174: Taoist funeral procession

The train slowly steamed into the heart of the Central Plains, the rails trembling as they cast the final whistle into the morning mist.

Zhang Xuanyi jumped off the platform, carrying his worn, faded canvas bag. The wind blew in from the wheat fields, carrying the scent of soil and withered grass.

The small town was unnaturally quiet; even the vendors outside the station were dozing off lazily. Only the walls, utility poles, and the glass of the bus stop signs were plastered with yellowing missing person notices.

The old man in the black-and-white photo had a face full of wrinkles, his eyes cloudy yet revealing a stubborn gentleness.

The headline read: "Scavenger Chen Afu passed away half a month ago under the South Bridge. Unclaimed, the funeral home has notified that cremation is imminent."

Zhang Xuanyi stood still, his gaze falling on that face, and his heart suddenly sank.

He had a dream last night.

In the dream, it was that abandoned small station. The rain had stopped, and there was a pile of fresh ash beside the tin bucket. Wet paper money lay on the ash, as if someone had burned it in a hurry and left before they could even take a look.

The fire hadn't burned out completely; only a lingering warmth remained, gasping for breath in the cold wind.

He knew that wasn't a dream.

Some warmth should not just be extinguished like that.

After dark, he circled to the perimeter of the funeral home in the south of the city, stepping through the muddy drainage ditch to sneak to the base of the perimeter wall.

The moonlight was obscured by clouds, and everything was silent, save for the crematorium chimney occasionally puffing out a wisp of acrid white smoke.

He crouched down, pulled a small bag of yellow soil and half a bottle of charcoal powder from his bag, moistened his fingers, and drew a crude "Return to Origin Formation" at the base of the wall—it didn't draw in Qi, didn't summon souls, nor did it disturb the records of the Underworld; it merely borrowed the terrain's flow to slightly adjust the direction of the wind veins.

"The wind goes to the old street, and the ash should return home," he said in a low voice. He sprinkled the last bit of charcoal powder from his fingertips onto the center of the Formation and tapped it lightly. "Go on, brother. No one is here to see you off, so I'll point the way for you."

He got up, brushed off his pants, and as he turned to leave, the wind behind him suddenly changed direction. The black smoke that had been swirling above the crematorium shifted slightly, drifting toward the old city district in the Northwest.

No one saw this scene.

But the next morning, people at the bridgehead began to talk: a wind had risen at night, but strangely, all the fallen leaves on the north side of the bridge were swirling toward the south, as if pushed by something.

And Su Qingzhu was standing at the entrance of an alley three hundred meters away, holding her camera, aiming the lens at the man crouching by the bridge railing.

She had been following him for three days.

This Daoist, who once set up a street stall to sell Talismans and was the target of the Old Ancestor of Quanxing queuing up to snatch his treasures, now looked like an idler wandering through the marketplace.

She saw him buying candles at the vegetable market—the cheapest kind, fifty cents each, carrying them away in bundles; at the scrap yard, she watched him rummage for an old radio, spending twenty yuan to buy a "Phoenix" brand one with a cracked shell and a raspy speaker; she even heard him ask the owner at a night market stall in a low voice: "Where does the old man who always sits by your stall usually sit?"

She didn't understand what he was doing.

Until tonight.

At the bridgehead, the cold wind was biting. Zhang Xuanyi placed an old bamboo basket in the center of the bridge, with the repaired radio underneath it.

The basket was stuffed with half a crutch, a cloth shoe covered in patch upon patch, and a cigarette box filled with unfamiliar phone numbers—all things he had quietly collected over the past few days.

He pressed the play button, and the raspy singing of Henan opera immediately rang out. The tune was way off, but it was authentic Henan Bangzi, line by line, desolate yet stubborn:

"...Twenty years drifting in the Jianghu, enduring all the frost and desolation—"

Su Qingzhu hid in the shadow of a street lamp, her fingers frozen stiff, but she forgot to press the shutter.

She saw the lady from the pancake stall arrive wrapped in a scarf, holding a hot egg pancake in her hand; the old man who repaired bikes walked over leaning on his toolbox, silently placing a kerosene lamp by the bridge; the sanitation worker couple stood holding their brooms, and the woman took a piece of candy from her pocket and gently placed it into the bamboo basket.

None of them said a word.

Zhang Xuanyi wasn't wearing a Daoist robe, just a faded old cotton-padded jacket. He crouched on the ground and surrounded himself with a circle of candles—eight of them, no more, no less, corresponding to the Eight Trigrams positions.

He struck a match and lit them one by one. The flames flickered, reflecting in his calm eyes.

Then he pulled a few colorful candy wrappers from his pocket—red, yellow, blue—all things only children would play with.

He bowed his head and folded them carefully, turning them into crooked little birds.

The fire rose, and the heat lifted the first paper bird. It wobbled as it flew up, its wings revealing colorful hues in the glow of the flames, like a star refusing to fall to the ground.

"When he left, no one saw him off," Zhang Xuanyi's voice was not loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears. "Now, let's light a lamp and let him know—this street remembers him."

The wind suddenly stilled.

A dozen pairs of eyes stared at the paper bird, watching it fly higher and higher until it finally melted into the night sky.

