They returned to the other Hejingshui with fewer people and more rules.
Shen Qing recited them before anyone stepped onto the road.
"We leave if the northern bell rings twice. We do not approach the masked people. We do not follow a new road because it looks interesting. We do not improvise with unknown relations."
Tianhui adjusted the binding on his shoulder.
Shen Qing pointed at him. "That last one is mostly for you."
"I had inferred that."
"I want verbal confirmation."
Tianhui inclined his head. "I will not alter an unverified relation without your order or Lan Jue's measurements."
Lan Jue said, "That is sufficiently narrow to be useful."
Shen Qing checked the road ahead. "Good. If either of you discovers a loophole, keep it until everyone is home."
Xiulan stepped through before the argument gained grandchildren.
The false village had changed again.
Three days had passed in real Hejingshui. Xue said eight had passed here. Anu remembered nine.
Nobody tried to turn the numbers into a ratio.
Lan Jue wrote each account separately.
The located Anu waited beside the mill wall with Keshi's knocking pattern scratched into the plaster. When she saw Xiulan, she ran over, stopped a pace away and asked the question before anyone could greet her.
"Did he answer?"
"Every hour," Xiulan said.
"Too much."
"That was also his mother's opinion."
Anu nodded as if an important adult matter had been settled.
Tianhui crouched beside the mill wall. "Do you remember the second signal?"
The girl's face tightened. "Sometimes."
"Today?"
"Since morning."
"Where?"
She pointed east.
There had been no road there during the previous visit.
Now a lane passed between two houses and continued farther than the village should have allowed. The stones were wet. Beyond the last roof, mist moved against the wind.
Shen Qing said, "We are not following it."
Tianhui nodded.
The captain stared at him.
"What?" Tianhui asked.
"I was prepared for resistance."
"You have repeated the rule enough times."
"Good."
"Do not sound disappointed."
They worked in the east square instead.
The purpose was simple: test whether a present choice on both sides could strengthen a relation more reliably than memory alone. Lan Jue gave each Xue a piece of plain wood. Xiulan remained on the near side of a narrow voice contact. When the signal stabilized, each woman marked her wood without discussing the shape first.
The first trial failed because two women chose circles.
The second failed because one mark smudged before the relation formed.
On the third, Xue cut three crooked lines into the wood and Xiulan, without knowing why, drew the same number in charcoal on the response plate.
The contact strengthened.
Tianhui felt the change through his channel.
"Again," he said.
Xue shook her head. "No."
Lan Jue stopped writing. "Why?"
"Because every time you learn something, the next visit becomes easier for you." She pointed toward the road they had used. "You come. You ask. You leave. Can we open your side?"
No one answered immediately.
Tianhui went still.
The assumption had been so basic he had stopped seeing it. They called real Hejingshui the near side because they lived there. They called this village the far side because they traveled to it. The road itself had never agreed.
"Return is a direction," he said.
Xue folded her arms. "You have said that before."
"I had not applied it correctly."
"That is less impressive."
"Your assessment is fair."
Lan Jue was already rearranging the plates in her mind. "If the destination can reverse, then our current formation is wrong. The response side is permanently privileged."
"Can you change it?" Xiulan asked.
"I can make it worse very quickly. Improvement will take longer."
That was when Anu screamed.
The new east lane had opened. It had not existed when they arrived, and the separate signal that had answered beyond the false village now ran through its stones. Lan Jue looked once at the plate, then at the lane.
"The third relation has attached itself to this settlement," she said. "I do not know whether the road moved the child or moved the boundary."
A child stood in the mist beyond the last house.
Anu.
The second one.
The located Anu ran three steps before Shen Qing caught her around the waist.
"Let me go!"
Shen Qing tightened his grip without hurting her. "You stay behind the active line."
"That's me!"
"I know who you see."
"Then let me go!"
"When the road stops changing under your feet."
The second Anu stood at the edge of the lane, close enough to see the bruise on her cheek.
The first Anu stopped fighting.
For several seconds the two girls simply stared.
The second one raised her hand.
The first did the same.
Tianhui felt the relation between them like a wire pulled tight.
"Do not open it," Lan Jue warned.
"I am not."
"You are thinking loudly."
He ignored that.
The second Anu pointed behind herself.
Three masked figures stood farther down the mist road.
They had not brought a bell this time.
One carried a black disk identical to the object left at the real boundary.
Shen Qing released Anu and drew his sword. "We are leaving."
The first masked figure bowed.
Not to Tianhui.
To the second Anu.
The child flinched.
The lane began to narrow.
"Wait!" the first Anu shouted.
The second girl shouted something back, but the road swallowed half the words.
Keshi's name.
Mill.
Then one clear sentence:
"Tell him I remember too."
The lane closed.
The first Anu stood in the square with both hands clenched.
Nobody told her the other girl was gone.
They had learned better than that.
They left the false village before the northern bell could ring.
Back in real Hejingshui, Keshi listened to Xiulan's account without interrupting.
When she finished, he went to the mill wall and added a second knocking pattern beneath the first.
"What does that one mean?" Qiao Rui asked.
Keshi scraped the last mark deeper.
"I don't know yet."
Qiao Rui crouched beside him and copied the pattern onto a loose piece of plaster. From the lane, Fu Lan called both children to eat before the soup cooled.