129: Exclusive secret recipe

The path along the mountain ridge was like a grayish-white scar, carved deeply into the verdant body of Mount Longhu.

Zhang Xuanyi walked slowly down along this scar, leaving behind the dispersing morning mist and a mountain that was losing its divinity.

The wind poured into his tattered cuffs, carrying a hint of the mountain's chill, causing his washed-out Daoist robe to flutter noisily, like a neglected, tattered banner.

Upon reaching the mountainside, an abandoned tea shed stood crookedly by the roadside.

Three of its four pillars were scorched black, as if seared by the wrath of a heavenly lightning strike.

He had intended to bypass this ominous place, but his footsteps faltered slightly as a faint, elusive warmth emanated from beneath his feet.

It was a pile of long-cooled ashes, buried deep beneath the collapsed roof of the shed.

Yet, in the depths of that deathly gray-white, there was a single spark, flickering intermittently at an extremely weak frequency, much like the final heartbeat of a dying patient.

Zhang Xuanyi crouched down, silently gazing at that tiny glimmer.

He did not use any magic, but simply picked up a piece of charred charcoal and, holding it like a brush, gently pushed aside the layers of ash.

Beneath the ashes lay a photocopy yellow paper, burned until only a corner remained.

The cinnabar talisman on the paper was long since blurred, but the familiar lines were exactly those of the "Don't Fear the Dark" talisman he had drawn years ago.

The corner of the paper was scorched yellow and curled, tightly bunched together, as if at the very last moment before being consumed by the flames, a hand had clutched it tightly, regarding it as their final hope.

He said nothing, simply placing the piece of charcoal back over it, as if adding a handful of fresh soil to an anonymous grave.

Immediately after, he pulled out a short wooden stick from his robes that had been polished smooth from constant handling; he had picked it up by a fire pit of the southwestern mountain people, and it still retained the most primitive scent of smoke and fire.

He placed the stick horizontally over the pile of ashes, making a silent mark.

The next morning, the light rain cleared.

A passing woodcutter was surprised to discover a wet strip of cloth hanging from the eaves of the abandoned tea shed, though he didn't know where it had come from.

The cloth strip swayed gently in the wind, and upon it was clearly branded a crooked "Fire" character.

It was not ink, but an eternal brand left on the fabric after water vapor encountered some kind of high heat and suddenly evaporated.

Meanwhile, in a northern city thousands of miles away, inside an old residential compound, Su Qingzhu turned off her voice recorder.

Since the street projection incident, she had closed all her social media accounts and, as if she had evaporated from the world, began this journey of searching for the ordinary people who had uploaded "True Fire Records."

Sitting before her was an elderly woman living alone, her hair white, yet her eyes exceptionally clear.

The elderly woman's son was a firefighter who had died in the line of duty.

Since then, she had insisted on standing on her balcony every night, using a near-masochistic method, rubbing her hands repeatedly until a small flame ignited in her palms.

"Auntie, aren't you afraid of being treated as an outcast by your neighbors by doing this?" Su Qingzhu asked softly.

The elderly woman shook her head, a calm smile appearing on her deeply lined face: "I used to be afraid, terrified that others would call me crazy. Now, I'm not afraid anymore."

She pointed outside the window, "Look at the news, those high and mighty Tianshi Mansion members wearing Daoist robes have all gone mute. Even with such a big incident at Mount Longhu, we haven't seen them do anything about it."

"Instead, it's us ordinary people who 'can't do' anything that have passed this fire down to our grandchildren."

As soon as she finished speaking, the sky outside changed abruptly, and a long-brewing rain poured down.

The old wiring could not bear the load, and accompanied by a sizzling sound of electricity, the entire residential area instantly plunged into deathly darkness.

Cries of surprise and the wailing of children rose one after another.

Only the balcony of this room suddenly lit up with a tiny glimmer.

It was not an electric light, nor was it a candle.

Instead, between a pair of calloused, withered, and bony palms, a stable and warm red flame was silently dancing.

The firelight reflected on the elderly woman's face; her expression was solemn and pious, as if she were communicating with a loved one in another world.

Su Qingzhu silently retreated downstairs, stood in the pouring rain, and raised the camera in her hand.

Rainwater slid down the cold lens, blurring the image in the viewfinder, like a grand, unknown, silent ritual.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the Central Plains, inside an abandoned ironworks listed as a key monitoring zone, Cui Wujiu stopped in his tracks.

The towering walls had long since collapsed, and the rusted steel skeleton emitted a ghostly wail in the wind.

He had not intended to stay here, but was attracted by a rhythmic tapping sound coming from underground.

Tap, tap, tap... pause.

His pupils suddenly constricted.

This frequency—he would never forget it even in death.

Three years ago, right here, a group of trapped miners had used their own blood to tap out this signal representing the character "Fire" on the cold rock wall!

Following the sound, he forcefully pulled aside a huge piece of rusted iron sheeting, revealing a deep, dark tunnel at the bottom of the furnace.

