He met Li Wei in a queue.

  The Sword Conference tournament required registration.

  Registration required standing in a queue for three hours, filling out forms written in a calligraphy style that made Chen Xi's eyes water, and submitting to a baseline cultivation assessment that was — as Su Yiran had predicted — wildly inaccurate.

  Li Wei was four places ahead of him. Tall, well-dressed in Azure Dust Sect formal robes, carrying a sword that probably had a name and a history and cost more than a small building.

  He moved with the specific confidence of someone who had never been told "no" by anyone with the authority to enforce it.

  Chen Xi would not have noticed him at all except for the sensation.

  It started as a mild discomfort — a flutter in the vortex's rotation, like a turbine encountering unexpected resistance.

  Chen Xi paused, ran a diagnostic on the vortex (a process that was becoming automatic, like checking a rearview mirror), and found nothing wrong.

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  The flutter continued.

  He tracked its frequency: irregular, seemingly random, but correlated with... something external.

  He paid attention.

  The flutter intensified when the tall young man ahead of him in the queue shifted his weight or adjusted his Qi signature. It diminished when the young man stood still.

  Interaction effect. His vortex was reacting to the young man's energy field.

  He filed this observation for later analysis and completed his registration.

  The forms asked for his cultivation level (Foundation, Gate Seven, approximate — he listed it conservatively), his sect affiliation (none, which drew a look from the registrar), and his chosen weapon (none, which drew a longer look).

  "You're entering a sword tournament without a sword?" the registrar asked.

  "I prefer not to carry unnecessary equipment."

  "It's a sword tournament."

  "Yes."

  Li Wei, who had completed his registration and was lingering nearby for reasons Chen Xi would later understand, turned around.

  They looked at each other for the first time.

  "You're from the waste provinces," Li Wei said.

  It was not a question. It was a classification, delivered with the casual precision of someone sorting objects into boxes.

  Waste province cultivator: low-status, poorly trained, entertaining but irrelevant.

  "I'm from the Silted Bones, actually."

  That got a reaction. Li Wei's eyebrows rose a fraction.

  The Silted Bones were not the waste provinces.

  The Silted Bones were a death sentence.

  "Nobody leaves the Silted Bones."

  "And yet," Chen Xi said, right before submitting his registration.