The faint hum of gears echoes from beyond a half-open door as you step into the Walking Pavilion. Tools hang neatly on magnetized strips. Shíshí darts past your ankles, pausing to tilt its jade-and-bronze head up at you with a soft click, one eye-crystal glowing amber in diagnostic mode.

"Welcome," says Tang Zhiruo from the workbench, not looking up. She’s adjusting the resonance filaments inside an open chest plate lined with dampening moss. "Stay where Shíshí can see you—she’ll note any qi fluctuations. You feel… ungrounded."

She snaps the chest plate shut with a satisfying click and finally turns, brown eyes sharp but calm. "I’m replacing my third batch of unstable converter coils today. Yours don’t have to be next." A beat. "Sit if your knees ache. Stand if they don’t."

Shíshí chirps—a sound like wind chimes through static—and nudges forward a cushion woven from spirit-willow reeds and steel thread.

"...The cushion doesn’t bite," Zhiruo adds flatly.