88: Stall owner? I grew up eating at stalls.

Su Qingzhu's fingertips touched the rough paper pages; the naive brushstrokes seemed to carry a certain warmth, transmitted through the paper.

Mud stoves roasting pebbles, chalk-drawn stalls, the furnace fire reaching the sky in dreams... As she flipped through page after page, the innocent and naive pictures stirred an indescribable bitterness in her heart.

She smiled bitterly and whispered to herself: "Zhang Xuanyi taught me... but he hasn't even shown his face once."

This booklet, titled "My First Stall," was less a submission and more of a huge mystery, a gentle yet cruel joke.

That night, the moonlight was like water, and Su Qingzhu, as if possessed, brought the booklet to the side of the Still Water Altar in the courtyard.

This altar was an heirloom of the Su Family, said to be able to reflect the human heart and cleanse distracting thoughts.

She gently placed the booklet on the edge of the altar and cast her gaze onto the calm, ripple-free water surface.

The reflections of the moon, the trees, and herself were clearly visible.

Just as she was about to withdraw her gaze, the water surface suddenly rippled imperceptibly.

The booklet in the reflection actually began to turn its own pages!

Su Qingzhu widened her eyes abruptly, staring fixedly at the water.

The scene in the reflection was no longer a projection of reality.

In the picture, a man whose figure could not be more familiar was crouching among a group of dirty children, a lazy smile hanging on the corners of his mouth, patiently clicking two stones together to teach a little girl with a topknot how to make a fire.

Who else could it be but Zhang Xuanyi?

Scenes flashed by one after another: he taught the children how to identify dry grass that could burn, how to mold the most stable stoves with mud, and how to visualize the inextinguishable flame in their dreams.

His figure was blurry and distant, yet incredibly real.

Su Qingzhu's heart raced; she was certain that this was by no means her own memory. What was reflected on the water was a more magnificent and incredible existence—it was the purest and strongest intent of those children, transcending the barriers of time and space, jointly depicting a reality!

That was the "Dao" formed by the collective intent of many!

Meanwhile, in a small town on the southwestern frontier thousands of miles away, on a dusty grain-drying field, Zhang Xuanyi was listlessly kicking the pebbles under his feet.

He saw a group of children gathered together, using black charcoal sticks to draw crooked stall cloths on the ground, with a broken iron can placed in the middle as if it were a serious stove.

He approached with great interest, crouched down, and asked in his usual lazy tone: "What are you selling?"

A little girl with pigtails, her face tanned red by the sun, looked up, her black and white eyes full of seriousness: "Selling wishes! One thought for one, no pay if it doesn't come true!"

Zhang Xuanyi was stunned for a moment upon hearing this, then laughed out loud, his laughter carrying a hint of long-lost joy.

He fumbled in his pocket for a long time and took out the last piece of candy wrapped in oil paper, which was the fist soul candy he once relied on to survive.

He handed the candy to the little girl: "This, to buy a wish from you."

The girl took it without hesitation, unwrapped the candy, and popped it into her mouth.

The candy melted in her mouth, and a warm current instantly flooded her small body.

The next moment, under the astonished gazes of all the children, the little girl suddenly stood up straight, her small fists clenched, and she fluidly performed a standard set of Baji small frame!

Every move and stance was fierce and powerful, with an astonishing Aura.

When she finished her stance and stood still, she used all her strength to shout at the sky: "I want to be the best stall owner in the world!"

The moment the words fell, the surrounding children burst into thunderous cheers.

And in the broken iron can used as a stove, without any warning, a "puff" sound occurred, and a cluster of faint blue flames ignited, small but steady and inextinguishable.

This wisp of blue fire was like a signal.

In a distant deep mountain cave, the long-slumbering Old Earth Vein Turtle slowly closed its eyes that had seen all the vicissitudes of life.

The light paths on its shell, which were originally shimmering, faded away at this moment, turning into ordinary natural patterns.

It opened its mouth and exhaled a wisp of extremely condensed earth Qi for the last time.

