144: Is something coming back?

The morning mist, like gauze, wrapped around the waists of the mountains in the Southwest.

The rain had not yet fallen, but the air was already so heavy it felt like it could be wrung out.

The muddy path wound into the market, the stone slabs trampled into pits of sludge, where pig manure and vegetable leaves mixed with the residual scent of last night's alcohol, fermenting into an aura of Chaos in the damp cold.

A man wearing washed-out work clothes walked over slowly, his hat brim pulled very low, carrying an empty bamboo basket on his shoulder.

His pace was not fast, but steady, as if he were stepping to a beat only he could hear.

Walking to the most remote corner of the market, he crouched down and set down the bamboo basket—inside was only a bag of grayish-black stove ash, wrapped in coarse burlap, the rope tied in a crooked knot.

The label was handwritten by him, the ink slightly blurred by the mist, the handwriting sloppy yet revealing a familiar, lazy smile:

"Old fire pit bottom ash, efficacy not guaranteed."

No one knew who this person was, yet someone recognized him at a glance.

"You... are you Zhang Xuanyi?"

An old hunter with a weathered face squeezed forward, his voice trembling, "The Daoist from Mount Longhu who runs the Myriad Laws Street Stall? You saved my son's life in the Miao village three years ago! You said, 'Don't touch fire for three days,' and that very night, my stove glowed with golden light, burning for seven nights without going out!"

The man did not look up, only pinched a small pinch of ash from the cloth bag and gently poured it into the other person's palm.

"It is not a Talismanic Incantation, not a technique, nor is it a secret transmission," he said in a hoarse voice, as if he hadn't spoken for a long time. "It chose you. Don't touch fire for three days, wait for it to come on its own."

The crowd began to stir.

Someone sneered, "Trying to scam money with a handful of stove ash? I've practiced Qi for ten years and have never seen spontaneous combustion!"

Zhang Xuanyi finally looked up, his gaze sweeping over the man, and said indifferently, "Then try lighting a cigarette."

The man scoffed, pulled out a lighter, and pressed it with a 'click'—the spark jumped once, then went out.

He pressed it again, but there was no response.

On the third try, the lighter suddenly became scorching hot, and a golden thread seeped out from the inside, crawling up his fingers, scaring him into flinging his hand away.

The onlookers gasped.

That night, the stove hearths of nine households glowed with gold.

Some saw flames bloom in the shape of lotus flowers while cooking porridge; others found their woodpiles heating up for no reason, burning all night without going out; and one family with an elderly person paralyzed for many years woke up in the middle of the night to find they could lift their hand, while the oil lamp by the bedside was quietly burning with a golden flame never seen before.

The news spread like wildfire, rampaging along mountain paths, telephone lines, and short-video platforms.

On the morning of the fourth day, the bamboo basket was still in the same place, half the ash gone, with half a piece of charred charcoal and a note pressed next to it:

"Fire does not knock on doors; what knocks is not fire."

The person was nowhere to be found.

Later, some said that when he was in a northern fishing village teaching children to rub fire, he smiled like a Daoist who had stolen candy; others said that when he was helping an old person add firewood at a plateau post station, the sparks in his pipe were always three parts brighter than anyone else's.

No one saw his face again, but the fire remembered.

Meanwhile, in a mountain village in Southern Anhui, it had been raining for days, and water dripped from the eaves into rivers.

Su Qingzhu sat in front of the stove in the old house, holding a lighter in her hand, trying for the third time to light the damp firewood.

The flame had just started when it was swallowed by the damp air.

She sighed and was about to give up when suddenly her fingertips felt warm—deep in the cold ash at the bottom of the stove, a few points of golden light were moving, weaving through the charcoal dust like fireflies, neither rising nor extinguishing, as if waiting for something.

She did not move.

She just sat down, grabbed a handful of beans, and slowly began to shell them.

The sound of rain pattered, and the firewood ash was slightly warm.

She said softly, "If you want to burn, then burn."

At 11:45 PM, without wind or catalyst, the stove hearth suddenly spontaneously combusted.

The moment the flames rose, they were not the usual orange-red, but radiated a faint golden glow, the shape resembling a supporting palm, steadily holding up the Void Realm.

After seven breaths, the fire slowly receded, leaving behind a wisp of warmth that did not dissipate all night.

She took a picture of the afterglow on the stove wall.

After the photo was developed, it was just a blur of light and shadow, with no details.

But whenever she gazed at it for a long time, her father's words from the radio broadcast years ago would ring in her ears:

"Don't turn off the lights, let them see..."

That was the last broadcast before he died in the line of duty.

And thousands of miles away in the Northwest Gobi Desert, just after the Spring Equinox, a sandstorm leveled the ruins of an old observation station.

When the herdsman was counting his livestock, he found a frozen lamb.

Just as he was about to bury it, he saw a tiny golden thread seep from its nose, slowly flowing down its neck into its body.

Three days later, the lamb opened its eyes and stood up, its whole body slightly warm, and where it lay at night, a circular ring of frost patterns formed, shaped like the ancient seal script character 'Burn' written upside down.

The old herdsman knelt on the spot and kowtowed, calling it a blessing from the Fire Patroller.

A hundred miles away in a dried-up riverbed, a piece of rusted iron lay quietly in the yellow sand, golden vein patterns appearing on its surface, vibrating slightly whenever the moon was full, causing the underground fire veins to detour—that was the remnant of the tool Cui Wujiu had used to draw the 'Pulse-Breaking Talisman' years ago, now a natural forbidden landmark, which even the remnants of the Old Ancestor of Quanxing dared not easily approach.

Fire was learning to walk.

It no longer relied on anyone, nor did it submit to anyone.

