139: Folk fire-lighter, Zhang Xuanyi

On the seventh night after Zhang Xuanyi received the anonymous letter, a mountain storm was brewing.

He stood before a bronze building hidden amidst the clouds and mist; the bells hanging from the eaves were silent, and a faint, subtle scorched scent drifted in the air—not the smell of burning smoke, but a deeper, more ancient sensation of scorching, as if a Soul were being gently brushed by tongues of fire.

The door was unlocked, and when he pushed it open, it emitted only a low, hoarse groan, as if the building itself were holding its breath.

Inside the hall, the lights were dim, and nine purple sandalwood chairs were arranged in a circle, occupied by individuals who were far from ordinary.

To the west sat the Disciplinarian Elder of Wudang, his robes embroidered with the map of the thirty-six constellations; to the east was the Guest Elder of Shushan, whose fingertips rested on a sword case, exuding a bone-chilling cold; to the north sat the deputy director of the special department, the Mystic Regulation Bureau, with a dark gold flame emblem pinned to the collar of their uniform; the others, though unremarkable in appearance, had breathing as long and steady as a sleeping Dragon, and the overlapping fields of their Qi caused the chandelier on the ceiling to tremble slightly.

What they were discussing was the "Golden Fire Phenomenon" that had recently swept across the nation.

"Spontaneous combustion without a source, impossible to record on video, and those who touch it experience mental clarity... such fire properties have exceeded the scope of existing magical explanations," the representative of the Mystic Regulation Bureau said in a deep voice. "I suggest immediately launching the 'Abyss Sealing Project' to use the Fire-Suppressing Stele to Seal the twelve sources of the fire veins."

"Impossible!" an old Daoist Elder interrupted sharply. "This fire possesses consciousness; if we suppress it by force, it may trigger a backlash, repeating the catastrophe of the Mount Longhu Seal riot from three hundred years ago!"

The argument grew more intense, and the atmosphere became increasingly volatile.

Some advocated for containment, some proposed research, and the radicals even went so far as to suggest refining it into a weapon to control the world's fire power.

The nine of them could not reach an agreement, and only Zhang Xuanyi, sitting in the corner, remained silent throughout.

He wore a washed-out blue cloth Daoist robe, stepped in a pair of old cloth shoes, and carried half a bag of mung bean cakes in his bosom, looking like a village peddler who had wandered into a grand hall by mistake.

It was not until the moderator called his name—"Civilian Fire-Lighter, Zhang Xuanyi, please share your opinion."

The entire room fell silent.

He did not stand up, nor did he speak to reason with them; he simply pulled a small, coarse pottery jar from his bosom, removed the lid, poured out a small pinch of grayish-brown stove ash, and sprinkled it in the center of the conference table.

His movements were so casual they bordered on insolent.

Some frowned, some sneered, and the Mystic Regulation Bureau official even reached out to push aside the documents: "What is this? Performing witchcraft?"

But the next instant, everyone froze.

That pile of old ash from a southwest hearth suddenly trembled slightly, without anyone touching it.

Then, a bean-sized golden flame rose out of thin air.

It was only as tall as a thumb, yet it remained condensed and did not dissipate, its halo as soft as the first light of dawn; after slowly rotating in a circle, it began to drift—passing in front of each person one by one.

The flame leaped three times before the Wudang Elder, as if bowing; it swayed gently before the Shushan Guest Elder, as if offering a greeting; it paused briefly before the deputy director of the Mystic Regulation Bureau, then suddenly retreated half an inch, as if wary.

Before the six of them, the firelight flickered in an orderly fashion, as docile as a pet dog.

But when it drifted before the three proponents of the Seal—

As it approached the first, the flame suddenly extinguished, not even emitting smoke;

The second attempted to block it with a talisman paper, but the flame simply bypassed them, avoiding them like the plague;

The third slammed the table in anger, and the moment his palm fell, the flame turned into ash and dissipated completely.

The room was deathly silent.

Even breathing seemed to have frozen.

Only then did Zhang Xuanyi raise his eyes, scanning the crowd, a lazy smile curling the corners of his lips: "It recognizes who has light in their heart."

No one refuted this.

No one dared to move.

After a long time, the Wudang Elder sighed softly: "Fire chooses the human heart... so that's how it is."

In the end, the meeting did not pass the Seal proposal, instead opting to establish an observation group and postpone all intervention measures.

When the meeting dispersed, some wanted to ask about the origin of the stove ash, but Zhang Xuanyi was already gone.

