172: Leave no trace, don't take credit, don't alarm ghosts and gods

The rain in Longxi came down heavy and dirty.

Raindrops the size of soybeans pelted the tin roof, crackling like someone was smashing pots and bowls in the sky.

The small station seemed to be steeped in murky tea, the tracks floating in a mist, and the green-skinned train slowly chugged away, stirring up a blast of damp, cold wind.

Zhang Xuanyi squatted at the entrance of the switchman's shack, a rusty oil drum converted into a stove at his feet, its lid lifted, steam billowing out.

The coarse rice porridge was thick and fragrant with a hint of char, beneath which lay a layer of stir-fried mung bean powder—no one knew this concoction was the result of him grinding for two hours with a stone mill last night.

“Same old, have something hot, it’s more effective than burning incense.” He waved to a few workers huddled under the eaves outside, his voice lazy but carrying an undeniable warmth.

A ragged old scavenger, wearing a tattered padded jacket, tremblingly handed over a chipped enamel mug, his hands shaking violently.

Zhang Xuanyi took it, filled it, and casually sprinkled a small pinch of grayish-brown powder into it—those were small pellets he had made from ashes collected from diners’ leftovers mixed with loess the night before, which had swollen slightly after being soaked by the rain.

“Old man, with your constitution, you need to mend your roots.”

The old man gulped, his eyes suddenly wide: “Eh? This… why does it smell like a brick wall baked by the sun?”

Zhang Xuanyi grinned: “That’s the Yang Qi in your destiny, returning.”

No one understood, and no one asked further.

In this place, being able to drink a free bowl of hot porridge was already a blessing; who cared if it had some mystery?

But they didn't know that just last night, in the dead of night, a muffled rumble like distant thunder came from underground, as if the earth was burping.

The old scar on Zhang Xuanyi’s palm suddenly itched unbearably, as if an invisible thread was pulling him from deep within the earth's meridians.

Earth meridians are like blood, and Qi flow is like breath.

Those nodes that have been dry for years and un-worshipped are most prone to blockage.

Once the flow is cut off, the Qi flow within a hundred li will sink; lightly, crops will wither and well water will turn bitter; severely, people's hearts will become restless and disasters will frequent.

But this time, he didn't want to draw talismans, didn't want to summon gods, and didn't want to alarm anyone.

He just made porridge.

The mung bean powder was a byproduct of heavenly eye mung beans; although it didn't have the miraculous effect of discerning techniques, it could temporarily stimulate the faint Yang fire in the human body; and the ashes from the leftovers, mixed with the “Earth Meridian Pills” he secretly buried in the cracks of the earth, once soaked by the rain, became the most unadorned medicinal guide for clearing blockages.

Fire isn't begged for, it's nurtured.

Just like the spark of kindness in people's hearts, you don't need to kneel, you don't need to worship; as long as someone is willing to first offer a bowl of hot porridge, it will ignite on its own.

On the third morning, the rain stopped.

The accumulated water receded unusually fast, as if it had been sucked into the ground by something invisible.

In the cracks along the edge of the platform, tender green shoots surprisingly emerged, crookedly pushing aside the broken stones that had fallen the previous night.

“Strange.” The old scavenger mumbled by the drainage ditch, “This ground… why does it have a faint green glow?”

Zhang Xuanyi was scrubbing the pot, and without lifting his head, he said: “You must be seeing things, right? Yesterday I poured some rice water, maybe it’s just a reflection.”

The old man shook his head and said nothing more.

But that night, when he returned home, his chronic leg pain, which had not healed for years, was greatly alleviated, and he slept like a child.

And in this peaceful morning, a dusty off-road vehicle stopped on the muddy road at the outskirts of the small station.

The car door opened, and Su Qingzhu stepped out, carrying her camera bag.

She wore a faded windbreaker, her hair tied in a ponytail, her brows showing the fatigue of a long journey, yet her eyes were astonishingly bright.

She had come following an online comment.

“At a small railway station in Longxi, there’s a Daoist priest who gives out free porridge, doesn’t reveal his origins, doesn’t accept offerings, only says ‘the fire is picked up’.”

At first, she didn't believe it, thinking it was another sentimental story made up by some self-media.

But when she found a blurry photo deep in a forum—the man squatting by the tracks, teaching a child to use broken glass to focus sunlight and light a cigarette—the profile of his face was so familiar it sent a jolt through her heart.

It was Zhang Xuanyi.

She didn't go forward.

She just quietly set up her old camera, switched to telephoto mode, hid behind an abandoned signal box, and began to shoot.

In the lens, Zhang Xuanyi was squatting in the middle of the tracks, holding a palm-sized piece of broken glass, patiently teaching a homeless child with a face full of coal dust to adjust the angle.

“When the sun comes out, you have to learn to borrow light.” His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly carried into the viewfinder, “Look, the flame isn’t given by immortals; it’s when you’re willing to bend down to pick up firewood, and dare to point a broken piece of glass at the sun, that it’s willing to jump out.”

The child tried more than a dozen times, his fingers red with cold, and finally ignited a small handful of dry grass under the glass’s focal point.

“It’s lit! It’s lit!” he jumped up and shouted, as if he had received the greatest reward in the world.

Zhang Xuanyi smiled and patted the back of his head, with a lightness like brushing away a speck of dust: “Do you believe now that you can also be a ‘Fire Grandpa’?”

The child nodded vigorously, carefully cupping the faint flame in his palm, as if holding the entire spring.

Su Qingzhu’s finger hovered over the record button, unmoving for a long time.

She suddenly felt that this scene should not be disturbed.

That night, she curled up in a cheap motel next to the small station, opened her notebook, and wrote a sentence:

“When salvation no longer requires ritual, people are truly free.”

