161: IOU from Tianshi Mansion

The torrential rain pounded against the blue stone steps of Mount Longhu, splashing up a mist of white.

Zhang Xuanyi stood by the stream, his Daoist robe soaked through, clinging to his body with a bone-chilling cold.

He looked down at the fragment of cyan jade in his palm—the cold jade felt like a red-hot iron, searing his heart.

His fingertips trembled slightly, not from the cold, but because some Karma that had been dormant for a century was suddenly awakened at this moment.

He remembered this pattern.

It was half a Seal, incomplete like a crescent moon, with intricate cloud and thunder patterns carved along the edges and the character "Deed" faintly visible in the center.

Back on the night the Myriad Laws Street Stall System first activated, he had caught a glimpse of a similar golden pattern flashing by, merging into that tattered stall cloth.

He had thought it was a gift from the System back then, but now he knew it was a mortgage certificate.

"Borrowing three thousand bundles of fire... awaiting repayment?" He muttered the scene he had just witnessed, and his heart felt like it exploded.

Returning to his thatched cottage, he dragged out the cracked pottery jar from under the bed—the container that had once held the Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid, now empty and dry, with a trace of faint golden Qi remaining on the inner wall.

He gently placed the cyan jade fragment into the jar and poured in some mountain spring water.

The water rippled slightly.

In an instant, the entire jar of clear water glowed with a red light, as if blood were boiling within it.

A line of distorted ancient Seal characters slowly emerged, the ink like tears, each word oozing pain: "On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month in the year of Guimao, borrowed three thousand bundles of folk fire, awaiting repayment."

Zhang Xuanyi recoiled, knocking over a wooden stool.

Three thousand bundles of fire?

Where did the fire come from?

The firewood in the commoners' stoves?

The eternal oil lamps in the ancestral halls?

Or... the unextinguished wish in people's hearts?

He suddenly recalled the scene when the System was first activated: the mountain wind howling at midnight, a golden light breaking through the air from the direction of Tianshi Mansion, landing directly on his stall cloth.

At the time, he thought it was just a coincidence, but now that he thought about it, it wasn't a gift at all, but a debt that had long since matured but had been forcibly transferred!

His "Myriad Laws Street Stall" was not a Golden Finger, but a tool to Repay the Debt.

"So... every photocopy yellow paper I sell, every heavenly eye mung bean, is all to Repay the Debt for the Tianshi Mansion from three hundred years ago?" He sneered, but anger ignited in his eyes. "They went into seclusion to avoid debt, suppressed wishes with Seals, and treated incense as private property to trade, while the people who truly lit the fire were those old ladies who couldn't even draw a Talisman completely, and the children who drew suns with crayons!"

Before he could finish speaking, hurried footsteps came from outside.

Su Qingzhu rushed in, soaked to the bone, clutching a stack of yellowed ledgers. The cover bore the four characters "chronicles of vows," and the edges were soaked through by the water.

She didn't bother wiping her face, directly pulling out a thin booklet from the stack and trembling as she opened it: "Look at this."

It was a handwritten manuscript titled "Incense Loan Record," with pages as brittle as withered leaves and mottled ink, but the entries were suffocatingly clear.

[In the seventeenth year of Yongle, a year of famine, Demonic Qi ran rampant.

True Person Zhang, with the taboo name Shouyi, took on the responsibility of requesting balance between Heaven and Earth, borrowing three thousand six hundred bundles of Power Of Will fire seeds from the common people to pacify the four directions.

Promise: On the day the Great World reopens, it will be repaid tenfold.

Collateral: Mount Longhu's Luck, mortgaged for three hundred years.]

The signature was clearly the "Tianshi Mansion Seal," accompanied by a fingerprint in blood.

Su Qingzhu's voice was hoarse: "This isn't protection; it's a loan.

They used 'Seal loosening' as an excuse to go into seclusion, but in reality, they were afraid of being dunned for the debt!

