155: Obsession turns into curse, resentment turns into poison

After the Spring Equinox, the lingering snow on the ancient Yellow River path had yet to melt, and the wind cut like a knife, stinging the face.

Zhang Xuanyi, wrapped in a faded Daoist robe, carrying a tattered bundle on his back, and wearing straw sandals, stepped into the small village that had been sealed by heavy snow for half a month.

At the village entrance stood a half-burnt flagpole, from which a wooden sign hung crookedly, its ink faded: "No faith fire, no warmth."

He stared at those five characters, his brow furrowed.

This was not a rule he had left behind.

He was the one who passed on the "ash," not a charlatan setting limits.

That handful of warm stove ash was supposed to be a natural principle where it would ignite if one believed and grow cold if one doubted; when did it become a threat? When did it become a punishment?

Pushing open the gate to enter the village, every household's doors and windows were tightly shut, and not even a dog barked. It was so deathly silent that it didn't seem like a place where living people resided.

Only the old ancestral hall at the east end of the village emitted a dim, yellow light, as if someone was unwilling to extinguish their last shred of hope.

He walked over and pushed the door open. Creak—

A gust of cold air rushed at him, colder than it was outside.

A dozen or so villagers sat huddled around a long-extinguished stove, clutching hot water bottles, electric blankets, and some even had heat patches stuck to them, yet they still hunched their shoulders, their faces pale.

The stove was cold, but people's hearts were colder.

The village chief looked up, recognized his silhouette at a glance, and sneered: "You're that Daoist who passes on the 'ash'? We've tried it! The ash isn't hot! The child has been running a fever for three days, and that thing couldn't even boil water! What you gave us was dead ash, not a fire seed!"

Zhang Xuanyi didn't speak; he simply squatted down silently and reached out to touch the remaining ashes at the bottom of the stove.

A golden pattern quietly appeared on his palm—that was the only mark left after the myriad laws street vendor system had transformed into a collective subconscious, like a fingerprint of the fire seed.

But at this moment, the golden pattern stirred slightly, yet there was no resonance. It was as if this ash had never been alive at all.

He gently brushed away a layer of cold ash, his fingertips touching a small pinch of dark red powder underneath.

He picked it up and brought it to his nose to sniff—there was a smell of rot, and a hint of a very faint, fishy odor.

Dead Qi talisman ash. The thing that the Old Ancestor of Quanxing had refined and discarded back then, had actually appeared here?

His gaze darkened, and he said in a low voice: "It's not that the ash isn't working... it's that you stopped believing first."

The room was silent.

"The fire never forces itself on a host." He stood up and looked around at everyone. "It only responds to a heartbeat. You are afraid of being deceived, afraid of wasting your efforts, afraid of giving your faith and receiving nothing in return—so while you hold the ash, you are saying in your hearts, 'This is useless.' And so, the fire truly becomes useless."

"Bullshit!" A young man stood up abruptly, his eyes red. "My mother coughed up blood last night. I put the ash by her bedside, and it didn't even raise her body temperature! You say it's because I don't believe? Then make it burn now! Cook a meal, boil a bowl of medicine, can you do that?!"

Zhang Xuanyi wasn't angry; instead, he smiled, a somewhat bitter smile.

He took a coarse pottery bowl from his bundle, scooped a spoonful of the remaining ash into it, and then, in front of everyone, blew a breath onto it.

No one thought it would be effective. But the very next instant—

The ashes in the bowl suddenly trembled. It was like a sleeping heart being gently patted awake.

Immediately after, a tiny thread of red light rose from the center of the ashes, flickering like a firefly, slowly spreading.

Heat began to spread, and before long, the sides of the bowl became slightly hot, even steaming with a wisp of white smoke.

Everyone widened their eyes, their breathing stopping.

"Do you see?" Zhang Xuanyi's voice was calm. "The fire has been waiting for you to turn back all along."

Before he could finish speaking, that point of red light suddenly trembled, and then "poof," it extinguished.

It was as if it had been strangled by something invisible.

