116: Who can light the fire

The morning wind, wrapped in damp mist, crawled up from the mountain hollow and brushed against the mottled earthen walls of the school.

A row of children crouched in an arc at the corner of the wall, their small hands frozen bright red, yet they still gripped the wooden sticks, rubbing them back and forth.

Sparks appeared intermittently, like a heartbeat.

Zhang Xuanyi leaned against the shadow of a broken monument, chewing on an orange peel, squinting as he watched the daylight climb the eaves inch by inch.

He wasn't wearing a Daoist robe, just an old, washed-out shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing his sturdy forearms.

The grey-feathered mountain sparrow on his shoulder tilted its head to look at the children, then suddenly fluttered away.

Footsteps sounded from the end of the mountain path.

An old Daoist priest approached slowly, leaning on a bamboo staff. His blue cloth shoes were covered in mud and dust, and behind him followed several youths, all properly dressed, with clear eyes and steady, solid footsteps.

The old Daoist looked up at the crooked wooden plaque at the school entrance—"First Ignition Land · Ease Hall"—his lips moving slightly, as if he had a thousand words he wanted to say.

Zhang Xuanyi remained calm, flicking his fingertip, and the orange peel in his mouth floated into the fire pile, causing the sparks to jump.

"This poor Daoist is Qingwei, a distant descendant of the 72nd Generation Celestial Master of Mount Longhu," the old Daoist cupped his hands. His voice was not loud, but every word was clear. "I have heard that this place teaches the 'Ignition Technique,' spreading heretical methods and causing unrest among the people. Today, I am ordered by the Sect to rectify the source and teach the orthodox Mind-Cultivation Technique to disciples."

The children stopped their movements, looking over timidly.

Zhang Xuanyi peeled an orange slowly, the fruit flesh glistening.

He picked out a segment and handed it to the thin boy at the front: "Want some?"

The boy hesitantly took it, put it in his mouth, and his eyes suddenly brightened.

"Is it sweet?" Zhang Xuanyi asked.

"Sweet..." the child answered softly.

"Does your grandfather know how to make fire?" he asked again.

"Yes," the child nodded, "with a lighter."

Zhang Xuanyi grinned, showing a mouthful of white teeth.

He got up and walked to the iron pot; half a spoonful of dark red sticky liquid remained at the bottom—that was the last residue of the fist soul syrup.

He grabbed a handful of sand and sprinkled it in, stirring it, and sparks crackled and exploded, as if thunder were hidden at the bottom of the pot.

"Then your father's fire, was it passed down from your grandfather? Or did he learn it himself?" He stared at the old Daoist, but the question was for the child.

No one answered.

The wind stopped.

Zhang Xuanyi pushed the pot toward the child: "Come, try it with your own hands."

The old Daoist shouted angrily: "Stop! This is the heretical art of drawing Qi, defying the Ancestral Master's teachings, disrupting the Bloodline, and harming the spirit!"

Zhang Xuanyi scoffed, unmoved.

The child reached out, trembling, and probed into the scalding sand. Three breaths.

Five breaths.

Suddenly, his fingertips trembled—

A point of cyan flame burst out from between his fingers!

It was weak, but real.

The flame reflected on everyone's faces, flickering.

The old Daoist staggered back, his face turning ashen.

The youths behind him looked at each other, and a flicker of hesitation appeared in some of their eyes.

Zhang Xuanyi squatted back against the wall, put the orange peel back in his mouth, and said softly: "Fire doesn't recognize a father; it burns on its own."

Just then, a rapid roar of a motorcycle came from afar.

Su Qingzhu rode a modified electric scooter into the village entrance, her trench coat flapping, sunglasses covering her face.

She swung her leg off the bike, holding a gold-stamped document; the cover was clearly printed with the words "Draft Legislation on the Lineage of Fire Seed Legacy," and below it was the joint Seal of Seventeen City.

"It's here." She took off her sunglasses, her gaze cold. "They want to establish a Family tree for fire and write 'who can kindle the fire' into the law."

Zhang Xuanyi didn't look up: "Who wrote it?"

"The Special Affairs Division of the Extraordinary Ability Management Bureau." Su Qingzhu sneered. "Behind them stand three old Sects, saying they want to 'rebuild the orthodoxy and clear away wild fires'."

She raised the projector in her hand: "I brought the video from three years ago."

That night, in the ruins of Lingnan.

