124: Fire Memory Pearl

The scene before him had changed completely.

The old locust tree, which used to be a place for people to rest and children to play, was now tightly encircled by a striking yellow cordon. On several brand-new wooden signs, the vermilion characters were menacing and glaring: "Danger Zone, No Entry."

Several deacons wearing the robes of Tianshi Mansion, their expressions cold and stern, patrolled back and forth like jailers, holding glowing talismans.

Their gazes were as sharp as eagles, fixed intently on every pilgrim who approached, strictly forbidding anyone from picking up a fallen leaf, let alone touching the cracked, broken pot beside the tree roots.

A cold curve tugged at the corner of Zhang Xuanyi's mouth.

How ridiculous. What these people fear is not fire, but the spark hidden within the human heart.

He quietly blended into a group of ordinary people coming to offer incense, lowering his bamboo hat.

In the crowd, a young mother was pointing at the old locust tree, whispering to the child in her arms who was looking around curiously: "Look, baby. Grandma said that a long time ago, there was a big brother here who could make wood catch fire on its own without any talisman paper!"

The child let out an "ah," half-understanding, but a flicker of longing flashed in the mother's eyes.

This very sentence was like a pebble thrown into the silent lake of Zhang Xuanyi's heart.

He quietly slipped away from the crowd, circled to the other side of the locust tree, and taking advantage of a gap in the deacons' patrol, lowered his body like a civet cat and quickly crouched down.

From his bosom, he pulled out a pre-prepared rubbing stick, wrapped with an inconspicuous piece of red thread, resembling some sort of ancient token.

He carefully tucked the stick into a hidden hollow at the base of the tree trunk, then extended his right index finger and, using his sharply trimmed nail, forcefully carved a crooked yet unbridled character "Xiao" into the rough bark.

After finishing all this, he didn't even glance back, turning to merge into the shadows of the forest. With a few leaps, he vanished without a trace, as if he had never appeared.

That night, with the moon dark and the wind high, three daring adolescent boys climbed over the cordon under the cover of darkness.

Familiar with the route, they groped around in the tree hollow. When their fingertips touched the stick wrapped in red thread, their faces lit up with the ecstasy of having found a treasure.

The next day, in Xiao Wang Village ten miles away, a wisp of cooking smoke rose curlingly amidst cheers, without the aid of any fire-starter or talisman paper.

That was the first source-less fire in three hundred years.

The storm began from here.

Su Qingzhu's encrypted communicator vibrated frantically in the dead of night.

The news transmitted by her informant made her heart sink: Tianshi Mansion had united with the six major orthodox mystical sects to hold an emergency meeting at the Golden Summit of Mount Longhu, with only one agenda—to propose the "Strange Fire Management Regulations."

The core content of the draft regulations was to classify all "non-Legacy-system fire control behaviors" as high-risk matters. Relevant individuals must be forced to register, and the "suspected fire-source carriers" they used were to be confiscated and destroyed on the spot.

This was an attempt to stifle all awakened fire seeds in the world in their cradle!

Su Qingzhu drove to Mount Longhu overnight, but was stopped at the perimeter checkpoint of the venue by a team of people wearing special security uniforms.

No matter which media credential she showed, the other party only repeated the same sentence expressionlessly: "The meeting is classified, no unauthorized personnel allowed."

Just as she was deadlocked with the security personnel, burning with anxiety, her phone suddenly "dinged," and she received a massive anonymous uploaded data package.

Her heart stirred, and she immediately opened it.

After the file was decompressed, what appeared were dozens of short videos from all over the country.

The footage was rough but filled with astonishing power: on the Inner Mongolian grasslands, a dark-skinned herdsman was rubbing a smoothly polished saddle rapidly against dry cow dung; a few seconds later, blue smoke rose and flames shot out. In an urban elementary school classroom, several children gathered during recess, competing to see who could rub their palms the fastest; from the palm of one child, a wisp of scorching smoke actually emerged. In a heavily guarded prison, a tattooed prisoner got into a conflict with others during yard time; in his desperation, he bit his tongue and actually spat out a small cluster of scorching flames from his mouth!

