180: The bowl of porridge you handed over is the Supreme Court

Several days later, the morning mist had not yet dispersed, and the fishing village's pier was still immersed in a gray-blue silence.

A returning fish transport boat slowly docked, its hull rusted, with empty plastic crates and fishy, foul-smelling nets piled on the deck.

Zhang Xuanyi wore a faded Daoist robe and a short jacket, carrying a bulging burlap bag, his footsteps as light as if he were treading in a dream.

No one came to see him off.

Nor was it necessary.

He looked back at the beach, licked repeatedly by the tide—the charred stone circle was still there, but the four characters "Take Turns Tending the Fire" had already been half-worn away by the sea breeze.

In the distance, the reefs were jagged, as if someone had stood there for a long time before quietly leaving.

Several fishermen who had just finished deep-sea fishing were curled up in a corner dozing, while a group of migrant youths returning home were huddled at the stern, smoking and bragging.

One of the young men with a cigarette hanging from his mouth caught a glimpse of Zhang Xuanyi and sneered, "In this day and age, someone still takes a fishing boat in a Daoist robe? Could he have been scammed?"

"Don't talk nonsense." A middle-aged man with glasses beside him pushed up his frames. "Haven't you heard of the 'Ash-Returning Stove' that just opened in the county? The government doesn't pay; it relies entirely on neighbors pooling rice and vegetables, and the duty roster is scheduled until next year's Spring Festival. They say every pot of porridge boiled adds a bit to the earth's Qi."

"Bullshit!" The previous man exhaled a smoke ring. "Earth's Qi? That's the Geology Bureau's business! Can drinking porridge really fix earthquakes?"

But before the words left his mouth, when they ate, they inexplicably poured their leftovers and scraps into the clay pot someone had brought to the stern, and even instinctively patted down the loose soil nearby—their movements were awkward, like fragments learned from some forgotten manual.

Zhang Xuanyi sat at the bow, listening to these noisy conversations, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

He knew what they were imitating.

That was the "Nine Steps of Stove Settling" he had taught in Longxi, a small technique to stabilize the fluctuations of the earth's veins through daily cooking.

Originally a simple ritual designed for post-disaster reconstruction, it had now spread spontaneously among the people in the simplest way.

This was not the spread of a Spell, but the landing of a spark.

The boat traveled for three days and finally arrived at the inland pier.

When Zhang Xuanyi got off the boat, it was nearly noon, and sunlight pierced through the clouds, shining on the abandoned station area with crisscrossing tracks.

He walked through a platform overgrown with weeds; wild chrysanthemums and thorns sprouted from the cracks in the cement beneath his feet.

This small railway town before him was the starting point of his first "Firewood Stove" three years ago.

At that time, the earth's veins were beginning to crack, and Spiritual Qi was chaotic; mysterious collapses and hysteria occurred frequently in surrounding villages.

He set up an iron pot here, used photocopy yellow paper to draw three hundred and sixty "Warm-Collateral Talismans" to mix into the firewood ash, and boiled coarse rice porridge for seven days and seven nights.

The villagers didn't believe it at first, until a paralyzed old man could walk two steps on crutches after drinking the porridge, and the news spread like wildfire.

Now, the switchman's room had long since collapsed, the red brick walls were covered in vines, and the tracks had rusted to a dark brown, like solidified bloodstains.

But when he crouched down and his fingertips gently brushed the cracks where the original stove had been, the touch made his heart tremble.

Moss.

That "Warmth Moss" with a faint cyan glow, which felt like warm velvet to the touch, was spreading out from the depths of the stone cracks, covering the base of the wall in patches.

It was a unique symbiont cultivated by the Talisman ash, candle tears, and the Power Of Will of the crowd from that year, extremely difficult to generate naturally.

And now, it was living more vigorously than wild grass.

Zhang Xuanyi smiled.

He didn't light a fire again, nor did he chant any incantations; he just sat quietly, watching the sunlight cut obliquely across the broken wall, drawing a golden line on the ground.

A sparrow landed on the dilapidated chimney, pecking at rice grains left by someone.

It only needed someone to remember to add firewood occasionally.

In the evening, the setting sun dyed the ruins amber.

An old bicycle creaked up and stopped behind him.

It was a girl in a school uniform with a ponytail, her cheeks flushed with cold.

She stared at him for a long time before taking a clean aluminum lunch box out of her schoolbag and handing it over with both hands.

"The internet says you are the first person to cook this kind of porridge." Her voice was very soft, with a hint of uncertainty. "My grandma used to tell me that a Daoist said, 'Drinking a hot mouthful is more useful than burning incense'."

Zhang Xuanyi took the lunch box and opened the lid—the sweet potato porridge was steaming, with a layer of shiny sugar frosting on the surface, clearly cooked with care.

He blew on it and smiled: "Then do you believe it?"

The girl nodded: "I believe it. Because my mom says the same thing."

