Hanlo rang the brass bell and asked the followers to trust the sequence and their own resolve. The crowd quieted. Some people sat on the benches with the red handout open on their knees. Others stood behind them, watching the volunteers and clinic table.
“Before the first breath,” Hanlo said, “remember that fear is only the body asking whether the spirit is ready.”
Yan stepped forward before Hanlo could begin. He carried his personal ledger, not the handout. “May I speak before you teach?”
Hanlo looked toward the crowd, then nodded. “Of course.”
Yan opened the ledger to the entry he had made after using Nine-Death Blood Ignition. “This record says the art consumes the practitioner’s lifespan. That is its ordinary cost. My System reverses that personal harm for me and gives me the method’s normal benefit. I do not lose lifespan from it. No one else can use my ledger to claim their body will respond the same way.”
A man in the second row asked whether Yan had tested it on someone else.
“No,” Yan said. “It is a change in me. It cannot be passed to a student.”
Hanlo said the ledger was one person’s testimony. “Faith cannot be measured on a page.”