At the end of every video, there was a line of text typed in the most ordinary font: "I haven't learned it, but I remember."

Su Qingzhu's breathing instantly quickened.

She immediately understood that this was a public opinion counter-offensive against Tianshi Mansion.

Without the slightest hesitation, she opened her laptop in the car and, with the fastest speed, edited these videos into a highly impactful short film, set to stirring music, and titled it: "Fire Cannot Write, But It Remembers."

After the video was released, it went viral on all major social platforms in less than half an hour.

The flames of public opinion burned even more fiercely than the flames in reality.

Under immense pressure, the three major portal websites had to push it to their front-page headlines, and the title was changed to be incredibly sharp: "Who gave them the power to define 'orthodoxy'?"

Meanwhile, deep within Mount Longhu, the figure of Cui Wujiu moved like a ghost along the edge of the Forbidden Ground of the earth veins.

He could clearly feel a powerful and cold Formation force, like a giant net, shrouding the entire mountain range.

This was the Nine-Layer Fire Suppression Formation, the ultimate technique of Tianshi Mansion, intended to completely cut off the resonance between the red jade within his body and the earth fire outside.

He discovered that the seven core nodes of the Formation were actually set above seven long-abandoned ancient fire wells, each presided over by a white-haired and white-bearded Great Grandmaster.

A direct attack would be like throwing an egg against a rock.

A cold light flashed in Cui Wujiu's eyes; he did not force his way in, but turned and raided the seven villages and eight hamlets at the foot of the mountain overnight.

He did not use any force; he simply knocked on the doors of the villagers who had once received the favor of the "Fire Hearth," asking them for a favor: to light an ordinary oil lamp at their doorway and silently recite an old saying passed down through generations in their hearts: "Fire does not stay at the door, it comes into the home."

Although the villagers were confused, they trusted this benefactor who had once brought them warmth implicitly.

When night fell, as the last villager lit their lamp, a miracle occurred.

From the foot of the mountain to the mountainside, the lights of ten thousand homes converged into a brilliant galaxy, echoing each other from afar.

An invisible, intangible current of heat, formed by the convergence of these thousands of weak Power Of Will, flowed along the veins of the earth like an angry fire Dragon, rushing upwards against the Nine-Layer Fire Suppression Formation at the summit!

The next morning, at the Golden Summit of Mount Longhu, the Elder responsible for presiding over the Fire Suppression Formation suddenly opened his eyes and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Almost at the same time, the Great Grandmasters suppressing the seven ancient fire wells all groaned in unison, their faces turning deathly pale.

Boom! Boom! Boom...

Seven loud bangs came in succession, and all seven ancient wells simultaneously erupted with cyan earth-core flames several zhang high!

The entire Nine-Layer Fire Suppression Formation instantly collapsed, unable to withstand the backflow of this energy from the earth and the hearts of the people.

"What has disturbed the Formation!" the presiding Elder roared in shock and anger.

A Disciple responsible for security came running, crawling and scrambling, his voice trembling with extreme fear: "Re... Reporting to the Elder... the... the earth veins down the mountain... the earth... is burning on its own!"

Taking advantage of this heaven-sent chaos, Zhang Xuanyi slipped into the most heavily guarded Archives Pavilion of Tianshi Mansion like a wisp of blue smoke.

He had only one purpose: to find the true records regarding the origin of the "Fire Memory Bead."

After searching for a long time among the dusty Incomplete Manuals, he finally discovered an ancient map drawn on special animal hide in the pages of a nearly rotted "Strange Chronicles of Mountains and Rivers."

What was depicted on the map was not the "sealing of heavenly fire" by the First Tianshi as rumored by the world, but the exact opposite scene: a world-destroying inferno descending from the sky. The First Tianshi was not sealing it, but had risked his life to snatch a burning star core from amidst countless heavenly fire meteors—that was the predecessor of the Fire Memory Bead!

