My dao to eternity

Mu Wan's visits grew more frequent once her parents stopped discussing the wisdom of allowing them. She no longer waited for both adults to be away before climbing the shared wall — some afternoons she simply appeared at the gate itself, knocking with the particular confidence of a child who had decided, on her own authority, that a certain kind of welcome no longer needed to be earned fresh each time.

Li Fan permitted it, deliberately and with the same careful calculation he brought to everything. He understood that a formation master who turned away a neighbor's curious daughter, again and again, invited exactly the kind of quiet, accumulating suspicion he'd spent months dismantling. A formation master who allowed her in, and showed her nothing but formations, built something considerably more useful — a witness, however unwitting, whose honest reports would always confirm precisely what he wanted confirmed.