The so-called restart of the High Martial Era is not some recovery of Heaven and Earth... it is a forced Repay the Debt!"

Zhang Xuanyi was silent for a long time, then suddenly laughed, a laugh that was almost tragic.

"No wonder the System relies on sales volume to upgrade... it turns out it wasn't rewarding me, but pushing me on my repayment progress."

He grabbed the cyan jade fragment and turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" Su Qingzhu asked.

"The Star Gazing Terrace," he said. "I want to see just how large this debt really is."

The night deepened.

The ruins of the Star Gazing Terrace were located at the highest point of Mount Longhu, once a place for successive Tianshi to deduce heavenly secrets, but now only broken pillars and ruined steles remained.

Zhang Xuanyi embedded the cyan jade into the crack where he had found the pottery jar years ago.

Click—a soft sound, as if a chain had snapped.

Golden patterns suddenly lit up on the ground, like a Bloodline reviving, and tiny Talisman runes rose from the ground, weaving into an array.

As light and shadow flowed, a panoramic image appeared in the air: a hundred years ago, a three-year drought, with starving people everywhere.

A group of Disciples dressed in Tianshi Mansion Daoist robes trekked between villages, carrying copper furnaces in their hands, collecting stove ash from house to house.

They took three handfuls of stove ash from each household in exchange for a yellow paper Talisman.

The camera zoomed in—on that Talisman paper were rough yet effective Talisman patterns, identical to the prototype of the current "photocopy yellow paper"!

"So that's how it is..." Zhang Xuanyi's breath hitched, "They weren't bestowing grace; they were collecting collateral!

The common people used their own most vigorous stove fire to nourish Heaven and Earth in exchange for a peace Talisman, while the Tianshi Mansion refined these 'fire seeds' into fuel to maintain the Seal... My System's ability to copy Talismans is simply a replica of the technology from back then!"

Su Qingzhu looked at the image in the air and muttered: "So the stall you mentioned isn't just business... it's you fulfilling their contract."

"No." Zhang Xuanyi stood up, his gaze like a torch, "It is me letting the fire return to where it belongs."

The wind stopped and the rain ceased; the east began to pale.

Before parting, Su Qingzhu flipped through the last remaining pages and suddenly saw a line of small, scribbled words in the interleaved pages, as if written in a hurry:

"The north is bitter and cold; the people often gather for warmth in rotation.

Old custom: Every winter solstice, take the most vigorous fire from the heart of the stove, Seal it in a pottery jar, and bury it under the ancestral grave, saying—left for the Tianshi to use for the New Year."

She was stunned.

She looked up at Zhang Xuanyi, only to find him gazing at the distant mountains with a complex expression, as if he had heard some distant call.

And that cyan jade fragment was still slightly hot, like a heart that refused to cool down.

When Su Qingzhu stepped onto the frozen northern soil, the snow had already sealed the mountains for seven days.

Her off-road vehicle was stuck in a gully halfway up the mountain, and she walked three kilometers on foot before seeing the wooden house almost buried by the wind and snow.

The chimney emitted a faint wisp of white smoke, like a breathing tube that refused to give out.

When the door opened, what hit her face was not warmth, but the smell of stale wood ash—the scent of a century of accumulation after stove fires had burned out, mixed with dry grass, old pottery, and the bloodiness brought out by the old man's coughing.

Three hunched figures sat around in the room; the oldest one's age was unrecognizable, with wrinkles on his face deep enough to hold fire tongs.

They were stirring a black pot with an iron ladle, with several scorched red pottery shards pressed to the bottom of the pot, and blurry Talisman patterns emerged in the steaming heat.

"Here to ask about the 'warm rotation' again?" The old man looked up, his eyes cloudy but sharp. "You reporters come to ask every year around this time."

