The First Use, Second Time
The internal meeting was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at three.
It was not a large meeting. Six people: Director Pang; Deputy Director Liu Aijun, of the General Office's Secretariat Section; Section Chief Wei Jianguo (Lao Wei); Section Chief Hu Mingrui, of the Documents Section; Section Member Lin, taking notes; and one additional senior clerk from Liu Aijun's section, also taking notes. The agenda, as circulated, was *internal coordination of November policy implementation.*
Lin had received the agenda the previous afternoon. He had read it twice. He had observed, on the second reading, that one of the four items on the agenda was titled, in the small careful language of these things, *Status review: External consulting and liaison expenditure, Q4.*
The line on the agenda was three weeks old. It had been placed there before he had submitted the budget draft. It had been on the schedule, in other words, before any of his work on the draft had occurred.
But the line was — he understood as he read it — connected to his work. It was connected to the three peculiar lines in the budget draft. It was connected, almost certainly, to the envelope he had carried to the Cloud Peak Teahouse on a Friday evening in late October.
The meeting on Tuesday at three would be a meeting in which the full operational shape of the things Lin had begun to understand about Pang's affairs would, for forty minutes, be discussed openly in front of him.
He had prepared.
He had prepared by reading every internal document available to him on the subjects of *external consulting* and *liaison expenditure* at the General Office level. He had prepared by reviewing his own notes on the budget draft. He had prepared, on Sunday evening, by drawing — for the first time in six weeks — an updated version of his butcher-paper map.
He had decided, on Sunday evening at the boarding house, that the proper posture for the Tuesday meeting was: *take careful notes, ask no questions, draw no attention, and observe.*
He had decided, on Monday morning, that this remained the proper posture.
He had decided, on Tuesday morning over breakfast, that this remained the proper posture.
The decision did not survive the meeting.
#
The meeting room was small. It had a circular table that seated eight. Five of the six attendees were already seated when Lin entered. He took the empty seat at the table, between Lao Wei and Liu Aijun's clerk. He set down his notebook. He opened it. He uncapped his pen.
Pang convened the meeting at three exactly.
The first three agenda items were ordinary. They consumed thirty-two minutes. Lin took notes. The notes were straightforward.
At three thirty-two, Pang turned to the fourth and final item.
"The fourth item," he said. "Status review of external consulting and liaison expenditure. Hu, would you summarize."
Section Chief Hu, of the Documents Section, was a thin man in his late forties. He opened a folder. He read from it, in the dry impersonal voice of a man who had read aloud from many such folders.
"For the period October first through November fifteenth, external consulting expenditure under the General Office's existing authorities has totaled four million two hundred thousand yuan, distributed across seven contracts with five firms. Liaison expenditure for the same period has totaled one million eight hundred thousand yuan, distributed across — twenty-nine separate transactions. The breakdown is in the appended schedule."
He pushed a thin sheaf of papers toward the middle of the table.
Pang nodded. He turned to Liu Aijun, the Deputy Director of the Secretariat Section.
"Liu. Your view."
Liu was a woman of perhaps forty-eight, sharp-faced, with the small precise movements of a person who had spent her career in administrative coordination. She had not, until this moment, spoken in the meeting.
She looked at the schedule. She looked at Pang.
She said: "Director, the expenditure pattern is — irregular. The seven contracts in the consulting category are concentrated, very heavily, in two firms. Of the four million two hundred thousand, three million one hundred thousand has been paid to those two firms. Both firms are registered in Jianghai. Neither has, that I can identify, a previous relationship with the General Office. Their service descriptions in the contract documentation are — broadly worded."
A small pause.
"In the liaison category, of the twenty-nine transactions, eleven represent payments to a single recipient, identified in the documentation as *coordinator, special projects.* The total to this recipient is nine hundred thousand yuan over six weeks."
She closed the folder.
She said: "Director, I would like to ask whether the General Office has — formally documented — the basis on which these contracts and transactions have been authorized. I have not been able to locate the authorizing memoranda in the standard files."
The room was very quiet.
Lin, sitting at his place between Lao Wei and the other clerk, became aware of three things at once.
The first was that Liu Aijun was — not in Pang's circle. Liu Aijun was, in fact, asking the question Pang had been counting on her not to ask.
The second was that Lao Wei, beside him, had — almost imperceptibly — shifted his weight in his chair.
