kept sun off paper and rain off wax. Behind it, a runner with a brush tucked behind one ear leaned over an open ledger like it was a mouth that never closed.
Ren Jiao stopped the team three paces short.
He didn't shuffle into line like a servant. He approached like a man who understood exactly how much a single careless stroke could cost.
Huang Qi held the torn net bundle like it weighed more than hemp.
Li Shen carried nothing visible. That wasn't modesty. It was role.
If you looked like the problem, you got processed like one.
The runner's eyes went over the net, the rope coil, the battered tags tied to each item—then landed on the slip in Ren Jiao's hand.
"Return," the runner said, neutral like the word didn't have teeth.
Ren Jiao set the slip down with two fingers. "Return. With a note."
The brush hovered. "Issued gear is recorded as standard."
Ren Jiao didn't blink. "Standard is a label. Not a condition."
The runner's mouth tightened, the way bored men tightened when they met work. "Torn net is a deduction."
Huang Qi's jaw jumped. "It wasn't—"
Two fingers from Ren Jiao, small and sharp.
Huang Qi shut his mouth like he'd been trained.
Ren Jiao didn't raise his voice. He didn't need volume. He needed something that could sit on paper without sounding like a challenge.
"Write what happened," he said.
The runner snorted. "I write what applies."
Ren Jiao's eyes stayed flat. "You write what you can stand behind."
The brush still didn't move. "Net torn. Rope burned. Damage is damage."
Ren Jiao leaned in just enough to force the runner's attention off the ledger and onto a face.
"I'm not denying it's torn," he said calmly. "I'm denying that it's ours."
The runner exhaled through his nose, irritated. "Everything tears in the field."
"Sure," Ren Jiao said, as if agreeing. Then he slid a second slip onto the counter.
Not the credit slip.
The processing note—small, stamped, and ugly in the way truth had to be to survive.
DAMAGE — ISSUED DEFECT (KNOT FAILURE)
The runner's eyes flicked to the stamp and away so fast it looked practiced.
"That's processing," he said. "This is gear."
Ren Jiao's mouth moved—not a smile, more like math finishing in his head. "The stamp exists. If you deduct anyway, you're contradicting a stamped record."
The runner's jaw worked. "Gear doesn't answer to processing."
Ren Jiao nodded once. "No. Gear answers to review."
Silence settled. Not dramatic. Just the pause where a room recalculated risk.
Behind them, other teams shifted in line—pretending not to listen while taking inventory of what it looked like when someone refused to make it easy.
The runner tapped the ledger with the back of his brush. "If I write 'issued defect' here, it's on me."
Ren Jiao didn't pretend it wasn't a threat. He treated it like one.
"Then call someone with a stamp you're comfortable hiding behind," he said.
The runner's eyes narrowed. "You want escalation."
"I want consistency," Ren Jiao replied. "If returning gear honestly gets punished, what do you think people start doing with broken gear?"
The runner's expression said he already knew the answer and didn't care.
"Wait," he said, jerking his chin toward the side bench.
Ren Jiao stepped back without looking shoved.
That was its own kind of win: making the counter say the word out loud.
They waited.
The line behind them breathed like a tired animal.
Huang Qi's face reddened with contained anger. "They're still going to charge us."
Ren Jiao didn't look at him. "If they can charge, it's because you let them do it quietly."
Huang Qi's mouth opened, then closed again.
Li Shen stayed silent. He watched hands, not faces. Hands betrayed intent long before words did.
A woman in clerk-grey appeared from the side corridor with a slim ledger under her arm. Not senior. Not important. Important people didn't come to the gear window.
But she had a stamp.
That was enough.
"What is it," she said, like the yard had already wasted her patience.
The runner gestured at the bundles. "Damage. Team says issued defect."
The clerk skimmed the processing note. Her gaze paused on the stamp—just long enough to show she was deciding whether acknowledging it would create work for her.
Ren Jiao spoke while she was still balancing that equation.
"Processing stamped it as knot failure," he said. "Gear is trying to deduct anyway."
The clerk's mouth tightened. "Processing doesn't govern gear deductions."
Ren Jiao nodded. "No. It governs records. You govern deductions. If the record says issued defect, then a deduction becomes a dispute."
The clerk looked at the net bundle, then at the rope coil.
She didn't touch them. Touching meant ownership. Ownership meant liability.
"Where's the knot," she asked.
Ren Jiao pointed. "Here."
Li Shen stepped forward—not to lead, just to put his body where a hand would have to reach past him to hide anything. Close enough to matter, far enough to stay unclaimed.
The clerk crouched with the reluctance of someone who resented reality. She pinched the knot between two fingers and lifted.
The tie pattern was wrong in a way that wasn't sloppy. Neat. Repeated. The kind of wrong that held until load hit, then failed clean.
And the break told the same story—clean at the cut point, not frayed along the length.
The clerk's eyes narrowed.
The runner shifted his weight like he was trying to move the moment along with his body.
