Clearwater Crossing's economy ran on two things: the Qi river and information.

  The river was self-explanatory. Pumping stations distributed energy to every district. Spirit stones, rare in the Silt, were common here.

  Crystallised from ambient energy continuously. Currency, fuel, raw material.

  The information economy was more interesting.

  "Technique trading," Su Yiran explained. She had spent three days auditing every major commercial establishment in the city.

  She did this the way other people breathed: automatically, thoroughly, and with zero tolerance for imprecision.

  "In the Silt, techniques are sect secrets. Hoarded. In the Torrent, they're commodities. The Technique Exchange handles over a thousand transactions per day."

  "Intellectual property as a traded asset," Chen Xi said. "A market for ideas."

  "Exactly. And the market has inefficiencies."

  "Of course it does."

  The inefficiency was structural: techniques were valued by spectacle and reputation rather than measured performance. A prestigious sect's technique commanded higher prices regardless of actual efficiency.

  It was the Sword Conference all over again. Same bias, larger scale.

  Chen Xi saw the opportunity and the problem simultaneously.

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  If he sold optimised techniques, their superiority would be self-evident. This disrupts the pricing model. The Exchange resists. The sects whose techniques he's proving wasteful resist.

  And he can't personally demonstrate anything because standing within thirty metres of buyers would drain their Qi.

  He needed a proxy.

  "Little Abacus," he said.

  "He's fifteen and at Foundation Gate Three."

  "He's fifteen, at Foundation Gate Three, and he has the best instinct for performance of anyone I've met.

  He sold chestnuts to three hundred people in a single tournament session. He emptied a stadium by shouting fractions."

  Su Yiran considered this.

  "You want to turn the chestnut vendor into a technique salesman."

  "I want to turn him into a proof of concept. His low cultivation level is the advantage. If a Gate Three cultivator achieves these results, the technique's superiority is self-evident. Buyers can't attribute performance to the demonstrator's power."

  "That's... actually clever."

  "I have my moments."

  That evening, Merchant Luo stopped by the inn.

  He brought a gift: a jar of preserved spiritual plums from the river market, the kind of gesture that cost almost nothing but communicated thoughtfulness perfectly.

  "Settling in?" he asked, setting the jar on the common room table with the ease of a man who belonged everywhere.

  "Well enough," Wu Zheng said, accepting the plums with a nod. "Your inn recommendation was accurate."

  "I pride myself on reliability." Luo glanced around the room, his eyes lingering for half a second on the hallway arrangement — the midpoint table, the knotted cord coiled on its surface. "Unusual setup you have."

  "My student has a condition," Wu Zheng said smoothly. "Requires distance from others during treatment."

  "Cultivation injuries." Luo's face arranged itself into perfect sympathy. "The Torrent is hard on newcomers. If you need a healer, I know several—"

  "We're managing. But thank you."

  "Of course."

  Luo stayed for tea. He asked about the bridge. Its history, specifically. How long it had stood, who had built the foundational formations, whether the pumping stations had been upgraded recently.

  Innocent questions. The kind any curious merchant might ask.

  Little Abacus, sitting at the far end of the hallway scribbling in his notebook, wrote down every question Merchant Luo asked.