Gu Yan did not leave the Broken Records Pavilion until the second bell finished ringing.
By then, the morning light had gone from dim to pale through the paper windows, and the cold inside the room had settled into his sleeves and collar. He had read what remained of the booklet twice. Then he went through it a third time, slower than before, stopping where the missing lines were widest and where the damage looked too deliberate to blame on time alone.
That was what bothered him most.
The booklet was incomplete, but not random.
Damaged manuals were common in the outer court. Partial copies, broken notes, revised methods that had lost half their content over the years—none of that was rare. Outer disciples trained on whatever they could afford, and what they could afford was usually old, damaged, or stripped down by generations of use.
This was different.
Too many sections had been removed cleanly. They had not burned away. They had not faded past recognition. Someone had taken them out.
Gu Yan closed the booklet and rested it on his knee.
"What's the price?" he asked.
Mo Chen did not look up from his ledger.
"For what?" the old man replied.
"For taking it."
Mo Chen turned a page with one dry finger.
"You haven't taken it yet."
Gu Yan waited.
After a moment, Mo Chen raised his eyes.
"Do you always ask the price before deciding whether something is worth taking?"
"Yes."
"Good," Mo Chen said. "Then you've learned more than most people here."
His gaze dropped to the booklet.
"That manual isn't in the sect inventory."
Gu Yan's expression did not change, but he understood the meaning at once.
If it was not recorded, then only two explanations remained. Either it had never mattered, or someone had made sure it would be forgotten.
"Which is it?" Gu Yan asked.
Mo Chen let out a faint breath through his nose.
"If I knew that for certain, I wouldn't still be sitting in this room."
That was answer enough.
Gu Yan ran a hand over the brittle cover again. The paper crackled beneath his fingers.
"If I take it and it turns out to be useless, I lose time and resources," Gu Yan said.
"Yes," Mo Chen replied.
"If it isn't useless, I may lose more than that."
"Yes," Mo Chen said again.
The old man watched him for a moment. Then he said, "You should leave it here."
Gu Yan looked up.
"That's the safe answer," he said.
"Yes."
"It isn't your real answer."
Mo Chen's face remained flat.
"No."
"Then give me the real one."
A slight line appeared at the corner of the old man's mouth. It was not quite a smile.
"The real answer," Mo Chen said, "is that if you practice it, you should do so because you understand how ugly the road might be. Not because you think you've found hidden fortune."
The room went quiet again.
Gu Yan lowered his gaze to the page.
The meaning was plain enough.
This was not a method built for speed.
It did not promise explosive improvement, awakened blood, or some clean leap over people who had trained longer and better. It was a method of refinement through pressure, repetition, and controlled damage. The body was not treated as something to be filled. It was treated as something that had to be forced into enduring more than it should.
That alone would have been enough to interest him.
What made him stay was the structure underneath it.
Skin. Flesh. Bone. Blood.
Not as separate stages of ordinary body tempering, but as linked refinements. Each one prepared the next. If the first was rushed, the second would be hollow. If the second failed, the third would be crippled. The surviving lines read less like a shortcut and more like instructions left by someone who assumed the reader would either have patience—or die for lacking it.
Gu Yan preferred methods that did not lie about cost.
He stood, tucked the booklet inside his robe, and bowed slightly.
"I'll return it if it proves worthless," he said.
Mo Chen watched him for a long moment.
"No, you won't."
Gu Yan stopped with one hand on the door.
Mo Chen closed the ledger.
"You'll either come back with better questions," the old man said, "or not come back at all."
Gu Yan stepped out into the pale light of morning.
The outer grounds had warmed just enough for the frost on the upper stones to begin melting, but the cold still clung to the shaded paths. Disciples moved between yards with herb baskets, training staves, and bundles of firewood. To anyone looking from a distance, the sect still appeared stable.
Gu Yan no longer trusted that appearance.
The line at the Tempering Hall had been cut. Zhou Ren had taken four slots instead of three. The old west archive had been moved and forgotten. The manual itself had been deliberately damaged. None of those things connected cleanly yet, but Gu Yan had lived too long in the outer court to dismiss patterns simply because he could not yet explain them.