Huang Qi let out a breath like he'd been holding it since the gully.
The clerk stood and looked at Ren Jiao as if she disliked him for being correct.
"Damage due to issued defect," she said, then turned her chin toward the runner. "Write it as a note. Not as a narrative."
Ren Jiao's voice stayed flat. "I don't need a narrative. I need it not to become theft."
For a half-second, the clerk's brush paused in midair.
Then it moved again, like the pause hadn't happened.
Two small lines.
RETURN ACCEPTED
NOTE: DAMAGE — ISSUED DEFECT (KNOT FAILURE)
NO DEDUCTION
The runner stamped it with the counter seal like he was biting down on something sour.
Ren Jiao took the slip back without a flicker of gratitude.
Gratitude made people feel generous.
This wasn't generosity.
This was procedure surviving contact with a bad habit.
They turned to leave.
And the trap snapped sideways.
"One more thing," the clerk said.
Ren Jiao stopped. "What."
She tapped the team slip with her brush. "Because the gear was defective, future issuance for this team may be… tightened. Until replacement stock is confirmed."
Huang Qi's head snapped up. "That's—"
Two fingers from Ren Jiao again.
Huang Qi swallowed the rest of it.
Ren Jiao spoke slowly, careful enough that every word could be repeated and still hold its shape.
"You're putting the consequence on our name," he said. "When the defect was in your stock."
The clerk's face didn't change. "I'm recording supply policy."
Ren Jiao held her gaze. "Then record it under supply. Not under Team Three."
The brush paused again.
Small pause. Big meaning.
The runner cleared his throat—not to help, just to end the delay.
The clerk wrote, controlled, and just generous enough to keep her own skin safe.
SUPPLY NOTE: REPLACEMENT STOCK PENDING — ROUTES MAY RECEIVE MIXED QUALITY
She didn't erase the implication.
But she didn't nail it to Team Three alone, either.
Ren Jiao accepted that as the best outcome available without opening a formal dispute right there in front of a hungry line.
They left the counter.
The yard air felt colder, even though the sun had climbed.
Li Shen's lower abdomen still carried a dull heaviness from yesterday's bursts—Qi debt that wasn't urgent yet, but wasn't gone.
Ren Jiao walked like his debt was different.
Ink debt. Attention debt.
Huang Qi finally let his anger leak out in a controlled hiss as they crossed the yard. "They tried to make it ours."
Ren Jiao didn't answer immediately. When he did, it was almost bored.
"It is ours," he said. "They just didn't get to charge us today."
Huang Qi swallowed. "So what now?"
Ren Jiao glanced at Li Shen, the look brief but loaded. "Now we treat every 'policy' like a lever. And we stop giving them clean leverage."
Li Shen nodded once.
He already lived that way.
Bai Ren caught Li Shen near the board afterward, where the yard turned events into rumor before ink finished drying.
He didn't smile.
That, too, was starting to feel like weather.
"You made trouble at the return counter," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen didn't bother denying. "Ren Jiao did."
Bai Ren's eyes flicked to Li Shen's hands—clean now—then to the slip tucked in his pouch.
"People saw it," Bai Ren said.
"People see everything," Li Shen replied, voice even.
Bai Ren leaned closer, lowering his words until they blended into the yard noise. "They didn't want to bill you. Billing is loud. They wanted the deduction to feel normal."
Li Shen stared at the board without reading it. "So they'll switch tools."
Bai Ren nodded once. "Hold sheet. Issuance. A clerk who suddenly forgets a code. Something that makes you spend time proving you exist."
"They can't forget stamps," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's mouth twitched—half amused, half annoyed. "You're still treating paper like it wins just because it's real. Paper wins when someone enforces it."
Li Shen didn't argue.
He asked what mattered. "Zhao Kun."
Bai Ren's gaze slid to the gear queue curling like a snake. "Not his hands. His orbit. Proxies. Runners who like him. People who don't mind being paid in favors."
"So conditions again," Li Shen said.
"Conditions," Bai Ren agreed. "They can't beat your record, so they'll poison your environment."
Li Shen looked at the board frame—old wood, deep nails, a structure built to make decisions feel inevitable.
He spoke quietly. "Then I build margin faster."
Bai Ren's mouth tightened. "Sounds like cultivation talk."
"It's not," Li Shen said. "It's tool talk."
Bai Ren studied him for a beat, then nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Tool talk can actually win."
He hesitated—just a fraction—then added lower, like he hated giving anything away without a price.
"Yan's corridor is still active. Private clinic runners keep moving. Whatever's happening there isn't small."
Li Shen's breath shifted once. "Yun Xue."
Bai Ren didn't repeat the name. He didn't have to.
"Just be careful what people get to connect," he said.
Li Shen folded that into his planning the same way he folded slips into his pouch:
Flat. Tight. Ready.
Above them, the board creaked in the wind—old wood remembering it still had teeth.