Su Qingzhu took off her soaked scarf, took out the dilapidated "chronicles of vows" from her bag, and turned to the line of small words on the interleaved page: "Left for the Tianshi to use for the New Year—what does this actually mean?"

The room suddenly went quiet.

After a long while, the old man put down the iron ladle, walked tremblingly to the corner, and brought out a pottery jar covered in cracks.

The mouth of the jar was sealed with yellow mud, and crooked cloud and thunder patterns were carved on the mud, identical to the patterns on Zhang Xuanyi's cyan jade fragment.

"On the night of the winter solstice, every household must burn the most vigorous stove fire." The old man's voice was hoarse, like wind blowing through a dry well. "Take the unextinguished charcoal core from the heart of the stove, wrap it in three layers of mulberry paper, Seal it in an ancestral pottery jar, and bury it in the deepest part of the ancestral grave... they say it's 'sending warmth'."

"Sending it to whom?"

"Who else could it be?" The old man sneered. "That old Immortal Master in seclusion on Mount Longhu.

Three hundred years ago, he blocked the cold evil tide of the northern border for us, which had frozen nine hundred villages to death overnight.

But he didn't leave; he stood on the snowy peak and drew a Talisman, pinning the cold wind into the earth's ley lines.

From then on, ten thousand fewer people died in the north every winter."

Su Qingzhu was stunned.

"We survived, but he was almost frozen stiff." The old man looked at the jar, his eyes suddenly softening. "The common people don't understand any Great Dao True Qi; they only know—the benefactor needs to eat a hot meal for the New Year, and the stove needs to be vigorous for a few days.

So, they quietly buried the most vigorous fire of the year, having agreed: 'Tianshi, you have worked hard; keep this fire to use for the New Year.'"

She couldn't speak.

Those folk customs she once thought were superstition, those rituals that were lightly dismissed in modern reports as "remnants of extraordinary human culture," were actually generations of Mortals using the fire in their stoves and the wishes in their hearts to Repay the Debt for a Sect that had been in seclusion for three hundred years!

And Zhang Xuanyi's stall... why did he choose to open it on the winter solstice?

Because she finally understood—that night, when the System's golden light descended, it was not a coincidence.

It was the sensing of the first "repayment" arriving!

It was the first tremor emitted by a contract that had been dormant for three hundred years because someone had started to fulfill it!

She rushed out of the wooden house, letting the wind and snow lash her cheeks, and took out her phone to contact Zhang Xuanyi, only to find no signal at all.

She could only look towards the direction of Mount Longhu in the south and murmur: "You knew it all along, didn't you?

You set up that stall; it was never for money... you were going to Repay the Debt."

Meanwhile, at the place where the stall was first set up on Mount Longhu.

Zhang Xuanyi slowly buried the empty pottery jar that had once held the Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid into the wet mud.

A handwritten yellow Talisman was pasted on the jar, the ink still wet: "Place of Return for Myriad Laws."

He took out a palm-sized stone tablet from his bosom and gently set it up in front of the soil.

Thunderclouds had gathered overhead, and lightning danced wildly like golden snakes.

He sat cross-legged beside the tablet, letting the rain drip down his hair and soak his clothes.

Suddenly, a red mark split the sky, as if an invisible giant lock had snapped, the roaring sound piercing directly into his eardrums.

On the distant mountain peak, the bronze gate of Tianshi Mansion, which had been tightly closed for three hundred years, slowly cracked open a sliver!

A voice, extremely old, pierced through the wind and rain, echoing across the mountains: "Who is there? It is time... to settle the accounts."

Zhang Xuanyi stood up, patted his soaked clothes, grinned, and revealed a mouthful of white teeth: "No rush, I brought some small change."

In his sleeve, a "fire coin" fused from scorched ash and golden patterns was heating up, like a heart tempered from the heart-fire of ten thousand people.

But he did not go up the mountain.

Instead, he squatted down, gently pressed the scorching fire coin into the muddy water, and whispered: "You are in a hurry—"