203: (The End) I'm full, I don't want to become an immortal.

The first golden ray of the spring equinox, like a precise arrow, pierced through the morning mist atop Mount Longhu and shot straight to the foot of the mountain.

There, overnight, a street stall had quietly appeared.

There was no sign, no shouting, and not even a stall owner.

It was a crude stand that looked like it might fall apart at any moment, cobbled together from old wood brought from all over the country, each piece carrying the scent of its own hometown.

On the tabletop, only a piece of old burlap was spread out, washed until it was white and covered in fine wrinkles.

The four corners of the burlap were held down firmly by four old objects.

In the upper-left corner was a spirit crystal, its energy exhausted and its luster dim; it had once been a hard currency that even the big shots of the Under Heaven Society would seek to buy at any cost.

In the upper-right corner was a piece of photocopy yellow paper with scorched edges; it had once copied the legendary Five Thunder Rectification Method and had also been used for a child's clumsy doodles.

In the lower-left corner was an empty glass bottle, the words "Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid" on the body already blurred; it had once turned countless Outliers stuck at bottlenecks into grandmasters overnight, and had also been sold to drunks as a hangover cure.

In the lower-right corner was a mung bean so shriveled it was unrecognizable; beneath its wrinkled skin, it seemed to still seal away a fleeting deity capable of seeing through all things.

These four "exotic treasures" that had once stirred the world's winds and clouds were now like four ordinary paperweights, silently pressing down on the burlap that had witnessed the beginning of every legend.

A long queue had already formed in front of the stall.

In the line, there was an old farmer carrying a basket of local eggs just taken from the coop, still warm; a Tibetan herder holding a whole piece of yak meat dried by the cold winds of the snowy mountains, emitting a rich milky fragrance; and a city professional in a suit with a solemn expression, carefully holding a temperature-controlled lunch box containing freshly cooked Sixi Meatballs from his own kitchen.

No one spoke, no one asked for prices, and no one even attempted to cut in line.

They simply walked to the stall quietly and piously, gently placing the most ordinary yet precious home-cooked meal they had brought onto the empty spaces of the burlap.

They placed them down, stepped back, and then stood silently to the side, as if waiting for a silent feast to begin.

When the sun was high in the sky, Su Qingzhu walked over slowly, leaning on a smooth bamboo staff.

Time had dyed her temples with the frost of autumn, but those eyes were clearer and sharper than when she was young.

In her hands, she held a thick, yellowed hardcover book, its cover inscribed with four characters in ancient seal script—chronicles of vows.

She walked to the stall, her gaze sweeping over the dazzling array of home-cooked dishes before finally landing on that scorched paper talisman.

She slowly opened the title page of the chronicles of vows, which also contained a scorched piece of paper.

That was the only physical evidence she had brought back from the scene when that little girl "returned the fire" years ago.

The crookedly written "huo" on the paper remained as it was.

But next to that pinyin word, at some unknown point, a line of tiny yet forceful new handwriting had been added:

"Thank you for remembering that I returned the fire."

Su Qingzhu's fingertips gently brushed over that line of text, as if she could feel the lingering, familiar, and nonchalant warmth.

She looked up at the cloudless blue sky, a tender smile appearing at the corners of her eyes as she whispered softly:

"You said that the best offering isn't incense, but a hot meal."

The moment her voice fell, the center of the flatly spread old burlap bulged slightly without warning, as if someone invisible was stretching underneath it.

Immediately after, a humming, tuneless little ditty drifted out from under the burlap, not loud, yet clearly entering the ears of everyone present:

"Eat the candy, gain the strength, one punch can make the moon shake! If not the moon, then the sun, the sun's so scared it wets the bed..."

It was the very jingle that the young Taoist had made up on the spot years ago to trick children into eating "fist soul candy" at the foot of the mountain!

A small commotion arose in the crowd, which then quickly subsided; everyone's face showed a knowing, relieved smile.

Suddenly, an anomaly occurred!

To the Northwest, a plume of cooking smoke rose into the sky!

Following that, to the southeast, the north, the southwest... as if by agreement, seventeen plumes of cooking smoke rose simultaneously from seventeen directions!

But this was only the beginning!

Seventeen instantly became three hundred! Three hundred split into three thousand, thirty thousand, hundreds of millions!

From the Black Dragon River to the blue waves of the South Sea, from the fishing villages of the East Sea to the Pamir Plateau, across the entire land of Huaxia, curling cooking smoke rose from the chimneys of countless kitchens at the same moment!

Every wisp of smoke, the moment it rose into the air, would briefly flash with a fleeting azure pattern.

Those patterns took a thousand forms, no two the same!

There were the gentle curves a mother unconsciously traced on the bottom of a pot while coaxing her child to eat; there were the trembling yet joyful ripples when an elderly person living alone finally lit a fire again after many years; there was the relieved light rising from the steam when two rival Outliers buried the hatchet and sat down to share a cup of hot tea... Deep within the Vow Archive, the massive Resonance Induction Box started automatically, the data on the screen refreshing frantically.

The curve representing the fundamental frequency was no longer that lonely 1.3 Hz, but had transformed into a magnificent, harmonious wave of sound woven from the resonance of hundreds of millions of individual heartbeats, like a mountain roar, like a tsunami, like the first symphony played at the dawn of time!

In front of the stall, Su Qingzhu gently placed the chronicles of vows in the very center of the burlap, amidst the mountain of steaming meals from ten thousand homes.

She took out an old-fashioned fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and solemnly wrote the concluding words on the final page of the book that recorded an entire era:

"He once sold talismans but did not teach the law; he had no master's lineage but was revered by ten thousand people; he never showed himself, yet his shadow is in every hot meal."

"The so-called Tianshi was never a deity sitting high in the clouds, but simply the person who stood up first to strike the match when no one else dared."

After writing, she casually stuck the fountain pen into the soil beside the stall, took a deep look at the lively smoke and fire of the human world, turned, and walked away with her bamboo staff without looking back.

Behind her, the old burlap actually rolled itself up slowly, tenderly wrapping the four old objects, the chronicles of vows, and the table full of food.

Then, the entire burlap, along with the stall, sank silently into the ground and vanished.

In its place, only a perfect circle of new green grass remained, looking very much like a wide, grinning smile.

That night, in Huaxia settlements across the globe, the lights of ten thousand homes shone as bright as day.

Countless families, by some unspoken consensus, moved their mealtime earlier.

At the dinner table, a little girl with pigtails shoveled the fragrant rice in her bowl and asked indistinctly, "Mom, why does the food smell so, so good today?"

The young mother smiled and stroked her head, her eyes shining with bright light:

"Because today, our family is eating early."

Thousands of miles away, deep in the Northwest Gobi Desert.

The mung bean sprout that had once squeezed out of a crack in the Tianshi Mansion boundary stone had now grown into a lush field of vines, its green tendrils tenderly wrapping around a new stone monument that had been erected at some point.

The monument had no name, no title, no words, and no achievements recorded.

There was only a simple sketch drawn with the most basic lines.

In the drawing, a young Taoist wearing robes was lying sprawled out on a roof, half a flatbread in his mouth, his face full of satisfaction.

By his feet crouched a short-haired woman holding an old-fashioned tape recorder, seemingly recording something.

And in the night sky above them, a few of the brightest stars were connected by a crooked line, forming a sentence:

"Carefree means being full and having no desire to become immortal."

...【End of Book】