119: Hands and Fire

The night in the Northwest was cold enough to bite into one's bones.

The wind whipped up yellow sand, swirling at the entrance of the cave dwelling like a group of invisible ghosts whispering.

Zhang Xuanyi sat before the stove, his back against the mottled earthen wall. An iron pot was perched on the cold stove, its bottom covered in a layer of ash thin as a cicada's wing, rustling softly as he stirred it with a flick of his wrist.

The sand, mixed with the last remnants of ash from the fire pit, swirled into murky rings within the pot, resembling an unfinished Talisman drawn upon the earth.

He hummed an off-key ballad, intermittent yet carrying a strange rhythm: "One rub, the cold fades; two rubs, the night brightens... thirty-six turns, the fire rises from the heart..."

It had been three years.

Since the spontaneous combustion at Mount Longhu, he had not lit a single stick of incense nor burned a single Talisman.

Tianshi Mansion became a fire pit, the Myriad Laws Street Stall turned into legend, the Old Ancestor of Quanxing knelt to beg for a piece of photocopy yellow paper, and the bigwigs of the Under Heaven Society held spirit coins in long lines reaching the foot of the mountain—but he had left, carrying a broken pot on his back like a stray dog, heading all the way west.

No one understood why he left.

Even he could not say for sure.

Until this moment, when a tiny, almost imperceptible spark at the bottom of the pot blinked gently.

Zhang Xuanyi's hand froze.

It was not an illusion.

It was not embers reigniting, nor was it the wind stirring a dying light.

It was "It"—that thing which had once danced in his palm inside the snow-line train carriage, the thing worshiped by countless people as the "Divine Fire." It had never died, nor had it left.

It hid in the ash, following him through wind and snow, across the wilderness, like a lurking snake, quietly waiting for him to speak.

But he did not speak.

He simply pulled out the charred, coal-black rubbing stick from his waist and thrust it into the sand, directly facing that spark.

"You recognize the path, not me," he said, his voice so light it was as if he feared waking something.

Then he closed his eyes.

The third watch, the third quarter of the Zi hour.

Suddenly, a wind of unknown origin blew outside the cave, and the ground cracked open, with fissures spreading like a spiderweb.

The spark leaped silently, landing on the tip of the rubbing stick. A flame ignited, but instead of leaping upward, it crawled along the fissures in the ground, moving faster and faster, glowing with a blood-red intensity. Within dozens of meters, the earth was outlined with an incomplete pattern—twisted lines, broken arcs, and in the center, a symbol that seemed like "Fire" yet was not.

The Free Fire Map.

Incomplete, yet alive.

Herdsmen in the distance were awakened, and seeing the earth fire moving like a Dragon, illuminating half the wilderness, they hurriedly threw on their clothes and knelt, chanting, "A divine miracle from heaven," "The Fire God has manifested."

An old man tremblingly held out a butter lamp, while a child stared wide-eyed, pointing at the ground and shouting, "A Dragon is crawling!"

Zhang Xuanyi stood up, kicked over the iron pot, grabbed a handful of yellow sand, and fiercely threw it at the burning fissure.

"Worship, my foot!" he sneered. "This fire won't keep your sheep from dying."

The flame flickered violently, as if stung by these words, and actually recoiled for an instant.

He did not look again and turned to leave.

His worn cloth shoes stepped on the scorched earth, emitting a faint crackling sound, as if the earth were breathing.

Behind him, a seven or eight-year-old child squatted on the ground, picked up a half-burnt wooden stick, and, imitating his actions from moments ago, clumsily thrust it into the sandy ground and began scraping it with a stone.

"Dad! Look! I can make fire too!" the child shouted excitedly.

The father looked up at the departing figure and muttered, "Who is that?"

"I don't know," the mother shook her head. "But this fire... it came from the bottom of his pot."

Meanwhile, on the East Sea, the research vessel "Power Of Will" broke through the waves.

