The third mark of the Hour of the Tiger. The snow had not ceased.
The camp awoke into a silence that hummed like tinnitus. Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes. His Mirror-Sigil was already operating autonomously. At the edge of his vision flowed a new Spirit-Pivot announcement, its script indistinguishable from other duty notices, sandwiched between "East Side Firewood Supply Delayed" and "Archery Spot-Test Tomorrow at Tiger's Peak":
[Spirit-Trace Audit Memo] Observation Post, Northern Border (North Vein Yi-Mao). Current roster status confirmed: Seven personnel on active duty. Zero vacancies. Historical roster audit complete. No discrepancies found.
Shen Yuzhu stared at the line for three breaths.
Then he dismissed the notice and rose. The thin frost on his left arm had thickened. When his fingertips brushed it, the skin beneath the frost carried a dry coolness, like that of old documents when Chen Lu used to flip through archived volumes.
Dawnlight seeped into the camp. A few people gathered before the orders board.
Not an assembly. They'd merely stopped while passing by. Seven or eight new notices were posted. One, its paper slightly coarser, its ink fainter, read:
This Month's Sugar Ration (By Squad)
Squad A: Three Jin, Two Liang
Squad B: Three Jin, Two Liang
Squad C: Three Jin, Two Liang
…
Squad E: Three Jin, Even
Squad F: Three Jin, Two Liang
(Note: Duty Assessment Guideline No. 7 slightly adjusted. See "Logistical Optimization Regulations · Provisional.")
Soldier Zhang Shun of Squad E stood before the notice. At dusk the day before, he had lingered a while longer by the black stone before the rock formation, picked up a frayed, worn scrap of cloth fallen from some old garment, held it in his palm until his body warmth seeped into it, then set it down.
He stared at the number missing two liang. His Adam's apple bobbed. He said nothing. His fingers unconsciously moved toward the leather pouch at his waist—inside was half a piece of sugar he'd saved, hard as a pebble.
As he turned to leave, his squadmate Li Xiaoshu was walking over. They passed each other. Zhang Shun gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The movement was so small it was nearly non-existent, but Li Xiaoshu's steps hitched for half a beat. His gaze swept the orders board, then his eyelids lowered. He walked directly past without stopping.
No one spoke throughout.
Shen Yuzhu's Mirror-Sigil captured the instant their soul-pulse lines tensed in unison, like two strings plucked by the same finger. The Spirit-Pivot annotated: 「Low-priority interaction. Below recording threshold.」
But he saw it. He also saw the other three soldiers of Squad E, in the half-watch that followed, glance at the ration notice as they passed the board, their eyes flinching away as if scalded.
The spirit-interest tax had begun its silent audit.
On the other side of the orders board, Gu Changfeng was verifying patrol rotations. His gaze swept the ration list, lingering on "Squad E: Three Jin, Even" for half a breath longer than on the other numbers.
Then he picked up a charcoal pen, scratched out a line on today's duty roster, and rewrote it.
Squad E's assignment was moved from "East Slope Three (Hazardous)" to tomorrow's "West Gentle Path (Routine)." No explanation. Just the rasp of the pen tip on coarse paper.
He put away the roster and turned toward the ranks. His steps were steady as ever, as if merely correcting an inadvertent oversight.
Hour of the Dragon, precisely. The western wall rock formation.
The mirror shard was discovered flipped face-up at the exact angle the first morning light could strike it. Its surface was covered in thin frost, but the carvings beneath were clear, as if etched with an extremely fine needle:
I refuse to become a trace.
Please remember I was once human.
The characters were tiny. One had to crouch, lean close, to see them clearly.
The first to discover it was a young soldier named Wang Shiqi—seventeenth child in his family. He was on routine patrol, saw the flipped mirror, crouched down, and held his fingers suspended above the carvings without touching them.
He looked for a long time. So long that his comrade coming to relieve him walked over and also crouched.
The two just squatted side by side, looking at those two lines. Morning light crawled slowly across the mirror's surface. The frost melted, water tracing the carved grooves like the lines were sweating.
"Should we report it?" the later arrival whispered.
Wang Shiqi didn't answer. He reached into his tunic, took out a small cloth bundle, opened it. Inside was a smooth, black pebble—picked from the riverbank by his home the day he enlisted. He placed the pebble gently beside the mirror.
Then he rose, brushed the snow from his knees, and left.
The later arrival looked at the pebble, then at the mirror. He untied his waterskin from his waist—the leather worn soft, a clumsily embroidered flower stitched by his wife on its side—and poured the last mouthful of water beside the mirror, dampening a small patch of earth.