He did not return to his room immediately.
Instead, he took the narrow path back through the eastern sheds, thinking through what he knew.
Not enough.
That was the first conclusion.
The second was simpler.
If the method was real, then reading alone would not help him. He would need medicine, support materials, and time to test it properly. He was short on all three.
By the time he entered his room, the sun had risen high enough to throw a pale bar of light across the low table by the wall. The room was as narrow and poor as it had been that morning: a bedroll, a basin, a cracked cup, a dull knife, and the small stack of supplies he had not yet been forced to sell.
He took the booklet out again.
He did not begin practicing at once.
First, he copied the first surviving section onto rough paper. Then he copied the broken body diagram once, and then again, correcting its faded lines as best he could. He wanted the order fixed in his mind before he risked anything with his body.
Only after that did he sit cross-legged on the bedroll and close his eyes.
He started with the first breathing pattern described in the manual.
The structure was not entirely unfamiliar—slow intake, held lower in the body than common sect methods, then released in shorter fractions—but the rhythm was different enough to become uncomfortable by the seventh cycle. By the twelfth, his chest had begun to tighten. By the fifteenth, the muscles along his ribs already ached.
He stopped.
Not out of fear. Out of habit.
If a method offered only comfort in the beginning, then it was either bait or a lie.
Gu Yan opened the booklet and read the first page again.
Refinement begins with the skin.
Do not seek comfort in the first stage.
Those who stop at pain learn nothing.
That final line had almost been scraped away. Only half the characters remained.
He set the booklet aside and tried again.
This time, he reached the twenty-fourth cycle before the pressure changed.
It began at the skin.
Not heat. Not exactly. It felt more like a dry, tightening pressure spreading across his forearms, shoulders, and the back of his neck, as if the air itself had grown slightly heavier around him. The pressure did not descend inward the way common circulation methods did. It stayed close to the surface, pressing against him from outside and within at the same time.
At the thirtieth cycle, pain began.
Sharp at first. Then broad.
His shoulders burned. His forearms twitched. The skin over his chest felt too tight for his own body. Instinct told him to break the pattern and force the breath out all at once.
He did not.
Instead, he shortened the release exactly as the surviving text instructed and forced himself through three more cycles.
The pain deepened.
And in that pain, he understood the method a little better.
This was not ordinary circulation. It was controlled tempering through breath and pressure. Crude, incomplete, and missing stabilizing sections—but real enough that his body had already begun to respond.
A drop of sweat ran down from his temple despite the cold room.
Then his left arm spasmed hard enough to break his posture.
The pattern collapsed.
Pain lanced through his ribs. Gu Yan caught himself on one hand before he could fall sideways. He stayed that way for three breaths, head lowered, waiting for the pressure beneath his skin to fade.
It did not fade immediately.
That, too, was different.
Most common techniques left fatigue, heat, or dull soreness when interrupted. This one left a lingering tightness under the flesh, as if something had been compressed and had not yet decided whether to settle or tear.
Gu Yan straightened slowly.
He rolled his left shoulder once. Then again.
Nothing torn. Nothing broken.
But if he had forced the method through the spasm without support, the damage would have become real very quickly.
He looked toward the meager stack of supplies in the corner of the room: two packets of common medicinal powder, one strip of dried root, three low-grade spirit stones, and a stoppered clay vial of cheap salve with barely enough left to cover a knife cut.
Not enough.
The manual did not begin with a list of supporting herbs, but it didn't need one. Anyone with sense could see that repeating this method without assistance would grind the body down faster than it refined it.
Someone knocked on the door.
Two taps, a pause, then one more.
Gu Yan slid the booklet beneath the folded blanket before opening it.
Han Lei stood outside with a split lip and a cloth bundle under one arm.
"You look busy," Han Lei said.
"I'm sitting in my room," Gu Yan replied.
Han Lei snorted.
"That counts as busy if you're you."
Gu Yan stepped aside.
Han Lei entered without hesitation and set the bundle on the table. His right sleeve was torn. There was dried blood along the cuff, and not all of it was his.
"You lost a fight," Gu Yan said.