That earth Qi was like an invisible sharp arrow, breaking through the cave and soaring into the sky, instantly resonating with the scattered blue flames in the thirty-seven markets across the country!

That night, all the stall owners who had interacted with Zhang Xuanyi, no matter where they were, had the same dream.

They dreamed of a giant turtle whose body was as huge as a mountain, carrying countless stalls of the world on its back, slowly wandering the earth.

Every step the giant turtle took, a cluster of warm flames would take root from under its feet, lighting up a piece of land.

After waking from the dream, countless stall owners felt inexplicably shocked.

They all coincidentally lit a small oil lamp in front of their own stalls.

This lamp was not for lighting, nor for worship, but just to "remember that breath of Qi," to remember that warmth originating from the depths of the earth, connecting all fellow travelers of the Dao.

People called it, "Earth Vein Lamp."

Several months later, the final volume of Su Qingzhu's "self-salvation" was published.

In the afterword, she wrote this passage: "Zhang Xuanyi never preached the Dao, and the world does not need him to preach it. He was just like a naughty child, tossing the pebble named 'Hope' into the pond named 'Human World,' stirring up ripples named 'self-salvation.' Now, everyone is a stall owner, and everyone has a fire of the Dao in their hearts."

On the day the book was published, a peculiar scene played out in markets across the country.

The stall owners spontaneously held a "reverse offering" ceremony.

They no longer respectfully placed the first skewer of meat grilled, the first bun steamed, or the first bowl of noodles cooked after opening their stalls on the shrine, but instead smiled and handed them to the first stranger passing by, to the shivering beggar at the street corner, or to the bewildered person asking for directions.

Someone asked in confusion: "Are you commemorating the immortal Zhang Xuanyi?"

An uncle selling roasted sweet potatoes shook his head, his wrinkled face revealing a simple smile: "No, this is to commemorate myself, to commemorate the me from many years ago, the one who had nothing but summoned the courage to want to set up a stall."

Another few months passed.

A green-skinned train traveled "clack-clack" across the boundless wilderness.

In the hard-seat carriage, Zhang Xuanyi was gnawing on a cold bun sold by the attendant, with a blade of grass from who knows where dangling from his mouth.

Sitting opposite him were a mother and son; the mother was whispering a story to her child: "...Later, I heard that the immortal Zhang stopped setting up stalls long ago."

The child looked up with an innocent face and asked: "Then who is taking care of those fires?"

The mother smiled gently and touched the child's head: "No one is in charge. But everyone who wants to set up a stall has a teacher in their heart."

Zhang Xuanyi lowered his head, took a big bite of the bun, and the corners of his mouth lifted unconsciously.

He turned to look out the window; in the fields speeding by, a bare-bottomed cowherd boy was holding a tree branch, drawing the grid of a stall cloth on the ridge of the field with a serious manner, while humming an off-key hawking tune: "Mung beans three wen—charm paper five wen—"

The sunlight fell, dyeing the small figure and the vast earth in gold.

At this moment, it seemed that the entire earth had become a giant, ever-living stall.

In the dead of night, Su Qingzhu once again took down the book "My First Stall" from the bookshelf.

The manuscript had been edited and published; she should have treasured this hand-drawn original.

However, an inexplicable impulse drove her to flip through it carefully once more.

As her fingertips traced the pages drawn with mud stoves and flames, a gentle smile appeared on her face.

However, when she turned to the last page, to the doodle of a child dreaming of a furnace fire reaching the sky and lighting up half the night sky, her smile suddenly froze.

Her finger stopped at a corner of the picture, and her pupils constricted abruptly.

In that sky background reddened by flames, at the most inconspicuous edge, there was a symbol drawn in extremely fine, faint handwriting.

That symbol was extremely ancient, definitely not something any child could draw; it looked like an eye, and also like a shackle.

What made her feel the most chilled to the bone was that she had seen this symbol in the oldest forbidden book of the Su Family.