Pei’s report lay open on the guild council table. He had included the courtyard readings, the method, and the hospital’s date check. The council elders read it in silence while Yan waited beside Qinghe and Gu.
One elder tapped the final paragraph. “You are saying the broadside is false?”
“The two headache cases cannot have been caused by Yan’s breakthrough,” Pei said. “They were recorded before it. The measured circulation did not change the courtyard readings. That is what we can say.”
“And what can’t you say?”
“That this test covers every technique or every person.”
The elder leaned back. “The public will not read the limits. They will hear that the guild cleared him.”
“Then put the limits in the first paragraph,” Qinghe said. “And let the public read the same numbers you read.”
Another council member objected that the crowd would treat any report as a verdict. Pei replied that withholding the result would leave the broadside uncontested. Yan watched the debate shift from his body to the guild’s reputation. He found that no more comfortable, but he held his tongue while Pei described how the instruments had been checked before and after the circulation.
