159: Shop No. 37

Three days after the golden line appeared on the night of Qingming, beneath the old locust tree at the foot of Mount Longhu, Zhang Xuanyi sat cross-legged, his clothes damp with dew, his brows slightly furrowed.

His palms were face up, and a very thin golden vein was pulsating slowly along his lifeline, as if something alive were crawling under his skin.

It was hot, but not scalding; painful, yet not enough to keep him awake.

He was familiar with this feeling—it was the residual Qi sensation from when the 'photocopy yellow paper' was activated. But the System had been down for many days, the mall interface was gray and stagnant like dead water, and even the cheapest fist soul candy could not be retrieved.

He took out the old pottery jar he carried with him; it was a broken piece of junk he had dug up from the Star-Gazing Platform years ago, which he had once used to store the residual condensation of the Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid.

Now, the bottom of the jar was dry and cracked, but the moment his fingertips touched the inner wall, his pupils constricted sharply.

Golden cracks.

They spread like a spiderweb, clear to the finest detail, shaped like root Systems. They were warm to the touch and actually pulsed in sync with the golden vein in his palm.

'Interesting,' he chuckled softly, his voice hoarse. 'I thought you had forgotten me... So it turns out you learned how to copy homework.'

Three years ago, he taught people to write prayer slips at his street stall: 'Fire passed through here.' Five characters, five yuan, blessing included, no refunds or exchanges.

At that time, the Old Ancestor of Quanxing was scrambling to buy talismans that could slay gods; who would care about such a street trick?

But now, news from the northern mining area said that ten miners taking turns guarding the well each had the same slip of paper tucked into the iron boxes at their waists. The handwriting was different, but the content was identical.

They weren't commemorating; they were passing it on.

'So I wasn't the one selling the fire,' he looked up at the moon, a ridiculous smile curling his lips. 'It was the fire that used the jingle I wrote as scripture.'

Meanwhile, at the municipal archives hundreds of kilometers away, Su Qingzhu was staring at a photo on a yellowed file, her fingertips trembling.

Thirty years ago, a cold wave raged, and a thousand people froze to death at 42 degrees north latitude.

In this photo, taken on the seventh day after the disaster, a group of miners wrapped in tattered cotton batting huddled around a dying fire. Someone had used a charcoal stick to draw a crooked symbol on the ground—three horizontal lines and one fold, plus an inverted triangle.

The structure was simple to the point of being childish.

But she had seen this talisman.

Just three days ago, on the scorched ash fragments she dug up from under the old locust tree at the village base, the texture of the flowing golden film matched this perfectly.

Even more eerie was that last night, while she was organizing her interview recordings, a piece of audio that should have been corrupted suddenly played automatically—the voices of a dozen children chanting in unison: 'Daddy don't be cold... Daddy don't be cold...'

The sound source came from the scorched ash keepsake in her bag.

She searched through all the materials and finally confirmed: during that cold wave, the only surviving children in the mining area were collectively struck dumb. It wasn't until twenty years later that they began to speak, one after another, and their first words were always: 'The fire has come back to find us.'

'This isn't a Legacy,' she murmured, her eye sockets burning. 'It's memory that grew legs of its own... It can walk, and it knows the way.'

The wind and snow over the northern foothills of Kunlun had not ceased, and Zhang Xuanyi had already stepped deep into the foothills.

He stopped in front of an abandoned kiln.

This place should have been barren, the kiln chamber dead silent for years, yet from the cracks in the stone at the entrance, a faint scent of mung beans seeped out—that was the unique aura of 'heavenly eye mung beans' after being burned, which lasts no more than three hours and requires twenty-four hours to cool.

And now, this scent had persisted for seven days.

He squatted down, dipped his finger in saliva, and silently wrote the 'Residence-Peace Talisman · Non-Standard Version' on the kiln wall.

The moment the strokes were completed, the entire kiln vibrated slightly.

The wall silently cracked open, and warm wind surged out, carrying the familiar clear fragrance, blowing his Daoist robe until it snapped.

Deep within the crack, one could faintly see dark red embers slowly flickering, like breathing, neither increasing in temperature nor extinguishing.

He was stunned.

This was his talisman, his product, his System's creation.

But the System had long since disappeared, yet these fires were still burning, still recognizing their master, and even... self-perpetuating?

'So you still remember me?' he asked softly, as if to the air, or to some invisible will beneath the earth. 'Or is it that you don't need me at all anymore?'

Before he could finish speaking, the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled.

The golden vein jumped violently, shooting straight to his brain.

He staggered backward, only to see a very thin golden line emerge from the kiln floor, extending from the crack, heading south, straight as a ruler, piercing through the snowfield.

It was not just this one place.

At almost the same moment, beneath the surface of 108 remote villages, abandoned mines, and collapsed tunnels across the country, golden lines quietly emerged, pulling at each other, weaving into an invisible giant net.

And in some corners no one noticed, beside ash piles, beneath temple steps, at the bottom of ceramic bowls held by old people, imperceptible points of light began to gather.

It was as if some long-dormant decree was being reawakened.

Zhang Xuanyi stood in the wind and snow, looking at the distance the golden line pointed to, and suddenly laughed.

