The archive clerk arranged the copied command orders beside the disconnected copper strips. Each page named a station and the local reading it had sent when Wuchen issued the command. Qinghe checked the dates against the furnace log. The reconnect orders for unsafe nodes came after crews had already reported damage.
Gu identified the seals and signed a statement explaining how the strips routed commands through the old network. He listed the changes he had failed to publish. The clerk placed the statement beside the technical sketch, where future investigators could compare his account with the physical parts.
Yan remained at the inner ring while the record was organized. He did not use his cultivation to alter the contents or erase the obligations. The provincial contracts remained evidence of what families had been made to bear. The affected people would decide how they were used at the hearing.
Gu set the technical sketch beside his statement. The clerk checked the drawing against the sealed strip and asked him to point out where the compulsory contact had branched from the local barrier control.
“Here,” Gu said. “This bridge carried the page command to the valve.”
“And you approved it?”
“I approved the layout. I failed to require a separate local control.”
