111: Wildfire burning monument

The biting north wind, carrying remnants of snow, lashed against the simple makeshift straw hut Zhang Xuanyi had just erected, emitting a mournful wail.

He paid it no mind, simply sitting quietly under the hut, placing a dry wooden stick onto a grooved wooden board, pressing his hands together, and beginning to rub it with steady, forceful motions.

Surrounded by a dozen or so thinly clad children, their noses red from the cold, they all stared with wide eyes, unblinking, fixed on Zhang Xuanyi's hands.

This was the First Ignition Site of the thirty-seven northern villages, a forgotten corner that had now become the center of the storm.

Zhang Xuanyi did not set up stalls or sell anything; he only taught people one thing: how to use their own hands to awaken the sleeping flame from within cold wood.

His movements were not fast, yet they were full of a certain rhythm, as if he were not merely rubbing, but whispering to the fire spirit sleeping within the wood.

A man wrapped in a tattered fur coat scoffed from not far away: "Fool, it's freezing, and with ready-made fire sources available, why are you here drilling wood? How long will that take, until the end of time?" Several adults nearby joined in the snickering, thinking the man must be crazy.

Zhang Xuanyi did not stop his movements, nor did he even look up; he simply asked the youngest child behind him calmly: "Little Stone, is fire afraid of the cold?"

The child named Little Stone shook his head vigorously and said loudly: "No! Sir said, fire is not afraid of the cold; what it fears is us not believing in our hearts that it can ignite!"

Only then did Zhang Xuanyi look up, his gaze piercing through the wind and snow to stare directly at the man. His voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached everyone's ears: "Three hundred years ago, was the first wisp of fire bestowed by the gods, or was it drilled out by our ancestors' hands?"

The man's expression stiffened, and the surrounding laughter ceased abruptly.

This question was like a heavy hammer, striking the deepest memories within everyone's hearts.

They were the descendants of humans, not the lambs of gods.

Seven days later, the unprecedented "Self-Ignition Festival" was held on the joint clearing of the thirty-seven villages.

Thousands of villagers formed a huge circle, with firewood for the sacrifice piled high in the center.

No one used a fire striker, and no one carried a fire source.

Under Zhang Xuanyi's calm gaze, hundreds of hands began to rub the wood simultaneously.

At first, there was the sound of clumsy friction, but gradually, the sounds merged into a torrent, carrying a primitive and stubborn power.

It was unknown whose board first emitted a wisp of blue smoke, followed immediately by a second, a third... Tiny sparks lit up among the crowd, carefully delivered into the central pile of firewood.

When the first cluster of flames shot into the sky, the entire wilderness erupted!

The flames burned brighter and brighter, shooting straight into the heavens, actually burning a huge hole through the thick, leaden clouds.

Right at the edge of that hole, illuminated by the firelight, four majestic and ancient characters appeared: Dao Is Self-Generated.

Meanwhile, in the capital thousands of miles away, the former famous journalist Su Qingzhu threw a thick stack of manuscripts into the fireplace.

That was "Chronicles of Fire Sources," which she had spent years writing with her heart's blood, recording how the Alien Mansion and the Fire Patrol Association monopolized fire sources, created disasters, and fooled the world.

The flames greedily devoured the pages, also illuminating her face with a red glow.

Facing the camera that had long been set up, her voice was hoarse yet firm: "In the past, I wrote the truth to expose the darkness. Now, I burn the truth to ignite the human heart."

She took out a faded police badge from her bosom; it was her father's relic.

She pressed the cold police badge tightly onto the burning manuscript, feeling that scorching heat, and whispered: "Dad, this time, I will no longer chase the murderer. I want to be the one who ignites the world."

The next day, a video went viral on the national Alien forum like a virus.

In the video, Su Qingzhu held a raging torch, standing atop the ruins of "Warm Dwelling New City."

That ruin had once been the "Fire Source Safety Demonstration Zone" touted by the Alien Mansion, but it had turned into scorched earth in an "accident."

Her voice spread in all directions through the lens: "Fire does not belong to the Mansion, does not belong to the Association, nor does it belong to any high and mighty existence! Fire belongs only to every unyielding heartbeat!"

Meanwhile, further south in Lingnan, Cui Wujiu returned alone to that cold, gloomy underground warehouse.

This had once been the core node of the "Signature Transport Chain," now sealed by the Alien Mansion, with the air permeated by a stale, musty odor.

But he could feel that beneath the ground, those invisible threads of Power Of Will still connected everywhere like a spider web.

He took out his portable Fire Patrol notebook, turned to the last page, dipped his fingertip in his own blood, and wrote four characters: Fire Burns Toward the Heart.

He tore off this page, ignited it, and threw it into the standby furnace nearby.

A bizarre scene unfolded.

