This Life, I Will Balance the Grain

Li Shen had spent five years as the quietest disciple in a minor branch school, and everyone liked that he stayed in the back. He counted grain stores, watched sword stances, and memorized who lied with their left hand. When his hands started shaking over a tiny ink mark in a notebook, he hid it fast and kept his face calm. That was the only way he survived being overlooked. Then a diary with a cut-off final line landed in his lap, and one unfinished sentence made him realize that the people around him were not simply careless. They had been moving pieces for a long time, and he had been the one person close enough to see the pattern.