The merchant left us at the crossroads. He went east. We went west.

  I waited until he was gone. Then I thought about what I'd heard.

  Three sects. Three approaches. And we were heading into the territory of the one that didn't search — it organized.

  I needed distance. More than the Black Moor feint provided.

  Wei was walking ahead. Fourteen steps now. The distance between us was growing.

  "Yun."

  He'd stopped. Was looking back. Past me. At the road behind us.

  "Someone's following."

  I turned. Looked. Nothing. The road was empty.

  "Nobody's following us."

  "Not following. Watching."

  I extended my senses. Road behind: empty. Trees: occupied by wildlife and wind and the ordinary business of ecosystems. Sky: indifferent.

  Nothing.

  But Wei's face. He felt something my instruments couldn't confirm.

  "The trees are too even," he said.

  I looked at the trees. Oak, birch, the usual northern mix. Spaced as the forest had placed them, the organic randomness of—

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  No.

  The spacing was wrong. Subtle. The trees were evenly spaced. Symmetric. As if planted by someone who valued regularity over naturalism and whose cultivation philosophy extended to the physical world.

  Heaven's Order. Their fingerprint extended to the landscape. They didn't just occupy space — they organized it. The result was a world slightly, almost imperceptibly, too tidy.

  I was already a hole in the qi field, a place where signal should be and wasn't. But Wei was a beacon. His unstable core leaked presence the way a cracked lantern leaks light. In organized territory, in a landscape that had been tuned to notice asymmetry, he was obvious.

  "Give me your wrist," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because you're loud."

  He looked down at himself. "I'm not—"

  "Not your voice."

  I held his wrist. Pushed the technique through contact: a pulse, then a compression, then the hollow sensation of a presence folding in on itself. He flinched.

  "That feels wrong."

  "That's because you're used to projecting. This is the opposite."

  He tried it. Failed. The spiritual equivalent of sucking in your stomach. The effort itself was visible.

  "Again."

  He tried again. Better. Still obvious, but the shape of the attempt was correct. I let him practice while we walked, correcting his posture each time — chin down, shoulders forward, steps shorter. Concealment wasn't only spiritual. It was physical.

  After an hour, he could hold the compression for thirty seconds before it leaked.

  I felt the cost. Each compression pushed his qi inward — and what was already too much for his channels was now being pressed tighter. The stream intensified. Denser. Hotter. Like forcing a river through a narrower bed. The tremor in his hands sharpened during each attempt.

  I knew what I was doing. Compression would make his core problem worse. Every cycle of press-and-release was training the qi to push harder when it escaped. The rebounds would be larger. The instability would grow.

  But invisible and unstable was better than found and dead. So I let him practice.

  "The western ranges," I said. "Into the high passes."

  "Why?"

  "Because wild terrain resists organization. Their symmetry doesn't survive scree fields and goat trails."

  Wei looked at me. True and insufficient — that was the expression.

  He turned. Walked. Fifteen steps ahead.

  I matched his pace, keeping the compression active. The road stretched behind us. Organized. Patient.

  But we were quieter now.