They returned to real Hejingshui before dusk carrying three facts nobody knew how to arrange. The false village had lived eleven weeks while they had lived two days. At least two Lin Xues had lives there now. Someone else had walked into that place from a road Tianhui had not seen. Xiulan wrote all three beneath LIN XUE and immediately regretted the board's small size. She had barely finished when the first family arrived.
"My daughter has been gone six days."
"My father is seventy-two."
"You have spoken to Lin Xue twice."
"Four versions of her," someone said.
The man who had been speaking turned. "Do you think that helps?" No one answered.
Qiao Ming tried to move the discussion inside the shrine. Too many people followed. The room filled, then the doorway, then the steps. A meeting formed because there was nowhere else for the grief to go. Xiulan hated the word meeting. It suggested chairs and order.
This was twenty people speaking over one another while Fu Lan ladled thin soup into bowls because half of them had forgotten to eat.
A woman whose son was missing pointed toward the road marker. "Why are we still going back for Lin Xue?"
"Because we know how to reach her," Xiulan said.
"You know how to reach four of her."
"We know how to begin reaching them."
"My son has not answered at all."
The accusation was not unfair. Xiulan looked at the board.
A week ago she would have chosen children first. Then the elderly. Then anyone injured. A clean order, if she had been cruel enough to pretend the categories were clean.
Tianhui sat near the back wall with his injured arm in a sling Luo Pei had forced on him. He did not rescue her from the decision. Good. She did not want him to.
"We continue with Lin Xue," Xiulan said.
Several people reacted at once. She raised her voice.
"Because contact already exists. Because every safe thing we learn with her may help us reach the others. Because abandoning the only stable route we have to search blindly would make all forty-one of them less likely to come back."
The room quieted by degrees. The woman whose son was missing did not look convinced.
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"You would say the same if it were your brother?"
Xiulan felt the question land.
Fu Jian had been gone from her life for years while an institution insisted he had returned.
"I do not know," she said.
The woman stared at her. It would have been easier to lie. Xiulan continued. "That is why this cannot remain my decision alone." Qiao Ming exhaled through his nose. "What are you proposing?"
"For now? Nothing permanent."
Fu Lan handed a bowl to the woman who had challenged Xiulan. "Good. Permanent rules made during grief are usually stupid." Nobody objected to Fu Lan's constitutional theory.
They agreed on one temporary rule: continue the established contact until they either opened a reliable connection or proved they could not. Reconsider after that. The rule satisfied almost nobody, which Qiao Ming took as evidence that it might survive the night. It survived three hours. At sunset the broker's seal activated.
The black paper Shen Qing had received unfolded on the shrine table, its surface brightening until a man's voice came through. The broker called himself Samar Vey.
He did not appear. He did not threaten. His voice was courteous enough to make Shen Qing's jaw tighten.
"Captain Shen. I am informed your survey is incomplete."
Shen Qing leaned over the paper. "I am informed your secondary clause nearly killed my crew." A pause.
"I did not author that clause."
"You sold the contract."
"I did."
"Then you sold the knife even if someone else chose where to put it."
Another pause, longer this time. Min Yue sat with a ledger open. Pei Chao stood by the door.
Samar Vey said, "The equipment must be returned. The ownership chain above me is not patient."
"We need the plates."
"You needed them for a survey."
"We need them to reach people your survey helped displace."
The paper remained silent. When the broker spoke again, some of his certainty had gone.
"You mean there are people there?"
Shen Qing looked at Xiulan. Xiulan shook her head.
"Give it another moment."
Shen Qing said, "We have unresolved casualties."
"That phrase hides more than it says."
"So did your contract."
Pei Chao left the shrine. Shen Qing watched him go but did not stop speaking.
"Give us seven days."
"I can give you three."
"Then you can come collect the equipment yourself."
That ended the polite part. When the seal went dark, Min Yue closed the ledger.
"He will not come himself."
Shen Qing rubbed both hands over his face. "I know."
"Someone will."
"I know that too."
Outside, Xiulan found Pei Chao behind the grain store, sitting on an overturned jar. He had his debt token in his hand. The metal was warm enough to steam in the cold air.
"Twelve days?" Xiulan asked.
He nodded.
"Your sister's clinic."
Another nod.
"What happens after twelve?"
Pei rubbed his thumb over the token. "They stop treatment unless I pay the next portion." Xiulan sat on the wall opposite him.
"You could leave."
"I could."
"You could sell information."
His head came up.
"That is not an accusation," she said. "It is a fact."
He looked away. For once, there was no quick answer.
"I already sold something once," he said eventually. "I thought I was selling my own risk."
"You were wrong."
"I know that now."
"What will you do?"
He closed his fist around the token.
"I don't know."
Xiulan believed him. It was not comforting. Before dawn, someone moved one of the contractor plates from the locked equipment shed. They did not take it. They turned it around. Lan Jue found the change because she remembered the scratches on the floor. No one in the village admitted touching it. Tianhui studied the plate, then the doorway, then the wet ground outside. A single muddy footprint marked the threshold.
The tread did not match any boot in Shen Qing's crew. And the mud was pale grey. There was no pale grey soil anywhere in Hejingshui.