The path to the herb gardens ran along the outer edge of the sect's lower courtyards, where stone gave way to packed earth and the air carried the damp smell of leaves. Yuan He followed a line of other outer disciples, all of them moving with the same cautious pace. Nobody walked too fast. Nobody looked too confident. It was a small, shared survival instinct.
Ahead, a low wall of pale brick enclosed rows of plants under simple wooden frames. A faint sheen sat on the leaves, like morning dew that refused to evaporate. The herbs were not the kind of things he had seen in a grocery store. Some had veins that glimmered. Some curled toward the sky in spirals as if they were listening. Some gave off a scent sharp enough to make his nose sting.
Spirit herbs, he reminded himself. Not metaphor. Not a naming convention. A real resource that mattered.
At the gate, a thin man in a gray robe leaned against the post with the relaxed posture of someone who had power without needing to prove it. His sleeves were clean. His shoes were clean. His eyes were not.
He held a ledger in one hand and a brush in the other. A wooden stamp sat beside him like a small judge.
"Tokens," the man said without looking up.
Yuan He stepped forward and offered the wooden task token. The man's gaze flicked over him, paused for half a second at the bruise on his cheekbone, and then moved on as if bruises were weather.
"Row fourteen," the man said. "Patch C. Sorting and watering. No mistakes."
Yuan He nodded. "What counts as a mistake?"
The brush stopped. The man finally looked up, and the expression in his eyes was mild amusement. Not anger. Not offense. Something worse, because it meant Yuan He had asked a question beneath his station.
"You overwater, you rot the roots," the man said, as if speaking to a child. "You underwater, you stunt growth. You mix bundles, you waste time in the hall. You damage leaves, you pay it back in labor."
He tapped the ledger. "If you do not know how to do the work, watch someone who does."
Yuan He did not argue. He did not bow. He simply absorbed the information and moved through the gate.
Row fourteen was near the back, where the wooden frames cast uneven shadows and the air felt slightly cooler. The soil was darker here, wetter. The plants looked a little less vigorous, as if they had learned not to hope.
Patch C was marked by a small stone with a painted character. Yuan He crouched and reached toward the soil, then stopped himself.
On Earth, he would have taken a sample. He would have run it through a meter, logged pH, moisture, mineral content, and argued with a spreadsheet until the numbers confessed. Here, he had no tools except what this body knew and what his mind could infer.
He pinched a bit of soil between his fingers. It clumped. Too wet.
The herbs here were a mix. Some had stiff, glossy leaves. Others were thin, delicate, and trembled even in still air. He watched the way the dew sat on each leaf. He watched which stems drooped. He watched how the ground around certain roots had a slick shine.
This patch was not hard. It was neglected.
He reached for the bucket line near the back and found exactly what he expected: a half-filled barrel, a wooden dipper with a cracked handle, and a rope that had been tied and re-tied until it looked like it had scars.
He dipped the ladle, feeling the weight of water, the pull of gravity. The simplest force in the universe, made suddenly valuable.
He began to water.
He kept it slow. Not because he lacked strength, but because he wanted to understand the system before he pushed it. In the lab, rushing meant missing feedback. Missing feedback meant disaster.
He watered the plants that were dry first, then moved to the ones that were already damp and gave them only a few drops. He aimed at the soil, not the leaves. He avoided bruising the stems. The work was menial, but it demanded attention.
Attention was something he had.
A shadow fell over him.
Yuan He glanced up.
A broad-shouldered outer disciple stood with hands on hips, watching him with an expression that made no effort to hide contempt. His robe was the same as Yuan He's, but it sat better on him, as if the cloth itself respected him.
"You're in C," the disciple said.
Yuan He stood, careful of his ribs. "That's what I was assigned."
The disciple's gaze flicked over Yuan He's face, then his hands, then the way he held the dipper. "You're watering like you're afraid of the plants."
"I'm watering like I don't want to kill them," Yuan He said.
A laugh came from behind the broad-shouldered disciple. Two other outer disciples stood nearby, leaning against the frame as if the garden were their personal stage. One of them held a bundle of herbs already tied and tagged. The tags were neat, stamped with something that looked official.
"Listen to him," the one with the bundle said. "He thinks care matters."
The broad-shouldered disciple stepped closer. Yuan He smelled sweat and cheap medicinal paste.
"You should be grateful," the disciple said, voice dropping. "Patch C is quiet. Nobody bothers you back here."
Yuan He waited.
The disciple's eyes narrowed. "Unless you make trouble."
"I don't want trouble," Yuan He said.
The broad-shouldered disciple stared at him as if trying to decide whether to be offended by that. Then he snorted.
"You've got the five-element root, right?" he asked, loud enough for the others to hear.
Yuan He did not answer immediately. The second set of memories rose, warning him. Words could be traps.
The disciple's smile widened when Yuan He hesitated. "That's what I thought. They keep giving you garbage tasks and you keep showing up anyway."
The one with the bundle chimed in. "It's because he has no pride."
The broad-shouldered disciple tilted his head. "Or because he has nowhere else to go."
The cruelty was casual. It was not fueled by rage. It was fueled by boredom. Yuan He understood that kind of cruelty well.
