194: Torches left unattended in the sandstorm

In the early morning on the Gobi Desert, snowmelt seeped into the frozen soil, emitting a faint cracking sound, as if the earth were turning over in its sleep.

The wind had not yet fully awakened, and sand grains pressed down on the grass roots, motionless, as if time itself had been frozen.

Zhang Xuanyi lay prone against the outer wall of the abandoned weather station, like a discarded old brick.

His breathing was so shallow it barely disturbed the dust, his chest rising and falling weakly, like an underground current, silent and soundless.

He had not eaten or drunk anything for three days; his body had long exceeded the limits of an ordinary person, yet he felt neither hunger nor cold—not because of numbness, but due to a deeper sense of detachment.

He no longer walked, not because he couldn't, but because there was no need.

Footsteps belonged to the past, to that young Daoist who carried a canvas bag and peddled photocopy yellow paper and fist soul candy.

Now, he was more like a wisp of lingering warmth, stuck in the gap where heaven and earth exchanged breath.

Last night, he stopped outside a herdsman's tent ten miles away.

Several children huddled around the stove, clumsily fiddling with dry firewood, muttering the "Qi Gathering Method of Equalizing Objects" taught by their teacher.

They didn't understand the principles, just followed instructions: cut the meat three times, turn the firewood seven times, and silently recite "It's time to cook" while blowing on the fire.

Nine attempts, nine times the green patterns appeared, the bottom of the pot warmed slightly, lasting seven seconds, just enough to boil a bowl of porridge.

At that moment, the depths of Zhang Xuanyi's bone marrow trembled violently.

That was not an ordinary resonance—it was the residual imprint of the "Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid" being activated.

He had once used this bottle of concentrate to forcibly ascend to the Grandmaster realm, at the cost of permanently scorching his Qi meridians and leaving his Dantian like scorched earth.

He thought that power had long been exhausted, but at this moment, it had awakened amidst the children's unintentional ritual, like a sleeping Dragon scale having its dust brushed away, trembling slightly.

But this power was no longer for his use.

Every breath carried a faint resonance, but it flowed into the distance, toward those children he had never met, toward the quietly warming gray spot under a village school stove seventeen kilometers away.

His existence was being slowly drained away by this world, like a sandcastle returning to the sea when the tide recedes.

He touched the old wound on his ankle—it was the mark of the Qi poison left by the Old Ancestor of Quanxing's sneak attack three years ago, which used to make him grit his teeth in pain all night long.

Now the heat was still there, but the direction had reversed.

Before, it was an external invasion; now, his body heat was seeping out in reverse, turning into invisible Power Of Will, flowing in all directions along with the wind and sand.

He closed his eyes and heard camel bells in the distance.

Ding—ding—ding—

Unhurried, like some ancient metronome.

He did not look up, only saw the sand grains on the edge of his shadow suddenly move.

One, two... a dozen fine grains of sand moved against the wind, crawling upward, tracing a crooked stove pattern on the ground, three interlocking circles with a protrusion in the middle—that was the simplified rune form of the "Folk Stove Talisman," passed down through generations by herdsmen to pray for the cooking fire to never go out.

Further away, morning reading at a newly built village school had just ended.

The children shouted in unison: "It's time to cook!" The voices were childish, yet uniform.

Seventeen kilometers away, the core of a stove in an abandoned cellar heated up in response, a faint blue light appearing under the ashes, lasting for seven seconds, then vanishing.

Zhang Xuanyi's mouth twitched, but he didn't smile.

These fires no longer needed his nod to burn.

Once, he was the Daoist who set up a Myriad Laws Street Stall at the foot of Mount Longhu, selling talismans, candy, and destiny-altering compasses, single-handedly igniting the myriad laws of fireworks.

But now, he finally understood—the true spark was never granted by the System, nor by the Celestial Master's decree.

It was millions of people simultaneously remembering the way their mothers cooked noodles, the clumsy gestures of children learning to chop vegetables like adults, the stubbornness of an elderly person crouching before ruins, insisting on cooking a meal.

The Dao is not in talisman paper, nor in Magical Artifacts, but in that fleeting moment remembered by the human heart.

At noon, the wind rose, whipping snow foam against the wall.

He dragged his blanket and moved ten steps toward the cellar.

His movements were extremely slow, as if afraid of disturbing something.

He wanted to confirm whether that piece of blue cloth was buried by snow—it was his last token, cut from his sleeve years ago and hidden in the gap of a bridge pier, like erecting an unknown memorial tablet.

But just as he touched the gap in the frozen soil, ashes fell from his fingertips with a rustle.

It wasn't dust; it was his own flesh and blood deconstructing, like the remnants of burnt paper, ready to scatter with the wind.

He stopped his hand and suddenly understood.

If he appeared now, even if he said a word or raised his voice, those children would attribute the fire to "Grandpa Immortal," the herdsmen would build temples to worship his image, and reporters would write legends.

But once named, worshipped, and co-opted—the fire would die.