The wind swept across the empty platform, blowing her hair and schoolbag straps.

She turned to leave, but stopped again, turning back to ask: "Is the next station for you to cook, or is it someone else's turn?"

Zhang Xuanyi bowed his head and finished the last mouthful of porridge, the sweet and sticky taste sliding into his stomach, as if awakening some dormant memory.

He placed the empty lunch box gently on the ground, his gaze cast toward the darkening horizon in the distance.

"You see," he said, his voice not loud but clear as a bell, "it is already burning."

Late at night, everything was silent.

The abandoned platform was like a sleeping giant, the tracks gleaming with cold silver light in the moonlight, as if leading to some long-forgotten era.

Zhang Xuanyi sat cross-legged on the broken cement pier, leaning against the vine-covered broken wall, when a familiar burning pain suddenly came from his palm—not the tremor of the earth's veins, not the backlash of Spiritual Qi, but the final whisper of something more subtle, more profound, before it completely dissipated.

It was the System.

The "myriad laws street vendor system" that had accompanied him for three years, starting from setting up a stall at the foot of Mount Longhu, lighting the firewood, and defying fate, had finally reached its end.

He slowly spread his palm, and a pale golden crack of light appeared between his palm lines, like a dried-up riverbed.

This had once been the channel for spirit coin circulation, the hub for generating rare treasures, and now only a faint echo remained, like a candle about to go out in the wind.

"Time to go?" he asked softly, his tone without regret, only a trace of almost gentle relief.

He took out the remnant of the photocopy yellow paper he had kept close to him for a long time from his bosom—the first commodity, and also the last token.

The edges were charred, the ink mottled, and it still retained the trace of the first "Warm-Collateral Talisman" he had drawn with his own hands.

It could have replicated Divine Ability and Daoist Magic thousands of times, but at this moment, he did not light a fire, chant an incantation, or inject a single trace of true Qi.

He just gently tucked it into the old, worn-out "Dao De Jing" he carried with him, on the title page of which his master had written a note years ago: "The Dao is in bricks and tiles, in excrement and urine, in the place where the cooking smoke rises."

Then, he got up and walked toward the collapsed switchman's room.

The window cracks were covered in dust, and he carefully tucked the book inside, his movements as light as if he were placing a sleeping child.

The wind suddenly rose, blowing the pages with a rustling sound, flipping to a certain page—it was exactly "Heaven and Earth are not benevolent, treating all things as straw dogs."

At that very moment, the remnant Talisman burned silently, without flames, without smoke, turning into a wisp of gray ash, rolling into the depths of the tracks with the wind, and melting into the cracks of the soil.

Three hundred miles away, in a newly built community mutual aid kitchen, the stove fire was raging.

Volunteers took turns adding firewood to boil porridge, and a faint, imperceptible cyan light suddenly appeared at the bottom of the pot, flickering like a heartbeat.

Someone frowned and looked down, only to find that a circle of dense Warmth Moss had grown at the bottom of the pot, rapidly spreading to the area around the ash jar.

Almost simultaneously, seventeen "Ash-Returning Point" locations across the country vibrated slightly—

In a village in Western Sichuan, an old woman was pouring the last ladle of cold porridge into the jar; her hand shook, and the cyan light rippled at the bottom of the jar;

In a fishing port on an island in Jiangnan, the night watchman discovered that the moss around the clay pot was moving without wind, slowly rotating into a small formation;

In the underground kitchen of a northern industrial ruin, several homeless people were warming themselves around the stove, when they suddenly felt a warmth in their chests, and the cold, old illnesses of many years quietly receded...

The resonance of billions of ordinary cooking fires finally reached that long-dormant frequency—the Power Of Will base frequency.

This was not a Spell, not a Divine Ability, but a collective will condensed by countless ordinary people adding firewood and continuing the fire day after day.

It had been Sealed in classics, mocked in science halls, but at this moment, it quietly awakened.

In the deepest darkness before dawn, Zhang Xuanyi stood up.

He took off the old Daoist robe stained with stove ash and filled with legends, folded it carefully, and placed it next to the aluminum lunch box left by the girl.

He changed into a faded blue cloth shirt, carried the empty burlap bag on his back, with no more Talisman weighing down his shoulders, and no more System urging him from within.

He became a true "ordinary person."

But he knew, this world was already different.

As he turned and stepped onto the path leading to the mountains, the first ray of sunlight was shining obliquely on the lunch box, reflecting a dazzling white light, like some kind of silent coronation.

And in a city high-rise thousands of miles away, Su Qingzhu closed her laptop. The last thing flashing on the screen was the title she had deleted—"The Last Daoist."

Her fingertips paused for a moment, and she re-entered five words, each one as if carved:

"We Have Become Our Own Gods"

Outside the window, the morning mist dispersed.

Wreaths of cooking smoke rose from countless rooftops, rising straight into the brightening sky, like incense, like prayers, like this new era taking its first independent breath.