131: The only "spell" my father taught me

Su Qingzhu's eyes were filled with confusion, but she still subconsciously followed Zhang Xuanyi's footsteps.

The so-called "excitement" was not an arena for Spell duels, nor was it an omen of a secret treasure being unearthed, but a newly completed glass building with four gilded characters hanging on the door: "Ten Thousand Laws Cultural Experience Hall."

This place was recognizable to both Zhang Xuanyi and Su Qingzhu.

A few months ago, this had been the most down-to-earth street stall area at the foot of Mount Longhu, where Zhang Xuanyi's folding table for drawing Talismans and fortune-telling was placed in the most conspicuous position at the entrance.

Now, the old atmosphere of daily life had been replaced by shiny floors and cold spotlights, superseded by a meticulously packaged "culture" that was isolated from reality.

The tour guide was introducing it to tourists with a standardized, sweet voice: "Everyone, please look. This is the cinnabar yellow paper restored one-to-one using the secret technology of the Tianshi Mansion. Its texture and energy conductivity have reached 98% of what is recorded in ancient texts. And these heavenly eye mung beans over here, through 3D modeling and micro-carving technology, perfectly reproduce the form of the Magical Artifact used by ancient Tianshi to open their Heavenly Eye..."

In the glass display cabinets, those objects that were once so vivid in Zhang Xuanyi's hands had now become exquisite models with price tags, exuding a strange smell of a mixture of plastic and filthy lucre.

Su Qingzhu frowned deeper and deeper; this was simply a public humiliation of the Daoist arts.

Zhang Xuanyi, however, was watching with great interest, as if enjoying a farce that had nothing to do with him.

He stood outside the crowd, listening to those absurd commentaries, a faint, almost imperceptible smile even hanging on the corner of his mouth.

Just then, a crisp child's voice broke the harmonious commercial atmosphere in the exhibition hall.

A little girl of about five or six years old broke free from her mother's hand, ran to the display cabinet, pointed at the stack of beautifully printed "restored yellow paper" inside, and asked loudly: "Auntie, then why can I draw Talismans that glow now?"

The tour guide's smile froze on her face, and for a moment, she didn't know how to respond.

She awkwardly prevaricated: "Little friend, this... this requires special talent and many years of practice, you shouldn't mess around with this."

"I'm not messing around!" The girl puffed out her cheeks in defiance, took a crumpled piece of homework paper and a red crayon from her pocket, and in front of everyone, lay on the ground and crookedly drew a flame pattern.

The brushstrokes were ridiculously childish, and the structure did not conform to any regulations of Talismans at all.

However, the moment she finished the last stroke, a faint, warm orange halo actually appeared on the rough crayon lines.

Although the light was weak, it was like a loud slap across the face of the "Ten Thousand Laws Cultural Experience Hall."

The whole place was in an uproar, tourists took out their phones to take pictures, and the tour guide's face turned pale.

The little girl's mother was both surprised and happy; she picked up her daughter and left in a hurry amidst the crowd's discussions.

In the chaos of the crowd, no one noticed that the smile on Zhang Xuanyi's mouth deepened.

He walked slowly to the huge electronic Karma box at the entrance of the exhibition hall, took out a colorful candy wrapper from his pocket—it was the packaging for the cheapest fist soul candy—crumbled it into a ball, and gently stuffed it into the coin slot.

After doing this, he turned and merged into the flow of people at the street corner, as if everything just now had nothing to do with him.

Su Qingzhu looked at his back, and the solid ice in her heart named "orthodoxy" was being quietly melted by an unspeakable force.

Late at night, Su Qingzhu sat alone in front of her computer, organizing the information she had collected during the day.

She opened an encrypted folder containing footage she had secretly recorded not long ago when she ventured into an "Orthodox Fire Method Seminar."

At the meeting, a veteran from Kunlun spoke with grief and indignation, claiming that those uncontrolled "wild fires" among the people were a blasphemy against the Daoist lineage, and if not strictly managed, the "hundred-year Foundation would be destroyed overnight."

Just as the old Grandmaster's speech reached its climax, the air conditioner in the venue suddenly sparked, the wiring caught fire, and the projection screen eerily displayed a blurry image of him in his youth in a cave in the Western Regions, secretly imitating alien priests dancing a wild fire dance.

The scene of the entire venue in an uproar was still fresh in her memory.

So-called orthodoxy is nothing more than history written by the victors.

And fire seems to remember all the names that have been forcibly erased.

As she was pondering, the computer screen suddenly flashed and instantly turned into a blinding blue screen.

Immediately after, without waiting for her to perform any operations, a video she had never seen before started playing automatically.

