158: No credit

On the night of the Winter Solstice, ashes rose into the sky like stars returning to their source, and the mountain gate creaked as if a lock had just been opened.

Three days passed, and Mount Longhu remained shrouded in thin mist, as if heaven and earth were holding their breath in anticipation.

Zhang Xuanyi did not go down the mountain.

He sat cross-legged on the highest stone steps of the Stargazing Platform, eyes slightly closed, his breathing synchronized with the mountain wind.

The inverted clay pot in front of him stood silently like an anonymous monument, offering the most simple gratitude of the Mortal world—not to gods, not to immortals, but to that wisp of fire that had once warmed a cold night.

The morning light slanted down, and the mist gradually dispersed.

Suddenly, his fingertips moved.

At the bottom of the clay pot, a circle of fine water droplets quietly appeared.

They were not dew, nor were they melted frost, but droplets seeping from the inside out—crystal clear, slightly warm to the touch, and carrying a faint, elusive pulsation, like a sleeping heartbeat.

He gently stroked the wall of the pot, and the golden mark on his palm, which had appeared on the night the ashes rose, suddenly trembled, as if it had sensed something.

"This is not the System." He whispered, his voice so soft it was almost blown away by the wind, "It is the earth... brewing wine."

He had used the Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid once; it was a forbidden object that forcefully raised cultivation and defied the heavens, cold, overbearing, and devoid of Life Qi.

But this drop of liquid, condensing on its own from the clay pot before him, was as warm and smooth as blood, with a long-lasting aura, and faint spirituality flowing within it.

People repay fire with sincerity, and fire repays the world with Qi.

The Dao of freedom was never about preserving oneself alone, but about all things helping each other, a cycle of Karma.

He once thought he was just the person who lit the spark, but now he understood—the true fire had long since ceased to belong only to him.

It had fallen into the hearths of thousands of households, turning into a word of advice from an elder, a roasted sweet potato in a child's hand, and a cup of hot ginger tea handed over by a stranger in a subway station.

Fire does not owe debts.

So when people say "This is returned to the fire," what they are returning is not just warmth, but Power Of Will, faith, and that glimmer of light deep in the human heart that refuses to be extinguished.

Zhang Xuanyi opened his eyes, looking at the surging sea of clouds in the distance, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth: "Back then, when I set up a street stall to sell Talisman, I was after spirit coin to upgrade the System; later, when I lit the fire, I wanted the world to no longer freeze; but now..."

He flicked his fingertip, and a drop of the warm liquid flew out, landing on the withered grass in the cracks of the stone.

In an instant, tender buds broke through the soil, lush and green, growing three inches of new branches in a single breath.

"Now, the fire can walk on its own."

Meanwhile, on a city street a hundred miles away, Su Qingzhu stood at the entrance of an old alley, staring blankly at a newly hung cloth banner.

On the banner were six characters: Warmth once, repay half a coin.

This had once been a stall selling "prayer ash," specifically swindling the elderly and children, claiming it was "ancestral hearth soil that wards off evil and prospers the home."

She had even written a report last year exposing its true nature.

But now, the stall owner no longer sold ash, but instead set up a large iron pot, boiling ginger tea and red date soup.

If passersby brought the leftover ash from their home hearths and weighed it, they could exchange it for a hot drink or a charcoal cake.

"You accept burnt ash too?" She asked, her tone carrying the habitual skepticism of a reporter.

The stall owner was a woman in her fifties, her apron stained with coal cinder; she looked up at her and smiled: "As long as it carries sincerity, the fire remembers the way."

Su Qingzhu was stunned.

She remembered the words she wrote while organizing her notes last night: "In the past, we chased after miracles; now, miracles have learned to wait for us."

At that moment, she suddenly felt her pen weighed a thousand jin.

Deep in the earth veins at the northern foot of the Kunlun Mountains, the seventh information broadcast had just been completed.

Zhang Xuanyi opened his eyes abruptly, his brow twitching.

He felt it—the network of golden threads originally guided by Cui Wujiu's remnant artifact had actually begun to flow in reverse!

It was no longer passive repair, but active energy release, like an undercurrent reviving beneath a dried-up riverbed.

He rushed overnight to an abandoned riverbed at the northern foot, dug three feet into the frozen soil, and his fingertips touched a piece of cold metal debris.

That was the fragment of the fire-patrol artifact that Cui Wujiu had left behind, which should have long since ceased to function.

But at this moment, golden crystal grains were slowly precipitating on the surface, like scabs of blood, and yet also like new life.

More eerily, these crystal grains spontaneously arranged themselves into an array, the structure of which was extremely similar to the "House-Peace Talisman" he had once photocopied at his street stall!

But looking closely, the strokes were crooked and the lines were immature, like a child's graffiti.

His heart jolted violently.

He remembered.

Three years ago in the depths of winter, a northern town had been without power for seven days. A mother, holding her feverish child, crouched by the fire pit and drew a crooked Talisman on the ground with a piece of charcoal, muttering: "Bless the father to come home early, bless the child's fever to break..."

He had passed by at that time and casually photocopied the charcoal drawing, saving it into the System store as an anecdote, numbered "Folk Wish Talisman - Non-standard Version."

No one had ever bought it.

He had also forgotten it.

But the fire remembered.

It had brought this sincerity back to the earth veins, using Cui Wujiu's remnant artifact as a medium and the Power Of Will of ten thousand people returning to the fire as a trigger, forcibly refining a child's innocent words into a true pattern to protect the land!

"My Talisman can be copied three thousand times, but it cannot copy the human heart," Zhang Xuanyi murmured. "But the human heart itself can turn a piece of waste paper into the Dao."

He slowly stood up, brushed the dust and snow from his knees, and looked toward the northern sky.

