168: Those who light a fire must also learn to put it out

Southwest frontier, night rain like a downpour.

The mountain road had long been swallowed by mud; the wheels spun in deep pits, emitting dying groans.

Su Qingzhu pushed open the car door. The rain instantly soaked her windbreaker, but she stood in the mud as if she couldn't feel it, looking up at the collapsed hillside ahead—where a "Commoner's Fire Altar" had once stood. Now, only broken stones and shattered steles remained. The incense burner was buried under three meters of rock and soil, as if the earth had opened its mouth and swallowed ten years of faith.

She crouched down and dug a piece of wet yellow paper out of the mud.

The handwriting was blurred, but one could vaguely make out the four characters: "Praying for a smooth childbirth."

"It's not that they don't believe anymore," a voice came from behind, low and hoarse but clear. "It's that they dare not believe."

Su Qingzhu turned around abruptly.

Zhang Xuanyi stood on the edge of the landslide, his washed-out Daoist robe covered in mud spots. He carried half a charred wooden stake on his shoulder, as if it had been dug out from some ruins.

He carried no umbrella and wore no raincoat. Rainwater dripped from his bangs into his eyes, but he didn't wipe it away, just stared quietly at the pile of ruins, his gaze like that of someone looking into an old, dried-up well.

"What are you here for?" Su Qingzhu's voice was tight. "The whole internet is looking for you. Some say you're in seclusion at Kunlun, others say you've already achieved Ascension... Some have even enshrined you in their ancestral halls, offering three sticks of incense morning and night."

Zhang Xuanyi chuckled and slammed the wooden stake into the ground. "I'm here to pay a debt."

He walked down the slope, his pace steady, moving straight through the crowd under the villagers' suspicious gazes. He crouched before the pile of wet yellow paper, took out a burnt wooden stick, and drew a circle in the mud.

Inside, he wrote the character "Rest."

"The fire needs to rotate and rest," he said, his voice not loud but suppressing the sound of the wind and rain. "You burned it for ten years, and it carried the burden for you for ten years. Now it's tired and needs to rest."

Someone asked tremblingly: "If we don't light the fire... will we still have Power Of Will?"

"Power Of Will isn't something burned into existence." Zhang Xuanyi stood up and wiped the rain from his face. "It's when you truly dare to say 'I can't' in your heart, and there is still someone willing to light that lamp for you."

The crowd fell silent.

An old woman suddenly knelt and kowtowed—not to the fire altar, but to him.

Zhang Xuanyi didn't accept it; he stepped aside. He only took an empty bag of heavenly eye mung beans from his robe and placed it gently by the muddy water. "Three months, do not light the fire. But every morning, leave a bowl of clean water under the eaves. The day it snows, if the bowl hasn't frozen over, you'll know—it hasn't left."

No one understood.

But they did as he said.

Three days later, Su Qingzhu started her return journey, crossing three mountains and visiting seven villages that implemented the "Ash Return System."

She discovered that those who used to fight for the first stick of incense were now sitting on stone benches at the village entrance, discussing not whether it was "effective," but whether they were "worthy."

"The Wang family's son failed the college entrance exam and asked for a fate-altering talisman, but the Village Council rejected it," a village head handed her a cup of coarse tea. "The reason: He steals electricity and fishes illegally every year, damaging his virtue, so he's not worthy of taking fire."

"Auntie Li is seriously ill and wanted to ask for a life extension. The whole village gathered ash to burn a short candle for three days for her," a young man added. "But her son voluntarily signed the 'Ash Return Contract,' promising to sweep the fire altar every day for ten years, regardless of wind or rain."

Su Qingzhu wrote these down, her pen tip trembling slightly.

At the end of her notes, she wrote: "Only when the fire is no longer a wishing machine can people learn to be reverent again."

Her phone vibrated suddenly. An emergency call from the editorial department.

"Teacher Su, the Huarui Group has formally sent a letter to acquire the 'Fire Altar Ruins' to plan a 'Spirit Fire Pilgrimage Park,' with an estimated investment of eight billion. They specifically requested you to mediate an interview with Zhang Xuanyi and plan to invite a top sculptor to build a statue of him, naming it 'The Fire Lighter'."

She sneered and hung up directly.

Two minutes later, a post popped up on her personal channel, containing only fifteen characters:

"What he hates most is being enshrined by others."

After sending it, she looked out the car window—the dark clouds were moving south, and a rainstorm was imminent.

Meanwhile, in an uninhabited valley deep in the Southwest.

Zhang Xuanyi stepped barefoot on the cold stone, the golden patterns on his palms moving like living snakes, faintly burning.

He could already feel it; that was not power, but debt.

It was a chain of Karma woven from the Power Of Will of millions, connected to his flesh and blood through the earth's veins.

He had once relied on it to ignite hope, but now, he had to cut it off with his own hands.

He began to dig a pit.

Pickaxe by pickaxe, he smashed into the hard rock layer.

No Magical Artifact, no Talismanic Incantation, only human strength and obsession.

Until he dug a three-foot-deep pit and placed the broken axis of the reverse fate altering compass inside—the needle had long since broken, and the surface had cracked like a spiderweb, yet the character "Reverse" in the center still glowed with a faint light.

