133: Tips for making fire

The rag wrapped around the wild locust roots at his sleeve fluttered gently in the wind as he strolled along, like a tired butterfly.

The clamor of the world seemed to have nothing to do with him; the violent transformation between heaven and earth was, in his eyes, nothing more than the wind passing through the treetops.

On the evening of the third day, a touch of human warmth appeared at the end of the mountain path.

It was a grain-drying ground in a mountain village, where the setting sun dyed the grain piles golden, and a group of barefoot children were gathered around an old stone mill, looking focused.

They were playing an ancient game—drilling wood to make fire.

An exceptionally thin boy was gritting his teeth, his hands swiftly rubbing a dry wooden stick, fine beads of sweat seeping from his forehead, yet in the groove beneath the stick, apart from some wood shavings, not even a wisp of smoke had emerged.

"It's no use, Wang Xiaoshuan, you still don't have any sense of Qi!" a sturdy-looking child shouted, drawing a burst of laughter, "If you can't even rub out a spark, how are you going to light a stove in the future?"

Wang Xiaoshuan's face flushed red, and he lowered his head in grievance, loosening his grip on the wooden stick.

He knew he wasn't good enough; no matter how hard he tried, his palms were always icy, unlike the other children in the village who would feel a faint, elusive warmth after rubbing for a while.

Not far away, beside a haystack, Zhang Xuanyi was leaning back, leisurely gnawing on a piece of cold, hard dry ration.

He watched all of this, his face devoid of expression, though a flicker of barely perceptible fluctuation passed through the depths of his eyes.

He chewed a few times, mixed a pinch of dry ration crumbs blended with heavenly eye mung beans residue with his saliva, and flicked his finger. The imperceptible, moist particle tainted with his aura silently fell into a water ladle beside the children.

Feeling dejected from the mockery, and also tired and thirsty, Wang Xiaoshuan picked up the ladle and gulped down several mouthfuls.

Three minutes later, a miraculous change occurred.

He subconsciously grasped the wooden stick again, and an unprecedented feeling surged into his heart.

He suddenly perceived clearly that, with the friction of his palms, a faint yet incredibly real current of warmth was slowly circling along the Laogong acupoint in his palms, like two awakening warm snakes.

"I'll try one more time!" he shouted, as if to roar out all the grievances he had just felt.

He leaned down, exerting strength with his arms, and the wooden stick began to spin at an unprecedented speed.

This time, it was no longer dry friction; he felt as if his palms had become two flints about to ignite.

Hiss! A wisp of blue smoke rose curlingly.

Immediately after, a weak spark burst out and landed precisely on the dry rice straw nearby.

The flame "whooshed" up, illuminating the surprised faces of all the children in red.

"It's lit! It's lit! Xiaoshuan started a fire!"

The children erupted in earth-shaking cheers, surrounding Wang Xiaoshuan in the middle, as if celebrating a great hero.

No one knew where this instantaneous Epiphany came from, and no one noticed the stranger by the haystack.

Zhang Xuanyi stood up, brushed the straw off his body, and stuffed the last bite of dry ration into his mouth, thinking indifferently: It's not that you weren't capable; it's just that before, no one was willing to let you ignite first.

Thousands of miles away, in the office of the Special Incident Investigation Bureau in the capital, Su Qingzhu was frowning at an anonymous email.

The attachment was an audio file. After clicking it, amidst the noisy background, a burst of childish voices could be heard, reciting something in unison.

"Heart must be warm, hands must be steady, fear not the dark, the fire will surely ignite."

She immediately recognized that this was the dialect accent of a certain rural primary school in the mountains of Southern Anhui, and the content sounded like an ancient "Fire-Starting Incantation".

But what truly made her heart constrict was that at the end of each line of the incantation, there was a faint, almost imperceptible resonant tremor, like the residual frequency produced when some ancient Talismanic Incantation was activated.

Without the slightest hesitation, she drove through the night to that remote mountain village.

When she found the primary school, the principal was worrying while facing the blackboard in an empty classroom.

On that blackboard, faint handwriting would appear every morning, as if written with invisible chalk, and the content was all "words heard" by the children in their dreams.

The principal smiled bitterly and pointed to the faintly visible marks on the blackboard: "Comrade Su, look... we don't dare to teach these, but they just know them on their own."

That night, Su Qingzhu set up high-precision recording equipment beside an abandoned old stove at the entrance of the village.

At three o'clock in the morning, when everything was silent, a faint, elusive whisper actually came from deep within the cold furnace.

"Don't fear the dark... this time... it is you who are illuminating me."

Su Qingzhu's hand, pressing the record button, couldn't help but tremble slightly.

This voice, this intermittent, breathless feeling, was exactly like the voice in the last phone call her father made before he died in the line of duty during a mission.