Meanwhile, in the depths of Southern Anhui, the night wind blew through the forest.

Su Qingzhu crouched outside the barbed wire fence, unaware that her fingertips had been pricked.

She gazed at the ruins surrounded by high walls ahead—the former Huailing Elementary School, now reduced to broken walls and tiles, alongside a steel-framed factory building with a sign that read "New Clean Energy Experimental Base."

She knew why her father had come here all those years ago.

Twenty years ago, children here dreamed of golden fire one after another, and upon waking, they could light candles with their palms without getting burned.

The police investigation yielded no results, and it was eventually closed as a case of mass hysteria.

Only her father did not believe it; he pursued the matter deeply and ultimately went missing in an inexplicable fire.

And now, the energy conglomerate had returned, bringing drilling rigs and pipelines to drain the warmth from the ground and sell it for profit.

She pulled out a miniature camera, gritted her teeth, and climbed over the electric fence.

Two hours later, in the underground pipeline level, she captured a horrifying scene: metal probes were inserted deep into the rock strata, and the surrounding soil withered and turned black at a visible speed, while the roots of the vegetation snapped and carbonized.

What flowed out of the pipe openings was not fire at all, but a dark, turbid liquid mixed with ash-like debris, exuding an aura of decay.

"You are extracting the fire Soul..." she murmured.

As she retreated, an alarm suddenly sounded, and a security team surrounded her with weapons.

She retreated to the generator room, with only a notebook left in her hand—filled with clues left by her father and her own investigation notes.

Without hesitation, she struck a lighter, lit a corner of the notebook, and threw it fiercely at the power distribution box.

The moment the fire flared up, something eerie occurred.

All the light bulbs at the construction site burst simultaneously, electric arcs danced wildly, and then—every remaining lamp ignited with golden flames!

The light did not burn, but it illuminated the blurry figures appearing in the air: a group of children wearing old-fashioned school uniforms holding hands, dancing an ancient circle dance in the center of the construction site, humming a lost nursery rhyme:

"Fire is not stolen, fire is not sold, fire is what the children hold dear in their hearts..."

The security guards collapsed to the ground, tears and snot streaming down their faces, repeating over and over: "I'm sorry... we shouldn't have dug..."

Su Qingzhu escaped in the chaos, running wildly along the mountain road, her tears and sweat intermingled.

She finally understood.

The fire did not wish to be extracted.

But it remembered the children here.

At the same time, in an industrial city in the east, Cui Wujiu stepped on a rusty steel ladder and snuck into the lowest level of a steel mill.

On the surveillance wall, hundreds of red dots hovered above the workers' heads, pulled by invisible threads toward the central furnace, where they were compressed into fist-sized "Stable Fire Cores."

In each core, emotional thermal energy of anger, exhaustion, and resentment was sealed.

"Treating human life-fire as batteries?" He sneered, taking a piece of rusted iron from his bosom, crouching on the ground, and making one stroke, another, and a third—the ancient "Pulse-Severing Talisman" took shape.

In an instant, all the fire cores in the factory exploded simultaneously.

But what gushed out was not high-temperature flames, but waves of long-suppressed shouts, cries, songs, and the sound of children calling for their fathers.

The workers awoke one after another, looked at the red dots disappearing above their heads, remained silent for a moment, then picked up their tools and walked toward the factory gate.

The strike had begun.

After leaving the seminar, Zhang Xuanyi did not return to Mount Longhu.

He took a night train, traveling thousands of miles, and finally stopped at a remote mountain village that was on the verge of being forgotten by maps.

The stone tablet at the entrance of the village was crooked, engraved with the three characters "Huaixi Village," its edges already swallowed by moss.

An old man leaning on a cane tremblingly came up to greet him: "Young man... you've come to look for the kitchen fire, haven't you?"

Zhang Xuanyi narrowed his eyes: "How do you mean?"

The old man whispered: "Three days ago, the fire in every kitchen hearth in the village... all turned golden." Zhang Xuanyi did not return to Mount Longhu.

The night train bumped along the mountain road mixed with mud and stone; outside the window was boundless ink-black, as if the entire world had been swallowed by thick fog.

He leaned in the corner of the worn-out seat, chewing on half a mung bean cake, but his eyes were as clear as knives.

The handwriting on the anonymous letter had long since been burned away, but that sentence still echoed in his ears—

"The fire is going to walk, aren't you going to see where it's going?"

Three days later, Huaixi Village.

The village was hidden in the folds of the mountains, so remote that even maps couldn't be bothered to mark it.