There, the extreme cold mining area was still sleeping, the wind and snow had not ceased, but something had already quietly awakened.

And at the other end of the city, Su Qingzhu closed her notebook, and a new message lit up on her phone screen:

[Editor-in-Chief Calling]

She answered, and a low and solemn voice came from the receiver: "Qingzhu, over at the northern mining area... someone filmed a strange scene. The miners built a fire at the abandoned wellhead and kept watch all night, saying they were 'returning' something. Do you want to go take a look?"

She didn't agree immediately, just looked down at the title of the manuscript she had just written in her hand.

The ink was not yet dry, and it read five characters: "The Fire Has Returned."

The Qingming rain, fine as needles, sprinkled on the bluestone slabs of Southern Anhui; it did not wet the clothes, but it chilled the bones.

Zhang Xuanyi, draped in an old Daoist robe and wearing straw sandals, walked slowly through the village alleys.

Ash urns hung high from the eaves, like silent stars—this was the new custom of the "Ash Welcoming Festival": no longer waiting for the fire to manifest, but igniting the fire with the heart.

He stood under the old locust tree, watching a circle of children sitting around.

The youngest was only seven or eight, holding a pinch of hearth ash, his voice trembling: "Last year on a snowy night, our cow shed collapsed... an uncle in a black jacket carried my dad back, holding a piece of hot charcoal in his hand. He didn't leave his name; when he left, he only said, 'The fire passed by here.'"

As the voice fell, the ashes in his palm suddenly trembled, turning a faint red, rising an inch of flame, illuminating the child's tearful eyes.

Zhang Xuanyi's eye twitched slightly.

Three years ago, he set up a street stall to sell photocopy yellow paper and relied on the System to farm spirit coin; later, he lit a fire on Mount Longhu and relied on Talisman to trigger a Qi tide; but now, the world no longer needed him to personally hand over the fire—they could refine a memory, a kind word, into a seed that would set the prairie ablaze.

"I used to think that freedom meant being unrestrained," he chuckled, pinching a wisp of ash floating in the wind with his fingertips, "but now I understand, freedom means the human heart is not cold, and the world warms itself."

In the distance, Su Qingzhu squatted in front of the voice recorder, her brows tightly locked.

The device screen was dead silent, the waveform showed no fluctuation, as if the scene just now had never happened.

But in her ears, the children's voices still echoed, as clear as a whisper in her ear, and she could even hear the half-breath broken by sobbing when a certain girl was telling the story.

Even more eerily, these voices automatically gathered in her mind into a manuscript—the title had already emerged: "The Inaudible Fire."

She suddenly realized that this was not a recording, but a Legacy.

Some things went beyond the scope of media's capacity, such as how faith is passed on in silence, such as how kindness ferments over time.

Late at night, the villagers dispersed, and only the old locust tree remained awake.

She returned alone and reached out to touch the rough bark.

In an instant, a warm current poured in from her palm, flowing along her arm straight to her heart—it was a very light pulsation, like a fetal heartbeat, and also like an ancient bell toll, deep, slow, and solemn, as if the whole tree had become some kind of living Magical Artifact.

"There is something underground," she murmured.

It was not intuition, but the body's memory.

Her father had said the same thing in his last phone call before he died in the line of duty: "Qingzhu, some things cannot be seen, but you can 'hear' them."

She knelt by the tree roots, brushing away the fallen leaves and floating soil.

Three inches down, she touched a piece of hard, burnt ash—the edges were jagged, with torn cloth fibers, as if it were a fragment torn from some cloth banner.

Her pupils contracted suddenly.

This material... was exactly the same as the "photocopy yellow paper" from the street stall on Mount Longhu back then!

That batch of Talisman had long been snapped up by the Old Ancestor of Quanxing, and the "House-Peace Talisman - Non-standard Version" numbered 001 had been ignored by everyone, even marked as a "slow-moving product" by the System.

But now, it was buried under a village foundation a thousand miles away, wrapped by tree roots like protective heart scales, with a thin golden film condensing on the surface, faintly flowing with the aura of Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid.

"The fire not only remembers the way..." She looked up at the starry sky, her voice trembling, "It is also evolving."

Meanwhile, at 42 degrees north latitude, in the extreme cold mining area.

The wind and snow still cut the face like knives, but the seventh abandoned wellhead was bright all night.

Ten miners took turns watching the bonfire, each with a tin box hanging from their waist, inside which were neatly stacked small slips of paper, with different handwriting but the same content:

"The fire passed by here."

A young technician was using a welding torch to carve characters on the derrick; amidst the splashing metal sparks, there was a striking line of big characters: Land of Returning Fire.

Suddenly, the ground shook slightly.

Everyone fell silent, bowing down to the ground—it was not an earthquake, it was a pulsation.

It came from deep underground, the rhythm stable and growing stronger, like a sleeping Dragon waking up.

And at the northern foot of the Kunlun Mountains, the fragments of the fire-patrol artifact left by Cui Wujiu had already formed a cluster of golden crystals under the snow, spontaneously forming a new array pattern.

This time, it was no longer a crooked Talisman, but a complete map of the mountain and river veins, accurately marking 108 "Fire-Returning Points" across the country.

The golden threads connected, like a net, completely matching the "Three Caverns Earth Dimension Map" hidden in the Tianshi Mansion.

Heaven and earth are silent, and fire has its own Dao.

When Mortals began to return warmth, fire was no longer just a tool, power, or miracle—it became a carrier of will, becoming the secret meridians connecting the hearts of billions.

And the starting point of all this was just a roguish Daoist who set up a tattered street stall at the foot of the mountain, smiling and saying:

"Talisman are five yuan each, pay before use, no credit allowed."