Meanwhile, Cui Wujiu, who was heading north, was spending the night in an abandoned post office on a vast saline-alkali wasteland.

He was awakened by an unusual warmth, and upon opening his eyes, he saw that the old coal stove in the corner had automatically reignited without anyone adding firewood.

The flame was not the usual orange-red, but presented a quiet, pale cyan color, flickering rhythmically like the breathing of a living creature.

He instinctively wanted to extinguish this eerie flame, but just at the moment the firelight flickered, he saw a line of distorted characters formed by light and shadow on the mottled wall opposite:

Those who believe in the faith fire shall prosper.

Cui Wujiu's pupils constricted, and he froze on the spot.

He remembered the night he saw that green flame turn into a shooting star on the Gobi Desert, and he remembered that transformation that overturned everything.

Just as he was about to approach for a closer look, the sound of rustling footsteps suddenly came from outside the window.

A hunchbacked old woman carrying a black pottery jar walked in, stumbling, ignoring him completely. She walked straight to the coal stove and carefully poured the ashes from the jar into the furnace.

The pale cyan flame licked the new fuel, burning even more brightly.

"The old man left it before he passed," the old woman said, her voice hoarse, without turning her head, "He said, fire lives longer than people."

After speaking, she turned and left, disappearing into the vast night, never once asking about Cui Wujiu's origin.

Cui Wujiu stared at the leaping cyan fire in the furnace, and after a long time, finally let out a breath of stale air.

He understood.

The so-called Legacy, perhaps, was never some earth-shattering ritual; it was merely someone willing, before the fire went out, to pass the last handful of ashes to the next person willing to light it again.

Several days later, Zhang Xuanyi passed through a county town.

Outside the funeral home, a commotion attracted his attention.

A group of people were surrounding a burning fire basin, shouting in terror that it was "haunted".

The flame burning the paper money was unusual; in the center of the blue-white flame core, an image of an old man clearly emerged, sometimes smiling, sometimes waving, as clear as a holographic projection.

Several staff members were about to step forward with water guns to extinguish it, but were stopped by Zhang Xuanyi's hand.

"Don't move." His voice was not loud, but it carried an unquestionable power.

He took something out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth, as if chewing gum; it was the very fist soul candy that could briefly activate super-strong perception.

Instantly, the world in his eyes became different.

He saw the truth: it was not a manifestation of a dead soul, but the middle-aged man kneeling before the basin, whose intense longing in his heart resonated with the newborn fire Qi, projecting the deepest memories in his mind.

He said to the family member who was almost crying themselves into a faint: "It's not a ghost, it's you missing him. Let him stay a little longer, finish what he has to say before burning it."

Hearing this, everyone calmed down.

The image of the old man in the flame looked deeply at his son one last time, revealed a gratified smile, and then the image dissipated, turning into golden light spots all over the sky, merging into the ashes.

Afterward, someone chased after him wanting to ask what kind of expert he was, but Zhang Xuanyi just waved his hand and left behind one sentence: "I'm just someone who used to sell matches."

Seven days later, a strange sight appeared at the market at the foot of Mount Longhu, the Holy Land of the Dao.

All the stalls selling so-called "fire seed paste," "fire control patches," and other imitations, regardless of whether they were real or fake, spontaneously ignited one after another at the same time. The fire was not large, but it just happened to burn all the merchandise, and the stall owners wailed and shrieked.

In stark contrast to this was an old man selling roasted sweet potatoes at the corner of the street.

His old stove not only did not have any trouble, but the flame became increasingly gentle and stable, and he could even adjust the heat size out of thin air according to his own will, precisely roasting the sweet potatoes to the five-tenths or seven-tenths doneness required by customers, without the slightest error.

Even more strangely, whenever any hooligans with malicious intent wanted to take advantage, the flame in the stove would immediately turn dark red and rapidly shrink, as if it would go out at any moment.

And if any children sincerely asked for the secret to starting a fire, the flame would happily jump lightly to show closeness.

This news spread like wildfire, and the people no longer believed in those ethereal Talismans and Magical Artifacts, but instead called the old man's stove a "Spirit Stove," and flocked to learn from him.

Zhang Xuanyi mingled outside the crowd, watching the old man surrounded by everyone, patiently explaining how to "talk to the fire with your heart," and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly in an imperceptible way.

Just as he turned to leave, a man wearing a coarse cloth short jacket with dark skin squeezed out of the crowd and came straight to him, his eyes filled with a bit of awe and earnestness.

The man didn't say much, just carefully brought out something wrapped in red cloth from his bosom.

Opening the red cloth, inside was a bundle of firewood tied together from countless different types of small kindling.

"Sir," the man's voice was loud and clear, carrying the simplicity of the mountains, "The thirty-six villages at the foot of the mountain would like to invite you to be a witness."