Calibration

A name given in private by a lowly rogue cultivator. The rebound rate of Qi-Condensation Powder in the bazaar has held, year after year, steady on a single line: just below the line the bazaar could hold anyone accountable for, yet just high enough to keep wringing spirit-pills, tending fees, and resale fees out of the rogue cultivators.

Too precisely high, too precisely low. So precise it seems no accident, but rather as if someone were tuning that crosshair from behind, day after day.

What chills one further: the same flaw appears not on a single pill alone. Change the art, change the street corner, change to unrelated rogue cultivators—and the position of the flaw is exactly the same. What is being calibrated is, it seems, more than one shop, more than one street.