Then, a second person began to fold.

A third person pulled out the wrapping paper they carried with them.

Someone softly hummed that Henan opera tune.

The singing was intermittent, but it became increasingly synchronized.

Su Qingzhu stood in the distance, her eyes welling up with heat.

She finally understood that this was not a ritual for the dead, nor was it a religious service.

This was a fire lit by the human world itself.

The ceremony ended in silence.

The crowd dispersed, and the bridgehead returned to its cold, quiet state, leaving behind only a pool of candle wax and a few burnt-out wicks.

Zhang Xuanyi crouched down and slowly packed up his things.

He carefully wrapped up the items in the bamboo basket and put them into his canvas bag.

The radio was still playing that Henan opera, and he reached out and gently removed the battery.

In the darkness, he fished out a fingernail-sized piece of metal from his inner pocket—the surface was engraved with blurred talismanic patterns, and a faint golden light remained on the edges, looking like a remnant from some System task reward.

He swapped in this "battery" and reinstalled it into the radio.

He then crouched before a crack in the bridge pier, scraped off a few drops of solidified candle wax, mixed them into the damp moss, and gently smeared it into the stone crevice.

After finishing this, he stood up and looked into the distance.

The night wind brushed past, and the radio suddenly made a slight "crackle"—the raspy singing seemed to be half a beat steadier than before.

Morning light spread over the bridge deck like thin gauze, dew weighing down the tips of the withered grass. The wings of one colorful paper bird trembled slightly, swirled in the wind, and slowly rose into the sky again.

Su Qingzhu's camera shutter made a soft "click," capturing that retreating figure—Zhang Xuanyi carrying his canvas bag, the cuffs of his cotton-padded jacket worn to a fray, his steps neither hurried nor slow, walking toward the brightening light at the end of the alley.

She didn't chase after him.

Because she suddenly understood that some paths can only be walked alone.

In the lens, a dozen paper birds were still circling in the air, as if supported by some invisible airflow, refusing to land.

They were not driven by Talismans, nor were they guided by any Formation; it was purely the lingering warmth left by human hearts, stubbornly flying for a while in this cold world.

She bowed her head to flip through her notes, her fingertips trembling slightly, and wrote down the last line:

"In the past, we begged deities to ferry the souls of the dead; now, we have become each other's incense."

The pen tip paused, and the ink bled into a small blot. She suddenly smiled, but the corners of her eyes were wet.

Meanwhile, Zhang Xuanyi stood at the alley entrance, squinting against the rising sun.

He didn't look back, but in his perception, that warm Qi was slowly seeping out from deep within the bridge pier—that was the "Will-Guiding Moss" he had buried last night, mixed with candle wax, charcoal powder, and a trace of residual Qi he had refined himself.

Within three years, it would quietly spread like underground roots, silently smoothing away the gloom of the past.

Depressed people walking across the bridge would inexplicably want to hum a tune, discouraged people stopping for a moment would feel their hearts lighten, and there was even a young couple who, after crying in each other's arms on a rainy night, actually made their marriage vows by this bridge railing.

No one knew why, only saying: "This bridge... is a bit spiritual."

Even stranger was that every Qingming Festival, strange children would always come carrying small baskets, fold colorful paper birds, and toss them gently—the birds would fly along the wind onto the bridge railing and stop there, like an unorganized memorial rite.

Zhang Xuanyi knew that was the echo of "Power Of Will."

He touched the metal piece on his chest—the "Power Of Will Energy Storage Core" was slightly hot, absorbing the emotional fluctuations gathered last night and converting them into strands of pure spirit coin, pouring into the depths of the System.

The prompt [Task Completed: Lighting a Lamp for the Nameless · Perfection] appeared quietly, then dissipated.

The System interface flickered, and the countdown to unlock new items appeared: 71:59:48.

He grinned and muttered: "I'm doing business that acts on behalf of the heavens now—aren't you going to give me some Advanced goods?"

But he didn't wait for the System to respond and turned to leave.

His footsteps trod over the damp stone path, his figure gradually merging into the morning mist.

Under the bus stop sign in the distance, a yellowing job posting flapped in the wind, printed with a few faded characters: "South · Coastal Industrial City—Shipyard Recruitment, Room and Board Included."

He stopped, looked for two seconds, tore off the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and stuffed it into his bag.

The wind blew from the south, carrying a salty, fishy, and rust-like scent, as if it had already brought the aura of the distance in advance.

That place was once a heavy industrial base controlled by the Under Heaven Society, with chimneys standing like a forest and machines roaring. Now, only broken walls and ruins remained, and laid-off workers were crowded into shanty towns to scrape by. The entire city district was like a dying beast, breathing heavily.

And he knew that such a place was the easiest to breed resentment, and also the most in need of—a little fire.

He looked up at the sky; the sun had just leaped above the horizon, golden light piercing through the clouds.

"Time to head south," he muttered to himself, his voice as light as if coaxing a child to sleep. "If you don't even need to invite the fire, what kind of deity are you worshipping? But if you're too lazy to even see someone off, that's what you call severing your roots."

As his words fell, he stepped forward, and his figure completely disappeared into the morning light.

Behind him, the last colorful paper bird landed gently, its wings spread out like an unsent letter.