120: Nine-turn Heart Burning Technique

The night wind swept through the village, carrying the dampness of mountain mist, causing the withered branches to rustle.

That fire pit, unlit for years, now flickered with a ghostly blue flame, like a soul crawling up from the depths of the earth.

Zhang Xuanyi sat by the pit, back against the iron pot. The faint glimmer at the bottom of the pot remained, echoing from afar with the seventh star of the Big Dipper.

He did not look at the fire, but at the old man—the man who had once had everything taken away by fire, and whose throat had been sealed by fire for thirty years.

Tears rolled down his deeply lined cheeks, coalescing into droplets at his chin before falling into the ashes with a soft "hiss."

In the firelight, the images dissipated.

The boy's smile, the out-of-control flames, the moment of throwing himself to protect his child... all sank deep into the charcoal ashes.

But that scene was not destruction; it was protection.

The fire did not kill; it simply ran out of time to be understood.

"Your son didn't die because of the fire," Zhang Xuanyi said in a low voice. "He died because no one taught him how to light it."

The old man shuddered, a broken sob squeezing from his throat, like thunder that had been sealed for years, repeatedly crashing within his chest until it finally cracked open a seam.

Zhang Xuanyi stood up and brushed the dust off his Daoist robe.

He said no more.

Words are like wind; only fire can convey the heart.

The next day, just as dawn broke, rustling sounds came from the village.

The children gathered around the fire pit, and the old man knelt on the ground, his hands shaking violently, yet he gripped a fire-starting stick tightly.

His hands were stiff and deformed from years of disuse, his knuckles white, sweat beading on his forehead.

A small grandson timidly handed him some dry grass; he took it, stuffed it into the groove, changed to another branch, and tried again.

Once, twice, ten times...

His fingertips were worn raw, blood mixed with resin dripping onto the wood.

The onlookers held their breath, no one daring to make a sound.

Until— "Snap!"

A spark jumped up, landing on the withered grass. With a gentle blow, a flame suddenly leaped out.

The old man froze, staring at that tiny flame as if seeing it for the first time.

Then, he laughed, and began to wail like a child.

The moment the fire pit was relit, the entire village went quiet.

It was not awe, nor fear, but a long-lost sense of belonging—the fire had returned, not as a disaster, but as a messenger of memory.

Zhang Xuanyi silently packed his belongings, preparing to leave.

An old woman chased after him and handed him a packet of fire pit ashes wrapped in oil paper.

"Take it," she said. "This is the taste of 'remembering'."

He nodded and accepted it.

As he walked out of the village gate, he looked back.

In the morning light, the fire pit reflected the sky, shifting from blue to orange, warmth rising.

Several children were already learning to rub the wood, their laughter filling the mountain path.

Meanwhile, in a city a thousand miles away.

Su Qingzhu stood in front of an old teaching building, looking up at the mottled wall.

The wall was covered in dark red patterns, like scorched marks, yet as delicate as a fine brush painting.

She raised her handheld scanner, the beam sweeping across the wall, and dynamic images immediately appeared on the screen: an old soldier in military uniform trekking through wind and snow, a faint fire burning in his palm, lighting the path beneath his feet.

His lips were chapped from the cold, but his eyes were as resolute as iron.

The final frame was the moment he collapsed in the snow, the fire in his hand extinguished, while he still tightly clutched a blood-stained letter to his chest.

"This is not graffiti," she said, her voice trembling. "This is history written by fire."

Behind her, a school representative frowned: "Reporter Su, this is unauthorized carving and must be removed."

"Remove it?" She turned sharply, her gaze like a blade. "What you want to remove is the final journey an old soldier walked with his life! It is the last bit of warmth before his death! You call this damaging cultural relics? The real cultural relics are these people!"

She stopped wasting words and immediately set up holographic projection equipment, digitizing the fire patterns on the entire wall, uploading them simultaneously to the "chronicles of vows" platform, and launching a nationwide campaign called the "Fire Memory Project":

[Use fire to record the person you are most unwilling to forget.]

