196: Who is teaching children to draw symbols?

Night, the mountains in the southwest were stained like ink.

The wind slid down the ridge, carrying damp, cold mist, and slapped against the mottled earthen walls of the village primary school.

The shadow of the old locust tree on the playground stretched long, like a withered hand reaching out to the mortal world, quietly crouching there, waiting for something.

The first grade's recess had just ended, and the children returned to the classroom, noisy and boisterous.

Teacher Li Xiulan walked down the corridor holding a stack of homework books, her footsteps suddenly halting.

In the last row in front of the blackboard, a little girl named A-Miao had not yet left.

She was squatting on the ground, clutching a half-burnt piece of charcoal in her hand, drawing stroke by stroke on the stone floor.

The sunlight slanted in, reflecting on her focused little face.

"Scribbling again." Li Xiulan approached, intending to scold her a little, but her gaze suddenly froze.

That was not a child's random graffiti.

The crooked lines actually outlined a... Talisman?

It was not a character from a textbook, nor was it a deity statue seen at a temple fair.

But the flow—the slight pause at the start, the swirl in the middle, the hook at the end—was clearly the framework of some ancient Talisman!

Even more eerie was that these patterns were shockingly similar to the basic Talisman bones of the "photocopy yellow paper" that had gone viral online ten years ago!

"How do you know this?" Li Xiulan's voice tightened.

A-Miao looked up, her eyes bright: "Grandpa needs a slow fire to cook soup, so I draw a circle to help him stabilize the flame."

She said it naturally, as if she were saying "chopsticks must be used in pairs."

A chill ran down Li Xiulan's spine.

She forced herself to remain calm and asked the students in the class one by one.

The result made her scalp tingle: out of the twelve students in the class, seven children had squatted alone in front of the stove at night, tracing strange gestures in the air with their fingers.

At first, the parents just thought it was mischief, until someone discovered that the embers in the stove would inexplicably reignite after those movements.

"No one taught them," an old farmer said, rubbing his hands. "It hasn't been on TV either. The kids just love watching that old rerun, 'There is a Talisman Seller Under Mount Longhu'."

This sentence, like a needle, pierced into Su Qingzhu's mind.

Three days later, an inconspicuous black off-road vehicle crushed over the muddy mountain road and stopped at the entrance of the village.

When Su Qingzhu got out of the car, the wind lifted the hem of her clothes.

She didn't carry an umbrella, nor did she wear protective clothing; she only carried a silver-gray briefcase on her back, her eyes as cold and clear as a deep pool.

She was here to investigate the "fire".

For the first time in ten years, the Power Of Will Archives dispatched an investigation team, not for a Great Grandmaster duel, nor for the opening of a Secret Realm, but for the charcoal lines drawn by a group of children.

The technicians were confused, the higher-ups were skeptical, but she insisted: "If the Dao can spontaneously combust, then we must figure out—where it starts to breathe."

She visited seven households in the village, retrieving medical records, consumption data, and family videos.

A clue gradually emerged: within three years, every household had purchased or come into contact with early System products—either the grandmother who ate "fist soul candy" to improve body coordination and treat arthritis, or the high school student who temporarily took "heavenly eye mung beans" to cram for exams, or even an infant who accidentally ingested a candy residue mistaken for vitamins when running a fever.

They didn't know they had participated in an invisible sowing.

What truly made Su Qingzhu's fingertips tremble was that news footage from ten years ago.

In the footage, the young Zhang Xuanyi sat behind a tattered street stall, grinning as he took the crumpled banknotes handed over by customers.

He took the money with his left hand and prepared to tear the yellow paper with his right, and at that very instant—

His wrist tapped the tabletop three times.

Click, click, click.

It was an extremely subtle movement, one that even the cameras at the time hadn't specifically captured.

But Su Qingzhu zoomed in frame by frame, her heart almost stopping.

She pulled up the surveillance videos of the children imitating the gestures—every child, before "drawing a Talisman," would unconsciously raise their hand and tap their knee or the wall with their wrist bone, exactly three times.

Not a single bit off.

This was not a Legacy, not a Bloodline Awakening.

This was a ripple of memory.

A certain frequency had long been buried deep within their nerves.

Just like seeds sleeping in frozen soil, waiting only for a familiar sound of wind to break their shells and emerge.

That night, she set up a low-frequency receiver under the old locust tree at the village entrance.

The instrument's casing glowed with a cold light, its antenna pointed at the night sky.

She input the parameters and played a specially processed audio—it was the ambient sound of the "Myriad Laws Street Stall" restored from historical recordings: Zhang Xuanyi's lazy hawking, "Two sheets of photocopy yellow paper for five yuan!"; the tinkling of brass bells; the melodious evening bell from the distant Mount Longhu...

The sound waves diffused, merging into the mountain wind.

At first, there was no reaction.

Two hours passed, and the instrument screen remained silent.

The assistant whispered, advising her to return: "Maybe the signal is too weak, or perhaps the so-called 'resonance' doesn't exist at all..."

