My dao to eternity

Li Fan watched the keeper's rotation for the better part of a month, never from the same vantage twice, never longer than a delivery or an herb-gathering errand could reasonably justify. The pattern took shape slowly. A junior elder climbed to the fifth terrace's gate at the new moon and stayed a full lunar month before another took the post, always alone, always arriving with a carried satchel of supplies that suggested the duty required no outside support once begun.

He caught the changeover itself only once, timing an herb-gathering trip along the boundary path to coincide with what his weeks of patient counting told him should be the transition. The outgoing elder came through the gate at dusk, and Li Fan, positioned at a discreet distance behind a stand of pine, watched the man's face in the fading light with the same careful attention he gave any difficult diagnosis.

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