Zhang Xuanyi's pupils constricted, and he quickly grabbed the remaining ashes to examine them closely—sure enough, mixed among the ash particles were a few black spots, sticky in texture, carrying an aura of dark rot.

Contamination. Someone had deliberately mixed Dead Qi ash into the fire seed, and not just once.

This kind of ash originated from an obsession that completely denied fate, resentful and poisonous to the bone, capable of suffocating even fire.

He looked up sharply: "Who told you to use this ash? Who gave it to you?"

No one answered. But in the corner, an old man tremblingly raised his hand and pointed toward the north slope outside the village: "It was a person in a black robe... He said... those who do not believe in the fire should not live to keep warm..."

Zhang Xuanyi's heart sank abruptly. The remnants of Quanxing were not yet dead.

And what was even more terrifying was—they had already begun using "disbelief" as a weapon to corrode the fire seed itself.

That night, he sat cross-legged on the roof of the ancestral hall, looking up at the starry sky.

The sense of stagnation at the three ley line nodes in the Northwest was growing stronger, like blood clots blocking blood vessels. He knew he could not wait any longer.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, Su Qingzhu stood at the end of a corridor in a sanatorium attached to a certain energy research institute in the North, holding an anonymous letter cut from the corner of an old newspaper.

The handwriting was shaky, and the content was brief: "My husband was once a power grid engineer and personally dismantled an 'inhibition ring.' He said it was a sin, and he burned himself to atone for it."

She pushed open the door and saw the man curled up next to a radiator, his arms wrapped in bandages, the exposed parts covered in low-temperature burns—not high-temperature burns, but chronic ulcerations caused by long-term close contact with a heat source.

He muttered to himself: "The fire chose someone else... It skipped me."

The medical record showed that there were trace amounts of Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi remaining in his body, but his meridians showed a strong rejection reaction, as if his immune System had mistaken the sacred medicine for a virus.

Su Qingzhu stood by the window, looking at the city lights in the distance, and suddenly realized: when fire becomes a faith, those who reject it are not just forgotten—their bodies also begin to betray themselves.

Meanwhile, deep in the Gobi Desert at the northern foot of Kunlun Mountain, Zhang Xuanyi knelt on the sandy ground, digging through layers of yellow sand with his hands, finally touching that wisp of golden thread wrapped in black ash.

The last connection of Cui Wujiu's remnant artifact was slowly dying.

His fingertips touched it lightly, and his mind suddenly flashed back to three years ago—in the desolate wasteland, a defeated Quanxing Disciple with a face full of resentment buried half of a failed fate-altering talisman into the ground, roaring: "I do not believe in fate, nor do I believe in fire! If there is fire in this world, then let me fall into the cold prison forever!"

Obsession becomes a curse, resentful ash turns to poison. So, disbelief itself could also ignite a plague.

When the wind rose, Zhang Xuanyi stood up and looked toward the direction of Southern Anhui.

Meanwhile, at the corner of an ancestral hall in a small village in Jiangnan, a few children were drawing on the ground with charcoal sticks, their laughter crisp. They were no longer drawing firebirds spreading their wings. Instead, they were surrounding a shadow painted in black, shouting in unison: "We caught the Fire Ghost!"

Su Qingzhu returned to the small village in Southern Anhui on a clear morning after the rain. Sunlight slanted across the blue tiles and white walls, and mist rose from the rice paddies, like an old dream not yet awakened.

She had come seeking comfort—wanting to see if the hope ignited by a handful of ash that spring day was still continuing in the human world.

But just as she entered the village, she heard children's screams rising and falling, not of joy, but of a chase filled with fear. "The Fire Ghost is coming! Run!"

Several children were running wildly in the open space in front of the ancestral hall, with one in the middle draped in black cloth, holding a broken pottery jar, his face painted with charcoal ash into a hideous ghost mask. Every time he caught one, he would sprinkle a handful of ash into the other's collar, causing screams to erupt repeatedly.

"Don't touch me! I'll become a lonely ghost!" a little girl shouted, huddled in a corner.