Before the words fell, the receiver suddenly vibrated.

On the green waveform chart, a faint but clear resonance signal jumped out.

Frequency: 7.83 Hz.

This was exactly the Earth's Schumann resonance fundamental frequency, and it was also the rhythm that Zhang Xuanyi's breathing and heartbeat had locked into synchronously when he last appeared in public.

But the most suffocating part was the source of the signal.

It did not come from any one person or any one location, but was scattered among the stoves of seven households within a twenty-mile radius, flashing alternately, forming an invisible net—as if some consciousness was manifesting by borrowing the smoke and fire of ten thousand homes.

Su Qingzhu stood under the tree, looking up at the pitch-black sky.

There were no stars.

But she knew, something had already awakened.

Not just memories.

It was the Dao itself, learning how to walk.

The night wind passed through the village, rolling up a few fallen leaves, spinning them on the muddy ground.

Su Qingzhu crouched in the shadows outside the courtyard wall, her breathing extremely light, her eyes fixed intently on the wooden window of the kitchen, which was covered with old newspapers.

There were no lights on in the house, only moonlight slanting in, illuminating the outline of the little girl stepping barefoot on the ground—it was A-Miao.

She walked to the stove like a sleepwalker, reached out with her small hand, dipped it into the cold water in a bowl, and began to draw stroke by stroke on the mottled stove wall.

Her fingertips traced across the bricks, the water trails meandering, actually outlining a complete Talisman form: three loops as a guide, seven star positions as a pivot, and the final stroke flicked out like a Dragon's tail—this was precisely the most widely circulated fire-starting incantation from the "photocopy yellow paper" that Zhang Xuanyi had sold earliest!

Su Qingzhu's pupils constricted sharply.

This child had never seen the original Talisman, and no one had taught her—yet she drew it more accurately than any Daoist when they first started learning, as if that hand had already practiced it thousands of times in dreams.

"Pop!"

A-Miao suddenly clapped her hands and laughed, her voice as crisp as falling stones in a mountain stream: "Brother Fire has promised to keep me company while I eat egg custard!"

As the words fell, a trace of warmth actually emerged from the depths of the stove.

At first, it was only a slight warmth, as if embers had been awakened by the wind.

Then, that heat slowly climbed, without a wisp of flame, yet it caused the bowl of cold, hard overnight rice on the stove to silently begin steaming.

The rice grains expanded, the aroma swirled, permeating the silent night, like the fulfillment of some ancient contract.

Su Qingzhu's fingers gripped her hem tightly, her nails almost embedding into her palms.

She did not rush in, nor did she wake the child.

Because she suddenly understood—this was not Qi Deviation, nor was it possession by an evil spirit.

This was a Legacy, but not a copy of a Talisman, not a transport of magical techniques, but an Awakening of faith.

Those people who had once had their perception lit up by "heavenly eye mung beans," their will awakened by "fist soul candy," and their hope ignited by a five-yuan photocopy yellow paper, their lives had at one moment touched the boundary of "I can do it."

And this feeling, like a seed, had been buried deep within their Bloodline and memories, and now it was sprouting again through the purest of hearts.

They no longer needed the street stall, no longer needed the System, and didn't even need Zhang Xuanyi anymore.

They themselves had become the fire seeds.

Su Qingzhu closed her eyes slowly, and in her ears, it seemed that the ambient sound from ten years ago echoed again: beside the tattered stall, brass bells tinkling, the young Daoist hawking lazily: "Two sheets for five yuan, returns and exchanges guaranteed!"

At that time, everyone thought it was a business selling Talismans.

But it turned out, what he was selling was possibility.

The train sped along the tracks, the lights outside the window flying by like a burning river.

Su Qingzhu sat by the window, her tablet lit up, the document title only half typed: "Preliminary Conclusions on the Decentralization of Power Of Will Propagation".

Her fingertips hovered, not yet continuing.

Suddenly, the screen flashed and automatically went black.

The next second, a hand-drawn picture popped out—

The lines were childish, like a child's graffiti: a simple street stall, the stall cloth tattered, the stall owner's back blurred into a dashed line, as if it could dissipate at any moment.

And the line of customers extended beyond the frame; above the head of every little figure, there was a small, dancing flame.

No names, no text.

But Su Qingzhu recognized it at a glance—that was the Myriad Laws Street Stall.

Her breathing stopped for an instant, and her fingers slammed the tablet shut.

Darkness returned.

She leaned against the car window, the glass reflecting her tired yet bright eyes.

The corners of her lips curled up slightly, whispering like the wind: "So you knew all along... the best System is one that makes people forget the existence of the System."

Just at this moment, a small town swept past outside the train window.

The night market was lively, with rows of snack stalls lining the street.

And at that instant, as if receiving some silent command—the stove lights along the entire street lit up simultaneously, blue flames leaping, oil pans sizzling, continuous like a galaxy falling to earth.

It was as if the whole city was nodding silently.