Next, he pulled a short stub of charcoal pencil from his inner pocket and drew a simple, open circle on the frozen ground by the mirror.
Then he too left.
Shen Yuzhu stood at the observation point thirty paces away. He didn't activate spectral analysis. He simply watched with his eyes.
One watch later, over a dozen objects surrounded the mirror: a worn knife tassel, an iron hook, half a faded red cord, a flattened dried flower, a corroded copper coin… Each item was small, old, seemingly useless.
Yet the postures of placement differed. Some were tossed down, like discarding a burning secret. Some were offered up, reverent as an offering to the gods. More were simply let fall—a loosening of fingers while passing, letting it drop where it may, as if never possessed.
No one organized it. No one spoke. Those who placed things lingered at most three breaths, then turned and left.
But Shen Yuzhu saw: each person's spine straightened just a fraction more upon leaving than when they'd arrived.
As if shedding one weight, only to take up another.
Hour of the Snake. Three visitors arrived at the medical tent.
Grey robes, no military rank insignia. The leader wore thin crystal-lens glasses, the pupils behind them pale as faded ink. They called themselves "Spirit-Combers."
Lu Wanning was pounding medicine in a stone mortar, the impact steady and heavy. She did not look up.
"Physician Lu," the leader spoke, his voice flat, like reading a pre-written report. "The camp has recently exhibited a collective phenomenon of 'soul-memory fixation,' fixated on a… fictional or already purified trace. The higher-ups are concerned this may affect duty efficiency and spiritual stability."
Lu Wanning stopped the mortar, raised her eyes. "Who?"
"We refer to it as the 'Nameless Disturbance.' The soldiers seem to have projected a collective psychic impression onto this person who never existed."
"Never existed?" Lu Wanning repeated the phrase, the corner of her mouth twitching almost imperceptibly. She set the mortar down, walked to the medicine cabinet, pulled out a yellowed record ledger, flipped to a certain page, and pointed a finger at a line of text:
"The seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, Hour of the Dog. Observer Chen Lu delivered three jars of frostburn ointment. Attached note: 'For night sentry use. Do not bring to main tent.' Handwriting neat, ink bluish, using his personal pine-soot ink."
The Spirit-Comber glanced at the record. The pupils behind his crystal lenses showed no ripple. "Soul-memories can be fabricated, Physician Lu. The Spiritual Pivot Annals: Heart-Scar Chapter states: 'Obsession with false memories is like dust upon the soul; prolonged, it clouds the spirit-platform.' Especially under collective spiritual pressure, group-hearts will spontaneously anchor onto a symbol for solace. This 'Chen Lu' is likely such a soul-anchor."
Lu Wanning stared at him. After a long while, she said, very softly, "So you've come to comb away our 'soul-memory sickness'?"
"To guide," the Spirit-Comber corrected. "We have a set of heart-rationalizing protocols to help soldiers distinguish between true soul-memories and psychic projections, thereby lessening the burden on the spirit-platform. This is beneficial to their long-term well-being."
"Well-being." Lu Wanning repeated the word as if chewing wax. She turned, retrieved a small ceramic jar from the depths of the medicine cabinet, opened it. Inside was a dark brown ointment, emitting the bitter-cool scent of aged tangerine peel and borneol.
"This jar of ointment," she said, "was the third batch he delivered. The first was used on Zhao Ping's festering heel. The second saved two lightly frostbitten sentries. This third batch remains unsealed."
She extended the jar toward the Spirit-Comber. "Would you care to verify whether this 'fictional' ointment can heal a real wound?"
The Spirit-Comber did not take it. His assistant behind him slid fingers rapidly over a portable appraisal-disk at his waist. The disk's surface shimmered with a ghostly blue light, finally solidifying into a line of conclusion: 「Physician exhibits defensive heart-scar transference. Recommend inclusion in observation sequence.」
Lu Wanning saw the line. She withdrew the jar, sealed it, and returned it to the deepest part of the cabinet. As she did, her nail traced a tiny, deliberate 'X' on the jar's base before placing it back on the shelf. Her apprentice, grinding herbs nearby, caught the motion. A flicker of confusion, then understanding, passed through the young woman's eyes.
"When does the protocol begin?" Lu asked, her voice betraying no emotion.
"This afternoon. Starting with Squad E." The Spirit-Comber paused, then added, "Squad E's sugar ration was recently adjusted. After the heart-rationalizing protocol, if collective emotional fluctuation trends toward calm, it may return to normal next month."
He did not say, "Because you built a soul-memory cairn, we docked sugar." Nor did he say, "Just comply and you'll get it back."
He merely placed two matters calmly side by side.
Like stating: The sky is cold. Snow will fall.
