170: Smart Fire Altar

The night wind swept through the alley, carrying a damp, rusty smell and an indescribable chill.

Thirty-seven green flames hung in that narrow alley, neither high nor low, neither flickering nor extinguishing, like ghost eyes nailed in mid-air.

Pedestrians passing by couldn't help but soften their footsteps, as if afraid of waking something up.

Children would wake up crying at night, saying someone stood before their bed in their dreams, body ablaze yet their clothes unburnt; elderly people would feel dizzy in the morning, claiming they saw shadows kneeling before the window last night, chanting words they couldn't understand.

This wasn't spirit fire—it was a sickness.

Zhang Xuanyi squatted on the stone steps at the alley entrance, pinched a bit of dust with his fingertips, and blew lightly; the gray powder emitted a faint golden glow under the moonlight.

He narrowed his eyes and smiled: 'The Earth Vein has been severed in seven places, yet you dare call this a 'Spiritual Energy Community'? Your developers are truly not afraid of being struck by lightning.'

He stood up, his Daoist robe hem sweeping over the moss on the steps, and walked toward the gold-plated fire altar sculpture in the center of the residential complex—a three-meter-high copper furnace with flame shapes made of LED light strips, the base engraved with the eight characters 'Heavenly Guided Vow Fire, Blessing Thousands of Homes,' flashing with tacky red light.

He lifted his foot and kicked it.

With a muffled 'clank,' the light strips tripped, and the entire sculpture went dark.

When the security guard rushed out, he only saw a retreating back, a dogtail grass hanging from his mouth, walking nonchalantly.

Zhang Xuanyi didn't go to the property management office, nor did he look for the manager to reason with them.

He turned directly into the underground garage and stopped in front of an iron door in the deepest part labeled 'Energy Control Room'.

The lock was electronic with a password and fingerprint, with a sign next to it reading 'No Unauthorized Entry, Violators Will Be Heavily Penalized'.

‘Sorry,’ he grinned, ‘I’m the type of person who is most afraid of following rules.’

A mung bean-sized green bead slipped from his sleeve—condensed from the residual power of the heavenly eye mung beans; although it had mostly lost its effectiveness, it was enough to deal with this kind of low-level electrical System.

He flicked the bead into the keyhole, tapped his fingertip three times, and muttered: 'Open.'

Click.

The door opened.

The main control box was right there, dozens of wires connected like a spider web to the fire altar bases on the balconies of each building; a screen in the center was scrolling: 'Remote Operation in Progress · Prayer Data Clearing Countdown: 6 days 23 hours'.

‘Clearing prayer records every seven days?’ Zhang Xuanyi sneered, ‘This isn't to prevent fire backlash, this is to prevent human Awakening.’

He pulled the power switch, unplugged the output wires one by one, and finally cut the main power supply.

In an instant, the entire community, all the falsely flickering 'spirit fires' on the balconies, extinguished simultaneously.

There was no explosion, no roar, just like countless eyes closing at the same time.

Darkness descended.

But at that very moment, on the kitchen stove of a certain household, a wisp of real green flame quietly ignited.

—That was the old lady who had just finished cooking dinner tonight, casually pouring the stove ash into an old ceramic bowl, muttering: 'Bless my grandson to get into college.' As the words fell, the fire spontaneously ignited.

Zhang Xuanyi walked out of the garage and looked up at the sky.

Thirty seconds later, the first scream rang out.

‘My fire altar is out!’

‘Mine is black too! Is it broken?’

‘Refund! We were promised annual service!’

Cell phone signals were instantly jammed, and complaint lines were blown up.

Meanwhile, Su Qingzhu's article 'What They Are Selling Isn't Fire, It's the Right to Forget' was going viral across the web.

She sat in the corner of a temporarily rented cafe, the laptop screen showing the backend data of the just-published report: read count over ten million, shares over a million.

The top comment in the comment section read: 'Can't we just light it ourselves?'

She stared at this sentence for a long time, her fingers trembling slightly.

The next evening, she appeared at the community square, carrying a stack of flyers with the title: 'Who Should Be Responsible for Your Fire? — The First Grassroots Fire Altar Autonomy Symposium'.

At first, only seven or eight people came, mostly retired elderly people and housewives with children.

But when Zhang Xuanyi appeared with a shovel and a few burlap sacks of ceramic powder, the crowd gradually gathered.

‘I know you’ve been deceived.’ He stood by the pit, his voice not loud, yet piercing through the evening breeze, ‘They charge thirty thousand a year, install a glowing iron box for you, and don't even let you keep the ash. Why? Because true fire must be nurtured by the Power Of Will and sustained by the human heart. They aren't afraid of you not believing; they are afraid of you truly believing.’

Some lowered their heads to wipe away tears, some clenched their fists.

Zhang Xuanyi bent down, grabbed a handful of black powder mixed with stove ash and ceramic powder, stuffed it into the bottom of an overturned old iron pot, and inserted a piece of locust wood branch.

‘Fire isn't afraid of being small, it's afraid of being fake.’ He said, ‘Every meal you’ve cooked, every medicine you’ve brewed, and every wish you’ve made is fuel. From today on, don't buy others' fire anymore; learn to light your own.’

The first night, thirty households ignited their new fire altars simultaneously.

The flames were faint, like fireflies, but not one extinguished.

On the seventh evening, everyone arrived on time with the incense ash and leftover candles they had accumulated over the week, kneeling to return their vows.

