The four-judge panel sat in a line beneath the banners, placards gleaming like polished shields. A brass tally rod ran their length, tiles stacked to click, click, click into verdict. The Device Witness orb hummed overhead, glass-blue and unblinking. Neutral Bells murmured, ropes thrummed tight as bowstrings. Chalk dust floated in incense and light.
On a side holoplate, a flicker: Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule: 12h. The line pulsed once and vanished.
Qin Ye stepped to the mark. His shoulder brushed the cool brass of the panel rostrum's tally rod.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: Panel Rostrum Brass Tally Rod.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Panel Thread (Lv.1, 25 breaths — optimizes phrasing & pause timing for multi-judge panels) + Simul-Stamp Token (1 use — force all four judges to cast decision simultaneously with public log).]
He said nothing. He inhaled-four, anchored-four, exhaled-two. The breath clipped the surge of noise into clean edges.
⸻
Mo Jian faced him—He-line flagship, movements crisp to the bone, economy on display. Compliance incarnate with a knife hidden in the timing. The judge raised a hand.
The bell rang.
Mo Jian's first step stuttered on purpose, a half-feint in cadence, then a needle-line strike aimed at the seam under Qin Ye's wrist.
Qin Ye activated the Tempo Thread. The false rhythm snapped to the background like rain behind glass. Quiet Pivot—angle reduced without drift. Blade Nudge—flat redirect, legal, precise. His baton tapped Mo Jian's shoulder.
An instant of stillness.
"Clause 7.4 hook," Mo Jian said, voice smooth. "Angle retention breach."
Qin Ye's heel kissed the chalk ring; the word rode his footfall. "Clause 7.2." The citation left him on beat, bound by his Clause Weave. "On-frame replay."
The Device Witness orb threw slow-motion onto the hall display: pivot within tolerance, guard neutral, touch clean. Judge One's tile clicked green. Judge Two hesitated; Judge Three clicked green; Judge Four frowned.
Two greens stood; the point held.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Point in Panel Light."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Appeal Resistance +2% (situational).]
Tiles slid back. The breath continued. Mo Jian's eyes sharpened.
⸻
A He-line aide took a half-step toward Judge Two, voice pitched softer than the bells. It was almost nothing.
Panel Thread rose inside Qin Ye like a second pulse. He felt the instant the panel's attention lifted—the space between blinks.
"Ex parte contact is barred during active exchange," he said, tone flat enough to ring. "Clause 3.1."
Heads turned. The aide froze. A public warning flashed along the hall's edge screens; a clerk's stamp hit the log with a sharp thud. The aide retreated three measured steps.
Mo Jian moved with that same measure. A knot of feints and tempo cuts, then clean extension. The judges' calls came staggered: green, red, green, red. A 2–2 split hung in the air, built to breed doubt.
Qin Ye's palm opened to the brass light. He willed the Simul-Stamp Token.
A pulse echoed through the panel's console. All four judges' hands were drawn, simultaneously, to the tiles. Four clicks in one breath. Three green, one red. The log flashed time-sync to the whole hall. The noise recoiled, then surged.
Mo Jian's jaw ticked once.
⸻
He drove Qin Ye toward the rope with a legal shoulder angle, tempo feints stacked like cards. The rope hummed higher; the panel leaned forward. It was textbook bait for a boundary warning.
Qin Ye let his center sink. Center Pin—inner circle anchored, no wasted sway. The push escalated. He planted. The force bled to null for a single breath; the floor might as well have grown around his foot. The leftover pressure slid into Vector Lock—root flashed, angle opened like a door on a tight hinge. Grip Recall tightened the baton's memory in his hand.
A small red flag twitched from Judge Four. "Safety reset?"
"Clause 8.1," Qin Ye said on step. "Reset requires logged cause."
The Device Witness replay traced their feet against the rope's song. No breach. No apparatus contact. The flag softened; the clerk's stamp came down hard.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Hold the Rope in Law."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Center Retention +3% (situational).]
The crowd exhaled through its teeth. Mo Jian's breath thinned. He adjusted.
⸻
He switched to a cadence illusion as fine as spider silk. Two ticks at once—a ghost beat layered into the bell's tail, then a sudden peel-away. "Citation not within foot-node," he said mid-motion, a "format quibble" thrown to tangle the margin.
The marshal replayed Qin Ye's prior steps in a sequence of clicks, the Device Witness overlay drawing a line from sole to ring and back in light. Clause Weave bound every syllable.
"Citation valid," the marshal said. His stamp fell. No pause.
Ghost Thread uncoiled. Qin Ye's entry step landed a half-breath early inside its lake of time. Blade Nudge again, just enough to jostle Mo Jian's guard path. The seam opened. His fingers touched torso—clean, lawful, surgical.