That small flame did not extinguish; instead, like a fish that had found a river channel, it instantly drilled into the ground, madly flowing backward along those residual threads of Power Of Will, like streams of underground fire Dragons, heading straight for the seven secret "Star Cellars" in the south.

Almost at the same instant, in the central monitoring rooms of the seven Star Cellars, alarms rang out, piercing the sky!

On the screens, seventeen black stones used to suppress the sources of fire simultaneously erupted with spider-web-like cracks, and the next second, they shattered with a boom!

The fire source power that had been suppressed for a hundred years, like an angry Dragon breaking free from its cage, roared along the earth's veins, following that summons from the north to return to their original home.

Cui Wujiu slowly removed the mask covering half his face, revealing a face covered in old burn scars.

He spoke to the empty underground vault, as if talking to an old friend: "Old Turtle, as promised, the fire has been returned to you."

In front of the northern straw hut, the wind and snow had stopped.

Zhang Xuanyi was watching the children escort the newly rubbed flames to the village's fire pit.

An anonymous letter was handed to him.

There was no letter paper inside the envelope, only half a piece of rough stone, warm to the touch, as if containing the pulse of the earth.

It was a fragment of the Mountain Root Stone.

On the back of the stone fragment, a line of characters was carved in ancient seal script: The person inside the gate is awake and wishes to see the one who ignites the fire.

Zhang Xuanyi's eyes did not flicker in the slightest, and a cold sneer even curled at the corner of his mouth.

He casually tossed that exceptionally precious Mountain Root Stone fragment into the fire in front of him, letting the flames devour it.

"Want to talk? Come out of the gate yourself."

As soon as he finished speaking, as if in response to his provocation, that night, atop Mount Longhu hundreds of miles away, the main gate of Tianshi Mansion, which had been tightly closed for sixty years, silently opened a crack amidst a teeth-grinding friction sound.

A figure, hunched so low that their face was barely visible, stood in the darkness inside the gate, their hands trembling as they held a blue flame lamp with a dim light that seemed ready to extinguish at any moment.

That lamp flame was the source of the "Dao Fire," the Legacy of Tianshi Mansion for a thousand years.

Far away in the north, Zhang Xuanyi seemed to sense something; he did not even turn his head, only saying to the child named Little Stone behind him: "Go, run to the foot of the mountain, and shout to that highest mountain to tell him—a lamp is not meant to be held in your hands. Fire must burn beneath your own feet."

At dawn, when the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, a grand "Wildfire Festival" was held simultaneously at the thirty-seven First Ignition Sites across the country.

Countless people, men, women, young, and old, all held high the torches they had personally rubbed into flames, forming huge circular formations.

They chanted an ancient and simple ballad; it was a song belonging to Mortals, not praising gods, but only singing praises to their own hands.

When the flames gathered from ten million torches shot into the sky, a sudden anomaly occurred!

From deep within the earth came a long, desolate turtle cry, as if spanning across eternity.

Immediately after, in the center of the festival at the northern First Ignition Site, the ground slowly arched, and the illusory remnant consciousness of the Old Turtle actually emerged from the earth's veins, carrying the other half of the Mountain Root Stone.

It gently placed that half of the stone at Zhang Xuanyi's feet.

The two Mountain Root Stones were supposed to merge into one, reconnecting the earth's veins and stabilizing order.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for Zhang Xuanyi's decision.

However, Zhang Xuanyi didn't even look at that divine object; he simply raised his foot and gave it a clean, decisive kick!

The Mountain Root Stone, like a meteor, was precisely kicked into the most vigorous pile of fire!

Boom—!

With an earth-shattering roar, the Mountain Root Stone exploded, the massive earth Qi contained within it merging with the wildfire filling the sky, transforming into a hundred-foot-tall blue pillar of flame that pierced the sky!

Amidst the howling wind, the shouts of thousands merged into one earth-shaking phrase: "Fire in hand, the path is at our feet!"

The camera zoomed out sharply, only to see Mount Longhu, hailed as the source of all methods and a place where Dragon and Tiger crouch, its mountain-protecting formation that had stood for a thousand years disintegrating inch by inch the moment the blue flames reached the peak, with countless rune-inscribed stone fragments falling like rain.

And atop that cloud-shrouded peak, a cluster of wildfire, ignited by no one, was quietly crawling up the century-old stele inscribed with "Heavenly Dao Forbids Fire," burning the characters on it, along with the stone itself, into fly ash.

The waves of revelry gradually subsided, leaving only the crackling of burning flames and the whistling of the wind across the wilderness between heaven and earth.

The faint light of dawn, for the first time, spilled without obstruction across this land that had just gained its freedom.

The old order had collapsed, and the new one had yet to be established.

In the absolute silence, a kind of silence, more heart-palpitating than the clamor, enveloped the entire world.