Su Qingzhu sprang up from her seat, her chest burning, as if fire were scorching beneath her skin.

She ripped open her collar and took out the remnant ash of that photocopy yellow paper from a cloth pouch against her skin—it was something she had picked up in the ruins of Mount Longhu three years ago and had kept with her ever since, calling it a "memento."

But now, the ash was glowing.

Faint, yet steady, with a distinct rhythm, like a heartbeat.

Her pupils contracted, and she immediately pulled up the monitoring footage of the Seventeen City fire pits.

The next second, a chill shot up her spine—all the flames in the fire pits, regardless of size, were rippling and vibrating at the exact same moment, with consistent frequency and a clear beat.

She quickly opened the audio analysis, converting the ripples into a sound spectrum.

When that coarse, primitive friction sound rang out, she shuddered.

It was the "Ballad of Rubbing Wood."

It was not the complete version, only a few fragments, but the System's comparison accuracy was 99.8%.

"It's not a coincidence..." she gritted her teeth and slammed the broadcast button. "Start a full-band broadcast! Replay 'Fire Lighting the Way' and add the rubbing wood audio track! I want everyone to hear—how the real fire comes to be!"

The signal instantly covered the thirty coastal cities.

Millions of flames in people's palms danced simultaneously, and then, without warning, collectively turned toward the south.

Like stars returning to their positions, like all rivers flowing to the sea.

On a cliff in the Qinling Mountains, Cui Wujiu sat cross-legged on a stone platform, blood seeping from his fingertips.

Using his finger as a brush and blood as ink, the phantom names of the 72nd Generation Celestial Master floated on the rock face, as he attempted to borrow the ancient pulse to investigate the fire of today.

But just as the final stroke fell, flames ignited from the eyes of the phantom, yet they did not reveal the faces of the sages of old; instead, they projected countless images: a man rubbing wood in the snow, an old woman passing fire in a subway station, a youth gritting his teeth and punching in a street boxing gym... they were all ordinary people.

No Talismans, no true incantations, no Legacy.

Only hands, and fire.

Cui Wujiu was stunned for a full ten breaths, then suddenly threw his head back and laughed aloud, his laughter startling countless mountain birds.

"So you stopped believing in memorial tablets long ago." He wiped the bloodstains from his face, tore off a corner of his robe, dipped it in blood, and wrote seven characters: "Those who come after need not remember me."

He threw it aside, into a ground fissure.

The fire roared and surged, rushing south along the thousand-year-old earth pulse like a waking red Dragon, pointing directly at the place where it first ignited.

A few days later, outside a border town.

Yellow sand covered the road, and wisps of cooking smoke were sparse.

Before a newly erected ancestral hall, incense smoke curled, and a towering stone tablet stood inscribed with three large characters: Fire Grace Tablet.

Villagers burned incense daily, saying, "We are grateful for the divine fire that descended from heaven, saving us from the desperate situation in the wind and snow."

The wind swept across the face of the tablet, raising a wisp of light smoke.

On a distant sand dune, a figure carrying an iron pot walked slowly toward them.

Zhang Xuanyi stopped, looked at the tablet, and his mouth curled into a mocking smile.

"Heh." The ash at the bottom of the pot was still hot, and the fire followed along.

Zhang Xuanyi squatted at the foot of the "Fire Grace Tablet," chewing on a dry piece of flatbread, with crumbs stuck to the corner of his mouth.

Watching the scene of swirling incense smoke and villagers kneeling in ritual, he felt it was so absurd he wanted to laugh.

Three years ago, that spontaneous combustion at Tianshi Mansion had sent flames soaring into the sky, turning the Myriad Laws Street Stall into ash, yet the world had attributed this Karma to Heaven—no, to a "God."

But where was there any God?

He spat out a piece of bread crumb and flicked it casually, landing right into the incense burner held by an old woman.

In an instant, a strange change occurred!

