Chen Rui snorted. "You paint 'seized' on my wall, Captain," she said, "and I'll charge you storage fees."
A few in the crowd laughed, weak but genuine. The tension eased a finger's breadth.
Du turned to the room at large.
"Hear this," he said. "By the Regent's command, any hall that sets law above the Dragon's is suspect. This place is now under his… gaze." His eyes flicked to the sparrow carved above the doorway. "And mine." He shoved the scroll back into his coat. "Any soldier who tries to collect more than his pay here answers to me. Any citizen who runs to Yong'an crying 'rebellion' to avoid his debts answers to the Regent."
He let that hang.
Then, lower, only half-performing now: "If your Road truly keeps knives sheathed and scales honest," he said, "prove it by living. Not by dying poorly for planks."
Sun Wei nodded once.
Du turned on his heel and walked out, his men parting around him. Some looked relieved. Some looked disappointed. None looked quite as sure as they had when they entered.
When their boots had faded, silence and breath flooded back into the hall in a rush.
Shuye crouched by the tablets. "The ink's ugly," he said. "But the words beneath are still ours."
Lin Chang huffed. "We'll sand it off," she said. "Or carve deeper."
Sun Wei stared at the black strokes. SEIZED. Claimed. Named.
He picked up one tablet by the edges. The wood creaked but held. "Get me a saw," he said.
Shuye blinked. "You planning to take up carpentry now?"
"We'll cut them into smaller pieces," Sun Wei said. "Hand-sized. One law each. Let Du say he seized three tablets. We'll spread thirty through town."
Chen Rui's grin flashed. "Make them small enough to hide under bowls," she said. "Or throw at heads."
Lin Chang already had a measuring cord out. "I've scrap planks for backs," she said. "If the Regent wants to smash law, he can start chasing every serving girl in Haojin. I'd pay to see it."
By evening, the hall smelled of sawdust and stubbornness.
Children queued to carry the new tiles out into the alleys: one with No beating without witness etched on it tucked under a shrine eave; another with No seizing without record leaned behind the fish stall; Lies pay double wedged into the crack of the tavern's beam where drunk men would see it every time they looked up to curse.
Inside the hall, the pillar stood bare, the old nail-holes like missing teeth. Sun Wei traced them with a thumb and felt, to his own surprise, not emptiness but room.
"We'll carve new ones," Shuye said, reading his thought. "Different words. Bigger teeth."
Sun Wei let out a breath. "When Captain Du comes back," he said, "he'll find law in every shadow. Harder to seize."
Shuye smiled. "Stones in the river," he said.
Sun Wei thought of the girl in Ye Cheng's square who'd stood up in front of a burning city and decided the maps were wrong.
"Road under Heaven," he corrected softly. "Even if Heaven doesn't like it."
That night, under Lin Chang's roof, he wrote by lamplight.
Zhang reached for the hall, he scrawled on silk. Du's hand was the one he used. We bent. Tablets on pillar taken down, marked as 'seized' to satisfy ink. No blood. Law cut into pieces; carried out in pockets and under bowls. Outside the door, their banners still matter. Inside, our words have learned to walk.
He hesitated, then added:
If you meant us to be bait, sorry. We chose to be driftwood instead. Harder to catch. The Road is not stone. It floats.
He tied the scrap to a pigeon, stroked its breast once, and sent it north.
In Yong'an, dawn found Ziyan on the wall, fingers cold on the battlements. She read Sun Wei's message with the wind trying to snatch it from her hands.
A slow smile bent her mouth, fierce and tired.
"Good," she said. "He's finally learning how to be disobedient in useful ways."
Li Qiang took the silk, read it, and nodded. "Zhang will call it a victory," he said.
"Let him," Ziyan replied. "He thinks he broke a hall. We just opened more doors."
Ren was already reaching for clay. "Title?" he asked.
She watched the river in the distance, imagining tiny wooden tiles tucked into the corners of a town that had never had anyone argue for it before.
"'On Things That Float,'" she said. "And on how hard they are to drown."
Far away, in Qi's archive, Ji Lu saw the copy of Du's official report—Order enforced, seditious tablets seized, law-house cowed, no further disturbance—and smiled without humor.
Wang Yu, reading over his shoulder, murmured, "Do you think she bent?"
"I think," Ji Lu said, touching the sparrow mark he'd scratched on his own desk, "she taught another man how."
In the Ash Hall, Zhang marked Haojin with a neat, satisfied stroke. To him, it was a piece tidied.
The ash under his feet, once part of other people's homes, shifted again, imperceptibly, as if the ghosts within were restless.
The Road Under Heaven, unconcerned with its enemies' paperwork, lengthened by another day's walk.