Su Qingzhu's heart sank abruptly. She crouched down and asked the girl, who was curled up with her legs tucked, in a soft voice: "Then are you afraid of fire?"

The girl shook her head, her eyes showing a touch of clear stubbornness: "I'm not afraid of fire, I'm afraid that the adults are deceiving it."

That one sentence stung like a needle. Su Qingzhu was stunned.

She remembered three years ago, how the first fire seed of this village had quietly ignited in the cold night—no rituals, no slogans, just an old woman holding her grandson, cupping that bowl of remaining ash in despair, and whispering: "If it can really warm people... then I will believe."

And then, the fire lit up.

Now, the fire was still burning, but people's hearts had changed.

In the city, some people made fortunes by peddling "consecrated ash," selling talismans via livestream, and inflating prices to the millions; Jianghu charlatans set up altars and performed rituals under the banner of "Direct Disciple of the Celestial Master"; there were even capital groups attempting to register "fire seed patents," putting a price tag on faith.

When fire became a business, children no longer viewed it as light, but as a dangerous curse.

She stood in front of the ancestral hall, looking at the wall that had once been painted with a firebird spreading its wings, now covered by children's scribbles—only a black shadow surrounded by others remained, with two crooked, wobbly characters written above its head: Fire Ghost.

She suddenly understood why Zhang Xuanyi had insisted on withdrawing back then. It wasn't giving up, it was making way. Letting this fire break free from the shell of "miracles" to undergo the most cruel trial—the turbidity of the human heart.

Late at night, the mountain wind passed through the forest. Zhang Xuanyi sat alone on the edge of a cliff, with a bottomless abyss beneath his feet and a galaxy like a waterfall overhead.

Beside his feet lay a pair of work boots that had been patched several times, the toes worn white, and the soles wrapped with a half-circle of tape. This was the last thing he owned that was related to the past.

There was no firewood in the fire pit, only a few charred charcoal bits, mixed with a thread of tattered cloth fiber—those were the remnants of the Myriad Laws Street Stall, the only trace that hadn't dissipated when the System had completely transformed into a collective subconscious.

He gently crushed the charred charcoal and scattered it into the night wind. In an instant, the surroundings fell silent, and even the chirping of insects stopped. The wind didn't move, the leaves didn't shake, and heaven and earth seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation.

A moment later—a spark of fire drifted over from the southeast, flying like a firefly. Then came the second, the third... more and more, as dense as stardust, crossing the valley, skimming over the treetops, converging toward the cliff.

They didn't burn anything, they didn't provide warmth, they just circled and danced around those old boots, as if on a pilgrimage.

Finally, countless sparks froze in the air, piecing together two incomplete yet clear characters:

Not his name, not his Dao, but that sliver of unyielding thought still remaining in the hearts of millions.

He threw his head back and laughed, the laughter shaking down pine needles and startling the mountain birds. "Good!" He slapped his knees and stood up. "What you recognize is this pair of shoes that have walked through cold villages and broken hamlets, not some Daoist, Celestial Master, or savior... This is truly good!"

Before the laughter had faded, a golden line on a distant mountain ridge suddenly dimmed and extinguished—the first fire pulse node had been completely eroded by black ash.

Three days later, on the outskirts of a city in North China, deep in an abandoned subway tunnel. The damp walls were covered with mold, water dripped constantly from overhead, and the air was filled with the mixed scent of rust and poor-quality incense.

This place had once been an underground transportation hub, but now it had become the largest "Ash Market" in the entire territory—a gathering place for the black market, Outliers, speculators, and desperadoes.

A broken sign hung at the entrance, the writing blurred: [Those who enter, sever your own Karma]

Night fell, and footsteps came from the end of the stairs. A man walked down slowly, his hair cut short, wearing a greasy, shiny jacket, carrying a tattered woven bag on his back, his hat brim pulled very low.

The scar-faced man guarding the entrance stopped him: "Name?"

The man grinned, his voice hoarse: "Old Zhang."