It skipped over the hands of the greedy, bypassed practitioners with deep obsessions, and rose quietly only in front of those most humble, most desperate, yet unyielding Souls—like responding to a silent scream, a faint heartbeat, an unspoken prayer.

That night, countless people looked up at the sky and found the stars unusually bright.

Some people began to whisper, "Is it... has something returned?"

And in a certain place in North China, a platform by an abandoned railway had long been desolate for years.

The tracks were rusted, and weeds grew through the concrete.

As dusk was ending, a figure walked over slowly.

He wore a faded military overcoat, carrying half a sweet potato in his arms, his gait calm, as if he were just passing by.

He sat down on a bench, took out the sweet potato and took a bite, his gaze falling on the mottled brick wall opposite.

...

The dusk in North China was like a piece of thin, scorched sheet metal, pressing down on the rusted roof of the abandoned platform.

The wind rolled in from the end of the tracks, carrying the scent of sand and aged coal ash, blowing the weeds so they bowed to the ground.

Zhang Xuanyi sat on the bench, the shoulders of his military coat worn to frayed edges, his cuffs still stained with dust from the Northwest Gobi Desert.

He gnawed on the half of cold, hard sweet potato, his cheeks bulging, but his eyes were fixed on the mottled brick wall opposite.

There had once been a sea of fire there—not real flames, but countless crooked flames drawn by children using red paint, charcoal sticks, and chalk.

They called themselves children of the Self-Combustion Hall, the first batch of Mortals to awaken during the spread of the golden fire three years ago.

They did graffiti on the streets and alleys, painting fire, believing in faith fire, and even dared to shout "We are not afraid of the dark" at the Talismanic Incantation of the Old Ancestor of Quanxing.

Later, the wind and snow came, the wall collapsed, and the fire was washed away, leaving only a few faded red marks, like dried bloodstains.

Zhang Xuanyi did not speak, only reached into his bosom and pulled out a small knife; the blade was already blunt, the one he had used for three years.

He crouched down and slowly carved two characters into the brick seam: Carefree.

The blade scraped across the moss, and stone chips fell with a rustle. Just at the moment the final stroke was completed—

"Hum."

A very subtle tremor came from his fingertips.

From deep within the carving, warm golden liquid seeped out, winding down the brick seam like a living creature, drilling into the foundation.

The light was not blinding, but it made the air slightly distort, as if time had hesitated there for an instant.

He did not look back, just blew gently, brushing away the debris, and sat back down on the bench.

The night deepened.

Before the hour of the Rat, the entire stretch of railway suddenly began to glow with a faint light.

It was not an electric arc, nor was it a reflection, but golden veins showing through from within, like fire seeds flowing in the blood vessels of the earth.

The tracks hummed with a low sound, the sleepers trembled slightly, as if an invisible train was roaring past, carrying countless silent Souls—it did not run in reality, but traveled between all the heartbeats that had once longed for warmth.

A homeless teenager dragged a tattered quilt as he passed by, seventeen or eighteen years old, his face frozen purple.

He saw the sweet potato peel and the half-pencil on the bench, hesitated for a moment, then bent down and picked them up.

The pencil stub was too short to hold, so he casually tore off a page of an old newspaper and wrote three crooked characters in the corner:

"I also want to be warm."

Before the ink was dry, the corner of the paper suddenly spontaneously combusted with a 'hiss'.

A golden flame rose up, not big, but steadily suspended in the air, illuminating his face full of astonishment.

The firelight reflected on his chapped cheeks, hollow eye sockets, and the vibration that flashed by in that instant, which was almost like faith.

He did not cry, nor did he run; he just knelt down and pressed the paper with the burnt corner tightly against his chest.

Meanwhile, on the seventh night after Qingming Festival, two thousand three hundred and seventy-six families across the country who had never touched the golden fire woke up at the same time.

They were all having the same dream—someone stood in the mist, their back blurred, handing over a ball of warm light, their voice as light as wind blowing through an incense burner: "Take it, don't be afraid of the cold."

When they woke up, there was already a faint light jumping in their stove hearths, regular as a heartbeat.

In some families, golden patterns appeared on the bottom of their ancestral iron pots; some children climbed up in the middle of the night to draw, all drawing the same pattern: a bird about to spread its wings and fly, its tail feathers curled like flames, its eyes closed, yet it seemed to be smiling.

Su Qingzhu sat under the lamp, flipping through the submitted photos received for the chronicles of vows.

Her fingertips paused, and her breath hitched.

This pattern... where had she seen it?

Her memory suddenly tore open a gap—that was the last scene before the System's rag turned to ash!

That rag that carried the Myriad Laws Street Stall, when it completely dissipated, had once manifested a rudimentary ancient seal in the Void Realm, shaped like a flying bird, with seal script flowing, which was exactly this pattern!

She rushed to the window and pushed open the glass, and the cold wind poured in.

Above the distant mountain ridges, fine golden threads were faintly floating, crisscrossing to weave a huge, invisible net, echoing the trajectory of the Big Dipper, as if the heavens and earth were recalibrating a long-lost resonance.

And beneath the ruins of the Ancestral Hall of Mount Longhu, deep within the thousand-year-old bronze pillar—

A point of golden light quietly revived.

It was no longer driven by anyone's will, did not obey the remnant scrolls of the Tianshi Mansion, nor did it respond to any summons.

It just followed the breathing of the earth, brightening and dimming, like a heart that had been asleep for hundreds of millions of years, finally beginning to beat.

This time, the fire was no longer looking for a master.

It wanted to choose its own era.

And somewhere on the North China Plain, an abandoned granary stood silently in the frost and mist.

At three in the morning, a few homeless men huddled in the corner, their hands trembling as they pressed their lighters over and over again...