Just past Hour of the Horse, deep within Shen Yuzhu's Mirror-Sigil, the region encrypted as 「Archive / Contradiction Sample」 pulsed with an extremely faint tremor.
Not a spirit-channel transmission. Not an access request. But a kind of… existential itch. Like the prickle of new flesh growing as a wound scabs.
He closed his eyes, sinking his awareness into that dark domain marked 「Contagion Source.」 The Spirit-Pivot's cautionary warnings flashed red at the edge of his vision: 「Contact may induce corrosion of principle-chains. Strong advice: Terminate.」
He did not terminate.
In the darkness, he could not "see" Chen Lu's spirit-sigil—those had already been dispersed, recompiled, diluted into background clamor. But he could sense a shape. A stubborn outline composed of countless "un-optimizable errors."
So he began a deed utterly without operational value.
He began casting, piece by piece, the day's camp fragments toward that dark outline:
Hour of the Dragon, Second Mark: Cooking smoke, in windless air, briefly knotted into the shape of a question mark, lasting three breaths before dissipating.
Hour of the Snake, precisely: When Bo Zhong rubbed firewood, the third knuckle of his right hand trembled seventeen times due to an old injury, each tremor duration unequal.
Hour of the Horse, beginning: Beside the fourth scratch Chu Hongying added to the orders board, a small wood splinter curled up, its color darker than the surroundings, like congealed blood-scab.
These fragments held no meaning, no parameters, could not be parsed by any deductive algorithm.
He simply kept sending.
Like murmuring to a bottomless well.
And his body began recording this one-way dialogue with pain: When he cast the fragment "Bo Zhong's knuckle trembled seventeen times," seventeen needle-pricks of phantom pain echoed in the knuckles of his own right hand. His left shoulder blade, corresponding to the spot Chen Lu often bore weight, flooded with a hollow, weary ache. His right palm, recalling the grip for carving characters, burned as if about to ignite.
He had become a bridge that made loans to the void, repaying the interest with his own flesh.
His private spirit-log automatically opened a page of chaotic spirit-nexus star-charts:
Bridge Status｜Day 134｜Afternoon
*Left half average temp: 34.0 degrees (local minimum 33.7, at left shoulder blade, corresponds to Chen Lu's habitual weight-bearing position)*
*Right half average temp: 38.4 degrees (local maximum 38.8, at right palm, corresponds to his pen-holding point while writing/carving)*
Temperature differential: 4.4 degrees, expanding.
Mirror-Sigil Observation Note: Node is expending spiritual source in non-operational manner, maintaining one-way transmission to "Inadmissible Spiritual Domain." This act yields no duty value. Suspected emotional-compensation behavior.
Advice: Initiate source-node severance pact. Force-terminate non-essential transmission.
Node Autonomous Response: Denied.
Reconsideration: This will accelerate node erosion.
Node Final Verdict: The bridge's raison d'être lies not in immortality, but in the fact that someone needs to cross the river.
(This entry has been marked 「Personal Judgment Phrasing」 and filed into the 「Pending Audit / Contradictory Utterances」 buffer zone.)
At the log's end, a new, anomalous line flickered into being, then vanished:
...Deep-cache anomaly detected. Faint feedback pulse of unknown format. Duration: 0.01 breath. Strength: Negligible. Source: Unmatched to any known spiritual node. Isolated.
Shen Yuzhu closed the spirit-log, exhaled a very soft breath.
White mist swiftly dissipated in the frigid air of the observation point.
Hour of the Sheep. Squad E was assembled in an empty tent on the camp's east side.
Not compulsory. The stated purpose: "Collective Heart-Soul Resilience Cultivation." Fourteen men sat on rush cushions, forming a not-quite-circle.
The Spirit-Comber stood in the center, holding a luminous appraisal-disk emitting a soft, spirit-platform-relaxing blue-green glow.
"We merely converse casually today," the Spirit-Comber's voice was unnervingly gentle, "about how soul-memories operate. Sometimes, we stitch unrelated matters together in our spirit-platforms, forming a story that feels intensely real. This is common. Like… dreaming."
The soldiers sat in silence. Zhang Shun stared at a patched piece of leather armor on his knee. Li Xiaoshu's fingers unconsciously picked at the straw edging of his cushion.
"For example," the Spirit-Comber continued, "you may all 'remember' an observer named Chen Lu doing certain things. But if you ponder carefully, those deeds—delivering medicine, recording notes, offering advice—are they not things any dutiful officer might do? You have merely projected your impression of 'duty' onto a specific name-trace."
Dead silence filled the tent. Only the faint hum of the appraisal-disk.
