122: Mars

It was a sound of friction, one stroke, then another, like a dying person using their last ounce of strength to wage a most desperate battle against the hard rock.

The sound came from deep underground, piercing through thick earth and stone, carrying a stubbornness that refused to yield.

Zhang Xuanyi leaned down, pressed his ear against the cold ground, and held his breath.

He heard it; it was not the scratching of a beast, nor the strange noises of natural mountain subsidence, but a human rubbing wood, using the most primitive and clumsy method, attempting to beg for a glimmer of light in the endless darkness.

This collapsed old mining town had long been designated as a Forbidden Ground. Rumor had it that three years ago, the Earth Vein Fire Qi went out of control, and flames spewed from the mines, devouring the entire town. Those who had luckily escaped all said that underground had become a fiery purgatory.

The Tianshi Mansion had once sent people to place a Seal, asserting that the fire poison would not dissipate for a hundred years and that no living beings should enter.

But now, beneath this dead land, there were actually survivors.

He did not hesitate in the slightest; his hands, like claws, embedded deeply into the frozen soil and rubble, forcefully tearing open a hole just large enough for one person to squeeze through.

A thicker scent of blood and coal ash rushed towards him, mingled with faint cries.

"Above... is that Master Tianshi?"

A voice so hoarse it was almost silent came from below, carrying a tremor of disbelief.

Immediately after, another voice rang out, weak yet incredibly firm: "Don't beg! We don't beg anyone! *Cough, cough*... It's not the last step yet, keep rubbing!"

"But... A-Yong's hands are already ruined..."

"Then use mine!"

The sounds of arguing, coughing, and that ceaseless, teeth-grinding friction intertwined.

Zhang Xuanyi listened in silence.

He could imagine the scene underground: a group of trapped miners, in a desperate situation without seeing the sun, lacking Talismans, without a Tianshi, perhaps not even possessing proper kindling.

Their only reliance was their own hands, and that stubbornness of not wanting to die, and not wanting to die on their knees.

They took turns biting their tongues, using their essence blood to soak the wood, attempting to spark that one-in-a-billion chance of fire.

This was a survival method bordering on self-mutilation; what was burning was life, and what was ignited was dignity.

"Is there someone above? We don't want to die... but we also don't beg the Tianshi!" that firm voice roared again, as if using up the last bit of strength.

Zhang Xuanyi slowly closed his eyes.

He rummaged through his worn-out bag and finally pulled out a piece of wax-yellow paper.

It was a photocopy of yellow paper, the first "Talisman" he had sold when he set up a stall in the town at the foot of the mountain three years ago.

The cinnabar on it had long since blurred, and it possessed no magical power whatsoever; only three crooked, barely recognizable characters could be made out.

He gently stuck this scrap of paper onto the rock wall at the entrance of the hole, as if completing a solemn ritual.

Then, facing the bottomless darkness, he whispered in a voice only he could hear: "The first Talisman I sold three years ago said 'Don't be afraid of the dark'."

Before his voice had even faded, he seemed to feel a slight tremor from the earth beneath his feet.

Immediately after, from the deep darkness, a faint yet incredibly stubborn red light suddenly flared!

It was not his magic, nor was it the creation of heaven and earth.

It was a miner deep underground, on the verge of his limit, relying on that one unyielding breath, who had finally rubbed out a spark on the blood-soaked wood shavings sufficient to ignite the coal dust!

One spark, two sparks... the fire did not burst forth, but like ink dripped onto rice paper, it spread rapidly and firmly.

From deep within the rock crevices came suppressed, ecstatic cheers of survivors who had escaped death.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Lingnan, Su Qingzhu was facing rows of neatly arranged master video tapes, performing the final archiving work.

The final manuscript of "Road Lit by Fire" had been proofread; this historical record documenting the rise and fall of the fist soul syrup era was about to be permanently archived.

Just as she was about to sign her name, the light screen in front of her flickered, and the live broadcast backend automatically popped up an anonymously uploaded encrypted video.

She frowned, intending to delete it directly, but her fingertip clicked on it as if possessed.

The image unfolded with a tremor; the scene was a primary school classroom in a remote village in the Northwest.

Outside the window, wind and snow howled; indoors, it was pitch black due to a power outage.

A dozen or so children in thin clothing sat huddled together, shivering from the cold.

They had no fist soul syrup in their hands, no Talismans, not even matches; each person was just clutching a withered branch they had sharpened themselves.

An elderly teacher with a wrinkled face sat among them, his voice gentle and powerful: "Children, don't be afraid. Think about what you want to illuminate the most in your hearts."

The classroom fell into a moment of silence, with only the tense breathing of the children.

Suddenly, from a little girl's fingertip, with a "poof," a small, golden spark popped out, illuminating her clear eyes.

