Archivist Ena joined Daro at the reading table the following morning. She had kept the confiscated notebooks in their separate shelf groups and knew the catalog numbers by sight. She placed the Yun Cang volume beneath a reading stand and turned only to the pages named in the council order.
The next sheet showed a second stage of the feedback diagram. The first column read “destructive return.” The next arrow curved away from the injured meridian and into a loop marked “refinement.” The final column had been blurred by water damage. Some of the ink had lifted from the page.
Qinghe studied the surviving terms. “This resembles the way Yan experiences his personal reversal. But the damaged label matters. We cannot fill it in from what we already know.”
Ena moved the reading lamp so the light crossed the page from the side. The water damage showed as a pale ripple where the ink had spread. She placed a loose sheet of clean fiber beside it, not on top, to compare the surviving strokes.
“The second column may be a result, or it may be an instruction,” she said. “The line break does not tell us which.”
Qinghe pointed to a small mark above the arrows. “This could mean a change in direction. It could also be a note about timing.”
