181: The Taoist robe is buried in the soil, and the fire sprouts out.

Countless chimneys rose from rooftops, their smoke ascending straight into the brightening sky, like incense, like prayers, like the first autonomous breath of this new era.

Before the morning light broke through, only a sliver of dawn appeared on the horizon, and Zhang Xuanyi’s silhouette had already merged into the distant, hazy mountains.

He walked alone along the edge of the abandoned railway tracks, his feet treading on rusted sleepers, each step like treading on the talismanic lines he had laid down in his early years—familiar yet distant.

Those lines were once restraints, protections, a microscopic manifestation of the order of heaven and earth, but now they were merely a path leading to a deeper unknown.

He did not look back, though he knew that the old Daoist robe, stained with the scent of hearth smoke and the marks of time, would not remain long in the collapsed signal box.

The perfectly timed gust of wind last night had blown open the ‘Dao De Jing’ tucked into the window crack, and the greyish-green ashes scattered between its pages were the starting posture for “Sending Fire to Dust,” the final form of “Nine Steps to Pacify the Hearth.”

This was the last “gift” he left behind, not for any individual, but for this land.

A faint smile played on his lips.

Within three days, a mischievous child, guided by curiosity, would surely stumble into that dilapidated signal box and pick up the incomplete ancient text.

Perhaps he would cherish it as a treasure, or perhaps merely a toy, but it would eventually be brought to the newly opened “Ash Return Academy” in the county town.

There, the teachers—those he had once supported and who were now the enlighteners of the new era—would point to the ancient yet powerful script on the tattered pages and, with a hint of nostalgia and reverence, say to the children: “Look, doesn’t this handwriting resemble that of the Daoist who never charged any money back then?” That was not just a name, but a transmission of spirit, the dawn of a new epoch.

He had sown the seeds of a prairie fire in the most discreet way.

Three hundred li away, on the outskirts of a city, a “Common Kitchen” converted from an abandoned community center was filled with warmth.

Granny Lin, the elderly attendant, hunched over and laboriously lifted the lid of a large pot; a rush of steam, mingling the fragrance of rice with the sweet freshness of wild vegetables, instantly dispelled the last trace of chill before dawn.

Squinting, she saw by the faint glow of the stove fire a circle of dark green patterns slowly swirling at the bottom of the pot, like living veins, exuding an inexplicable vitality.

Of course, she didn’t understand that this was the “Vow-Pattern” formed by the resonance of “Warmth Moss” mycelium and ashes, a profound mystery she had never heard of in her youth.

She only knew that ever since she followed the online post, widely shared and attributed to Su Qingzhu, titled “How to Cook the First Pot of Porridge,” and learned to mix in “three-day old porridge base” and a pinch of “stove-heart red earth,” this pot of porridge cooked exceptionally well, its aroma rich and mellow.

Even the old chronic patients who suffered from damp cold year-round marvelled, saying, “One sip, and the bones feel loose.”

As she added firewood to the stove, she casually tucked a printed sheet of paper under the pile; it was Su Qingzhu’s post, and beside the title, in her trembling hand, she had neatly written a line of annotation: “The heat is more important than the incantation.” These simple eight characters contained the most core truth of the new era—the power of mortals can also reach the heavens.

In the afternoon, Zhang Xuanyi’s figure appeared on a desolate hillside.

Wind swept through the broken clouds, revealing a half-broken stele, leaning isolated in the earth, faintly carved with the words “Mount Longhu Fire Patrol Boundary.” The paint had peeled, the inscription blurred, as if recounting a forgotten past.

He squatted down and gently tapped the base of the stele with his fingertips.

A dull thud, followed by a faint, regular tremor from underground.

This was not the resurgence of earth-vein spiritual energy, nor the activation of ancient formations, but a more vast, more universal “harmonic of vows”—the daily timed cooking at seventeen “Ash Return Points” across the country, the resonance of billions of ordinary hearth fires, unconsciously causing the rhythm of the stove fires to gradually converge, like synchronized heartbeats, gathering into an invisible torrent of power.