The third was that Pang, across the table, had become very still.
Pang looked at Liu Aijun for a long moment.
Then Pang said, in a voice that was — entirely calm, entirely controlled, entirely without expression: "The authorizations were verbal, Comrade Liu. As is the standard practice for liaison expenditure under this office's discretion. The consulting contracts were authorized in writing by my own office, with copies in the contract files."
"Director, I have reviewed the contract files. The authorizations bear your signature, but they do not, in any of the seven contracts, include the requesting memorandum from a department or section that would normally precede such authorizations."
A pause.
"That is — my question, Director. By what process did these requests originate."
The room was very, very quiet.
Pang said, after three seconds, with the same calm: "The requests originated within my office, Comrade Liu, on my own initiative, in response to operational needs that I judged urgent. The standard procedure requires a requesting memorandum from a section. In these instances, my office served as the requesting section. The memoranda are in the office files, signed by myself in the requesting capacity, and by myself in the authorizing capacity."
Liu Aijun looked at him.
"Director — that is — that is not the standard procedure."
"It is a permitted variation of the standard procedure, Comrade Liu. The General Office's own internal regulations, section three, paragraph fourteen, permit the Director to serve in both requesting and authorizing capacities for expenditures below the threshold of one million yuan per transaction. None of these transactions have exceeded that threshold."
"The cumulative expenditure in the consulting category exceeds four million."
"Cumulative expenditure is not a regulated category, Comrade Liu. Per-transaction expenditure is the regulated category. None of the per-transaction figures has exceeded the threshold."
Liu Aijun was silent.
She looked, briefly, at Section Chief Hu. She looked, briefly, at Lao Wei.
She looked back at Pang.
She said: "Director, I — accept the explanation. I would like, however, to formally request that the authorizing memoranda for each of the seven consulting contracts be filed with the Secretariat Section's central files, in addition to the office files, in accordance with the recommended best practice circulated in the Provincial Government Internal Regulations Commentary, volume three, two thousand nineteen edition. I will prepare the request in writing."
Pang looked at her.
"Comrade Liu, the recommended best practice is — recommended. It is not required."
"It is not required, Director. I am requesting it."
A pause.
Pang said: "I will consider your request, Comrade Liu. If you submit it in writing, I will respond in writing within the standard period."
"Thank you, Director."
"If there is nothing further, the meeting is adjourned."
He stood. He gathered his papers. He walked out.
The other attendees stood, more slowly. They gathered their papers. They walked out, in twos and threes, in silence.
Lin stood. He gathered his notebook.
As he was leaving the room, he passed Liu Aijun. She had remained at the table, slowly closing her folder. As Lin passed her chair, she did not look up.
But she said — very quietly, to her folder, in a voice that perhaps only Lin and Lao Wei could hear: "Section Member Lin. Tomorrow morning, ten o'clock, my office. Bring your meeting notes."
Lin's heart, for one beat, stopped.
He inclined his head a fraction. "Yes, Deputy Director."
He walked out.
#
In the corridor outside, Lao Wei caught up to him. Lao Wei did not slow. He passed Lin without any apparent acknowledgment, and as he passed he said one word, very quietly, with the same flat patience he had used on the night he had told Lin about Liu Wenbing:
"Careful."
Then he was gone.
Lin walked back to the small office. He sat at his desk. He set down his notebook. He picked up the next document from his stack, and he stared at it, and he did not read a single word of it for the next forty minutes.
#
He thought, that evening at the boarding house, with great care.
Liu Aijun was — what.
She had performed an act that no Deputy Director acting in pure subordination would perform: she had publicly questioned her director's expenditure authorities, in front of three of his subordinates, in a manner that placed her director on notice that she intended to file a written request for additional documentation.
She had done this carefully. She had stayed within procedural bounds. She had cited specific regulations. She had, when Pang had pushed back, accepted his procedural defense without further argument. She had not made an accusation. She had not made a scene. She had simply — visibly — opened a small file.
The opening of the file was, itself, the message.
The message was: *I am watching. I will continue to watch. I will, if necessary, document.*
And she had summoned Lin to her office for ten o'clock the next morning, with his meeting notes.
She had not asked Hu for his notes. She had not asked her own subordinate for his notes. She had asked *Lin's* notes.
