Deng Sima was buried before sunset.
Hejingshui had no grand cemetery. The dead went to a terraced slope east of the village, where the soil was shallow and morning light reached the graves before it touched the roofs below.
Xiulan had stood there for her parents. She had never imagined returning for Deng.
Sun Lian remained upright through the burial. People brought rice, salt, a coil of cloth, two jars of oil, and money that changed hands without anyone announcing the amount. The mill still needed an owner. Sun Lian's medicine still needed paying for. Death had changed the household; it had not relieved it of expenses.
Deng's younger brother offered to take over the mill. Sun Lian refused. He argued until she said no a second time. That ended it.
After the grave was packed down, Xiulan found her beside the path with the medicine jar in her lap.
"You should take it," Xiulan said.
Sun Lian gave a small, exhausted laugh. "He would be unbearable if I died after all that."
Xiulan sat beside her.
Below them, people drifted back toward the village in twos and threes. Sun Lian waited until the last of them reached the lower terrace.
"I knew he took the money," she said.
Xiulan turned.
"I didn't know what he sold for it. I knew there was money."
"Why didn't you ask?"
"Because I wanted the medicine."
The answer left no clean place to stand. Deng had lied. Sun Lian had chosen not to examine the lie too closely. Both choices had grown from the same fear.
She rubbed one thumb over the glazed rim of the jar. "I slapped him because he let me pretend."
Xiulan had no answer worth giving. They sat until the eastern slope lost the light.
On the second day, the impossible road began collecting observations.
Lan Jue refused the word rules.
"Rules survive repetition," she said. "We have two days."
Qiao Rui started another list and titled it RULES LAN JUE REFUSES TO ADMIT ARE RULES.
Lan Jue read the title. "Your sample size remains inadequate."
Qiao Rui added that underneath.
Objects could cross the line without disappearing. Qi sent across it vanished from every instrument they had. Sound behaved normally unless it began directly on the dark strip.
They learned the last point because Qiao Rui dropped a spoon.
The spoon struck once at her feet. Three breaths later, a second metallic note came from somewhere north.
Silence followed. Qiao Rui picked up the spoon. "I was going to say I meant to do that."
"You did not," Qiao Ming said.
"No. But now I wish I had."
Water poured onto the line flowed north against the slope for seven paces before returning to ordinary gravity. Lin Xue's hairpin made the dark strip shift by less than a finger-width.
Tianhui watched every test with Branch-Sight closed. By midday, restraint had made him irritable enough for Wu An to begin announcing it.
"Ancient master appears displeased."
"I can hear you."
"Observation confirmed."
"Your storehouse remains half repaired."
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Wu An turned toward the roof beams lying in the mud. "My work has escaped."
"Go catch it," Xiulan said.
He went. Tianhui watched him cross the square. "He speaks excessively."
"You answer him."
"I have been trapped underground for three thousand years. Some errors deserve time."
Xiulan nearly gave him the obvious reply. Instead she asked, "Did you know people like him before?"
A small stillness entered his face.
"Yes."
"Were they all dead before you were sealed?"
"Most."
"Most is not all."
"No."
He offered nothing more. Xiulan let the silence remain. She wanted the same courtesy when the questions reached Fu Jian.
Lan Jue tied silk around the hairpin and gave the other end to Lin Xue's husband.
"Do not pull unless I tell you."
He nodded too quickly.
For ten breaths the hairpin lay motionless. Then it slid north by a finger-width. The husband inhaled. The silk tightened.
"Leave it," Lan Jue said.
It moved again. Then a third time.
The thread snapped.
The hairpin vanished.
Lin Xue's husband lunged. Xiulan caught him around the waist before his feet reached the road.
"Let go!"
"You have no idea where it leads."
"Neither do you."
He struggled for two breaths, then folded as if whatever had held him upright had been cut. "I keep losing things she touched."
Xiulan went down with him, one knee in the mud. The road stayed dark and narrow.
Several paces away, Tianhui's hand tightened against his robe. He wanted Branch-Sight. Xiulan knew the signs now: the altered breathing, the way his attention seemed to leave the world before the rest of him.
He stayed where he was. She remembered that.
Shen Qing spent the afternoon writing letters.
