Ning found Hanlo in the market square, standing beside the poster painter’s stool. The first poster still showed Yan above the furnace, with the sentence about fearlessness printed beneath him. A new pamphlet lay open on Hanlo’s table. It showed the same red aura and carried another line: “The art only eats what it cannot use.”
Yan stopped when he saw it. He knew the words. He had made the joke after a public demonstration, when a cook asked if the red art was fatal. He had laughed and said the art only ate what it could not use. The answer had meant his body, and only his body. The pamphlet had cut away the table, the question and the joke’s limit.
“That was mine,” Yan said. “I said it once.”
Hanlo held up the pamphlet. “Then you know the words are true.”
“I know I said them as a joke about my own gift. It wasn’t advice for disciples.”
Ning asked where he had found the phrase. Hanlo produced a traveling broadsheet with the same illustration and quote. “The story was already printed. I used it because it showed what people understand about you.”
Jinn stepped closer. “I copied the wording from this broadsheet when you paid me for the poster. I didn’t know it came from a private conversation.”