At the end of the drawing, there was a line of small notes written in blood, the handwriting overbearing and flamboyant: "This fire belongs to the world, and cannot be privatized by our clan."

So that was it!

Zhang Xuanyi's heart was shaken; the Ancestral Master of Tianshi Mansion had not forbidden fire, but was actually its protector!

Three hundred years of Legacy had turned out to be a massive lie!

Just as he was about to make a rubbing of the ancient map, a sharp alarm bell suddenly rang out loudly outside the Archives Pavilion!

"Not good!" Zhang Xuanyi made a decisive decision without any hesitation, tearing off that page of the ancient map, crumpling it into a ball, shoving it into his mouth, and swallowing it whole.

Immediately, he backhanded and overturned the candlestick beside him, and the candle flame instantly ignited the dry bookshelf.

Amidst the rolling thick smoke, he heard the footsteps of the pursuers outside the door getting closer and closer.

Just then, a carrier pigeon flew in through the paper window, with a small note tied to its claw in Su Qingzhu's handwriting: "Media has exposed it, hold them off."

Zhang Xuanyi grinned, his smile full of unbridled satisfaction.

He grabbed a broken broom in the corner, infused it with True Qi, and with a casual wave, created a barrier of sparks that forced the Taoist priests rushing in to retreat several steps.

Amidst the sky full of sparks and thick smoke, he walked out of the main entrance swaggeringly, his resonant voice spreading throughout the entire Tianshi Mansion:

"You can lock up books, but can you lock up the human heart?"

That night, the moon was dark and the stars were sparse.

Seventeen urban Fire Hearths that had been extinguished reignited without wind, without any external force.

But this time, the flames did not shoot into the sky, but eerily surged and converged along the ground, actually piecing together a massive ancient Seal character on the vast plains—"Release"!

Meanwhile, in over three hundred remote and ancient locations across the country, unbelievable "spontaneous combustion events" occurred simultaneously: ancestral tablets in shrines within deep mountain temples emitted a warm glow for no reason; scorching fire mist steamed up from thousand-year-old wells; and even more remarkably, a child in a border town, while sleepwalking, used their finger to draw a complete "Road of Fire" map on their own earthen wall.

At the Golden Summit of Tianshi Mansion, the meeting hall was dead silent.

An old Immortal Master who had been in seclusion for many years looked at the flickering lights of ten thousand homes below the mountain and sighed heavily: "Three hundred years ago, we feared that fire would destroy this world, so we sealed it. Now, fire has entered the human heart and human blood. To try to Seal it again... would be to make an enemy of all living beings, sealing the hearts of the people."

A thousand miles away in a southern town, Su Qingzhu's computer received the last anonymous submitted video.

In the footage, Zhang Xuanyi stood under that old locust tree at the foot of Mount Longhu, gently tossing the last rubbing stick he had whittled himself into the bonfire in front of him.

The flames rose, illuminating his face, which was half-mocking and half-sighing.

"The pot is broken, the fire has run," he whispered to himself, as if speaking to some unseen existence, "That's good."

The video ended there.

Overnight, the situation in the world had reversed.

The blockade of Tianshi Mansion existed in name only, and no one could, or dared to, control the flames on the earth anymore.

However, everyone understood that this was only the beginning.

The huge mountain gate of Mount Longhu, which had been passed down for a thousand years, still stood majestically in the dawn of the next day.

Only the killing intent that used to suppress the world in the past was now replaced by an indescribable anxiety and bewilderment.

The bluestone square in front of the mountain gate was empty, and even the Taoist boy guarding the mountain had been withdrawn.

The entire Mount Longhu seemed to have become a fierce tiger with its fangs pulled out; it looked as massive as ever, but inside, it was already empty.

It was waiting, or rather, fearing something.

The mist at the foot of the mountain gradually dispersed, and a solitary figure, stepping with unhurried paces, was walking along that straight ancient pilgrimage path, step by step, towards the mountain gate.