Morning Journey to the Exhibition to Showcase Skills, Entering the Pavilion and Receiving Orders to Learn the Basics Confuses Ji Meng

After a night of rest, Jing Shao and Guan Han returned with their hearts full of anticipation. Before dawn had even broken, they hurried through the morning dew toward the Mohist Pavilion registration office.

The sky at the Hour of the Tiger had only just taken on a pale fish-belly white. Cold mist laden with dew dampened the bluestone road. The two had thought that coming so early would surely put them near the front of the line, but the moment they rounded the street corner, their steps abruptly halted, and the confidence on their faces froze solid.

Before them, the queue outside the registration office had already wound into a gray-black dragon, stretching from the street entrance all the way to the end of the alley, its tail nowhere in sight.

There were nearly three times as many people as when they had come the night before.

The people in line assumed all manner of postures. Some, wrapped in coarse short jackets, curled up on straw mats with hard wheat cakes tucked against their chests.

Others used their bundles as pillows and leaned crookedly against the walls, drool still hanging from the corners of their mouths.

Some had gone so far as to lie directly on the icy ground. Their snores rose and fell, mingling with the distant clack of the night watchman's wooden rattle, startlingly clear in the empty streets and alleys.

"How... are there this many people?!"

Jing Shao's eyes went wide. His fingers unconsciously clenched the cloth pouch at his waist, which held the mechanism tools they had prepared to show off their skills.

Frowning, Guan Han took two steps forward and bent down for a closer look. An old man turned over, his straw mat smeared with mud, yet he showed no sign whatsoever of