He thought, with great speed: *She has been told. By someone. Possibly Lao Wei.*
*If Lao Wei has told her, then this entire meeting was — set up by Lao Wei. The question Liu Aijun asked Pang yesterday afternoon was the public face of a coordination that had been arranged in advance.*
*Liu Aijun, in this office, is not testing me on Lao Wei's behalf. She is — receiving me. She is meeting me, formally, as a person Lao Wei has begun to bring into her circle.*
*The single question she will ask is the question of whether I will accept the introduction.*
He thought: *I have to decide now whether I trust this reading.*
He thought: *Lao Wei said "careful" yesterday. He did not say "do not go." He has prepared me. He has built up my trust in him for nine weeks. He has spent capital on me with Pang. He has now, in some way I do not yet fully understand, vouched for me to Liu Aijun.*
*He has earned, by all of this, the trust I am about to give him.*
*Or he has set me up.*
He felt the rewind — the readiness of it, the small dense potential of it — sitting in him like a held breath.
He thought: *If I answer wrongly, I will use it.*
He thought: *I will answer first, and use the rewind only if I see her face change in a way that tells me I have answered wrongly.*
#
He was awake before five.
He lay in the bed in the small grey dark of the boarding house and he thought about the meeting that would happen in five hours. He thought about what he would say. He thought about what he would not say.
He thought about the second draft. About Lao Wei's sealed envelope. About Su Wanyin's.
He thought: *If Liu Aijun is who Lao Wei seems to think she is, she may, in the meeting, ask me a question that would invite me to — reveal that the second draft exists.*
He thought: *I would not reveal it. Not on a first meeting. Not without — much more confirmation than I have.*
He thought: *But the question may come. And if it comes — if it comes — I have to be ready to give an answer that neither reveals nor lies.*
He thought about the answer for an hour.
By six he had it.
He rose. He boiled water. He made tea. He drank it sitting at the desk by the window.
He thought, just before he stood to go to the office: *This is the second time.*
The first time had been the corridor with Sun, on his eighth day. The first time he had used the rewind.
The second time was today.
He was going to go to a meeting today in which a single sentence — said wrongly, or said too specifically, or said too revealingly — could close a door on his career that he could not reopen.
He had decided, on the long walk through the rewind testing in week two, that the rewind was for *one mistake a day,* and that to use it speculatively, to try a sentence and rewind and try another, was to waste it on every day he did not face a real crisis.
He had held to that rule for nine weeks.
But today —
He thought: *Today is, perhaps, a real crisis.*
He thought: *I will save the rewind for the meeting.*
He thought: *I will not use it unless I must. But I will hold it ready.*
He drank the rest of his tea. He washed the cup. He picked up his satchel. He walked to work.
#
At ten-oh-three, he knocked at Liu Aijun's office door.
A small voice said: "Come in."
He entered.
Her office was not large. It was, perhaps, two-thirds the size of Pang's. The furniture was good but plain — a desk of dark wood, two simple wooden chairs facing it, a single bookshelf along one wall. The bookshelf contained no decorative items: only books, arranged by subject, the spines worn with use. A single calligraphic scroll on the wall, in a hand Lin did not recognize, read: *慎独* — *be careful when you are alone.*
It was an old phrase. From the Confucian classics. *Watch your conduct most carefully when no one else is watching.* The choice of scroll, in this office, was — itself — a piece of information.
Liu Aijun was seated behind the desk. She wore a simple grey wool jacket. Her hair was tied back. She did not stand to greet him. She gestured at one of the chairs.
"Sit, Section Member Lin. Tea?"
"No, thank you, Deputy Director."
"Mm."
She looked at him for a moment. Then she said: "Did you bring the notes."
"Yes, Deputy Director."
"Place them on the desk."
He set the small notebook down. She did not pick it up.
"Section Member Lin," she said. "I do not, in fact, need to read your notes. I attended the meeting. I know what was said. I asked you to bring them as a — pretext. So that you would have a reason to be in this office at this hour without alerting the curiosity of those whose curiosity I prefer not to alert."
She paused.
"The meeting will take twelve minutes. You may, when you leave, tell anyone who asks that I asked you a few small questions about meeting protocol — note-taking conventions, the use of the formal record format, that kind of thing. You may tell Lao Wei the truth, if you wish. You may not tell Director Pang the truth. You may not tell Section Member Zhang Xiaodong the truth. Do you understand?"
"I understand, Deputy Director."
"Good."
