105: People save themselves

Su Qingzhu's fingertips traced a cold blue light across the holographic projection.

National fire-seed fluctuation charts, real-time ocean current data, population density heat maps, surface temperature variables... four massive streams of data overlapped, collided, and parsed before her eyes like waterfalls.

Deep within her pupils, billions of flickering data points were reflected, and in the end, all these points of light converged into a heart-stopping conclusion.

The Green Flame, the last remaining warmth of human civilization, was shifting irreversibly toward the southern coastline at an alarming rate of 1.3% per month.

Even more fatal was that the energy purity of the thirty-seven fire-seed sources in the north, known as the "First Ignition Sites," was continuously decaying, like ink being diluted, gradually losing its original intensity.

This was by no means a natural phenomenon.

She turned abruptly and dug that tattered copy of "self-salvation" out from a pile of ancient books.

The pages were yellowed and the edges curled; on them were the geomantic notes Zhang Xuanyi had left behind years ago, the handwriting scrawled as if the recorder had been in a state of extreme unease.

Su Qingzhu compared the data model with the ancient patterns in the notes one by one, and a line of tiny, circled characters finally revealed its true meaning under the analysis of modern technology.

"Fire flows like water; when the source is cold, it drifts."

Su Qingzhu shuddered, as if struck by lightning.

She had always thought the fire-seed was migrating on its own, like a migratory bird chasing warmth.

But at this moment, she understood with a bone-chilling coldness.

It wasn't the fire moving on its own; someone was drawing it out!

An invisible giant hand was installing a greedy straw at the Foundation of the northern land!

At the same time, in a small town along the Yangtze River.

Cui Wujiu crouched beside a public stove that had once been named "Nameless Hearth Corner."

The fire here had once been the most vigorous for a hundred miles around, but now its color was turbid, and the core of the flame was tinged with a lifeless, dull gray.

A seven or eight-year-old child was clumsily holding a withered piece of kindling toward the stove fire.

Once, twice, the third time, the flame reluctantly licked the tip of the grass, igniting a tiny cluster of faint light.

Cui Wujiu's eyes were as cold as the freezing iron at the bottom of the river.

He reached into his bosom, pulled out a roasted sweet potato, peeled back the scalding skin, and extended a charred black piece of the tuber toward the stove fire.

A bizarre scene unfolded—the seemingly normal flame actually recoiled slightly like a startled living creature, avoiding contact with the charcoal.

"The fire has been taught wrong." He let out a cold laugh, his voice filled with killing intent.

Fire was originally the most yang and rigid element, burning everything to ashes; when had it ever "dodged" or "disdained" anything?

This meant that someone had distorted its nature at the root, teaching it to "choose."

That night, the moon was dark and the wind was high.

Cui Wujiu's figure swept across the river like a phantom, sneaking into an abandoned meteorological tower in the middle of the river.

In the deepest part of the tower's base, behind a damp concrete wall, he found a hollowed-out hidden compartment.

Inside the compartment, half a photocopy of yellow paper was emitting a faint energy fluctuation.

It was the fragment left behind when the System crashed all those years ago!

However, the runes on it had been completely tampered with, becoming a sinister "Fire-Drawing Talisman," acting like a magnet, silently attracting the surrounding fire-seeds to gather in a specific direction.

"Heretical paths." Cui Wujiu snorted in disdain and grabbed it in his hand.

Without the slightest hesitation, he tore the yellow paper to shreds and threw it into the rushing river.

When the scraps of the talisman touched the water, instead of sinking, they "boomed," igniting into a mass of ghostly blue flames that sped downstream along the river, pointing straight toward the south.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away in Lingnan, inside an extremely luxurious underground clubhouse, the air was as warm as spring.

Zhang Xuanyi was wearing a waiter's uniform, head bowed, holding a tray, observing everything calmly.

The core of the clubhouse was a room called the "Constant Temperature Fire Room."

A group of pot-bellied, wealthy merchants sat around an exquisite bronze stove, chatting and laughing.

In the stove, a cluster of green flames burned quietly, as stable as an electric lamp, but it lacked the leaping and agility of ordinary flames, completely devoid of Life Qi.

He had infiltrated the place under the guise of applying for a job as a "Fire Master" and soon discovered the secret here.

Every midnight, when the guests had dispersed, a designated person would hold a special hollow copper tube and carefully approach the stove, like skimming cream from milk, to "extract" a wisp of the purest flame and inject it into the underground pipes in the corner.