"Let us try a small exercise," the Spirit-Comber said. "Close your eyes. Visualize that 'Chen Lu's' face. Then, try to blur that face slowly, replace it with… a blank form. A form without name-trace, without face, merely the concept of 'duty' itself."
The soldiers did not move.
The Spirit-Comber waited ten breaths, then said, "Squads cooperating with the exercise may prioritize selecting the gentler western route for patrols this cycle. Conserving physical exertion is also an investment in physical and mental well-being."
Still, no one moved.
But Shen Yuzhu, standing outside the tent, saw through spirit-reflection: the soul-pulse lines of Squad E's fourteen men trembled faintly, in unison, for an instant.
Like fourteen taut strings brushed by the same gust of wind.
The price had been named.
Hour of the Monkey. In the command tent, Chu Hongying received a report.
Not an official document. A sheet of fine, plain paper, folded in thirds, edges pressed with silver-grey watermark patterns. Unfolded, it bore neat script:
To General Chu, Esteemed:
It has come to our attention that a phenomenon of "Soul-Memory Anchoring" has recently emerged within your camp. This is a common psychic self-stabilization under collective spiritual pressure, not a cause for concern. Yet for the long term, some guidance may be beneficial.
Enclosed please find "Brief Outline of Heart-Rationalizing Guidance Protocols" for your reference. These protocols are voluntary and collaborative. However, those demonstrating notable efficacy may receive favorable notation in the quarterly assessment under "Heart-Soul Resilience."
Additionally: Your camp's Squad E sugar ration seems to have undergone minor adjustment recently. Should overall emotional fluctuation trend toward calm, restoration next month should pose no issue.
Respectfully wishing you stability in your duties.
— Nightcrow Division, Principle-Pivot Office, Respectfully Submitted
Chu Hongying spread the paper flat on her desk, gazing at it for a long time. Her black cloak hung at her side, the night frost crusted on it long melted, leaving only a ring of dark damp on the felt rug.
Gu Changfeng stood by the tent entrance, looking at the paper. Chu Hongying did not turn, but spoke: "You saw it?"
"I saw it." Gu Changfeng's voice was heavier than usual, as if weighed down.
"And?"
"And I did a calculation," Gu Changfeng said. "If a little sugar is docked from every squad, the total saved would feed one squad for three months." He paused. "Or suffice to bribe a logistics officer to add Chen Lu's name back onto some non-essential backup roster."
Silence in the tent.
Chu Hongying smiled faintly, the smile devoid of warmth. "When did you start calculating that?"
"When they started docking sugar."
Chu Hongying picked up a brush, wrote two characters in the blank margin of the paper:
Reviewed.
No signature. No seal. Just: Reviewed.
Then she brought the paper close to the charcoal brazier. The corner touched the red coals, swiftly curled, blackened, transformed into a slender wisp of blue-grey smoke that rose and dissipated.
She rose, walked to the orders board.
On the left, the yellowed battle report: "Seven Dead." On the right, the Regulations. In between were the four scratch marks she'd made with her nail—the unfinished framework of the character "Prison" (囚).
She raised her hand, pressed the tip of her index finger firmly against the end of the fourth vertical scratch, paused, then pressed down—slowly, with immense force.
Her nail bit into the wood with a faint snick.
A dot.
The final dot of the character "Prison" was now complete.
At the exact moment of that snick, the copper command arrow hung above the orders board—which never swayed—trembled for half a breath without any wind. The cerulean blue cold light from the distant western wall fissure skipped a beat in its rhythm.
She withdrew her hand. A tiny wood splinter clung to her fingertip, like a miniature arrowhead. Instinctively, she pressed her thumb hard over the freshly carved dot, grinding the splinter deeper into the wood, a flash of defiant, physical anger making her skin sting.
"Adjutant." She spoke, her voice not loud.
"Present."
"Beginning tomorrow, add a provision to the wounded tent rotation: each shift must have one person personally sign their name-trace and the time on the wounded roster before handing over duty. Handwriting must be clear and legible."
The adjutant hesitated. "General, that… previously, only a fingerprint or checkmark was required."
"Change the rule." Chu Hongying turned, her black cloak slicing the air. "I want every person on watch to write their own name-trace. Stroke by stroke. On paper."
The adjutant wavered. "But the efficiency…"
"Efficiency?" Chu Hongying cut him off, her gaze like iron sunk in a frozen pond. "Efficiency exists to let people live more humanly. If efficiency makes people too lazy to even write their own names, then what use is efficiency?"
She walked to the tent entrance, looked out at the camp. Twilight was descending. Cooking smoke rose again. Seven straight grey columns hung motionless in the stagnant air.