She folded her hands on the desk.
"I will tell you why I have asked you here. I will tell you in the form of two statements, neither of which will require a response from you. After the two statements, I will ask you a single question. To that question I will require an answer. Then we will be done. Are you ready?"
"I am ready."
"Statement one. Director Pang's expenditure pattern of the past three months is — in my professional judgment — outside the bounds of what the General Office's authorities permit. The pattern involves the routing of approximately five and a half million yuan to entities whose operational existence I have not been able to verify. The pattern is consistent with — schemes that I have observed at other levels of the system in my career. I am, in my own time, building a record of this pattern. I am building the record carefully. I am building it against the possibility that, at some future moment, the record will become important to certain interests in this city. I am not, presently, sharing this record with anyone. I am building it for the file."
A pause.
"Statement two. I am aware that you, last week, submitted a first draft of the General Office's annual budget proposal that included three lines whose figures appear connected to the expenditure pattern I have just described. I am aware that you submitted the draft as instructed by Director Pang. I am aware that you wrote the draft cleanly, without burying the lines and without softening them. I am aware that you have, in the course of the past two weeks, almost certainly produced a second version of the draft, in some form, that you have not submitted to anyone. I am aware that this second version exists in at least one location outside your own access. I will not ask you where. I will not ask you what it contains. I will not ask you to give me a copy."
She paused again.
"That is the second statement, Section Member Lin. I would like you, before I ask my question, to tell me whether either statement contains anything you wish to dispute."
Lin's mind moved very fast.
She knew. She knew about the second draft. She knew it was hidden in at least one location. She did not know — or had chosen not to claim — about Lao Wei's envelope or Su Wanyin's. She had — somehow — established this knowledge in the past five days, since the submission of the first draft.
He thought, with great speed:
*Lao Wei has told her. Or — possibly — she has inferred it from her own observation, in which case she is sharper than I had estimated. Either way, the knowledge is hers.*
*The right answer is to dispute nothing. To dispute would be to lie about a fact she has stated, and she has stated it because she already knows it is a fact.*
He said: "Deputy Director. With respect to your first statement, I have no comment. With respect to your second statement, I have no comment. I would prefer, however, to ask your question rather than offer further dispute."
Liu Aijun looked at him.
Her face did not change.
But her eyes — for the smallest fraction of a second — did something that was almost a smile, in the same way that Su Wanyin's mouth had its almost-smile, in the same way that Lao Wei's bored mask had, on rare occasions, its almost-acknowledgment. The expression was so small that Lin would not have known to look for it three months ago.
He saw it.
She said: "Very well. The question."
"Yes."
"Section Member Lin. I am building, as I have said, a record. The record is — currently — thin. I have access to certain document streams. I do not have access to certain other streams. In particular, I do not have access to the working notes of the General Office's directors, the agenda annotations of certain meetings, or the operational details of arrangements made — outside the formal correspondence channels — between the Director and external parties.
"Some of these things are observed, in the course of normal work, by the Director's own clerk. They are not, ordinarily, written down. They are — observed.
"My question is this. Would you be willing, Section Member Lin, in the course of your normal work, to — observe carefully — and to mention, to me, perhaps once a month, in this office, in a small conversation that would last twelve minutes, anything you have observed that you judge — by your own judgment — to be worth mentioning?"
She paused.
"I am not asking you to spy. I am asking you to share — with one other person in the building — observations that you would in any case be making for your own purposes. I am not asking you to take risks. You will judge what is safe to mention. I will judge what I do with what you mention. I will not, in any record I keep, name you. I will not, in any conversation with anyone else, indicate that you are a source. The connection between us, beyond this room, will not exist on paper or in any oral channel that I do not myself control.
"You may, in return, ask me — perhaps once a month — for any observation or piece of context I am able to give. You will, similarly, judge what is safe to ask. I will judge what is safe to answer.
"You may answer my question now with yes, no, or — I would like to think about this and respond next week.
"There is no wrong answer. If you say no, this conversation will not have happened. If you say yes, the conversation will continue. If you say — let me think — I will respect that, and we will speak again when you are ready."
She stopped.
Lin sat in the chair.
He thought.
He thought, with the small dense potential of the rewind sitting in him.
He thought about Lao Wei. He thought about the noodle shop, and the story of Liu Wenbing, and the small foil packet of tea on the eighth day, and the morning Lao Wei had walked into Pang's office to tell the same story for the second time in nineteen years.