The three sticks of incense, which should have been burning quietly, suddenly shrank, and a blue flame "boomed" upward, translucent and deep blue, without a trace of black smoke.

As the flames rose, a phantom image appeared in the air: at the foot of Mount Longhu, a young man in a Daoist robe stood behind a street stall, distributing small amber-colored syrup bottles, his voice drifting through time—

"Fist Soul Candy. Keep it in your mouth and you can unleash the intent of the Eight Extremes. Don't ask me the principle; just pay the spirit coins."

The crowd was in an uproar.

"This... this is something from three years ago!"

"I ate it that day! It was that night that I dared to fight the people of Quanxing..."

"So the fire... didn't come from the sky? Did we strike it out ourselves?"

A youth spoke with a trembling voice, but his eyes were frighteningly bright.

Zhang Xuanyi did not answer, slowly brushed the dust off his trousers, and stood up.

The night wind swept across the open space in front of the ancestral hall, blowing the hem of his tattered Daoist robe and revealing a pair of cloth shoes with worn-through soles.

"Fire has no grace, nor does it have debts," he said calmly. His voice was not loud, but it struck like a hammer into people's hearts. "It does not record Karma, nor does it demand offerings. You can light it because you are willing to rub the wood; you can win because you dare to swing your fist."

He paused, looked at the high-and-mighty stone tablet, and sneered, "You are worshiping the wrong thing."

Before the words had even faded, a hidden force brushed silently across the ground, formless as the wind.

The next morning, the villagers were shocked to find the "Fire Grace Tablet" fallen on the ground, broken in two, while in its place, someone had piled up a low stove with loose stones, with traces of charred wood ash left in the center.

No one knew who had done it.

But that very night, a child secretly picked up dry branches and, imitating the legendary method of rubbing wood to make fire, fiddled with it in the stone stove all night long.

Just before dawn, a faint flame finally licked the dry grass—he cried, not because of the warmth, but because he had done it.

At the same moment, far away at Mount Longhu.

The main hall of Tianshi Mansion had long since burned down, the beams and pillars turned to ash, yet a single cluster of clean flame remained unextinguished, burning quietly in the center of the ruins as if it had a will of its own.

At this moment, the fire suddenly contracted, condensing from a raging flame into a thin line of fire, moving like a snake along the ground, winding along the patterns of the remaining floor tiles, and finally stopping before a charred rubbing stick that was half-buried.

The line of fire burrowed into the wood's crevices.

The entire piece of wood trembled gently, like a reviving heartbeat.

Immediately after, the fire pits in the Seventeen City across the country rippled with light simultaneously—whether it was the pottery basins of East Sea fishing villages, the iron stoves of Northwest herdsmen, or the secret fire altars of urban underground martial arts gyms, all flames reflected the same image in the same instant:

Under the stars and moon, a figure carrying an iron pot walked alone.

A faint light at the bottom of the pot flickered like breathing, waxing and waning, yet never extinguishing.

The camera slowly zoomed out.

That point of light actually echoed across the distance with the seventh star of the Big Dipper in the night sky, as if the movement of the heavens and stars was quietly following the footsteps of one man.

Silence.

But a more magnificent Awakening had already been ignited in the depths of the human world.

A few days later, in the rolling mountains of the Southwest, clouds and mist obscured the sun.

At the end of a narrow mountain path, a village almost completely isolated from the world was hidden.

Under a withered tree at the village entrance sat an old man, ragged and empty-eyed, with a fire pit in front of him that had been cold for who knows how many years.

No one had seen him speak, nor had anyone seen him lift a hand to touch a piece of firewood.

Until one late night, when faint footsteps were heard on the distant mountain path.

Worn cloth shoes stepped on wet moss, emitting a soft crackling sound.

The person, carrying a pot on his back, walked slowly, stopped at the village gate, looked at the dead, silent fire pit, and then looked at the old man.

He did not speak.

He simply sat down in silence.