One went to the district survey office. Another to the broker who had hired them. The third was for a physician in Qinghe who owed Shen Qing money and might know Pei's sister.
Ren Yu read over his shoulder.
"You are telling the district the truth."
"Yes."
"They may arrest us."
"Possibly."
"You should lie about something."
"Choose a part that does not involve forty-one missing villagers."
Ren Yu thought about it. "I'll get back to you."
From the pallet, Pei said, "I read the contract."
She turned. "You discovered hidden text after it activated."
"It still counts as reading. The text was dishonest."
Ren Yu turned back to Shen Qing. "Why do you keep taking jobs like this?"
He kept writing.
"Sealed employer. Bad route. Pay slightly above reason. Pei assures us the paperwork is fine. We nearly die. Then you find another one."
"My younger brother joined a sect at twelve," Shen Qing said.
Ren Yu waited.
"He lasted eight months."
"That explains very little."
"It explains why I stopped believing institutions become safe because they have gates." He set down the brush. "Independent crews get the jobs nobody wants. We also get to walk away."
Pei stared at the broken token on the table. "Usually."
No one contradicted him.
Outside, the shrine bell sounded once as Lan Jue tested another connection. The contract had ended. The crew remained.
Tianhui met modern cultivation properly that night and disliked it almost at once. Lan Jue seemed pleased by this.
She drew a channel map on a board in Fu Lan's courtyard. Luo Pei shelled peas nearby. Xiulan repaired the strap of her medicine basket. Qiao Rui had been banned from the lesson and was therefore listening from the roof.
"The current system names twelve primary channels," Lan Jue said.
"Incorrect."
A pea struck Tianhui in the chest. Luo Pei held another between two fingers. "Let her finish."
"There are fourteen."
"In your era," Lan Jue said. "Current practice treats two as composite routes. Opening them separately causes more damage than benefit in most bodies."
Tianhui leaned closer to the board.
The model was crude in places and elegant in others. A thousand years of low-level healers had solved problems ancient masters had ignored because ancient masters possessed enough power to survive their own mistakes.
"This is sensible," he said.
Lan Jue waited.
"Very sensible."
From the roof came Qiao Rui's whisper: "He hates it."
Tianhui glanced upward. A pair of eyes vanished behind the tiles.
The lesson continued.
By midnight he had abandoned two assumptions older than every person in the courtyard. He slept badly and woke pleased.
Rain arrived on the third morning.
Hejingshui smelled of wet earth, wood smoke, and repairs delayed again. The impossible road darkened under the water and held its shape.
Luo Pei examined Tianhui's arm before breakfast. "Today." He sat up too fast. She pushed him flat again.
"Today," she repeated. "After you eat."
Fu Lan passed the doorway with an armful of firewood. "He learns slowly."
"I have known him three days," Luo Pei said. "I expected worse."
The channel attempt began at noon.
Lan Jue set a resonance reed against his forearm. Luo Pei kept two fingers on his pulse. Shen Qing tried to keep spectators away, which failed when Qiao Rui climbed the back wall and Wu An brought a stool so he could see over it.
Xiulan sat inside the doorway.
Tianhui closed his eyes. The old instinct came immediately: look first. Find the point of failure. Trace the adjustment before pain had the chance to teach him.
He opened his eyes again. Lan Jue noticed. "Problem?"
"No."
"Then begin when you are ready."
The new route curved through scar tissue, borrowed part of a modern composite channel, and used resonance where force would tear him apart. It was ugly. It was also alive.
He moved the first thread of qi. Pain climbed from his ribs. The reed trembled.
"Too much return at the shoulder," Lan Jue said.
"I know."
"Then change it."
Tianhui almost laughed. He changed it.
The thread reached his elbow. His fingers warmed. Luo Pei counted his pulse aloud and told him to slow down twice. The old Tianhui might have found the situation humiliating: taking orders from a Body Tempering healer and a formation specialist whose ancestors had not been born when he last walked beneath the sun.
The man on the mat wanted the channel more than he wanted dignity.
Qi reached his palm and held there. One breath. Two. Three.
The route trembled. Branch-Sight waited at the edge of thought.
Tianhui listened instead—to Lan Jue's reed, Luo Pei's count, rain ticking against the courtyard tiles.
Four. Five. Six. Seven.
The channel held.
Warmth spread through his hand.