Zhang Xuanyi suddenly laughed out loud, his clear laughter echoing on the desolate slope, carrying a hint of relief, a touch of release.

He pulled out a withered remnant of a heavenly eye mung bean from his worn coarse cloth bag.

This was once a rare treasure from the System Mall, but now the System was gone, and it too had lost all its mystical properties, becoming just an ordinary seed.

He buried it at the base of the stele and whispered softly, “You’ve learned to keep time yourselves, why should I still worry?” He no longer needed to interfere, no longer needed to guide, because this power, originating from mortals’ vows, had found its own direction, taking root, sprouting, and growing vigorously.

In the evening, he arrived at a small village nestled by mountains and water, and stayed overnight at a farmhouse.

The simple villagers brought out their home-brewed rice wine, rich and sweet.

During the meal, he heard that a wealthy businessman in the neighboring county had sniffed out a business opportunity and intended to buy out the “Ash Return Stove” brand, register it as a chain of wellness centers, and even send people to dig up old stove earth, euphemistically calling it “spirit ash packets” for sale.

Zhang Xuanyi just lowered his head and drank, not saying a word.

However, when night fell and everything was silent, he quietly got up and walked around the village.

He carefully took out a small pinch of mixed ash from his cloth bag; it was his “matured vow ash,” accumulated over years of cooking porridge. It had no supernatural abilities, but it could subtly influence people's hearts, guiding them naturally towards goodness.

He gently sprinkled this pinch of ash in front of each household’s door.

The next morning, the village chief convened a village-wide meeting.

To everyone’s surprise, the villagers were all agitated and unanimously resolved: “Anyone who dares to touch the words ‘Ash Return’ must first ask if our shovels agree!” It was not incited anger, but a deep-seated protection of that hard-won warmth and unity from within their hearts.

The village elders said that they had slept exceptionally soundly last night, waking up with a warm feeling in their chests, as if some old ailment had quietly disappeared, and their whole being exuded a renewed spirit.

That invisible “matured vow ash” nourished this land and solidified the hearts of its people.

Late at night, Zhang Xuanyi sat under the eaves, with a brilliant galaxy overhead and the chirping of insects and croaking of frogs in his ears.

He took out the letter Su Qingzhu had sent a few days ago; the envelope had no address, only tied with a beautiful bow of fine hemp string.

The letter contained no words, only a newspaper clipping: “We Have Become Our Own Gods”—prominently featured on the front page of the Huaxia Metropolitan Daily, accompanied by a picture of countless ordinary people gathered around a stove, their faces beaming with satisfaction and hope.

In the blurred background of the photo, a figure receded into the distance, a figure so familiar, yet so strange.

Zhang Xuanyi caressed the report, feeling the scent of ink and the warmth of the paper on his fingertips, a faint, serene smile appearing on his lips.

He folded the letter into a small paper boat and placed it in the gurgling stream in front of the door.

The water carried the paper boat, swaying downstream, passing through three villages.

At each place it passed, someone would stop and gaze, someone would silently scoop a ladle of stream water and carefully pour it into their household’s stove urn.

And a thousand li away, in the city editor’s office, Su Qingzhu wearily closed her laptop, the screen still flickering with the email she had just sent.

She looked at the empty inbox and murmured to herself, her voice carrying a hint of relief, a hint of resolve: “You don’t need to reply anymore—wherever it needs to burn, it is burning.”

Zhang Xuanyi sat by the stream for a long time, until the sky began to lighten.

He knew that this path had no end, and a new journey had just begun.

He picked up a sturdy wooden stick from the ground, lightly tossed it, and swung the empty coarse cloth bag back onto his shoulder.

Deep in the mountains, an ancient post road emerged faintly in the morning mist, where he had once occasionally stopped and set up a temporary stall.

Now, he set off again, walking towards that forgotten realm shrouded in time.