'Fine then,' he patted the snow off his Daoist robe. 'Since you want to play big, don't blame me for not following the rules—'

'This time, we'll light the fire together.'

Chapter 160: Fire Debt Becomes Covenant

The rainy season in the southern town arrived silently.

At the end of the bluestone alley, the bronze tripod in front of the ancestral hall had long been mottled, but it was polished until it shone tonight.

Su Qingzhu stood on the outskirts of the crowd with an oil-paper umbrella, the recorder hidden in her sleeve, the lens aimed at the pile of ash—not bone ash, nor incense residue, but a whole year's accumulation of furnace ash from every household's stove, kang, and iron furnace.

Each handful was wrapped in cloth and handed by the elders to the children.

This was the 'Ash Return Feast'.

No one could clearly say when this custom started.

There were no records in the town annals, and even the oldest genealogy only vaguely mentioned: 'At year's end, return the embers, thank the fire for not abandoning me.' But when twelve children chanted the words of gratitude in unison, a chill suddenly ran down the back of Su Qingzhu's neck.

'Thank the fire for lighting the night road, thank the fire for warming cold bones, thank the fire for protecting the young, thank the fire for guarding the lonely house...'

The voices were childish, yet they hammered into her heart like a hammer.

She suddenly remembered what Zhang Xuanyi had once said: 'Talismans aren't drawn for gods to see; they are written for people to believe in themselves. But what if one day, the fire also started to believe in people?'

Before the words faded, a faint light appeared at the bottom of the tripod.

At first, it was just a thread of golden light seeping from the gaps, but in an instant, it spread into a web-like pattern, as if something alive were crawling in the ash.

The onlookers held their breath, no one daring to step forward.

The next second, the entire pile of ash vibrated gently and actually reorganized itself like flowing water—

'Shop No. 37, Debt Repaid.'

Six characters, neat and clear, with a trace of scorched curling at the end of the strokes.

Su Qingzhu's pupils constricted.

Shop No. 37?

That was the street stall number at the foot of Mount Longhu!

Three years ago, Zhang Xuanyi's 'Myriad Laws Street Stall' was set up there. photocopy yellow paper for five yuan a sheet, heavenly eye mung beans for ten yuan for three. When business was at its best, even the Old Ancestor of Quanxing would line up to buy talismans to avoid tribulations.

And now, a folk ritual in a remote town was actually using the furnace ash of thousands of households to 'Repay the Debt' to a stall that had long since disappeared?

Her fingertips were cold, but the handwriting on her diary was as scorching as fire:

'We thought we were repaying a debt, but in reality, we were signing a covenant—a contract of symbiosis with the fire.'

At the same time, thousands of miles away at the foot of Mount Longhu, night fog filled the air.

Zhang Xuanyi had been standing on this open ground for half an hour.

This was once his bustling stall where he shouted, 'Blessing included, shipping included, no refunds or exchanges.' Now, only weeds remained; not even a stone stool was left.

But tonight was different. A layer of pale golden mist rose from the ground, like silk and threads, flowing slowly into the wilderness, as if the earth were breathing.

He squatted down and pressed his palm to the ground.

The golden vein burst forth!

The lifeline that had been dormant for many days suddenly burned, as if flames were flowing upstream along his Bloodline, rushing straight into his Sea of Consciousness.

The moment the excruciating pain struck, he actually smelled the familiar fragrance of mung beans—it was the scent of 'heavenly eye mung beans' after being burned. Clearly, the System was dead, and the products had long been out of print.

Just as he was about to pull his hand back, a very light child's voice drifted on the wind:

'Uncle, we are guarding your fire for you.'

He turned his head sharply.

Wild grass swayed, the moonlight was empty, no one was in sight.

Only half a broken pottery shard lay quietly in the mud, its edges scorched black. It was exactly the shard of the teacup he had broken three years ago—back then, he had even laughed and scolded: 'A broken bowl can't raise good Qi.' As it turned out, a beggar picked it up the next day to hold porridge and said that after drinking from it, his whole body felt comfortable, and even his old illness of coughing up blood was cured.

At this moment, the shard was slightly hot, as if harboring a heart that refused to cool.

Zhang Xuanyi stood still for a long time, then suddenly looked up and laughed. The laughter tore through the silence, startling the birds roosting in the forest.

He untied the cloth bundle on his back, which contained the last three bottles of Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid—forbidden items that could once help a person ascend to heaven in one step and enter the Grandmaster realm. Now, in his eyes, they were nothing more than a handful of kindling.

He pulled out the stopper and poured it into the soil.

'Fine, this Dao of fire, I'm handing it over.'

Before the words were finished, the entire hillside suddenly shook!

Beneath the soil, the spiderweb-like golden lines lit up instantly, dense as meridians, surging like a river, rushing toward the four directions of southeast, Northwest.

A low rumble came from the distant mountain ridge, as if the earth's veins were waking up, or as if some ancient decree was reshaping the rules of heaven and earth.

The wind rose.

It carried warmth, it carried memories, it carried the unsaid gratitude and obsession of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

And in the distant Northwest border, in the morning mist of the Longxi market, a wisp of blue smoke rose from an inconspicuous roasted sweet potato stall—as the flames flickered, a lotus-shaped phantom faintly condensed at the tip, lingering for a long time.