An array of light screens was set up in front of a wordless monument, projecting images into the sky—the footage shook, and a younger Zhang Xuanyi, drunk, grinned at the camera, waving a piece of yellow paper in his hand:

"I copied this Talisman so poorly that even my master wouldn't recognize it—but it can still drive away ghosts!"

The next second, the photocopy yellow paper burned, and images of countless ordinary people holding Talismans and forcing back demons appeared in the flames: a vegetable vendor using yellow paper to cover a well, a courier stepping on heavenly eye mung beans to avoid an ambush, an old lady using rubbed wood to start a fire and scare away night-walking corpses...

Su Qingzhu stood on top of the monument, facing the national live broadcast camera, enunciating every word: "If 'orthodoxy' is something that can't even be copied accurately, then why are we still kneeling to the Ancestral Master?"

That night, three hundred universities ignited bonfires simultaneously.

Students threw their Family trees into the fire, and the flames soared, illuminating the night sky.

Someone started singing the "Rubbing Wood Ballad," the singing like a tide:

Rub a handful of earth, ignite a spark,

No bowing to Heaven, no respecting locks,

Where my heart burns, that is home.

Meanwhile, deep in the northern snowfields, the cellar of a hidden Family's ancestral hall was as cold as a grave.

Cui Wujiu crept along the wall, his eyes falling on the "Fire Ancestor Spirit Bone" glowing with a faint light in the center of the altar.

He took out a heavenly eye mung bean, ground it into powder, and silently mixed it into the incense ash of the ventilation duct.

The ceremony began.

The Elders of the Family chanted scriptures, and the young disciples knelt on the ground, waiting for the "Bloodline Awakening."

Smoke filled the air.

In an instant, the pupils of several young people shook violently—they saw the truth: the red flame phantom of the ancestor's manifestation was nothing more than an old man hiding on the beam manipulating a phantom fire array; the runes on the surface of the "Spirit Bone" were all carved later, and the bone texture was clearly that of a beast.

"It's a lie!" someone roared, punching the Spirit Bone.

The flames went out of control, backfiring on the ancestral hall. The century-old Family tree curled into ash in the raging fire.

Cui Wujiu stood on the roof, snow falling on his shoulders, watching the fire soar into the sky, whispering: "What you worship is not blood, but a lie."

A thousand miles away, at the foot of Mount Longhu.

Zhang Xuanyi suddenly opened his eyes.

He was sitting on the threshold chewing a steamed bun, the compass in his hand humming incessantly, the needle spinning crazily, pointing to the north.

A line of small text appeared on the surface:

[System prompt: Large-scale Pseudo Qi fluctuation detected, suspected abuse of Advanced extraordinary treasure, mission triggered — "Fire of Breaking Delusion, Burning Away False Names"]

He took a bite of the bun, squinting at the northern sky.

There, under the clouds, a hint of ominous crimson faintly showed.

He stood up, brushed off the crumbs, and turned to walk into the house to pack his bags.

When passing the town entrance, his footsteps paused slightly.

A vermilion wooden plaque stood on the side of the street, with "Fire Seed Qualification Certification List" written on it.

The list was dense, and at the top was written:

Zhao Family · Zhao Chengyan, bestowed Qi by the Celestial Master, pure blood Awakening.

Zhang Xuanyi stared at the name and laughed.

The laughter was soft but carried a scorching temperature. The night wind was like a knife, cutting through the thick clouds over the ancient town.

Zhang Xuanyi stood in front of the list, which was engulfed in flames, his clothes flapping wildly.

The vermilion wooden plaque twisted and deformed in the raging fire, and the large characters "Fire Seed Qualification Certification List" were swallowed by black smoke, like a mouth screaming and then shutting.

The flames spread along the bulletin boards on both sides of the street, burning the lists of "descendants of famous families" and "pure blood Awakening" into ash butterflies, dancing all over the sky.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then erupted into a long-suppressed roar.

"Our ancestors didn't have names, but our hands can start fires!" An old man with a face full of coal dust suddenly pulled out the lighter at his waist, clicked it on, and held it over his head.

Where the sparks fell, more people took out matches, gas stoves, and even rubbed wooden sticks—igniting a fire was no longer a grace begged for on one's knees, but a right taken back while standing.

Zhang Xuanyi didn't look at the pile of residual fire again.

