The archive room had one narrow window and a shelf of copied texts behind a locking screen. Gu He had asked for the capital fragment to be brought there, where the Orchard scripture could be compared without moving the original again. Qinghe set both texts on a padded board. Ning came in with a clinic roster folded under her arm and left it closed until they finished.
Gu pressed the edge of a paperweight against the fragment’s curled corner. “Read the last intact line aloud.”
Yan leaned over the page. The ink had faded, but the characters stayed clear. “Lamps divided without loss.”
A faint line followed, partly hidden under the tear. Qinghe tilted the board toward the window, watching the ink rather than touching it. The line named the Borrowed Sea as the place where the rest of the method had been kept.
Yan read it again. “This is more than a message art.”
“The next line may have told us how it worked,” Gu said. “The Orchard copy says the method lets awareness reach several places at once. It does not say the user’s body goes with it.”
A single awareness in several places. Yan felt the possibility open in his mind like a map unfolding. He could imagine watching a road while remaining in camp, or seeing beyond a barrier before anyone stepped into danger. It excited him. He wanted to know how far the method could reach and whether its projections could move with the same…