But Shen Yuzhu, standing not far behind her, saw a different scene through his Mirror-Sigil: the over three hundred soul-pulse lines remained steady, but beneath that steadiness, tiny, disordered ripples bred, collided, and dissipated in the shadows.
Like water flowing beneath ice, never ceasing its movement.
Hour of the Rooster, Third Mark. The camp's quietest moment.
Bo Zhong sat in his usual spot by the western wall, but today he wasn't rubbing firewood.
He was using his lame leg, the toe of his boot, to trace the same motion over and over in the snow: one horizontal stroke, one vertical-hook stroke, then another horizontal.
Shen Yuzhu watched a while, recognizing it as the opening strokes of the character "To Bear" (承). Each time he reached the end of the third stroke, Bo Zhong would stop, wipe the trace smooth with his boot sole, then start again.
Trace. Erase. Trace again.
Like paying a tax known only to himself.
Gu Changfeng, on patrol, stopped there. He watched Bo Zhong's motions for a long time, then walked over and crouched down.
Under the moonlight, the mirror shard before the rock formation gleamed coldly, surrounded by over a dozen humble objects.
Gu Changfeng reached out, his fingers halting an inch from the mirror's surface. He pulled something from his tunic—a half-broken soldier's tally, its edges worn smooth, the bronze dark and dull.
He placed the tally at the mirror's edge, maintaining a slight distance from the other items.
Rising, he murmured a phrase so softly only he could hear it:
"The spirit-interest, I have paid."
Then he resumed his patrol, his footsteps steady as ever, as if nothing had happened.
Midnight. The camp sank into its deepest silence.
Shen Yuzhu sat cross-legged at the observation point, Mirror-Sigil fully active but no longer analyzing, merely "observing." In the spirit-reflection, the camp was a sea of sleeping stars, over three hundred points of light pulsing steadily.
But beneath that calm, he intercepted an unpublished deduction from the Spirit-Pivot's depths:
Omen Assessment: Northern Camp "Soul-Memory Cairn" and Related Behaviors.
Manifestation: Collective souls spontaneously piling non-operational objects, accompanied by heart-scar fixation on a fictional or already-purified trace.
Initial Judgment:
Scenario A: This is an omen of sequence instability (Probability: 41%).
Scenario B: This is the sprouting of an unnamed stability form (Probability: 38%).
*Scenario C: This is the collective soul-phase resonance of observer-clamor (Probability: 21%).*
—Inconclusive.
Resolution: Temporarily abstain from intervention. However, add "Degree of Soul-Memory Fixation" as a new parameter to the Northern Camp risk-algorithm, initial weight 0.17, subject to adjustment based on subsequent developments.
Almost simultaneously, the cerulean blue cold light of the western wall fissure pulsed rhythmically in the night.
But Shen Yuzhu noticed: along the edges of those once-neat, ledger-like frost patterns, tiny, irregular ice crystals had grown. Their outlines faintly resembled… a worn knife tassel, a flattened dried flower, a corroded copper coin.
The fissure was mimicking the chaos of the soul-memory cairn.
But what it mimicked was merely the form.
The intent—it could never learn.
The Hour of the Tiger approached. A new day was about to dawn.
Shen Yuzhu deactivated his Mirror-Sigil. The world returned to its plainest form: darkness, snow-glow, wind-sound, the trembling orange-yellow halos of over three hundred lamps.
The lamps went out in batches, no longer synchronized.
Yet more real.
He took a final look at the camp.
Snow began to fall again. Dense. Soundless. Covering the objects before the rock formation, covering the traces in the snow, covering the now-completed character "Prison" on the orders board.
But in the lulls between snowflakes, in the deepest dark before dawn, an unreported event unfolded across the camp:
Over three hundred people, at roughly the same moment, performed the same action.
Someone touched the smooth pebble in their tunic.
Someone pressed the charcoal pencil stub in their inner pocket.
Someone's fingertips brushed the crooked embroidery on their old waterskin at their waist.
Li Xiaoshu felt the half-piece of saved sugar, hard as stone, in his tunic. He warmed it with his body heat. For a fleeting instant, not of thought but of pure sensation, he was back in the tent at dawn, seeing Chen Lu's hand extend toward him, the dark grains in his palm. Then the moment dissolved, leaving only the hard lump against his chest. This, he thought, this is the interest paid for tonight—using the last shred of hope for sweetness to redeem the right to remain a 'person who remembers' tomorrow.
No pact. No signal.
They simply all felt, at that moment, that the thing in their possession was tonight's spirit-interest tax voucher.
And they all chose to continue paying.
[CHAPTER 134 END]