The note was small enough to miss if you didn't know where to look.
A narrow strip nailed low on the forge board, under the day's batch headers and oil warnings, written in the same ink that made hunger official.
COVERAGE WINDOW — LATE
Line Three: escort hardware
Assigned support: Li Shen
No praise. No explanation. Just a name placed into a time slot that stole sleep.
Li Shen read it once and didn't let his face move.
He had learned the difference between punishment and selection.
Punishment was loud.
Selection was quiet, because it needed you to accept it.
The corridor into the forge still tasted like heat and old oil. The thaw outside had turned the yard to slush and wet wood, but inside, winter didn't matter. Fire didn't care about seasons.
Line Three was already moving.
Meng stood at the edge, watching the flow without looking like he was watching anyone in particular. He saw Li Shen's eyes flick to the board and gave a small grunt.
"You got selected," Meng said.
Li Shen set his kit down. Jig. Tongs. Dip rack. The stone base with the scratch marks for the oil count.
"Coverage," Li Shen said.
Meng's mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost not. "Means you'll be here when bodies stop being polite."
Li Shen didn't ask why.
Why was always the wrong question.
The right question was: what does it cost.
The cost arrived with a person.
A young man stepped into Line Three's heat with the stiff posture of someone trying to stand like he belonged. Cultivator-servant, barely. Entry-level, the kind of stage that made you dangerous mostly because you thought you were real now.
He carried a small tool roll like it was a badge.
A runner pointed at Li Shen's station. "With him," the runner said, already walking away.
The young man bowed too deep. "Senior—"
Li Shen cut him off. "Name."
The young man blinked. "Wu."
Li Shen waited.
"Wu Kai," the young man said quickly.
Li Shen nodded once. "You follow. You don't improvise."
Wu Kai swallowed. "Yes."
He looked relieved, as if being given a rule meant he could stop thinking.
That relief was a problem.
Thinking was where errors were caught.
Relief was where errors happened.
Li Shen didn't explain that. Explanations made people comfortable. Comfortable hands got sloppy.
He pointed at the dip rack and then the jig.
"Watch," Li Shen said.
Wu Kai leaned in too close. He smelled like cheap soap and nervous sweat that the forge heat immediately turned sour.
Li Shen began the work.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
Iron Grip only when the metal demanded it—short clamps, clean releases. Pulse. Release.
Smoke-Sealing stayed out of his throat until it needed to be there. The forge air didn't just dry lungs. It recorded it. Every cough was an announcement.
The first hour passed clean.
Wu Kai stood behind him, watching with the tense focus of someone afraid to be yelled at. He asked questions anyway, because fear didn't stop mouths.
"Is that the right angle?" Wu Kai whispered.
Li Shen didn't look up. "It's the angle that passes the jig."
"And the dip count—"
"The count is on the stone."
Wu Kai's eyes flicked to the scratch marks like they were runes.
Li Shen kept moving.
A lot didn't care if you were tired.
A lot cared if you drifted.
By the time the late window arrived, the line looked different.
Not because the metal changed.
Because the men did.
Voices thinned. Movements got slightly slower. Tiny hesitations started to appear—hands hovering a fraction longer before touching a tool, eyes narrowing more often as if the heat was making the world blur.
Li Shen felt it too.
A weight behind his eyes. A roughness in his throat that wasn't sand yet but wanted to become it. A hunger that sharpened instead of dulling as the shift went on.
He didn't feed it Qi.
He fed it discipline.
He tightened his cycles. Shorter clamps. Cleaner releases. No extra holds.
Wu Kai tried harder as the window went late.
Harder meant faster.
Faster meant mistakes.
It happened on a clasp batch—tight mouths, small tolerances. The kind of piece where "almost" looked identical to "correct" until it failed someone else's day.
Wu Kai reached for the rack too early.
Not dramatic. Not a thrown tool. Just fingers moving toward the wrong row, because he thought he was helping by being quick.
His sleeve brushed the edge of a cooling tray.
One piece shifted.
Barely.
But the shift was enough.
The alignment on the rack was a map. If you moved one piece, you created a question: did it move because it was set wrong, or because someone touched it.
Questions were poison.
Li Shen's hand snapped out and caught Wu Kai's wrist with Iron Grip—not a crush, not a show. A clamp that stopped motion. A message delivered through tendon and bone.
Wu Kai froze.
His eyes went wide. "I— I didn't—"
Li Shen released him immediately, before the clamp left a mark.
He didn't shout.
Shouting made witnesses curious. Curious witnesses turned into narratives.
Li Shen set his tongs down carefully.
Then he stopped the line.
Not by ringing bells. By holding still long enough that the rhythm broke.
The men beside him noticed the silence and looked over. Meng's gaze lifted from two stations down.
Li Shen spoke once, calm and flat. "Witness."
Meng didn't ask why. He walked over like it was already his job.
A runner drifted closer too, drawn by the scent of a possible problem.
Li Shen pointed at the rack. "He brushed it."
Wu Kai's face went white. "I didn't mean—"
Li Shen cut him off without looking at him. "Meaning doesn't matter."
He lifted the tray, showed the shifted clasp, then set it back down and indicated the jig.
"Test now," Li Shen said.
