193: spontaneous breathing

The late autumn wind, like a blunt knife, scraped across the desolate road along the ground.

Withered grass bowed to the ground, pebbles rolled away, and the entire wilderness seemed drained of sound, leaving only Zhang Xuanyi's footsteps, one by one, treading upon the silence of heaven and earth.

He carried a worn-out canvas bag on his back, its shoulder straps frayed, and inside it was empty save for a single aluminum lunchbox.

That lunchbox had long since rusted beyond recognition, its inner walls scraped down to a thin layer of ash, like the final dregs of some ritual.

He had once used it to hold talisman water, store mung beans, and even steep the hot tea Su Qingzhu had handed him.

Now it was empty, just like him—leaving cleanly, without leaving a trace.

Zhang Xuanyi no longer remembered the road, nor did he look at the celestial phenomena.

There was no System notification sound, no mission countdown, and even the "Myriad Laws Street Stall" that had once followed him like a shadow had turned into a wisp of blue smoke three months ago, dissipating into the wind.

He could not say clearly whether he was fleeing or returning—perhaps neither.

He simply walked, like an ember that had popped out of a stove, blown by the wind into the unknown night.

On the thirty-seventh day, he walked into an old city block that was about to be razed.

Cranes stood like a forest, dust filled the air, and several excavators were slowly approaching the last few rows of low-lying restaurants.

The red "Demolish" character on the wall was glaring, like an unhealed wound.

Workers shouted, no one noticing an old man kneeling in the corner, his gray hair covered in dust, his hands clutching a concrete pillar tightly.

"This stove... fed my father, my grandfather, and my son." The old man's voice was hoarse. "Can you... leave it for one day? Just one day! Let me Cook one more meal!"

No one paid him any mind.

Zhang Xuanyi stood at the street corner, watching for a long time.

He did not speak, nor did he step forward.

He simply walked silently around to the back kitchen of that small restaurant with the broken plaque hanging that read "Centennial Stove God."

The wooden door was crooked, rubble was everywhere, the stove had a large crack, and the bricks were loose, on the verge of collapsing.

He crouched down and opened the lunchbox.

The last pinch of ash was gently sprinkled into the stove.

His movements were very light, as if afraid of disturbing something sleeping.

"Thank you for the meal," he said in a low voice.

The ash scattered as soon as it fell; with a gust of wind, it vanished without a trace.

The fire did not ignite, nor would it ever ignite again.

He knew that some things were destined to end here—not because no one cherished them, but because the times would not wait.

The Dao is not in the temples, nor in the talisman paper; if there truly is a Dao, it should be hidden in the steam of a hot pot, in the moment a mother lifts the lid while simmering soup, in the warmth of the palm of a stranger handing over a bowl of noodles.

But now, even these were to be razed.

He stood up without looking back, letting the structure behind him collapse with a roar.

That night, he curled up under an abandoned bridge on the outskirts of the city to shelter from the wind.

Rainwater dripped through cracks in the bridge deck, forming shallow puddles on the ground.

He took out an old radio; the battery was almost dead, and after sputtering with static for a long time, a clear female voice finally came through:

"At zero hour today, the Power Of Will base frequency completed global self-consistent oscillation, and the state has officially shut down the central control System." The announcer's tone was solemn, carrying a certain historical pause. "From now on, every bit of human life and sustenance shall be autonomous breathing."

Zhang Xuanyi stared at that radio for a long time, then turned it off.

The spark had been released.

Not by him, nor by Tianshi Mansion, but ignited by thousands of people themselves.

From the stoves without mentors in the Northwest pastoral areas, to the furnace fires on the prows of Southern fishing villages, and to the "equitable material samples" secretly replicated in old city alleys, the fire had spread across the plains.

And he, the one who had initially sold talismans and lit the fire, had instead become a speck of ash in the coldest place.

He touched the blue cloth shirt he was wearing; the cuffs were frayed and the collar stiff—it was a birthday gift from Su Qingzhu back when he was running his street stall.

She had said, "A Daoist doesn't look like a Daoist, a stall owner doesn't look like a stall owner; wear some proper clothes."

He smiled, pulled out his pocket knife, and cut off the last piece of fabric that was still intact.

He rolled the cloth into a cylinder, three inches long and two fingers wide.

He crawled into the deepest crevice of the bridge pier, stuffed it inside, and gently covered it with rubble.

It was like erecting a memorial tablet that no one would ever know of.

Nameless Stove Shrine.

The wind wailed under the bridge, and the distant city lights were a blur.

He leaned against the cold concrete wall and closed his eyes.

This night was very cold, as cold as the end of the Dao.