It would no longer be a light lit by millions together, but an act of grace bestowed by some "expert."

That would be equivalent to him personally extinguishing the flame they had lit themselves.

So he sank his last breath into his Dantian, operating the "Turtle Breath Concealment Technique" personally taught by his master at Mount Longhu back then.

His spine collapsed, his heartbeat returned to zero, his body temperature synchronized with the wind, and his whole body collapsed into the depths of the wall's shadow, as if he had never existed.

The wind passed through him, the sand swept over him, the sunlight shone on him, but left no shadow.

On the mottled iron gate of the weather station, rust quietly spread, outlining half a broken stove rune, only to be smoothed away by the wind and sand in an instant.

And a thousand miles away, at the top of the urban steel forest, inside the top-floor observation deck of a building, a huge national heat map was silently circulating.

Suddenly, seventeen red dots pulsed abruptly, their positions shifting, appearing and disappearing, like a restless pulse deep within the earth.

The wind and sand rolled across the Gobi, like a dull knife scraping across a tin roof, emitting a hoarse wail.

The piece of blue cloth swayed three times on the withered branch, as if still concerned about some unfinished mission—it had once belonged to the sleeve of a washed-out Daoist robe. When it was cut off, Zhang Xuanyi was crouching by the broken bridge at Mount Longhu, using a cinnabar brush to draw the final Qi-sealing talisman on yellow paper.

Now, the cloth hung in mid-air, three feet off the ground, neither high nor low, like a torch held by no one.

Zhang Xuanyi leaned against the wall, his eyelids as heavy as if pressed by a thousand catties of ice.

His vision had long blurred, colors fading to gray and white; the world in his eyes was no longer composed of light, but of afterimages pieced together by frequency vibrations.

He could "hear" the sound of ashes shifting in the stove of the village school seventeen kilometers away, could "feel" the rhythm of the old herdsman's wrist as he cut meat thirty miles away, and could even "taste" the warmth of a baby's tongue trembling as it uttered its first syllable a thousand miles away—that was the embryonic form of "igniting," the initial source of the Power Of Will's fundamental frequency.

But he could no longer respond.

His body was deconstructing, not dying, but transforming.

Every inch of flesh and blood was becoming a more subtle existence, like the embers after talisman paper burns out, though formless, still carrying the will of fire.

He once thought the "myriad laws street vendor system" was a Golden Finger, but later understood that it was just a primer—what truly ignited the fireworks of ten thousand homes was never some exotic treasure mall, but that sentence in the depths of the human heart: "It's time to cook."

He remembered the last time Su Qingzhu came to the Gobi to find him, wearing a windbreaker, clutching a draft of "chronicles of vows," her eyes as red as burnt charcoal.

"Is there any point in hiding here as nameless ash?" she asked.

He smiled: "I'm not hiding, I'm exiting. If the fire is to burn on its own, one cannot always rely on someone to pass the torch."

She gritted her teeth: "But someone has to see it!"

"The price of being seen is deification." He shook his head, "Once I become the 'Igniter,' I become a symbol, a belief, and a shackle. They will no longer believe that they too can light that cluster of green patterns."

The wind grew stronger, the withered branch trembled, and the blue cloth fragment finally broke off, spinning toward the sky, instantly swallowed by the yellow sand.

At that very moment, Zhang Xuanyi's shadow disappeared completely.

There was no flash, no roar, not even an extra gust of wind.

He just collapsed into the gap where heaven and earth exchanged breath, becoming a part of the climate, becoming the frequency itself.

A thousand miles away, at the pinnacle of the city.

Su Qingzhu stood in the center of the observation deck, the seventeen red dots on the heat map in front of her were still pulsing, with a rhythm bordering on eerie—completely overlapping with the sound wave frequency unconsciously emitted by a newborn seven days ago, with an error of no more than 0.03 seconds.

"This is impossible..." the technician's voice trembled, "How can a baby uttering a word trigger a global Power Of Will response?"

Su Qingzhu didn't speak; her fingertips slid across the screen, calling up a dusty video: Ten years ago, Zhang Xuanyi was cutting taro on the deck of a fishing boat, humming a tuneless ditty, the knife fell seven times, the taro slices as neat as if cut by a machine, and the green pattern on the bottom of the pot flashed and vanished.

No one noticed then, but the System recorded the frequency peak of that moment.

She stretched the waveform and overlaid it into the algorithm deduction model, and the image automatically completed—countless late nights, a blurred figure appearing in different corners: village entrances, bridge underpasses, abandoned schoolhouses... He never started a fire, just crouched, watched, and waited for that faint circle of blue to appear on the bottom of the pot.

"It wasn't him lighting the fire," she said softly, her voice as hoarse as sandpaper, "It was him teaching the fire how to find people on its own."

As she finished speaking, the lights of ten thousand homes outside the window suddenly brightened for a moment, like a collective breath.

Seventeen households, seventeen pots, steam burst out, condensing into a short line of words in the cold air, vanishing in an instant—like half a sentence of exhortation swallowed by someone at the very end.