132: The temple that no one worships is the most powerful

Zhang Xuanyi's knuckles were somewhat withered and yellow, as if calloused from years of gripping something; he leaned over and carefully picked up the slip of paper.

The paper felt tough to the touch—neither bamboo nor wood—with a warm, smooth texture, as if it still held a trace of a living creature's body heat.

There wasn't a single word on it, only a few freehand strokes outlined with the most primitive charcoal pencil, yet it precisely depicted a hidden gully within the rolling mountains of Southern Anhui; at the end, a crooked square was drawn, looking like a solitary house.

This letter had no origin and even less reason, yet it was like a silent imperial decree.

Zhang Xuanyi did not hesitate; he folded the map, tucked it against his chest, and turned to walk toward those vast, wild mountains.

Three days later, he stood at the place indicated by the map.

Before him lay a ruin, with weeds as high as his waist, and children's graffiti and broken desks and chairs scattered among the crumbling walls.

This was a mountain primary school forgotten by time.

However, right in the middle of this dead, silent ruin, a single classroom had miraculously remained intact.

Although the doors and windows had rotted, the walls were sturdy, and not a single tile had fallen from the roof.

Zhang Xuanyi did not step inside immediately; his gaze was drawn to the blackboard.

That old wooden blackboard was completely free of dust; instead, it was covered in dense, childish handwriting, as if it were a diary left behind by countless children scrambling to write.

Today I rubbed out a spark again, a little bigger than yesterday's.

Mom says I'm a little immortal, and I'm not allowed to tell anyone.

The teacher doesn't scold us for playing with fire anymore; she says we are good children.

Every sentence carried a kind of innocent yet stubborn power.

Looking down, there were no books or pointers on the podium, only a chipped, coarse pottery bowl offered up.

Inside the bowl, filled with half a bowl of fine, dry wood shavings, an incredible scene was unfolding—a faint flame ignited out of thin air in the center of the shavings, danced quietly a few times, and then quietly extinguished.

After an interval of no more than three to five breaths, the flame would reignite, cycling over and over, like an untiring heart performing a tiny, sacred breath.

Night fell, and the mountain wind grew cold.

Zhang Xuanyi did not enter the room; he simply found an inconspicuous corner to crouch in, his whole body blending into the shadows.

Just past midnight, the sound of rustling footsteps came from all directions.

One by one, thin, small figures, guided by the moonlight, traversed the ruins with familiar ease, their faces bearing a solemnity ill-suited to their age, as they quietly gathered at the classroom door.

They dared not enter, only gently placing the things they had brought by the threshold—a piece of candy wrapped tightly in candy paper, a pencil still bearing fresh ink marks, or a paper crane folded from exercise book paper.

They said nothing, simply watching the flickering fire in the bowl, their eyes filled with admiration and devotion.

The wind blew through the dilapidated window lattice, carrying their collective whisper, as faint as a mosquito's hum, merging into a strange power of thought.

I am not a bad child; I can make fire.

Zhang Xuanyi listened all night; it was only when the first light of dawn appeared and the children retreated quietly like the tide that he slowly stood up.

He did not touch the bowl, nor did he disturb the offerings; he simply dug a shallow pit with his hands in the corner of the classroom courtyard and planted a wild locust sapling he had found by the roadside.

He tore a piece of cloth from his own washed-out sleeve, carefully wrapped the sapling's roots, and covered it with soil.

In the morning light, one could vaguely see two blurred traces of characters on that corner of cloth—Ten Thousand Laws.

Just as Zhang Xuanyi was patting the last handful of soil onto the wild locust, in a city a thousand miles away, a report titled We Do Not Need to Be Lit was like a stone thrown into a deep pool, stirring up a silent, massive wave.

This article by reporter Su Qingzhu was very strange; it contained no pictures, no data, and not even a single comment from her.

It was pieced together from 324 handwritten manuscripts from ordinary people all over the country, and the content was only one thing—My First Experience Making Fire.

Some were farmers rubbing dry grass into flame on the ridges of fields, some were children lighting damp firewood on a rainy night, and some were white-collar workers knocking sparks from two stones on the roof of an office building.

The words were simple, but the emotions were searing.

Less than an hour after the article went online, it was throttled and deleted by multiple mainstream platforms.

However, a more ancient method of dissemination was activated.

People spontaneously copied the article onto spirit money, burned it in sacrificial fire basins, and then sprinkled the ashes into their own furnaces and stoves.

An invisible fire text chain spread wildly among the people; they firmly believed that doing this would make the flames in their homes burn brighter and with more spiritual efficacy.

That night, the circuits in Su Qingzhu's home suddenly short-circuited, and the entire house plunged into darkness.

She fumbled to light a candle, only to discover that the old-fashioned typewriter on her desk, which had long been obsolete, was making click, click sounds on its own.

The keycaps rose and fell rhythmically in the candlelight, typing out a brand-new line of text, the ink not yet dry.

The words you spoke, the fire remembers them all.

Su Qingzhu reached out and gently touched the machine, which was cold but now slightly hot to the touch; in the candlelight, her face was streaked with tears.

Almost at the same moment, in the Northwest Gobi Desert.

Cui Wujiu was walking into the tail end of a sandstorm; as the yellow sand filling the sky dissipated, it revealed the ruins of an ancient post station that had been buried for at least half a century.

Right on top of the rammed earth platform in the center of the post station, a fist-sized green flame was burning quietly.