Meanwhile, in old residential buildings across seventeen different cities, certain stoves that had been silent for many years were quietly undergoing unexplainable changes—

Faint blue patterns emerged on the edges of the stove vents, the bottoms of the pots grew slightly warm, and it seemed as if a flow of Qi was swirling within.

It lasted for seven seconds, then dissipated immediately.

In the surveillance footage, those moments were all frozen at 3:17 AM.

No one noticed.

But the fire was waking up.

In the coldest moment before dawn, while the myriad lights of seventeen cities were still on the verge of sleep, those old stoves long forgotten in corners trembled slightly at that very instant.

The bottoms of the pots grew slightly warm, as if someone in the darkness had blown a puff of warm air.

Faint blue patterns emerged from the edges of the stove vents, like ancient seal script talisman marks, circulating for seven seconds before fading away.

No sparks jumped out, nor did any smoke rise, but in the surveillance footage, the timestamps were uniformly frozen at 3:17 AM—this number was like a code embedded in the pulse of the entire nation that had not yet awakened.

In a kitchen in an old residential complex in the South, an elderly person living alone rose groggily and muttered, "Time to Cook." The instant the words fell, that coal stove which had not been used for thirty years heated up on its own; the iron pot hummed, and water droplets rolled across its surface before evaporating completely.

At the same time, in a tent in the Northwest pastoral area, a mother was coaxing her child to sleep and said to her husband, "Let's Cook some porridge tomorrow morning." As soon as the words left her mouth, the center of the stove rippled with waves invisible to the naked eye, as if something in the darkness was quietly responding.

This was not a coincidence.

Su Qingzhu sat before the data terminal on the third basement level of the archives, the cold light of the screen reflecting on her slightly pale face.

As her fingertips slid across the screen, the anomaly reports from seventeen locations unfolded side by side, the parameters highly consistent: temperature fluctuations, residual Qi flow, and time nodes completely overlapping.

The System automatically tagged it as an "S-Class Potential Collective Power Of Will Resonance Event," with the red warning box flashing incessantly.

She stared at the "Report" button for a long time.

Her finger hovered in mid-air, trembling slightly.

It was not fear, but rather because she knew too well—once submitted, this data would be brought under the "Central Control System," placed back under supervision, and turned into yet another tamed anomaly sample.

But what if... she let it grow on its own?

She suddenly remembered what Zhang Xuanyi had once said: "The spark is not a command; it is remembering."

"Remembering what?" she had asked at the time.

"Remembering how your mother cooked noodles for you," he said with a smile. "That is the starting point of the Dao."

Su Qingzhu closed her eyes, pressed the delete key, and erased all "anomaly" tags.

At the end of the log, she left a single line of text in the smallest font size:

Normalcy is when thousands of people think of the same thing at the same time.

In that instant, she felt a stone that had been pressing on her chest for a long time crack open.

Seven days later, the wind on the edge of the Gobi Desert began to change direction.

Outside the town post, yellow sand swirled with scraps of paper, and a rusty aluminum lunchbox hung on a wooden post, swaying gently with the wind, emitting a faint metallic rubbing sound.

Herders passing by would take a second look—this was not a modern object, but more like the old items used in state-run canteens decades ago.

"I heard there's always light at night," a camel driver said in a low voice. "Smoke rises from the top of the sand dune, like someone is cooking porridge. But when you go up there, there's nothing."

An old man nearby, smoking a dry pipe, squinted and said, "Likely a spark left by some wandering Daoist? Around here, we have always recognized honest people."

Before he finished speaking, a gust of wind blew, and the lunchbox swayed gently, its bottom facing upward.

Someone leaned in to look and froze.

A line of small characters was carved on the inner wall, the knife marks deep and steady, as if carved with great effort, yet hidden very well:

Fire recognizes honest people—gifted by a Cook who wishes to remain anonymous.

Somehow, the news reached Su Qingzhu's ears.

Three days later, she drove alone across the wind and sand line and arrived at this border town.

Standing in front of the post, she reached out to take down the lunchbox, her fingertips brushing over the carving, her pads tracing the grooves over and over, as if she could touch the final warmth of that receding figure.

That night, in the small room she had rented temporarily, she wrote the title of the final chapter of the chronicles of vows:

"He Left, So We Can All Stay"

Outside the window, in a herder's tent, the furnace fire was blazing.

The mutual-aid porridge in the pot bubbled, and the blue patterns on the bottom of the pot appeared and disappeared, like some ancient heartbeat, slowly reviving in the silence of the wilderness.

And behind the sand dunes further away, the morning snow began to melt, and a faint cracking sound came from deep within the frozen earth, as if roots were stretching, or perhaps a Bloodline was awakening.