200: Who didn't get a hot meal this morning?

At 5:00 AM, the alarms in seventeen pilot villages sounded simultaneously.

It was not an earthquake, not a power outage, but the most mundane thing in the world—the stoves had failed.

The gas wouldn't ignite, the induction cooker panels were lit but had no heat, and even the old-fashioned wood stoves seemed sealed by an invisible hand; no matter how much one blew or fanned them, not a single spark would jump.

Cooking smoke no longer rose, a hot meal became a luxury, and the entire morning seemed to have been muted, bone-chillingly cold.

The National Emergency Ability Bureau assembled within ten minutes, and heat maps covered the command hall in a glaring icy blue.

The 'Power Of Will' frequency curves for all households plummeted like cliffs, decaying in a fault-like manner, like strings that had been cut, unable to produce resonant notes ever again.

'System simulation terminal ready, please authorize, Chief Steward,' a mechanical female voice echoed in the airtight underground command room.

But Su Qingzhu did not sign.

She stood before the ice cellar in the deepest part of the archives, her breath condensing into white mist.

Here lay the surviving data related to the 'Myriad Laws Street Stall' from the past decade—ash from Talismans, used mung bean shells, even a piece of scorched hemp rope.

And at this moment, she held only an old wooden box, its lacquer mottled and its corners rotting.

When she opened it, only a handful of ash remained.

That was the only relic left behind after Zhang Xuanyi last appeared and dissipated into Power Of Will.

No bones, no clothes, only this handful of embers as light as dust.

But she knew he was still 'there'.

Just like that scene in the fishing village yesterday—the stele resonance, the stoves in the whole village ringing in unison, the child igniting the faith fire—that was not a miracle of belief, but a continuation of frequency.

Zhang Xuanyi was no longer in his Physical Body; his consciousness had sunk into a more primitive fluctuation, hidden in the heart of everyone who believed 'they could light a fire'.

And now, this fluctuation was disappearing.

Su Qingzhu placed a thumb-sized image chip into her palm.

It came from the backup storage of the voice recorder in the interlayer of the old street stall's account book, its surface covered in a thin layer of frost, as if it had been soaked at the bottom of a warm cup for years and then rapidly frozen.

Technicians all said it was broken and could not read any data.

But she did not believe them.

She connected it to a low-frequency resonator, hooked it up to the Power Of Will reflux line, and tuned it to 98.7 Hz—the frequency that perfectly matched Zhang Xuanyi's brainwaves before he died.

The instrument hummed to life, the indicator light turning from red to green, then from green to yellow.

Time ticked by, and the waveform on the screen was as dead as a wasteland.

Five minutes.

Eight minutes.

Just as the technicians were preparing to forcibly take over permissions and restart the System simulation terminal—

The waveform line suddenly trembled!

It did not come from the chip, nor from the System server, but from an external signal source injected in reverse!

In seventeen villages, at seventeen monitoring points, almost at the same second, sensors captured a faint yet clear sonic vibration:

'It's time to cook.'

Childish, clear, carrying the dazedness of waking up, yet incomparably firm.

It was children, opening their eyes in the darkness at 5:00 AM, the first words they spoke.

Their voices were not loud, and not even transmitted online, but it was this pure 'will to act' that triggered the resonance mechanism at the lowest level of the Power Of Will network.

Like a pebble thrown into a dry riverbed, the ripples flowed upstream, awakening the sleeping river.

Su Qingzhu's pupils shrank, her fingers hovering over the console, her fingertips burning.

She suddenly understood.

The Myriad Laws Street Stall never relied on the System to bestow mystical treasures; it made people dare to take action.

What Zhang Xuanyi sold was not Talismans or candy, but faith—faith in oneself that one could succeed, faith that the faith fire would come.

And now, the technical team was still busy fixing equipment, adjusting parameters, and restoring the database... but the real 'fire' had long since transferred to those children who did not yet know what fear was.

'Cut off all technical support,' she finally spoke, her voice as cold as a blade sliding across an iron plate.

The crowd was in an uproar.

'Repeat, cut off all remote power, Power Of Will supply, and System simulation terminal access. Close the central control protocol and downgrade to pure observation mode.' She stood up, removed her shoulder badges, took off her communicator, 'This time, no use of Talismans, no praying to gods, no waiting for a savior.'

After saying this, she turned and walked out of the command room, not even putting on her coat, heading straight for the pilot village school in the Northwest.

Three hours later, on the playground where yellow sand swirled, an open-air stove stood alone.

Over a hundred teachers and students stood around it, silent as stone statues.

The pot was cold, the firewood was dry, but the wind seemed frozen, unable to blow a single spark.

Su Qingzhu stood before the stove, her gaze sweeping over each face—some fearful, some expectant, but mostly blank.

'Whoever can make this pot hot,' she said aloud, 'I will record their name, write it into the chronicles of vows—not as a recipient, but as an igniter.'

The wind brushed past her ears, no one answered.

Ten minutes of dead silence.