It was neither fierce nor flickering, like a solidified piece of jade, emitting a faint light.

The accompanying archaeological team was completely stumped; all their precision instruments could not detect any energy fluctuations from this flame, and they couldn't even measure its temperature.

It was like a three-dimensional phantom, existing in reality, yet transcending all physical Law.

Cui Wujiu dismissed everyone and kept watch alone under the earthen platform for three nights.

On the third night, when the moonlight was at its strongest, cold and clear as mercury spilling over the earth, the green flame suddenly expanded without warning, transforming into a huge circular array.

On the ground illuminated by the flame, a line of ancient script slowly emerged, each character like a brand.

Those who serve the fire shall perish; those who have faith fire shall prosper.

Cui Wujiu looked at that line of characters, a look of relieved exhaustion appearing on his wind-weathered face.

He sat cross-legged, gently pressed his calloused palms against the cold ground, and said in a voice only he could hear: I will not patrol anymore; you are free.

The moment his voice fell, the green flame suddenly soared into the sky, exploded in the air, and turned into thousands of meteors, tearing through the night sky and shooting in all directions.

Each meteor dragged a long tail of flame, falling with pinpoint precision onto the roofs of cities in the distance and sinking into those cold chimneys.

Fire had come home.

This wave of return also washed over the seemingly indestructible modern order.

Zhang Xuanyi passed by a newly completed Modern Daoist Cultural Center, where a giant curved LED screen in the square was looping a promotional video, the eight glittering characters Authentic Legacy, Scientific Cultivation looking particularly glaring.

He had originally turned to leave, but was drawn over by a noisy argument.

A group of migrant workers who had just finished their shift were gathered around the musical fountain in the center of the square; they were soaked through and wanted to build a fire to dry their clothes and warm themselves up.

But several security guards in crisp uniforms surrounded them, sternly driving them away: Public place, no use of any form of civilian fire allowed! This is the rule!

Zhang Xuanyi silently pushed through the crowd, took out a short wooden stick that he had polished to a shine from his bosom, and handed it to the leader, a burly man who was arguing red-faced with the security guards: Try this.

The man was stunned for a moment, then hesitantly took the wooden stick.

He looked at it, then looked at his companions, as if having made a decision, placed the stick against a dry stone slab, and with a heart full of frustration and chill, joined his companions in rubbing it rapidly.

Sss—

A wisp of blue smoke rose, and then a weak spark sputtered out, landing precisely on a piece of soaked fabric.

The fabric ignited instantly, and the flame whooshed up.

The workers let out a cheer, and as more and more people joined in, the sound of rubbing wooden sticks merged into a majestic and rhythmic symphony.

Something magical happened; as the sound of fire-making grew denser, ripples began to spread across the surface of the central fountain, the water droplets refracting the firelight in front of the workers, casting thousands of dancing fire shadows onto the water curtain, like a galaxy inverted here.

The security guards were all stunned, standing frozen in place.

They did not notice that the metal badges on their uniform chests, symbolizing order and authority, had begun to grow slightly hot at some unknown moment.

On the night of Qingming, Mount Longhu.

As the ancestral court of the orthodox Daoist sect, a heaven-shocking anomaly suddenly appeared within a ten-mile radius of its core Forbidden Ground.

The thousands of stone steps leading from the foot of the mountain to the caves where successive Celestial Masters had secluded themselves began to heat up step by step; eventually, the entire mountain road turned red-hot like a branding iron, emitting scorching heat waves, yet not a single flame ignited, nor was a single blade of grass or tree damaged.

All the Disciples were terrified, but no one dared to approach.

On the Star-Gazing Terrace at the summit, the current Sect Head, dressed in purple robes, gazed into the distance at the Dragon of fire that ran through the entire back mountain; after a long silence, he finally uttered only one command: Remove all Restrictions and barriers.

As the news spread, the surroundings fell silent.

An era seemed to have come to an end.

And a thousand miles away, in a residential building in an ordinary small county, a housewife was cooking with the most common gas stove.

She was suddenly surprised to find that the blue flame spurting from the burner had turned a pale gold at some unknown time.

As she stirred with her spatula, an indescribable, wonderful fragrance rose from the pot, instantly penetrating the walls.

The residents of the entire building, no matter what they were doing, stopped all their actions the moment they smelled this fragrance, closed their eyes, and expressions of intoxication and lingering aftertaste appeared on their faces.

She looked up blankly, watching that golden flame, and muttered to herself: This fire... why does it seem like someone is laughing?

At this very moment, Zhang Xuanyi was sitting on a ridge in the mountains of Southern Anhui, leisurely gnawing on a roasted sweet potato he had just dug out of a fire.

He suddenly looked up at the deep night sky.

He saw the stars in the sky begin to shift slowly, finally arranging themselves in the center of the firmament into a huge, incomparably large character Xiao that seemed to be burning fiercely.

The characters were majestic and atmospheric, illuminating the Nine Provinces, and then they quietly dissipated as if they had never appeared.

Zhang Xuanyi smiled, threw the last piping hot piece of potato into the fire in front of him, and patted the ash off his hands.

Alright, it's your turn to burn on your own.

After speaking, he stood up and brushed the dust off the hem of his clothes.

The transformation that had swept across the world seemed to have settled, but he showed no intention of leaving; he simply walked slowly along the winding mountain path, heading back in the direction he had come from.