My dao to eternity

The street outside Hundred Herbs Hall was quiet in a way Li Fan hadn't heard it since his first week in the city. No cart wheels grinding over packed dirt, no vendors calling out prices, only the occasional footstep passing the window and the low creak of a shutter somewhere down the row. He swept the front hall anyway, the motion familiar enough by now that his mind stayed elsewhere while his hands did the work.

Old Sun sat behind the counter with a bowl of tea he wasn't drinking, glancing once toward the empty street before going back to the ledger open in front of him. "Half the city's standing outside the east gate," he said, not looking up. "Won't see much trade before midday."

He didn't say it with any particular weight behind it. Just a fact, the same way he might have noted rain coming or a shipment running late. Li Fan finished sweeping and moved on to the shelves, wiping dust from jars that had already been wiped clean the day before, and the shop settled into a stillness that made the scrape of his own cloth against clay sound louder than it should have.

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