My dao to eternity

Li Fan didn't return to the records office directly, not that week nor the one following it. A man asking pointed questions so soon after a stranger had come sniffing around the same subject would draw exactly the kind of notice he'd spent years learning to avoid, and he'd rather wait a season for an answer than earn himself a second blade in a second alley by rushing toward the first one carelessly.

He brought the sweeper his usual tonic instead, on the usual schedule, and let three such visits pass with nothing exchanged beyond ordinary pleasantries before he finally let the true question surface, folded so carefully into the shape of idle conversation that anyone listening from outside the doorway would have heard nothing worth repeating.

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