The footage came from an old street surveillance camera, and the timestamp showed it was fifteen years ago—the very day her father, a police officer specializing in handling abnormal fire incidents, died in the line of duty.

In the video, the specially modified police car was swallowed by a violent, incomprehensible fire, and in the very last frame as the flames engulfed the driver's cab, the destructive firelight briefly condensed into a blurry human silhouette, waving gently towards the camera.

Su Qingzhu's blood froze instantly.

She stood up abruptly, replaying the last few tenths of a second over and over again, until she was sure it was definitely not her hallucination.

Outside the window, spring thunder rolled by.

The old-fashioned gas stove in her kitchen, without being lit, slowly lit up with a circle of faint blue light in the furnace core.

Immediately after, the lid of the kettle on the stove began to jump rhythmically.

Da, da, da.

Three soft clicks, clear and regular.

That was the fire signal code used by miners of the old era when they were in trouble underground to convey "I am still alive, requesting support."

It was the first, and only, "Spell" her father had taught her.

Su Qingzhu took a deep breath, and her trembling body gradually calmed down.

She turned off the computer, picked up the camera on the table, and whispered to the empty room in a tone almost like an oath: "Dad, I saw it. Let's pass this fire on together."

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away at the ancient Yellow River ferry crossing, a storm was raging.

Cui Wujiu was wearing a black raincoat, standing on the muddy bank, watching the abandoned barge that was about to be auctioned off.

The government seal read "Suspected of illegal fire gathering," but in his eyes, this rusty iron-hulled ship was more like a sleeping giant beast.

He had boarded the ship to investigate during the day; the hull was cold and rotten everywhere, except for the boiler room, which was warm as spring, with the inner walls covered in rough fire Talismans left by generations of boatmen using their fingernails and stones. That was not the orthodox Talisman of the Daoist sect, but more like a primitive belief rooted in Bloodline and sweat.

"Boom!"

A thunderclap exploded, the flood peak from the upper reaches arrived early, the river water rose at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the nearby flood control embankment was instantly in an emergency.

The rescue team's searchlights all went out due to power failure, and the darkness and roaring flood multiplied the despair.

At the critical moment, an old boatman with gray hair roared and rushed out of the crowd, braving the torrential rain, and stumbled onto the abandoned barge.

He pressed his withered palms tightly against the cold boiler shell, and a boatman's chant that had long been forgotten by the era erupted from his throat.

In an instant, inside the entire broken ship, an orange-red scorching light burst forth from those Talisman carvings!

Steam gushed out from every crack in the pipes, driving the huge water pump temporarily installed on the ship to emit a deafening roar, and it began to frantically pump water out of the river channel.

The iron-hulled ship that should have sunk was now like an ancient beast awakened, roaring and working in the flood, buying the most precious few minutes for the rescue.

Cui Wujiu stood on the shore, the rain washing over his expressionless face.

He watched the ship burning with "human hearts," muttering to himself: "What you are sealing is not fire, but human hearts."

And in the distant southwest frontier, in a minority village that had just abolished the "Holy Fire" system, children were reciting poems from their textbooks around a large iron pot.

That pot had been used by Zhang Xuanyi not long ago to resolve the conflict between two major Families.

He didn't use a single Talisman, nor did he chant a single scripture, but just filled the pot with cold water and said to everyone: "Whoever can make this pot of water boil by itself, the fire belongs to them."

Experts from all walks of life exhausted their fire-summoning techniques and thunder-invoking formulas, but the cold water remained.

Until the third morning, a group of playing children surrounded the pot, exhaling to keep warm while reciting "Wildfires cannot burn it out, it springs up again with the spring breeze," and the water in the pot actually boiled.

Zhang Xuanyi slapped the pot and laughed: "See? The pot doesn't pick hands, and the fire doesn't recognize a father!"

Since then, there was no "Holy Fire Altar" in the village, only a "Co-burning Hall" where everyone could add firewood.

The fire in the world is quietly reviving in different ways, in different corners.

At the foot of Mount Longhu, Zhang Xuanyi returned to his rented small room. The wind outside the window seemed a bit noisier than usual, carrying some kind of message from afar.

He brewed a pot of coarse tea as usual, sat in a creaking rattan chair, and closed his eyes to rest.

In the absolute silence, a very slight sound of paper rubbing against the door crack rang out.

The sound was very light, very thin, almost imperceptible, yet it precisely pierced through the wind and rain, falling into his ears.

He didn't get up immediately, didn't even lift his eyelids, just paused his hand holding the teacup for a moment.

The wind, it seemed, had really risen.

After a long time, he slowly put down the teacup and walked to the door.

A piece of hard paper with a strange texture was lying quietly on the cold ground, like a fallen leaf sent by the wind that did not belong to this season.