With the drain reduced, the team could function as a team again.

  A rhythm formed.

  Chen Xi optimised techniques. Little Abacus demonstrated and sold them at the Exchange, developing a sales persona that combined natural showmanship with data-driven pitch.

  Su Yiran audited the Exchange itself, building a database of pricing anomalies.

  Wu Zheng cooked.

  The cooking was not incidental.

  In the Torrent, social infrastructure was built on shared meals. Wu Zheng's food — prepared with an alchemist's precision and a grandmother's generosity — became their embassy.

  The congee he served neighbours was rice cooked past memory into something silken, with shreds of spiritual ginger that dissolved on the tongue and left a warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.

  Neighbours visited. Merchants stopped by. A network formed through soup.

  Chen Xi's relationship with Su Yiran evolved.

  Not dramatically. Not with theatrical revelations.

  It evolved the way scientific understanding evolves: accumulated observations, revised hypotheses, and the gradual acceptance that the data supported a conclusion he'd been resisting.

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  The data: she made him better. Not as a cultivator. As a person. She asked questions he wouldn't ask himself.

  She told him when he was an idiot with the same calm precision she applied to everything.

  The conclusion: he was in love with her.

  This was not an efficient emotional state. It introduced bias, created vulnerability, reduced objectivity.

  A liability, in every framework he possessed.

  He told her anyway. Not in words. Not in a speech.

  He redesigned the Probability Core's safety margin to ensure that at two metres — the distance between two people lying side by side — the drain was provably zero.

  It took three extra days and cost 0.3 percent efficiency. He did not care. Some calculations mattered more than optimisation.

  This was the most important one he'd ever run.

  Three extra days. 0.3 percent efficiency cost.

  She found the modification in his notebook. Read the calculations. Understood what three days and 0.3 percent meant.

  She walked to where he sat and stood exactly two metres away.

  "You absolute idiot," she said, with a warmth that no thermometer could measure.

  "The data supports the conclusion."

  "The data has supported the conclusion for weeks. It was obvious to everyone except you."

  "I wanted to be sure. I'm a scientist. We require—"

  "Shut up," she said.

  And closed the gap.

  Merchant Luo visited again that week.

  He brought a bottle of aged spirit wine this time. Sat in the common room with Wu Zheng, discussing the Qi river's seasonal patterns.

  Casually — so casually — he asked about the bridge again.

  Whether the formation anchors had been inspected recently. Whether the pumping stations downstream had reported any irregularities.

  Wu Zheng answered what he could. Luo filled in the rest with the easy knowledge of someone who knew the city's infrastructure intimately.

  Little Abacus, as always, wrote everything down.

  Three pages of Merchant Luo's questions about Clearwater Crossing's structural vulnerabilities.