In the tunnel, a few ragged, homeless teenagers were sitting in a circle, using the sharp edge of broken glass to scrape, stroke by stroke, at a pitch-black lump of coal, sending out sporadic sparks.

Seeing him suddenly appear, the leader of the teenagers vigilantly stopped his movements, looked up to size him up, and grinned, asking: "Hey, I heard you're an official sent from above to 'patrol the fire'? But we haven't learned this fire, nor have we paid respects to anyone's turf."

Cui Wujiu did not answer.

He just quietly watched the crude tools in the teenagers' hands and that hard piece of coal, then slowly crouched down and reached out his own hand.

The teenager was stunned.

What a hand that was—the palms were covered in terrifyingly thick calluses, the knuckles were large, and every crevice was embedded with indelible black marks, like medals left from years of dealing with steel and fire.

Cui Wujiu took the piece of coal handed to him by the teenager and silently placed it on his own palm, which had long since been worn down like a slab of stone.

The teenager was dazed for a moment, then grinned, revealing two rows of white teeth.

The two no longer spoke, just squatted side by side in the dark tunnel, using the most primitive and clumsy method, rubbing it again and again.

Sparks flew, illuminating their young and determined faces, and also lighting up the pattern graffitied on the tunnel wall behind them with white stone: a big smiley face, with two words scrawled next to it—"Whatever."

Seven days later, Zhang Xuanyi appeared at a market in a county town.

A stall owner wearing a fake Daoist robe was holding an electronic megaphone and shouting loudly: "Authentic Tianshi Mansion certified, exclusive secret recipe Fire-Starting Paste! No hard practice needed, apply and it ignites! Guaranteed to teach and guarantee to learn, money back if ineffective!"

There were many onlookers, mostly elderly people and children with eyes full of curiosity.

Zhang Xuanyi stopped for a moment, his face showing neither sadness nor joy.

He quietly squeezed into the crowd, and while no one was paying attention, he surreptitiously tucked a small pinch of furnace ash he had brought from the southwestern frontier fire pit into the crevices of the stones at the base of the stall.

That night, a strange thing happened.

All the unsold paste at the "Fire-Starting Paste" stall began to heat up on its own, emitting choking white smoke.

And those who had bought the paste and applied it to their hands, instead of rubbing out any sparks, found their palms burning and swollen, as if they had been branded by a hot iron.

Meanwhile, the old man selling roasted sweet potatoes next door exclaimed in the street.

His earthen stove, which he had used for decades, for some unknown reason, without adding any extra firewood, saw its flames inexplicably intensify several times over, roasting sweet potatoes that were crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with a fragrance that wafted for miles.

The news spread throughout the entire county overnight.

The angry public spontaneously tore down the fraudulent "Fire-Starting Paste" stall and instead surrounded the old man's earthen stove, packing it tightly.

They didn't ask, nor did they beg; they just quietly watched the most simple and unadorned flames dancing in the furnace.

No one taught them; they just watched. Once they watched, it was as if they knew how.

Another seven days passed, and the spring rain ceased. At the site of the old locust tree at the foot of Mount Longhu, which had been transplanted into a glass enclosure, a strange phenomenon suddenly appeared.

The carefully nurtured tree trunk was gradually turning yellow and withered, devoid of any vitality.

Yet, in a wild field three miles away, a new locust seedling defiantly broke through the soil.

Its branches glowed with a strange pale red; every night, a faint light flowed through its leaf veins, like fireflies.

Even stranger was that every night at the hour of the Rat (midnight), the kitchen stoves in every household within a hundred-meter radius would heat up on their own, boiling a pot of cold water to a simmer without the need to add firewood.

The Daoist priest guarding the hall was panicked and reported this matter to Tianshi Mansion.

The higher-ups were shaken and wanted to send people down the mountain to investigate, but were stopped by a single sentence from the secluded Sect Head: "Let it be."

That night, Zhang Xuanyi sat alone in a small tavern on the mountainside, drinking by himself with a plate of aniseed beans.

He suddenly saw, on the dim, twilight-covered ridge in the distance, a few village children chasing and playing with each other.

They waved burning dry grass in their hands, the firelight tracing bright arcs in the air, their crisp laughter piercing through the evening breeze and traveling far.

He looked up, drank the last drop of wine in his bowl, let out a satisfied sigh, and whispered to himself: "The pot is broken, the temple is empty, which is actually quite good... This fire, it seems, has finally grown too lazy to acknowledge any master."

The wine bowl was set down with a "clang," and the few remaining drops of wine at the bottom of the bowl, under his gaze, began to heat up slightly; in the swirling water vapor, they vaguely formed an upside-down "Xiao" character, then immediately evaporated, leaving no trace.

After drinking that bowl of leftover wine that reflected the upside-down "Xiao" character in the tavern, Zhang Xuanyi did not stay long.

He stood up and turned the still-warm coarse porcelain bowl upside down on the table, making a soft "click" sound, as if placing a chess piece that no one could understand.

His gaze crossed the hustle and bustle of the tavern and cast toward the vast world outside the mountain, shrouded in night and starlight, where it seemed some more ancient and more scorching call was awakening.