The flame suddenly trembled.

A streak of green flame shot into the sky, twisting and extending in the air, actually transforming into a hazy tree shadow—the branches gnarled, the outline aged; it was clearly the old locust tree that had provided shade for a hundred years at the foot of Mount Longhu!

Sobbing and cheering erupted among the crowd.

Zhang Xuanyi looked at the phantom, long silent.

The fire was truly alive.

But just then, the roar of engines came from afar.

Several black off-road vehicles drove into the complex, the doors opened, and more than a dozen security guards in black uniforms, fully armed, got out; the leader held a walkie-talkie, his cold gaze sweeping over the fire altar still burning in the center of the square.

‘We have received reports of illegal assembly and destruction of public facilities here.’ The man stepped forward, reaching out to extinguish the flame, ‘Please stop the activity immediately, otherwise we will take mandatory measures.’

The crowd stirred, fear spreading.

Zhang Xuanyi, however, did not move.

He just turned his head, looked at the young mother beside him who was holding her phone to livestream with trembling hands, and said softly:

‘Aim the camera over there—at those ‘fire altars’ that just went out.’

Chapter 171: Do You Believe in the Iron Box, or the Ash at the Bottom of the Stove?

The engines of the black off-road vehicles had not yet been turned off, and the cold white searchlights swept across the square, pulling the cluster of green flames long and short, like a lifeline struggling in the wind.

The security team leader reached out to extinguish the fire, his movements crisp and neat, as if he wasn't extinguishing a cluster of light, but a non-compliant advertisement.

But at the very moment his fingertips were about to touch the flame—

‘Aim the camera over there.’ Zhang Xuanyi's voice was not loud, yet it cut through the clamor like a thin blade.

He didn't look at the security guards, nor did he look at the crowd; he just lifted his hand slightly, signaling the young mother to turn her phone toward the residential buildings.

The screen lit up, and the live broadcast was transmitted in real-time to dozens of social platforms.

Thousands of eyes were staring, through her lens, at the rows of extinguished ‘electronic fire altars’ on the balconies—those gold-plated bases that used to flash red light and symbolize ‘spiritual energy service’ were now just empty shells, as cold as tombstones.

Turning back, it was the ‘ash-core fire altar’ in the center of the square, made of an old iron pot, locust wood branches, and stove ash.

The flame was not high, but it kept leaping, carrying the warmth of human life, reflecting the tears and stubbornness on thirty faces.

‘Are you willing to believe in a plugged-in iron box,’ Zhang Xuanyi finally spoke, his tone lazy, but fire burning in the depths of his eyes, ‘or do you believe in the charcoal left over from the soup you stewed yesterday?’

The crowd was in an uproar.

Someone looked down at the ‘smart fire altar’ on their own balcony that had been remotely cut off, and suddenly laughed, laughing with a choke: ‘Thirty thousand a year... just to watch a light?’

The security team leader's hand froze in mid-air.

He slowly withdrew his hand and took off his headset, his movements so slow it was as if he were taking off a suit of armor.

Then, from the inner pocket against his chest, he took out a scorched and curled fragment of yellow paper.

‘My mother left this... before she passed.’ His voice was hoarse, ‘She said, this is a ‘life-saving talisman’ that can save a life at a critical moment.’

Zhang Xuanyi looked at the remnant talisman and suddenly smiled.

He stepped forward, didn't take it, but nodded gently: ‘Then starting from today, you be the talisman master yourself.’

A single sentence, light as a feather, yet it pressed the entire scene into silence.

The captain was stunned, his eyes suddenly burning hot.

No one mentioned ‘mandatory measures’ again.

A dozen security guards stood in silence, and finally, they voluntarily retreated to the edge of the square, standing in a human wall, separating the external oppression.

They didn't speak, nor did they leave; they just stood there—like a group of children who finally remembered that they, too, had once knelt before an incense burner.

The night grew deep, but the fire did not go out.

Zhang Xuanyi walked to the edge of the square alone, his back to the crowd, his palms facing the sky, as if feeling the aftershocks of the Earth Vein.

Moonlight shone obliquely, and a faint golden pattern flashed briefly under his skin, vanishing in an instant, like an illusion.

Meanwhile, Su Qingzhu was sitting in front of the computer in her rental, organizing the footage from today's live broadcast.

She repeatedly replayed the unedited footage—Zhang Xuanyi's silent figure, his palms slightly raised, the background out of focus, yet it had an indescribable weight.

She zoomed in, and zoomed in again.

The golden pattern flashed.

Her heart jumped violently, and she quickly pulled up the old file: that was the screenshot of the System backend log from the day of the ‘Contract Breaking Array’.

At that time, the mission prompt clearly read—【System task completed】.

But looking at the comparison data of the Earth Vein spectrum again now, her pupils shrank.

The channel was not broken.

It was just compressed to the extreme, like an almost invisible thread, silently supporting the entire Power Of Will network on the verge of collapse.

He hadn't completely cut off the System connection at all—he had turned himself into a relay station.

She turned off the lights and said softly in the darkness: ‘It turns out the most carefree person is the last one to let go.’

Outside the window, the spring breeze brushed over the hills.

And in the mountains of Southern Anhui, thousands of miles away, a silent little village was falling into an unusual restlessness.

The fields were cracking, the creek beds were exposed; at this time of year, the blue smoke of rain prayers should have risen long ago, but now—

There was no one in front of the ancestral hall.