Meng's eyes moved over the rack, the pieces, the count marks. He grunted. "Do it."
Li Shen took the shifted clasp first and seated it in the jig.
Click.
It didn't seat clean.
Not a dramatic failure. A small resistance that told the truth.
Wu Kai made a sound in his throat like he wanted to apologize and didn't know what form to shape it into.
Li Shen didn't let the sound become speech.
He pulled the clasp out, adjusted the mouth alignment with two controlled taps, then seated it again.
Click.
Clean.
He did a second clasp from the same rack row.
Click.
Clean.
A third.
Click.
Clean.
The line could have kept going without anyone ever noticing if the wrong clasp had been mixed in with the right ones.
But now it was documented, corrected, witnessed.
Meng looked at Wu Kai for the first time. "Don't touch racks you don't own," he said.
Wu Kai bowed too deep again, panic in his shoulders. "Yes, Forehand—"
Meng didn't correct the title. Titles didn't matter to men like him. "If you guess again," Meng said, voice empty, "you go back to the yard."
Wu Kai's mouth opened, then shut. He nodded hard.
Li Shen resumed the rhythm.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
The near-miss had cost him minutes.
Minutes in a late window weren't just minutes.
They were visibility.
A runner leaned too long on a post watching his station. Another worker glanced over more often than he should.
The line didn't get dirtier.
The air around him did.
Wu Kai stood behind him now like a shadow that had learned fear properly. He didn't speak. He didn't move unless Li Shen told him to.
Good.
But it didn't solve the real problem.
The assignment itself was the attack.
The sect didn't have to sabotage the metal.
It just had to sabotage the rhythm.
When the late window finally ended, Li Shen's throat was rough and his eyes felt scraped. He didn't cough. He swallowed dry and kept his face still.
Wu Kai bowed at the edge of the line as if Li Shen had saved his life.
"Thank you," Wu Kai said, too sincere.
Li Shen didn't accept gratitude he hadn't asked for. "Don't touch racks," he said.
Wu Kai nodded quickly. "Yes."
Then he hesitated. "Senior Li… why me?"
Li Shen looked at him for a beat.
"Because you're available," Li Shen said.
That was the truth that kept both of them alive.
Wu Kai swallowed and stepped away, shrinking back into the flow of the forge like a man who had learned what "selection" felt like.
Li Shen cleaned his station, counted the dip marks on the stone base, and scratched the final line for the day.
His hand trembled once when he lifted the oil ladle.
Late.
Still late.
But closer than it should have been.
Outside the forge corridor, the air hit him wet and cold. The yard smelled like mud and lime and boards that would rot if they weren't braced properly.
Bai Ren was near the dorm side, shoulders damp, carrying two planks at once like he was proving something to himself. He looked tired on purpose. He looked happy on purpose.
He looked up when he saw Li Shen and immediately widened his grin.
"Congratulations," Bai Ren called, loud enough for two passing servants to hear. "You survived another day in the holy furnace."
Li Shen didn't stop walking. Bai Ren fell into step beside him like it was accidental.
Bai Ren kept his voice bright. "They assigned you a friend?"
Li Shen's eyes stayed forward. "Helper."
Bai Ren made a face as if that tasted worse. "That's the word they use when they want you to carry something that doesn't belong to you."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Bai Ren nodded like that was answer enough. He adjusted the planks on his shoulder with a grunt and kept smiling, because smiling turned observation into boredom.
"They're saying it openly now," Bai Ren said, still cheerful. "Not names. Not yet. But the idea."
Li Shen asked the useful question. "Where."
Bai Ren's grin didn't move. "By the board. By the wash basin. Anywhere men wait with nothing to do but watch other men."
Li Shen exhaled once, slow.
Bai Ren kept going, because he understood that information needed to be packaged to survive the walk.
"They like your hands," Bai Ren said. "The way you keep them clean."
Li Shen's jaw tightened a fraction.
Bai Ren lifted his free hand and wiggled his fingers dramatically. "Very offensive. It makes the rest of us look like we have hobbies."
A servant passing behind them snorted.
Bai Ren laughed too loud.
The laugh was armor.
Then, as they neared the dorm entrance, Bai Ren dropped his voice one notch.
"I heard the phrase," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen didn't look at him. "Which phrase."
Bai Ren's eyes stayed on the planks. " 'Clean record means assigned to assist.' "
Li Shen nodded once.
Bai Ren's grin softened for half a breath, just enough to be human. "So we make you boring," he said. "And we keep you alive."
Li Shen walked into the dorm.
Bai Ren peeled away toward the brace stack, still smiling like a fool, because fools were tolerated.
Li Shen sat on his plank, took a drink of ration water, and let the heat leave his bones slowly.
His throat stayed rough.
His eyes felt scraped.
He had paid for today with sleep he hadn't even had yet.
He pulled his ledger out and wrote a single entry, cold and short.
Dorm plank — late window coverage
Fact: assigned helper; near-miss on rack corrected under witness; batch stayed clean.
Cost: throat rough; tremor closer if greedy.
Action: coverage nights = no extra holds; if helper reaches rack → stop + witness immediately.
He closed the ledger.
The system had changed its angle.
It wasn't trying to make him fail.
It was trying to make him tired enough to fail himself.