She gave a low cry of surprise, and immediately after, the boy next to her, then the girl next to him... the second spark, the third spark, lit up one after another.

Finally, in the entire dilapidated classroom, clusters of warm flames ignited on the tips of the withered branches, like stars rising into the sky, illuminating the children's frost-bitten red faces with warmth.

They had not learned any magic incantations; they were just thinking in their hearts, "I want Grandma to see the road under her feet clearly," "I want to light up my homework notebook," "I want Mom to no longer be afraid of thunder," and then, the fire came.

Su Qingzhu's breathing suddenly hitched.

She stared fixedly at the timestamp in the bottom right corner of the screen—the string of numbers pointed precisely to the seventh minute after the Fire Memory Bead burst on Mount Longhu.

She reached out, deleted the already written, ten-thousand-word ending of the manuscript, and on the blank page, typed a new line: From now on, there is no need for anyone to stand up and tell you how to light a fire.

At the same time, Cui Wujiu, wandering through the towering mountains and ridges of the Southwest, also stopped in his tracks.

He stood beside a fire pit in a village, feeling the changes in the Earth Vein fire flow beneath his feet.

For decades in the past, these fire flows were like cattle and sheep needing a shepherd to drive them; they had to be carefully guided by "Fire Patrols" like him to run steadily.

But now, they seemed to have come alive.

The Earth Vein fire flows no longer needed his guidance; instead, they seemed to have gained their own consciousness.

Before a rainstorm, they would proactively preheat the soil in the mountains to prevent mudslides; during a long dry season, they would precisely ignite a small patch of dry grass, urging new life through the way of wildfire burning everything away.

He walked into the village and saw several elders using red-hot iron tongs to brand an ancient "Fire" character onto their door frames.

He asked curiously what kind of ritual this was.

The elder replied with a smile that this was an old method to "ward off the cold evil."

Cui Wujiu asked them again if they knew any fire-controlling incantations.

The elders shook their heads one after another: "What incantations? We don't know any. But the children in the village taught us that as long as you feel warm in your heart, your hands can light up."

That night, thunder and rain raged, and the wind blew fiercely.

Cui Wujiu sat cross-legged opposite the village, watching an incredible scene unfold.

All the fire pits in the village, at the same moment, ignited without wind!

The flames were not fierce, but they exuded a stubbornness; no matter how the wind blew or the rain poured, they simply would not go out.

It was as if it wasn't fire burning, but the earth itself taking a deep breath towards the sky.

He let the cold rain soak his entire body, gazing at the patches of warm and stubborn lights in the valley; the "Fire Patrol" obsession that had been as heavy as a mountain on his shoulders for decades was suddenly unloaded at this moment.

He tilted his head back, facing the lightning-filled sky, and let out a hearty laugh.

"I don't need to search anymore—it has long since returned home."

When these changes were unfolding everywhere like a prairie fire, at the source of it all, that first place of ignition, under the old locust tree, the mutation reached its peak.

On the night of the full moon, that old, long-withered locust tree suddenly emitted a gentle, warm glow throughout its body.

The locust flowers all over the tree bloomed silently, then drifted down like snowflakes.

The moment each white petal touched the ground, it would "boom" and ignite into a golden flame; where the fire passed, it did not harm a single blade of grass.

At the same time, from the ice fields of the North to the reefs of the South Sea, the seventeen city fire pits that served as nodes boiled without wind.

The sky-high flames did not rise, but instead surged along the ground, connecting with each other along invisible veins, finally merging into a "River of Human Fire" that traversed the entire map.

And in the main hall of the Longhu Mountain Tianshi Mansion, the sect of all magic, the wreckage of the Fire Memory Bead floating in the air, after its last ray of light faded, slowly sank into the ground.

It did not shatter, but instead transformed into a piece of warm, red jade, silently burying itself deep into the foundation of the Tianshi Mansion, becoming the deepest memory of this land.

All of this happened in silence.

Only the wind passed through the empty main hall, swirling up a wisp of residual ash from the ground, spinning in the air, tracing half of an unwritten "Xiao" character, before suddenly dissipating.

It was as if even this heaven and earth were trying, in their own way, to remember a legend that no longer needed heroes or names.

The rescue at the mining town lasted for a night.

At daybreak, the first rescue team, covered in dust and with faces full of shock, carried out the surviving miners.

They did not talk about the hardships underground, nor did they cheer for their survival; they just kept looking back at that pitch-black hole with a gaze bordering on a pilgrimage.

Soon, an unbelievable piece of news began to quietly spread among the rescue team.

They said that down there... it was no longer a mine shaft.

And Zhang Xuanyi, walking along the edge of this dead, silent mining town, was walking step by step towards the entrance of the abyss that had just been illuminated by the sunlight.