Zhang Xuanyi followed the direction of the pipes with his gaze, constructing an underground map in his mind.

He avoided all surveillance and sneaked deeper underground.

At the end of the pipes was a massive underground vault that pulsed like a heart.

In the center of the vault, a formation made of countless precise runes was slowly rotating; it was, shockingly, a miniature replica of the "Mountain Root Lock Formation"!

The core of the formation was greedily absorbing the fire-seeds that were migrating south from the north along the ley lines, purifying and compressing them.

"Want to build a new Tianshi Mansion?" A bone-chilling coldness flashed in Zhang Xuanyi's eyes as he muttered to himself, "Using the cold of the masses as your fuel?"

An encrypted communication request connected all three of them simultaneously.

Su Qingzhu's holographic projection appeared in the field of vision of the other two.

"The data confirms my hypothesis," Su Qingzhu's voice was hurried and grave, "The migration of northern fire to the south is not a natural disaster; it is man-made."

"I call it 'Power Of Will Siphon' here." Cui Wujiu's voice came through the river wind, with the sound of rushing water in the background, "Someone is building a dam downstream, so naturally, there is less water upstream."

Zhang Xuanyi's face appeared exceptionally stern in the dim underground light: "They aren't just building a dam; they are building a 'Warm World' that belongs only to a few. Using the cold of the north to fuel the dreams of the south."

"The most terrifying thing," Su Qingzhu added, her voice trembling slightly, "is that this process is extremely slow, and the common people cannot perceive it at all. The fire is still there, it's just... it's not hot anymore. People will only feel that winter is getting harder to endure, not knowing that even warmth itself has become a luxury item that is being plundered."

Silence spread among the three, suffocatingly oppressive.

Suddenly, Zhang Xuanyi spoke, his voice calm but carrying a madness that would overturn the chessboard: "Since the source is cold, the water will flow downstream."

"Then let the cold of the north get even colder."

Three days later, an unprecedented blizzard descended without warning simultaneously on the thirty-seven "First Ignition Sites" in the north.

Temperatures plummeted, and a thousand miles were frozen over.

According to common sense, in such weather, the already weakening stove fires should have been completely extinguished, letting despair shroud the land.

However, they did not.

In villages buried by wind and snow, in cold cave dwellings, and on fishing boats amidst raging waves, when the last wisp of stove fire was about to be extinguished, the people did not pray, nor did they weep.

An old man trembled as he picked up two pieces of dry wood; a woman dug out forgotten flint from a corner; a fisherman named Lin Shouhai stood on the violently rocking bow of his boat, took off his coat, used his body heat to protect the only torch in his hand, and let out a hoarse roar to the sky filled with wind and snow and his roaring companions:

"Cold, not afraid! The fire is still in our hands!"

It was as if it were a command.

In the deathly silent villages, the "hissing" sound of rubbing wood rang out.

In the frozen cave dwellings, the "clack" of striking stones erupted.

In the darkness, one, two, thirty-seven points of faint firelight stubbornly lit up in the wind and snow.

The next instant, a sudden change occurred!

This flame, ignited by the most primitive and pure human will to survive, seemed to awaken the ancient power sleeping deep within the ley lines.

The thirty-seven stove fires all shot up into the sky simultaneously!

It was no longer a weak, dull gray, but the most brilliant, most scorching Green Flame!

The flames gathered and intertwined in the pitch-black night sky, actually piecing together a huge, towering "Human" character above the wind and snow!

In the south, deep within the luxurious underground clubhouse, the steadily operating miniature lock formation suddenly emitted a harsh, mournful cry.

"Crack!" A clear fissure suddenly spread from the core of the formation.

In the deepest part of the unknown, dark ley lines, the remnant consciousness of the old turtle, which had been sleeping for who knows how many years, slowly opened its eyes, and its whisper echoed in the Earth's crust: "The fire has been driven away, but the people have awakened."

The wind and snow gradually ceased, and the "Human" character of firelight in the sky slowly dissipated, but that unyielding will seemed to be branded into the bones of every northerner.

In one of the First Ignition Sites that had just experienced the flames shooting into the sky, Zhang Xuanyi slowly crouched down beside a long-abandoned stone stove.

He did not look at the gradually whitening sky, nor did he pay attention to the clamor of those who had survived the disaster around him.

His fingertips gently touched the ashes that still held residual warmth in the stone stove.

This time, he did not use any power from the System.