My dao to eternity

The city had mostly returned to its usual noise by the time Li Fan swept the front hall the next morning, cart wheels grinding over packed dirt outside the window, a peddler calling out the price of dried fish somewhere down the street. A handful of the recruited had already left Stonebridge before the sun cleared the rooftops — Li Fan had seen two of them from the shop's window, a boy and a girl no older than the crowd he'd watched the day before, walking beside a mule cart with bundles too small to hold much of a life packed into them, parents trailing a few steps behind until the road bent out of sight. Old Sun didn't mention any of it. He set a fresh basket of dried root on the counter and nodded at it. "Sort these before the noon crowd."

Li Fan worked through the basket the way he worked through most mornings now, hands moving without needing much thought behind them, while the shop settled back into its ordinary rhythm around him.

---