He turned and walked into the shadows of the alley, his fingertips gently stroking the last piece of photocopy yellow paper in his sleeve—as thin as a cicada's wing, the edges charred and brittle, a "relic" left behind before the System completely left his body.

Yet on this paper, a blurred image still appeared: a Celestial Master from a hundred years ago wrote "Talisman methods can be sold, incense can be traded" in his own hand, and then smiled and stuffed the whole stack of yellow paper into the sleeve of a government clerk.

It turned out that the so-called orthodoxy had sold itself out in secret long ago.

He chuckled, crumpled the remaining paper into a ball, and threw it into the gutter by the roadside.

Though the System was gone, the Dao was not cut off.

Since the fire had returned to the wild, it would never be allowed to be taken back.

The roar of the motorcycle tore through the silence.

He got on the modified electric scooter left by Su Qingzhu, twisted the throttle, and the vehicle shot out of the ancient town like an arrow.

The navigation pointed to the northern snowfields—Cui Wujiu had made a move; that wave of Pseudo Qi was by no means an ordinary illusion, but a Fire of Breaking Delusion that struck directly at the Foundation of "Bloodline Orthodoxy."

He knew that the fire was not just burning the ancestral hall, but burning the thousand-year shackles.

The wheels crushed the frozen earth, and the cold wind poured into his collar.

Zhang Xuanyi squinted at the deep night road ahead, but in his mind, the stone steps behind Mount Longhu appeared—he had buried a Fire Seed there, saying it was left for those with affinity.

But thinking about it now, perhaps what really should be waited for was not who would inherit it, but who dared to destroy the two words "inherit" with their own hands.

Suddenly, the compass on his wrist shook violently!

The needle went from wild spinning to deathly stillness, then pointed vertically downward, as if pinned down by some force.

A thin crack appeared on the surface, and small blood-colored characters emerged:

[Warning: Reverse Seal fluctuation detected]

[Source: Mount Longhu Forbidden Ground · 9th Step of the Back Mountain]

[Residual Will Rating: Dying · Obsession Unbroken]

Zhang Xuanyi's pupils shrank.

"...The Mountain Guarding Elder?!"

He slammed on the brakes, the electric scooter skidded several meters and stopped in the wilderness.

The image of the old man who had self-immolated to send a message at the ceremony flashed in his mind—charred all over, roaring hoarsely "The fire must return to the Sect," and then turning into ashes.

Everyone thought he was dead, but in this world, what is most feared is not the dead coming back to life, but a person half-dead, still obsessed with carrying out the will of heaven.

He turned the scooter around, no longer heading north.

"Old thing, if you had really died, it would be peaceful." Zhang Xuanyi gritted his teeth, firelight leaping in his eyes, "But if you are going to crawl back half-dead to re-establish the rules... then I will extinguish this fire myself."

A thousand miles away, the back mountain of Mount Longhu.

The moonlight was pale and white, shining on the winding stone steps.

A hand covered in burn marks slowly stretched out, trembling to hold up the weakly jumping Fire Seed—it was the wisp of wild Fire Origin that Zhang Xuanyi had left behind years ago, which Cui Wujiu had quietly kept.

The old man's throat rattled, his remaining consciousness having only one thought: restart the Seal, re-establish the Family tree, the fire can only be inherited by our generation!

He wanted to press the Fire Seed into the scorched hole in his chest to complete the final ritual.

Unexpectedly, the Fire Seed suddenly trembled and jumped up on its own!

"No... impossible..." the old man roared, reaching out to grab it.

The Fire Seed fell into a stone crack, and in an instant, a dull roar came from the underground.

A crimson flame surged out from the depths of the rock layer, like a beast waking up, burning backward up his arm!

Skin and flesh cracked, bones crackled, and the flame ignored life and death, using this half-dead body as the final altar, backfiring on its master!

The old man's eyes widened, looking south, as if he had realized something.

Before the flames engulfed his remaining body, he used his last breath to whisper hoarsely:

"...So fire... doesn't recognize a father..."

The ashes drifted down, forming two words—

No One Can Inherit

The wind passed without a trace, and the stone steps returned to silence.

And in the depths of the southwestern mountains, in a secluded village, a faint vibration came from the ground.

A group of teenagers curled up in the corner of the ancestral hall, the Fire Qi in their bodies boiling, burning each other, their eyes full of terror.

The village Elder held an iron chain and said in a deep voice: "Lock them in the cellar, wait for the 'Orthodoxy' to come and collect them!"