Three days later, the whole country exploded.

In a fishing village on the East Sea, a mother burned the temperature curve of her child's first cry by the stove;

In the Northwest Gobi Desert, a retired worker branded a countdown of their last shift on the wall of an abandoned factory;

In the mountains of the Southwest, a couple lit their family motto in front of their ancestral home, the wedding vows of three generations appearing in the flames;

There were even university students who piled up firewood in an open campus area, using low-temperature fire to engrave the names of underground party members from the War of Resistance...

Fire was no longer a taboo, but a language.

The authorities were initially silent, then quietly changed their tune: "Such behavior... is temporarily listed as a new type of intangible cultural heritage observation project."

Meanwhile, in the northern wilderness, Cui Wujiu stepped through the snow and entered that forest of red leaves.

The leaves were like blood, their veins resembling fire patterns, trembling gently in the wind.

He reached out to touch one, and the leaf suddenly became hot, light and shadow emerging: it was the faces of his ancestors, each walking out from the flames, silently watching him.

"We are not the descendants of the Celestial Master," a voice sounded, old and calm. "But we have lit fire, passed on fire, and guarded fire. That is enough."

He closed his eyes, hearing countless whispers echoing through the forest, like an ancient sacrificial song, or perhaps a conversation spanning a century.

He plucked a leaf and tucked it into the worn-out notebook he carried with him.

The cover was long since blurred, with only one line of text faintly visible: "Record of Root-Seeking".

"If future children ask where our roots are..." he murmured, "just show them this leaf."

That night, a wildfire suddenly broke out in the forest.

No one lit it, no one controlled it.

The flames slowly circled the forest, and after three turns, they naturally extinguished.

Like a sacrificial rite.

And also like a farewell.

At the market in a border town, thin morning mist filled the air.

Zhang Xuanyi walked into the crowd with an iron pot on his back, his clothes simple, his expression lazy.

He stopped at an empty stall, looking at the noisy marketplace in the distance, and suddenly heard two passersby whispering:

"Have you heard? A 'Fire Master' is taking apprentices here, teaching some 'Self-Combustion Art', claiming it's the true transmission of Mount Longhu..."

"Don't believe it. The day before yesterday, someone practiced it and broke out in a rash all over their body, almost burning out their Meridians."

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, but he said nothing, only taking out that packet of fire pit ashes from his bosom and gently stroking it.

Immediately after, he walked to the market management office and rented the most inconspicuous corner stall.

Sunlight shone aslant, and a faint glimmer flashed at the bottom of the pot.

Like a spark falling into the mortal world, waiting quietly to set the prairie ablaze.

Zhang Xuanyi squatted in front of the iron pot, unhurriedly adding a piece of firewood.

The flame leaped up with a "whoosh," licking the bottom of the pot, illuminating half his face in light and casting the other half in shadow.

The clear water bubbled, without a single grain of salt or a piece of medicine, yet it attracted the gaze of the entire street.

"I'm not selling fire today, only inspecting it." His voice was not loud, like a stone falling into a mountain stream, crashing into the hubbub of the market.

The crowd froze.

Someone sneered: "Who doesn't know that the 'Fire Master' has disciples all over the world? Who do you think you are?"

Before the words faded, a thin man squeezed to the front, shaking open a yellow Talisman, inscribed with "Dragon and Tiger True Transmission · Self-Combustion Art Core Chapter," the cinnabar handwriting crooked like crawling snakes.

"I bought this for three hundred spirit coins! Just because you say it's fake, it's fake?"

Zhang Xuanyi glanced at it, the corners of his mouth curving upward.

He didn't take the Talisman, instead taking out the oil-paper-wrapped packet of fire pit ashes from his bosom and gently patting it in a circle around the bottom of the pot.

The ashes touched the hot iron, surprisingly emitting a faint green light.

"True fire leaves a trace, green and clear; false fire refines Qi, black smoke shoots to the sky." He reached out to take the Talisman and stuck it to the bottom of the pot.