The stone tablet was crooked, the cooking smoke was thin, and the old man stood at the village entrance leaning on his cane, his eye sockets deeply sunken, like tree roots that had grown out of the soil.

"Young man... you've come to look for the kitchen fire, haven't you?"

Zhang Xuanyi raised an eyebrow: "How did you know?"

The old man grinned, not many teeth left: "Three days ago, the fire in every family's kitchen hearth turned golden. Cooking at night doesn't burn your hands, and boiling water lets you smell the tea scent the ancestors loved. The children say they dreamed of their great-grandfathers returning to warm their shoe soles, and the wives say they dreamed of someone keeping vigil and adding firewood for them... isn't this the 'Return of Fire'?"

He paused, his voice dropping even lower: "The fire has recognized its kin."

Zhang Xuanyi did not speak, only gently patted the old man's shoulder and walked straight toward the ancestral hall in the center of the village.

When he pushed open the mottled wooden door, a wave of warmth rushed toward him—not heat, but a rhythm almost like breathing.

On the offering table, three incense candles ignited without wind, the flames a pale gold, and as they flickered, they outlined the contours of human faces: there was an old man with white hair and beard, a warrior clad in armor and wielding a sword, and a woman holding an infant... face after face rotated and appeared, as if the family tree had come to life.

He watched quietly for a moment, turned and walked out of the ancestral hall, and under the old locust tree at the entrance that had been dead for a hundred years but had suddenly regained green branches, he took off the bundle on his back and pulled out a rusty, old copper gong.

With a "dong" sound, he hung it on a tree branch.

On the face of the gong, eight characters were written in cinnabar:

Do not welcome the fire when it comes, do not hold it back when it goes.

No one asked why, and no one dared to approach.

The villagers watched from afar, their eyes filled with awe, yet they were strangely calm.

At the midnight hour that night.

The kitchen fires in the whole village shone simultaneously.

Golden flames like stars shone through the window lattices of every house, yet they did not raise the temperature, did not smoke out the rooms, and did not scorch the eaves.

The entire mountain village was suspended in a sea of tranquil light, as if the Milky Way had fallen to the human world.

Ten miles away, a black off-road vehicle convoy sped toward them, red and blue police lights flashing on their roofs.

The Mystic Regulation Bureau's emergency investigation team arrived at the scene, led by a confidant of the deputy director—an Innate realm expert proficient in fire-suppression Formations.

"Absurd!" He stared at the scene before him, his face ashen. "Spontaneous gathering of fire by civilians is extremely likely to trigger a spiritual tide resonance! Extinguish it immediately, Seal off the area!"

He drew a talisman command and was about to cast a spell, but the moment his fingertips touched the Magical Artifact, the communication device at his waist suddenly "cracked" and smoked, and then the entire row of equipment exploded one after another; from the shattered screens, tiny golden threads seeped out, like fire veins crawling.

"This... what kind of evil art is this?!"

He stumbled backward, then looked at the villagers—each one sitting around the fire piles in their courtyards, whispering about childhood memories, departed loved ones, the warmest meal they ever had, the last apology... On their faces, there were tears, smiles, and a long-lost peace.

No one paid him any mind.

And even fewer feared him.

Three days later, "Fire Remembers" went online.

The short film edited by Su Qingzhu was only eight minutes long, yet it swept across the entire internet.

At the end of the video, she stood in the center of the Huailing Elementary School playground, clutching her father's old police badge in her hand, the wind blowing through her hair, her voice as light as a sigh:

"We always think civilization is humans teaching fire how to burn,

Actually... it is the fire that has always been teaching humans how to live."

That night, over three hundred communities across the country spontaneously lit candles and held "Vigil and Talk of Fire" events.

In streets and alleys, people sat in circles and whispered, recounting the warmest moments of their lives.

Monitoring data showed that the probability of golden fire appearing in these locations soared to more than seven times the usual rate.

And at an observation station in a no-man's land in the Northwest, a technician suddenly looked up, staring at the real-time star map and exclaiming in shock:

"The handle of the Big Dipper... has shifted again!"

On the screen, those seven ancient stars slowly rotated, finally pointing to a coordinate in the east—

Deep within Mount Longhu, at the bottom of the Fire-Locking Cliff.

The night wind swept over the cliff, blowing against the bronze pillar buried deep underground.

The runes on the pillar glowed faintly and trembled incessantly, as if something were slowly opening its eyes from a three-hundred-year slumber.