167: Those who bought on credit have started to pay back their debts

The morning mist in Southern Anhui was like a thin veil, wrapping around the eaves of the ancestral hall.

The newly hung "Ash Registry" wooden plaque hung quietly; the ink was dry, yet the characters seemed to still carry moisture, pressing heavily into people's hearts.

Where the wind passed, no one answered.

For the first seven days, there was nothing in front of the Ash Registry.

The villagers stood far away, their eyes filled with both awe and suspicion.

No one believed that burning some rags and scraps of paper could truly bring warmth to their lives.

Even fewer were willing to be the first to act—what if they offended the Fire God and brought trouble upon themselves?

Zhang Xuanyi did not persuade them.

He simply pulled an old Daoist robe he had worn for five years from his bundle; the cuffs were worn white, and the collar was still stained with cinnabar spilled while drawing talismans last year.

In front of the entire village, he took out scissors and, with a "snap," cut it into palm-sized pieces, tossing them one by one into the large coarse pottery jar in front of the ancestral hall.

The fire started.

Wisps of blue smoke curled up, burning neither too fast nor too slow.

He took out a small porcelain bottle, caught a few drops of the warm liquid melted from the ashes, and turned to walk toward the old well at the entrance of the village.

"Splash."

The liquid entered the water, silent and traceless.

On the morning of the third day, a miracle arrived.

The child from the Wang family, who had coughed since childhood and couldn't sleep, didn't cough upon waking; instead, the first thing they said was a clear, bright "Mother, my throat doesn't hurt anymore."

Granny Li rubbed her knees and walked three laps in the courtyard, tears falling: "I haven't felt this relaxed in thirty years."

The news spread like wildfire.

At first, it was a few pairs of old shoes and a few scraps of paper quietly placed beside the ash jar.

Later, someone wrapped leftover food scraps from the previous night in rough paper and brought them over, saying it was to "repay the fire for a meal."

Even later, people from neighboring villages rushed over to watch the spectacle.

A skinny teenager squatted beside the ash jar, staring at the flames for a long time, before finally gathering the courage to ask Zhang Xuanyi, "Is this... really useful?"

Zhang Xuanyi, who was squatting and roasting a sweet potato, grinned upon hearing this, his teeth dazzlingly white: "I don't know if it's useful, but I remember you said you wanted your mother to stop coughing—did she sleep soundly last night?"

The teenager was stunned, his eyes suddenly turning red.

He nodded, his voice trembling: "She slept, the whole night, without coughing once."

Zhang Xuanyi gave an "mm," broke open the sweet potato, and handed it over, steaming hot: "That's enough."

Meanwhile, Su Qingzhu sat on a hillside outside the village, a laptop spread across her knees, her fingertips dancing across the keyboard.

The title of her report had long been decided: "We Have Finally Learned to Say Thank You to the Fire."

Before the article was even published, the number of shares had already exceeded one hundred thousand.

In the three southern provinces, nineteen villages hung signs and set up ash registries overnight.

Someone took a photo of an elderly person trembling as they tossed in fingernails clipped by their granddaughter, with the caption: "This is my family's first Repay the Debt."

But the more she wrote, the tighter her brows knitted.

Because she discovered that the places that had once fought tooth and nail to snatch the "Spirit Fire" were now the most perfunctory in "returning the ash."

Some hired homeless people to burn cold ash on their behalf; a pile of paper money was thrown in without even a spark appearing. Even worse, wealthy families hired retired supernatural individuals to set up formations to protect their fire, terrified that others would "steal" their family's luck.

In the dead of night, she visited the wealthy family who had spent millions to hire someone to set up a formation and questioned them: "What are you afraid of?"

The man sat in a grand chair, sneering, his eyes like knives: "I'm not afraid that the fire won't work; I'm afraid that others understand how to deceive it better than I do."

She didn't change a single word of this sentence, bolded it, pinned it to the top, and it became the Soul of the entire report.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, above the snow line on the northern foothills of Kunlun, Zhang Xuanyi was trudging through knee-deep snow.

In his hand, he held an anonymous letter; on the paper, there was only a broken golden thread, its end pointing toward this barren land.

He knew this was a mark left by the Fire Patrol Cui Wujiu before his death—years ago, they had debated the Dao for three days at Mount Longhu, and Cui Wujiu had said at the end: "If the fire loses balance, a black hole will surely arise."

After two days of trekking, the wind and snow had almost buried his footprints.

When he finally stood before that abandoned star-gazing platform, the world was as silent as death.

The foundation had been hollowed out, the entrance collapsed, as if something had gnawed it away from the inside.

He lit a fire stick and walked in, step by step.

The sight before him made his breath hitch.

Thousands upon thousands of prayer items were piled into a mountain—yellowed photos, tangled strands of hair, blood-stained letters, old cassette tapes... layered upon layers, like a cocoon built from obsession.

And in the center, a black iron furnace burned quietly.

The fire emitted neither light nor heat.