This was the final anchor point.

He took a stack of yellowing paper from his bundle: "Vow lists" signed by clients, writing "Praying for father's recovery, willing to reduce lifespan by five years"; copies of reports from the chronicles of vows, with the headline "Why did that talisman-selling Daoist make the Old Ancestor of Quanxing kneel and cry?"; and even an old voice recorder with a worn shell, the label reading "Su Qingzhu, 2019.4.5, first interview."

He placed them into the pit one by one.

When the fire started, it was dark blue, silent, not intense, but as deep as an abyss.

The flames reflected countless images: the trembling hands of someone receiving the photocopy yellow paper, the tear-streaked face of a fist soul candy user throwing their first punch, the ecstasy of a heavenly eye mung beans buyer dodging a fatal blow in the blink of an eye...

"You didn't buy talismans," he whispered, his voice melting into the fire. "It was the moment of panic I bore for you, the words 'not possible' I said to fate on your behalf."

The firelight flickered, reflecting an unprecedented exhaustion and clarity on his face.

Rain began to fall.

Fine as needles, landing on the fire, but it did not extinguish.

Instead, it made the blue flame even calmer, as if waiting for some deeper response.

Zhang Xuanyi stood motionless, the golden patterns on his palms slowly wriggling, as if struggling, and as if saying goodbye.

And thousands of miles away, in front of the wild fire altar in a northern mountain village, the night-watching youth suddenly opened his eyes—

The fire in the altar was silently receding, as if someone had gently blown it out. When the formation was complete, a light rain fell from the sky.

The raindrops were as fine as needles, falling silently on the mountain valley's rock walls and hitting Zhang Xuanyi's bare insteps, cold and bone-chilling.

He stood before the pit, hands pressed together. The golden patterns on his palms were fading at a speed visible to the naked eye, like talisman paper burned by fire, peeling off, drifting away, and turning into fly ash that merged into the dark blue embers in the pit beneath his feet.

With every line that vanished, a heavy "weight" quietly peeled away from his body—that was the chain of Karma woven from the Power Of Will of millions, the fate anchor point he had carried as the "Fire Lighter" for these ten years.

Finally, the last golden line dimmed and broke.

His knees bent slightly, but he did not fall. He just took a deep breath, as if he had unloaded an entire mountain.

At that very moment, strange phenomena erupted.

Above the ruins in the Southwest frontier, the broken corner of the incense burner half-buried in the mud trembled slightly; in front of the wild fire altar in the northern mountain village, the night-watching youth realized in shock that the flames were slowly contracting like breathing, turning from manic to silent burning, the flame core condensing into a point of green light that lingered for a long time; the photocopy yellow paper enshrined beside the stove in the East Sea fishing village moved without wind, its edges curling slightly, as if responding to some distant call.

Further away, an old farmer who had once spent three coins at the foot of Mount Longhu to buy heavenly eye mung beans saw in his dream that young Daoist, always chewing on a blade of grass and smiling carelessly, standing behind his tattered street stall, shaking a green bean in his hand: "From now on, look for yourself, I'm not selling anymore."

He saw Zhang Xuanyi shove a brush into his rough palm, smiling and saying: "From now on, draw it yourself, I'm not collecting money anymore."

When he woke up, the flame in the stove jumped gently, as if nodding.

At the same time, amidst the high-rises of the city, Su Qingzhu was sitting deep in the archives, her fingertips turning through the old manuscript of the chronicles of vows.

The computer screen flashed suddenly, went black, and then a line of extremely simple white text appeared:

"System task completed—The Dao of Freedom is now in the human world."

She froze, her fingers hovering above the keyboard, her heartbeat skipping a beat.

It wasn't joy, it wasn't relief, but a tremor bordering on reverence.

She suddenly understood that the man who always said he was "just a street vendor" had long since stopped "completing tasks" and had instead burned the task itself into a fire that illuminated the world.

Several days later, she drove back to the foot of Mount Longhu alone.

The once bustling street stall was long gone, leaving only a smooth blue stone lying quietly by the roadside, weathered by wind and sun, moss-spotted.

On the stone sat a coarse pottery jar, empty, with two lines of small characters carved on the bottom, the ink faded but clearly legible:

Three coins of mung beans for the Heavenly Eye, five coins of yellow paper for peace—

But from now on, the one who owes the debt is you yourself.

Su Qingzhu crouched down, her fingertips gently stroking the indentation, the touch warm, as if it still retained the temperature of someone's palm.

She didn't speak, just took out a newly recorded audio file from her bag, the label reading: "The Last Interview—If he can still hear it."

She placed it gently beside the pottery jar.

As she turned to leave, the wind suddenly rose.

A wisp of blue smoke rose from the empty jar, straight as a sword, rushing toward the gray-blue sky.

It did not disperse, it did not deviate, it did not extinguish, like a letter that had never been signed and needed no delivery—this time, it was no longer looking for a recipient, but becoming part of the sky, becoming the wind, becoming light, becoming that lamp that quietly lit up in the hearts of countless people.

And in the small town on the Southwest frontier, the rain had been falling for seven days.