He thought about the third faction. About the white space between the two great factions, where men and women like Lao Wei and Liu Aijun and probably Sun and possibly retired Bureau Chief Su built — across decades, across noodle shops and small offices and afternoon teahouses — a slow patient survival network whose purpose was not power, exactly, but the preservation of something more nameless: the institutions, the procedures, the city itself.
He thought: *If I say no, I keep my freedom. I work for Pang. I do my work. I rise or I fall on Pang's coattails. I do not become entangled with the third faction. I am — clean.*
*If I say yes, I become — something. I become the kind of clerk who reports to two people. I become Lao Wei's project, in a more formal sense than I have been. I become, in the slow accumulation of small monthly conversations in this office, a node in the third faction's quiet net.*
He thought: *No is safer.*
He thought: *Yes is — what I have been moving toward for nine weeks without knowing it.*
He looked at the calligraphic scroll. *Be careful when you are alone.*
He thought, suddenly: *That scroll is the answer. The scroll is what she chose to put on her wall.*
The scroll was not — *be careful so you do not get caught.*
The scroll was — *be the same person when you are alone as when you are watched.*
That was a very different thing.
That was — perhaps — the deepest definition of the third faction. They were the people who, alone, were the same as they were watched. They were not honest in the dramatic public sense that had broken Liu Wenbing. They were honest in the small private sense. They survived in the system because they understood the system perfectly. But when they were alone — when no one was watching — they remained the people they wished to be.
Lin had lived, for twenty-two years, with the question of which kind of man he wanted to become. He had not yet decided. The question, he understood now, might be about to be decided.
He thought: *I want to be the man on the scroll.*
He felt the rewind sitting in him.
He let it sit.
He said: "Yes, Deputy Director. I will."
Liu Aijun looked at him.
She nodded once.
"Good," she said. "First Friday of every month. Three in the afternoon. Twelve minutes. You will find a pretext. The pretext will rotate. Today's pretext was meeting notes. Next month's will be — perhaps a question about formal record format. The month after, a small administrative question. We will not repeat a pretext for at least six months. Do you understand."
"I understand."
"You may go."
He stood. He picked up his notebook. He bowed his head a fraction.
At the door he stopped.
He said: "Deputy Director."
"Yes."
"May I ask one question. Not a question that requires you to answer. A question only."
"Ask."
"The scroll on your wall. May I ask who wrote it."
A small pause.
She said: "Old Su Yongqing wrote it for me, twelve years ago, when I was promoted to my current position. It was a gift. I have kept it on the wall of every office I have occupied since."
Lin nodded.
"Thank you, Deputy Director."
"You are welcome, Section Member Lin."
He went out.
#
In the corridor outside, he walked slowly to the stairwell. He did not return immediately to the small office. He climbed two flights up to the sixth floor — a floor on which he had no business being — and walked to the small window at the end of the corridor, where there was a view westward over the city, toward the river.
He stood at the window for ten minutes.
He had not used the rewind.
He had said yes, and Liu Aijun's face had not changed in any way that suggested he had answered wrongly, and after thirty seconds he had understood that he was not going to need the rewind today. He had — in the entire forty minutes of the meeting and the sleepless hours that had preceded it — held the rewind ready, like a sword unsheathed across a knee, and at the end of the meeting he had returned the sword to its scabbard, untouched.
But the headache had still come.
It was a dull pressure, not the splitting fire of the corridor with Sun, but real. A migraine of *readiness* — of holding the rewind taut for too long, against too much uncertainty. He had not known, before today, that holding it without using it could cost him pain. He noted the new fact.
He thought: *I will be more careful next time. I will hold the readiness only in the specific moment, not for forty minutes of preparation.*
He thought: *I have learned a new rule about my gift.*
He stood at the window. The river was a thin grey line beyond the buildings. Somewhere on the far bank, the new development cranes were turning very slowly against a low overcast sky.
He thought about what he had just done.