Outside the window, moonlight spilled onto the empty tracks, casting a cold, silvery glow.

And deep within her unexamined memory card, an unmarked video lay quietly—

Late at night during a torrential downpour, the platform was empty.

Zhang Xuanyi stood alone in the middle of the two tracks, his hands in the pockets of his cloth clothes, his silhouette as thin as a paper-cut.

He didn’t hold an umbrella, nor did he seek shelter from the rain; he just quietly gazed into the distance, as if waiting for a train that would never stop.

Rainwater dripped from his hair, soaking his clothes.

But at that very moment, in the corner of the lens, in a crack in the ground, a faint green light quietly flowed, as if the earth was breathing.

She hadn’t noticed it yet.

But she would see it soon.

Su Qingzhu woke up at three in the morning.

Outside the window, the moon had already begun to set in the west, and inside, only a desk lamp was lit.

She curled up on the hard bed of the motel, her laptop on her lap, its screen glowing coldly as it replayed the footage she had originally intended to delete—the stormy night, the center of the tracks, Zhang Xuanyi standing still as a monument.

She had watched it frame by frame seventeen times.

The first time, she thought the lens was blurry; the second time, she realized that raindrops were indeed mysteriously sliding off three feet above his head; the third time, she zoomed in to the pixel limit and finally saw that it wasn’t an illusion—a nearly transparent, curved barrier enveloped his entire body, and the rainwater hit it like hitting invisible glazed glass, scattering in all directions.

But what chilled her to the bone was the ground.

She switched to infrared enhancement mode, and the picture instantly changed: the soil was cracked, a thin fissure snaked like a snake, and deep within, a wisp of golden thread struggled and wriggled, as if being desperately pulled upwards from underground by something.

That light was pure, ancient, carrying a certain heart-pounding rhythm.

That was the Earth Meridian Dragon Qi.

But even more astonishing was that at the moment the golden thread was about to break through the earth, an extremely faint Qi trace descended from Zhang Xuanyi's palm, light as a whisk sweeping the earth, yet precisely pressing that restless surge back down.

There were no talismans, no hand seals, he didn't even move, as if it was just a breath, an exhalation.

Su Qingzhu’s fingers trembled.

She pulled up the “Contract Severing Array” mission record released by the system three months ago—at that time, Zhang Xuanyi personally burned the main talisman connected to the earth’s meridians, declaring the “myriad laws street vendor system” completely independent from the Tianshi Mansion’s ancient arrays.

Theoretically, he could no longer perceive, let alone control, the flow of the earth’s meridians from then on.

But this scene before her eyes was clearly defying heaven and altering the situation.

Unless… he never truly cut it off.

Unless, at the time of “severing the contract,” he quietly left behind a single thread—thin as a wandering spirit, hidden deep within his consciousness, usually inconspicuous, only when the earth’s meridians were about to collapse, and calamities were about to arise, he would gently pluck it, adjust a wisp, and avert a silent, unseen catastrophe.

Leaving no trace, claiming no credit, alarming no ghosts or gods.

“So… you didn’t abandon your power.” She murmured, “You hid it in the mundane.”

She suddenly understood what “the fire is picked up” meant.

The true spark of fire is never in the heavens, nor in the temples, but in the fingertips of a person willing to bend down to cook a bowl of porridge for a stranger, in his silence, preferring to bear oblivion, yet mending the leaks of heaven and earth.

The next morning, sunlight streamed into the small station.

Zhang Xuanyi hummed an unknown mountain tune, tying the last few pieces of luggage onto his shoulders.

His cloth bundle contained only half a bag of mung bean powder, a tattered photocopy yellow paper, and an old thermos cup Su Qingzhu had given him last year—two words carved into the bottom of the cup: “Don’t run.”

He didn’t run, he just found a different place to light a fire.

As he turned, his steps paused.

The tin bucket stove he had used for three years had, at some unknown point, been welded to the concrete ground, reinforced with steel frames at its four corners, and next to it stood a crude wooden sign, on which a crooked line of characters was written with charcoal:

Next stop, it’s your turn to tend the fire.

As the wind blew, several pieces of wall plaster around the stove rustled and fell, revealing dense graffiti behind them—all simple drawings: a bowl of porridge, a hand offering a match, a child lighting dry grass… In the corner, there was also a drawing of a man’s back wearing a bamboo hat, with a small line of text below: “He also said, fire can be passed on.”

Zhang Xuanyi paused, then burst out laughing.

He knew who did it—Old Chen, the construction site cook, who was the last man to drink porridge last night, had an old leg injury but insisted on squatting to finish his meal, and bowed deeply before leaving: “I’ve never respected immortals in my life, but today I’ll kowtow to you, it’s not shameful.”

It turned out that people came overnight, not just to show gratitude.

It was to take over the fire.

He fumbled in his in my arms and pulled out the last fragment of photocopy yellow paper—the system had long been shut down, this paper was a private souvenir of his, its spiritual energy almost depleted.

But he still gently pressed it against the back of the wooden sign and whispered:

“It’s not my fire that was passed on; it’s the light that was already burning in your own hearts.”

As his voice faded, the yellow paper spontaneously ignited without fire.

The ashes rose into the air, carried by the morning breeze into the sky, like an unspoken admonition, and like a silent prayer.

He turned and stepped onto the green-skinned train, his silhouette gradually merging into the thin mist.

And in a corner of the platform he couldn't see, a girl in a school uniform stood on tiptoe, placing the half of a steamed bun left from her breakfast into a small clay bowl beside the stove, and softly said:

“My mom said, if you receive warmth from others, you have to leave some of your own warmth.”

The wind blew, and a faint light flickered at the bottom of the bowl.

As if in response.