Ten minutes of dead silence; the wind and sand swept past the edge of the stove, blowing the ashes at the bottom of the pot to tremble slightly.

Over a hundred teachers and students stood on the playground filled with swirling yellow sand, like clay figures frozen by time.

The fire was not lit, the meal was not cooked, and hope hung on a thin line about to snap.

Just as Su Qingzhu's fingertips felt cool and she was about to order a restart of the System simulation terminal—

A small, thin figure slowly walked out from behind the crowd.

She was wearing a faded blue school uniform, the pant legs were uneven, the strap of her school bag on her left shoulder was broken and barely tied with a red string.

No one knew her name, only that she was a child from a neighboring village temporarily studying here.

She didn't say a word, lowered her head and tore a page from her exercise book, her pen tip trembling as she traced the Talisman shape from a news picture in her memory—that was the 'Myriad Laws Street Stall' sign's photocopy yellow paper published on the front page of the Huaxia Metropolis Daily ten years ago, crooked and broken, like a child's doodle.

She folded the paper into a square and threw it into the stove.

No fire.

The wind grew colder.

Someone sighed softly, and some children began to sniffle.

The technicians exchanged glances, secretly preparing to activate the emergency power supply protocol.

But the girl didn't leave.

She took out her pencil again and wrote four words on another piece of paper: 'Fire is not afraid of the dark'.

The handwriting was childish but forceful, as if she had pressed all her strength into the pen tip.

She folded the paper and threw it into the stove again.

Still silent and motionless.

The onlookers held their breath, even their breathing becoming light.

This was no joke, but a silent struggle—a child's plea to the world, a Mortal knocking on the door of fate.

Then, she bit her index finger.

A bead of blood rolled down, drawing a circle on the third piece of paper.

Simple, primitive, with no Talisman structure, and no magical rules to follow.

She whispered: 'This is me'.

The sound was as light as a murmur, yet like a thunderbolt splitting the Chaos.

The paper ignited.

It wasn't a spark that lit it, but spontaneous combustion out of thin air; a green flame rose three inches, not burning people, but carrying a pulse like an ancient rhythm.

The flame spread along the firewood, and a circle of light cyan patterns suddenly appeared on the bottom of the pot, like a Talisman but not quite, like a wave but not quite, rotating slowly, as if a Formation that had been asleep for a thousand years had finally awakened.

The whole scene was dead silent.

Immediately after, cheers erupted like a tidal wave!

Teachers hugged and cried, children jumped and clapped, and even the calmest technician took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Someone shouted: 'The fire is back!' Someone knelt and kowtowed, chanting 'The Master manifests'.

Only Su Qingzhu was standing still.

She did not record the girl's name.

She just watched the green flame quietly, watching it jump and reflect on the girl's face, and suddenly felt a burning sensation in her chest.

That was not the System's energy fluctuation, not the Power Of Will frequency resonance spectrum, but something more primitive—faith.

Faith in oneself to light the fire, faith that light can be born in the dark.

She turned and left, not waiting for the commendation, not waiting for the report, not even looking back at the cheering crowd.

Her coat was still in the command room, the cold wind ruffled her hair, but she walked firmly.

Three hours later, on the return train, she received seventeen briefings.

Northwest pilot village: An old man hummed the street hawking tune Zhang Xuanyi used to sing, the stove rang three times, and the fire ignited spontaneously.

Southeast fishing town: A mother held her baby and patted a rhythm, each beat matching the frequency of the old street stall's copper bell, and the cooking smoke rose again.

Southwest mountain village: A youth stood in the wind, roaring: 'I'll light it myself today!' As the words fell, sparks burst from the heart of the stove, and the woodpile burned with a roar.

The methods were different, the paths were different, but the core was the same—no one asked for help, no one waited for gods, they became the fire themselves.

She turned off all communications and stuffed the last briefing to the bottom of her bag.

Night surged outside the window, and thousands of lights lit up one after another; under each one, it seemed as if someone was bending over to blow on a fire, brushing away ashes and adding wood, their actions as pious as a sacrifice.

She gently stroked the blood-stained smiley Talisman in her bag—the one the girl had quietly stuffed into her hand before leaving; the paper still carried the rusty smell of blood.

Finally, she spoke, her voice extremely soft, as if afraid of disturbing something:

'So you never left, you just changed to a different way of living.'

As the words fell, the train entered a tunnel.

Darkness instantly swallowed the carriage.

At that moment, reflections appeared on the glass window—countless Su Qingzhus sitting side by side, and beside each one of her, sat a blurred figure: a tattered Dao robe, a smile at the corner of the mouth, eyes as free as the wind.

When light returned outside the window, the reflections disappeared without a trace.

But she knew he was always there.

And at this moment, in the monitoring screen of a quiet village thousands of miles away, a small, dusty foot was quietly retreating from the kitchen door frame.

The embers in the stove were not yet extinguished, the granary door was left ajar, and the camera time showed: 3:17 AM.