He thought: *I have — committed.*
He thought: *Two months and twelve days ago I walked into the marble lobby of this building. I was, then, a young man with a notebook in his pocket and three changes of clothes. I had no allies and no enemies and no map. I was — clean.*
*Today, at twelve forty-six PM on a Wednesday in mid-November, I have ceased to be clean. I have a director who suspects me. I have a section chief who has spent capital on me. I have two patrons I cannot name aloud. I have a woman who reads poetry at a hall in the old quarter, who keeps a sealed envelope from me whose contents she has not opened. I have a small spy at the desk across from mine whom I have agreed, by silent compact with my section chief, to manage at the rate of two cigarettes per day.*
*I have, today, agreed to be — a small node in a slow patient net that may, one day, save me, or destroy me, or simply pull me along its long careful current until I am old, and I find myself, in a small office somewhere, telling stories about Liu Wenbing to some other young clerk on a Thursday evening when neither of us has gone home.*
He thought: *I do not know whether this is the life I wanted.*
He thought: *I know, though, that it is the life I have chosen.*
He thought, last: *I have chosen it. The choice is — mine. Whatever else I lose in the next forty years, I will not lose that fact.*
He stood at the window for another minute.
Then he turned and walked back down to the fourth floor, and into the small office, and he sat at his desk and bent over the next document on his stack, and he worked.
Lao Wei did not look up. But, after a moment, he reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a small foil packet, and tossed it across the gap between their desks. It landed beside Lin's hand.
Lin looked at it.
Tieguanyin. The same grade as the first day.
The fifth packet.
He took it. He stood. He walked to the hot water dispenser. He made a fresh cup of tea.
He sat back down. He drank.
The afternoon light through the small window changed slowly. The cicadas had been gone for weeks; the camphor trees in the courtyard had nearly finished dropping their leaves. The year was turning toward winter.
He worked until eight at night. He went home. He ate noodles. He slept.
In his sleep he dreamed of his grandfather one final time. His grandfather was in the courtyard of the old house in Qingyuan County, sweeping leaves with a long bamboo broom. The leaves were yellow. The air was cool. Lin was perhaps twelve years old in the dream, and he was helping to sweep, and they were not speaking.
His grandfather looked up. His grandfather said: *Zhaoxu.*
Lin said: *Yes, Yeye.*
His grandfather said: *You have begun.*
Lin said: *Yes, Yeye. I have begun.*
His grandfather nodded. He bent back to his sweeping.
Lin slept until morning.
---
*[End of Chapters 14–20.]*
---
## STATE AT END OF CHAPTER 20
| Dimension | Status | |---|---| | **Days in the office** | 72 | | **Lin's rank** | Still 科员 (Section Member). Promotion to 副科长 will come at Ch. 50. | | **Patrons / allies** | Lao Wei (mentor, full trust). Sun (research arrangement, formal). Liu Aijun (third faction node, monthly meetings). Indirect ties to retired Bureau Chief Su via Liu Aijun's scroll. | | **Rivals / enemies** | Director Pang (suspicious but not hostile — has decided Lin is a useful tool). Zhao Yifan (passive antagonist). Zhang Xiaodong (placed informant, being managed at "two cigarettes"). Zhao Hongdao (cultivating relationship). | | **Romantic state** | Su Wanyin — Thursday poetry group + Saturday noodles + sealed envelope of trust. They are reading together. They have not yet kissed. | | **Cheat used** | Twice in narrative use (Ch. 4, Ch. 5 testing). Held ready but unused at Ch. 20. **No tier-up yet.** Lin has learned a new rule: holding the readiness costs pain. | | **Open mysteries** | Pang's external consulting / liaison expenditure pattern. The Cloud Peak Teahouse contact. The full identity of the third faction. | | **Foreshadowing in place** | Western Industrial Park (Ch. 1, 4, 9 — to climax at Ch. 46–49). The 1998 land-use document (Ch. 8). The hollow book / butcher-paper map (Ch. 10, 19). |
---
## NOTES FOR CONTINUATION
**Movement III** (Ch. 23–35) — *"The Leaked Document"* — begins next. Pang will use the budget draft Lin submitted as the basis for an attempted scapegoating when a related document leaks to a competing department. Lin will need Lao Wei's help (Ch. 26) and will use his Liu Aijun channel for the first time. Su Wanyin's role deepens through this arc.
Ch. 21–22 (Li Mingxia's tea meeting at the Cloud Pavilion teahouse from Ch. 11; map update) come next, before Movement III begins.
The pacing distribution holds: Ch. 6, 8, 13, 17, 18 were the slow/atmospheric chapters; Ch. 4, 7, 14, 15, 19, 20 were the fast/decisive chapters; everything else medium.