He offered nothing back. He simply returned to watering.
That silence irritated them more than any insult would have.
"Hey," the broad-shouldered disciple said, and his foot nudged a small wooden marker at the edge of the patch. The marker tipped. A few plants sagged as the frame shifted.
Yuan He's eyes flicked to it. He did not move.
The disciple kicked it again, harder. The frame creaked.
If the frame fell, the herbs would be damaged. The ledger man would record it. The punishment would land on the worker assigned to Patch C.
Yuan He lifted his gaze slowly. "If you break that, it's my labor. Not yours."
The broad-shouldered disciple's smile turned sharp. "So fix it. That's what you're here for. Trash does trash work."
The other two laughed again.
Yuan He did not respond with anger. He responded with calculation.
He stepped forward and set the marker upright with steady hands. He adjusted the frame so it sat back in its groove. He did it quickly and cleanly.
Then he turned back to the plants.
The broad-shouldered disciple lingered, waiting for Yuan He to say something. Waiting for Yuan He to give him a hook.
Yuan He gave him nothing.
Eventually, the disciple clicked his tongue and walked away, bored by a target that refused to bleed in a satisfying way.
As the morning wore on, Yuan He watched other outer disciples work. Some were clumsy. Some were lazy. Some were clever in small ways, like watering quickly and then hiding in the shade until it was time to leave. A few were competent enough that their herbs looked better by midday.
Those competent ones had something else in common.
They were not assigned to Patch C.
Their patches were closer to the gate. Their barrels were fuller. Their frames were sturdier. Their tags were pre-stamped, which meant less time waiting at the ledger. Less time waiting meant less time being seen.
Less time being seen meant less opportunity for someone to cause problems.
A system, he thought again.
Not fair. Not random. A system.
In the early afternoon, the gray-robed ledger man walked the rows, brush and stamp in hand. He paused at each patch, glanced at the herbs, and made a mark. He did not praise. He did not instruct. He simply recorded.
When he reached Patch C, his eyes moved over the plants, then to Yuan He's hands.
"You did not overwater," he said.
It was not approval. It was a statement.
Yuan He bowed his head slightly. "I tried not to."
The ledger man made a mark. "Sorting. Bring the bundles by sundown."
Yuan He nodded.
As the man moved on, Yuan He noticed something small. When the ledger man made marks, he used a simple set of symbols. Not words. Not explanations.
A system of shorthand.
Yuan He watched the brush strokes and began to map them in his head. A long vertical line, then a dot. A small hook. Each one likely corresponded to quality, quantity, damage, timeliness.
The ledger was not just paperwork. It was the sect's way of turning labor into merit points.
He thought of his task token, warm in his pocket.
He thought of the steward's words. Two merit points if done right. Free labor if done wrong.
He thought of the Merit Hall, of gates disguised as rules.
If he wanted to survive, he needed more than effort. He needed leverage.
By late afternoon, his body was sweating and his ribs were angry, but his mind was clearer than it had been since waking. He had something to work with.
He began to sort the herbs.
Some were bruised from being handled too roughly by others. Some were mixed. Yuan He recognized patterns by smell and leaf shape. He moved slowly at first, then faster as his confidence grew. He tied bundles with steady knots. He placed tags carefully.
He did not make them beautiful. He made them consistent.
Consistency was what systems rewarded.
When the sun dipped lower and the shadows stretched, he carried his first set of bundles toward the gate. The weight was not heavy, but he held it like it mattered, because it did.
The gray-robed ledger man took the bundle, glanced at the contents, then at the tag.
He stamped it.
Once.
Then again.
He made a mark in the ledger, and Yuan He saw it clearly: a vertical line with a dot. The same mark he had used on a different patch earlier, one that had looked healthy.
Yuan He's throat tightened. Not with pride. With confirmation.
He brought a second bundle. Another stamp. Another mark.
The ledger man's expression did not change. His brush did not hesitate.
But Yuan He had learned something valuable.
Even in Patch C, even with a half-empty barrel and a broken frame, the ledger recognized quality.
The system had cracks. The cracks were small, but they existed.
As Yuan He turned back toward Patch C to finish the remaining bundles, he caught a glimpse of movement near the front rows. A cluster of outer disciples parted around someone like water around a stone.
A young man in a cleaner robe walked among them with lazy confidence. He spoke, and people laughed at the right times. He did not work. Or if he did, it was the kind of work that looked like it did not cost him anything.
Yuan He did not need the second set of memories to label that presence.
Sun Ba.
He did not approach. He did not look directly at Yuan He. His attention was on the front rows, on the competent workers, on the ledger man, on the places where merit flowed easily.
But Yuan He saw him, and he understood something else.
Sun Ba didn't just bully for amusement.
He bullied for resources.
He bullied for control.
He bullied because the system allowed it, and because the system rewarded the kind of person who could take without consequence.
Yuan He lowered his gaze and returned to his patch, carrying that understanding like a new piece of equipment.
He was not ready to fight Sun Ba.
Not physically. Not socially.
But he could see the shape of the battlefield now.
And once you could see the battlefield, you could start placing constraints.
You could start building containment.