In an instant— "Boom!" A foul-smelling black smoke surged up, twisting into the shape of a ghastly face, shrieking once before dissipating into the wind.

The crowd was in an uproar.

"This... this is low-quality ignition powder mixed with Inflaming Grass! Practicing this will burn out your Dantian!" an old, knowledgeable supernatural practitioner exclaimed.

Zhang Xuanyi remained calm, throwing the Talisman into the pot.

The clear water rolled, floating up a layer of greasy black dregs, like pus and blood.

The second person refused to believe it and brought out a Jade Slip.

As soon as he chanted the incantation to activate it, a green light flashed from the bottom of the pot, the Jade Slip shattered, and several scarlet pills flew out, turning into foul-smelling slime the moment they hit the ground.

"It's mixed with 'Life-Exhausting Pill' residue," Zhang Xuanyi nodded. "Using the name of passing on fire, but actually trading your life for three days of false fire. Their conscience has been fed to the dogs."

By the time the thirty-sixth person knelt, the copy of "Nine-Turn Heart-Burning Art" in their hand had already been trampled to shreds by the crowd.

The onlookers were furious.

In recent days, how many people had suffered from Qi Deviation while practicing, how many children had convulsed and fainted—they had thought it was a lack of talent, only to realize now that they were being slaughtered like livestock!

The fake Talismans were torn to shreds like snowflakes, tossed into the pot, evaporating with the black water and turning into wisps of smoke that sounded like wails.

Zhang Xuanyi stood up, the flames in the pot suddenly still, the water surface reflecting thousands of fragmented lights—like someone's memories burning.

He held up a blank Talisman paper and stood against the wind.

"The fire seed you want is not on the paper, nor in the medicine," his voice was not loud, yet it suppressed the breathing of the entire crowd. "It is in the stubbornness that makes you want to try again after being deceived, in the nights when you know it will hurt but refuse to let go. The true Art is that indomitable spirit in your heart."

No one spoke.

The wind blew through the market, picking up a few burnt corners of the Talismans.

A young man looked down at the secret manual in his hand, his fingers trembling, then suddenly gritted his teeth, tore open the spine, and threw the entire book into the pot.

The fire surged with a "poof," turning half the street red.

That night, at the third quarter of the Zi hour.

The fire pits of Seventeen City boiled for no reason.

The flames did not rise, did not burn, did not take shape; instead, they shattered into billions of tiny specks of light, like fireflies flowing upwards against the current.

They did not disperse, did not extinguish, passing through the clouds to quietly gather in the stratosphere—

A star map spanning three thousand miles appeared in the firmament, woven from countless memory fragments: the first wisp of warmth from a mother lighting the stove, the final obsession of an old soldier before his fire extinguished in the snow, the glow of the hearth as a couple looked at each other and smiled while keeping watch... Each speck of light was a "Fire Memory" that a person was unwilling to forget.

And deep within the Forbidden Ground of Mount Longhu, in the Celestial Master's Hall that had been sealed for a hundred years, the charred wooden stick that Zhang Xuanyi had once used to teach people how to make fire by friction suddenly snapped.

"Crack."

A crystal-clear bead rolled down the stone steps—the Fire Memory Bead.

It floated quietly in the air, its surface shimmering with the palm prints and heartbeats of everyone who had touched the stall's strange treasures over the past three years, like a heart of civilization that was still beating.

In the distance, the first light of dawn appeared.

Zhang Xuanyi, with the iron pot on his back, set off on the return journey.

He walked toward the mountain village where he had first lit the fire pit, his steps light and slow, like a pilgrimage.

But when he passed through the mountain path and arrived at the village entrance, his steps faltered.

The place of the first ignition no longer had the Fire Lesson Headquarters.

In its place was a circular open-air plaza, with stone steps spreading out in layers like a lunar halo.

In the center, a deep pit lay quietly, without railings or frames, only a circle of dark red bricks surrounding it like a pool.

There was no fire in the pool.

But the ground was slightly warm, as if there was a sleeping pulse, waiting for the first bundle of firewood to fall.