"If I had lost," Han Lei replied, "I wouldn't have brought food."
He unwrapped the cloth.
Inside were two coarse steamed buns and a paper packet of salted greens. Better than what the outer kitchens usually handed out by midmorning.
Gu Yan looked at the food, then at Han Lei.
"Where did you get those?"
"I won them."
"With what?"
Han Lei smiled despite the cut on his lip.
"A better question would be who was stupid enough to underestimate me."
Gu Yan sat back down.
"So you fought over food."
"I fought over contribution points," Han Lei said. "The food came with it."
He took one bun and tossed the other over.
Gu Yan caught it one-handed.
Han Lei's gaze stayed on his face.
"You're pale."
"I was practicing."
"That bad?"
Gu Yan bit into the bun before answering. The dough was coarse and cooling, but it was still better than going hungry.
"Bad enough."
Han Lei ate in silence for a while.
That was one of the reasons Gu Yan tolerated him. Han Lei knew when to leave silence alone.
After a minute, Han Lei said, "The hall was worse than usual this morning."
"I saw."
"Zhou Ren took four slots."
"He usually takes three."
Han Lei looked up sharply.
"So you noticed."
"I was standing in the line."
"That's not what I mean." Han Lei swallowed and leaned against the wall. "I mean you noticed it was different."
Gu Yan did not answer at once.
He had noticed.
Zhou Ren was not the sort to overreach carelessly. If he had taken more than usual, it meant the outer yard could no longer push back—or someone behind him had decided there was no longer any need to preserve appearances.
Instead of saying that directly, Gu Yan asked, "What else changed?"
Han Lei folded his arms.
"The stewards are tighter. Mission quotas are worse. Herb prices went up again. And I heard they sealed the west path to the old mining slope."
Gu Yan's eyes lifted.
That mattered.
Han Lei caught the shift.
"You know something about that?"
"Not enough."
Han Lei held his gaze for a moment, then let it go. He did not push further.
Useful.
Instead, he looked at Gu Yan's left arm.
"You're shaking."
Gu Yan followed his gaze.
The tremor was slight, but visible if someone knew where to look.
"It's temporary," he said.
"That means one of two things," Han Lei replied. "Either you're lying, or you've already decided the damage is worth it."
Gu Yan took another bite, swallowed, and answered, "Both can be true."
For the first time that morning, Han Lei laughed properly.
When the laughter faded, he reached into his robe and tossed a small paper packet onto the table.
"What is it?" Gu Yan asked.
"Powdered ironroot bark. Don't ask where I got it."
Gu Yan looked at the packet without touching it.
"Why give it to me?"
Han Lei shrugged.
"Because if Zhou Ren keeps squeezing the outer court, I'd rather not be one of the only two idiots here worth relying on."
"One of two?"
Han Lei gave him a flat look.
"If I say one, I sound arrogant."
Gu Yan held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once.
"I'll repay the value."
"You'd better."
Han Lei pushed himself off the wall and moved toward the door. Before leaving, he stopped.
"There's a gathering mission posted for the lower ravine this afternoon," he said. "Resin wood and frost moss. Not valuable enough for the inner groups to care about, but dangerous enough to keep most people away."
Gu Yan said nothing.
Han Lei opened the door.
"You look like you need materials more than sleep. Find me there if you're coming."
Then he left.
The room fell quiet again.
Gu Yan finished the bun and picked up the packet Han Lei had left behind. He opened it, caught the bitter mineral smell, and set it beside the hidden booklet.
Not enough to support the method properly.
Enough to try again without being reckless.
He remained seated for a while without speaking.
Outside, the sect moved through its ordinary noise—footsteps on stone, distant shouts from the lower yard, the metallic ring of a struck practice post, a bell from some far inner hall.
Ordinary sounds.
Ordinary morning.
But the booklet on the table did not feel ordinary.
Neither did the sealed west path to the old mining slope.
Gu Yan lowered his gaze to the folded blanket.
There were paths that changed because a man chose them.
There were others that changed the moment he touched them, whether he was ready or not.
This one was beginning to look like the second kind.
And if that was true, then moving carefully would not be enough.
He would have to move correctly.