It devoured everything thrown into it, yet offered no feedback.

Even when the fire stick approached, the flames actually shrank inward slightly, as if avoiding the light.

A typical "Power Of Will black hole."

Such a thing should not exist.

It was a product of twisted faith, a "spiritual tumor" condensed from the evil fruits of countless people blindly taking without wanting to return anything.

If not dealt with, it would sooner or later suck dry the Qi veins for a hundred miles around, becoming a true source of disaster.

Zhang Xuanyi was silent for a long time.

He did not extinguish the fire, nor did he dismantle the furnace.

The wind and snow poured in from the cracks overhead, blowing his tattered robe corner.

He slowly reached out and pulled a small cloth bag from his bosom. Opening a corner, it revealed grayish-white powder inside—the remnants of crushed heavenly eye mung beans, one of the only traces left after the System disintegrated.

He looked down at the iron furnace filled with prayers and suddenly laughed.

"You want fire?" he said softly, his voice not loud, yet echoing in the empty star-gazing platform, "But do you still remember how to breathe?"

The wind and snow whistled through the cracks of the star-gazing platform, like the whispers of countless lost Souls.

Zhang Xuanyi stood before the black iron furnace, the bag of grayish-white powder in his hand already completely poured out.

The residual dust ground from the Heavenly Eye Mung Bean shells was the only trace left after the myriad laws street vendor system disintegrated—it had no spiritual effect, could not be traded, and didn't even have a single trace of Qi left.

But it had witnessed the light in the eyes of thousands of people kneeling before the Myriad Laws Street Stall, using their last bit of money to exchange for a photocopy yellow paper or a fist soul candy; it remembered the crying and hysterical laughter of those whose fates were twisted by the fate-changing compass in the dead of night; it had heard too many trembling voices saying, "Please save my parents."

The moment the powder fell into the black hole fire, a strange change occurred abruptly.

The flames, which had originally devoured everything and were silent as an abyss, suddenly trembled, actually rippling with a deep blue color.

Immediately after, thousands of scenes rose from the heart of the furnace, appearing in the air, layered upon layers, spinning endlessly like a revolving lantern—

A mother holding a child with a high fever kowtowing in a dilapidated temple, murmuring, "As long as he lives, I am willing to suffer ten years of illness for him";

An old farmer kneeling on a dry, cracked ridge, his forehead bleeding, begging, "Let there be rain this year, even if it cuts short my lifespan";

And in a secret room, a powerful person burning incense and kowtowing, praying in a low voice: "Let my son take over; make anyone who stands in his way disappear."

These Power Of Will had never dissipated; they were just greedily swallowed by this black hole, twisted into seeds of disaster.

Zhang Xuanyi closed his eyes, his throat moving slightly.

"What you wanted was never fire," his voice was as light as falling snow, "It was for someone to bear the suffering for you."

He had once been that person who "bore the suffering."

Relying on the System to sell talismans, defying fate and changing luck for others, saving people from fire and water.

Whether the world called him a fraud or a charlatan, he did not care.

What he cared about was that one voice: "Daoist, I still want to see my daughter get married one more time."

And now, the System was destroyed, the stall was gone, but he still stood here.

He slowly raised his hand and threw the empty cloth bag into the raging flames.

"Then let me, this 'talisman-selling fraud,' keep the accounts for you one last time."

As his voice fell, the entire black iron furnace suddenly trembled, emitting a mournful sound like tearing metal.

The flames exploded from within, but no longer devoured; instead, they gushed outward, billowing with ashes!

The ash was like smoke and mist, rolling up thousands of layers of waves in the strong wind, shooting straight into the clouds.

At dawn, Su Qingzhu was staring at her computer screen, her heartbeat almost stopping.

A video automatically uploaded to her private account, the source marked as an old phone that had long been deactivated—that was the spare phone she had handed to Zhang Xuanyi with her own hands three years ago, with the agreement "don't lose contact."

The footage shook, filled with wind and snow; one could only vaguely see the moment the iron furnace collapsed.

Subsequently, the ashes soared into the air, actually coalescing into a winding long river in the high sky, flowing silently in all directions, as if a new vein had been carved between heaven and earth.

She suddenly zoomed in on the details, her pupils shrinking—each grain of flying ash was wrapped in a slip of paper smaller than a grain of rice, with the same word written on them in different handwritings:

"Understood."

It was like a response, like repentance, and also like the first breath finally learned.

She immediately dialed the tracking signal, her fingertips trembling.

The location jumped several times, finally settling in a no-man's-land deep in the southwestern mountains, and then completely disappeared.

The office fell into dead silence.

She looked down at the unpublished final draft on the table, the title clearly reading "We Have Finally Learned to Say Thank You to the Fire."

And in the lower right corner of the title, someone had added four small characters with a charcoal pen, the ink still wet, vigorous and powerful—

"Fire does not recognize a master."

Outside the window, dark clouds were quietly moving south, pressing down on a border valley where a rainstorm was about to arrive.