The bell rang. The panel's tiles split and turned.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Beat the Stagger."]
[Reward: +200,000 Spirit Stones; Tempo Sense +3% (situational).]
Mo Jian took one cool step back. His eyes flicked once toward the panel, calculating.
⸻
He changed the attack's spine. No more noise. Just razor compliance. A long combination that ended with a raised hand, not a strike—the first link in a chain of appeals meant to clot the bout.
"Angle-retention precedent contradicts the earlier pivot," he said. "Panel guidance required."
"Panel replay priority," Qin Ye cut in, the words riding a measured pause the Panel Thread gave him. "No halt."
The judges glanced to the head. A single nod. The orb rewound the last three beats and ran them forward in silence. Every micro-touch inside regulation; Qin Ye's path clean; Mo Jian's shoulder brush inside line but spent into nothing by that brief root.
The bell didn't stop. Neither did Qin Ye.
Silent Step on the chalk, no scrape. Quiet Pivot to center. Vector Lock touched the shoulder brush and traded it for a sliver of space. He didn't take a big door. He took the seam. The baton found the open square of rib again—tap.
The panel's tiles hovered; the clerk cleared his throat. "Applying prior sim-stamp rule to this exchange."
All four hands moved in one breath. Three green.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Win a Split Panel."]
[Reward: +220,000 Spirit Stones; Panel Sense +3% (situational).]
The head judge lowered his palm. The bell sounded that clean, single tone that made arguments small. Mo Jian's shoulders eased by a shade. He nodded once, precise as a line drawn with a blade.
⸻
[Ding! Optional Objective completed: "Sweep the Open Audit Bout with zero resets & zero overturned points."]
[Reward: Technique Chest (combat/panel, unlocked).]
Three options settled in front of Qin Ye's attention like tiles on the rod: Panel Beat (phrase/footfall coupling widens acceptance window), Edge Silence (reduces audible tells near rope), Split Bind (on 2–2, Device Witness priority auto-requests replay in one breath).
He chose Split Bind. The technique set into his posture like a notch carved where judgment sits.
⸻
Noise ebbed. Ropes hummed low. The panel shuffled papers, stamped the log.
On the side holoplate, the registry flickered again: Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule: 8h. The hash tail showed a tiny fresh nick, a scratch you'd miss if you didn't know where to look.
Tiles reset on the brass rod. Incense drifted in lazy sheets. Qin Ye's breath was the only metronome he trusted.
He stepped down off the ring.
⸻
They didn't let him reach the corridor before the small frictions tried again.
"Bench format note, for tomorrow," a clerk said, stepping half in his path with a slate. "With your style, a slower lane—less… scrutiny—might avoid—"
"Clause 2.1." The words rode his heel, calm. "Route parity."
The clerk looked at the slate, then over Qin Ye's shoulder to the panel. The stamp fell with a resigned certainty. "Lane order stands."
He moved on. The crowd split around him like the tide around a stone.
⸻
He Rulong stood with one hand on the balcony rail, weightless and heavy at once. No nod. No tilt of the head. Just gaze, as quiet and inevitable as a planet. It moved across Qin Ye's line and did not linger or flinch.
Below, the tally rod caught a sliver of light, tiles aligned. It looked like a jaw with all its teeth in place.
⸻
The hall's main board clacked into a new array. Letters punched out a heading that glittered under the Device Witness glow:
Core Trials — Day 6: Compliance Duel under Live Index.
The line held. The law held. Incense thinned. Ropes went quiet.
Qin Ye counted a breath and set his foot down where the next clause would be.
⸻
The bout's shadow receded across the floor as the sun pushed through a high arch slit. The hall warmed by a degree. The day did not. Somewhere behind the wall, a clockwork ticked toward eight hours.
He didn't look up at the holoplate. He didn't need to. The weight of that little nick on the hash lived in the side of his eye like a splinter under clean skin.
He rolled his shoulders once, slow, felt Center Pin settle into his spine, Vector Lock coil across the angles of his hips, Split Bind nestle against the measure where judges breathe. Tempo Thread idled and went still.
He had used one token and nothing else. He had wasted nothing.
He breathed. Four. Four. Two.
⸻
There was paper to be stamped and chalk to be re-drawn and there would be hands to be watched. Aides would hover, then retreat. The rod would click. The bell would ring. And somewhere a masked finger would try to pry at a public line and find the log too sharp to grasp.
He stepped through the ring rope. The chalk curled under his heel and lifted in a powdery crescent. It didn't make a sound.
The day's noise folded up on itself. The hall returned to its din.
He walked the short aisle with the same economy he fought with. No show, no flare, no extra breath carried forward into the next thing.
He stood at the corridor mouth a moment and let the incense lose its shape.
Then he went, the law's measure underfoot, the panel light behind him, the next index already drawing breath.