89: The fire has entered the stove

That mysterious symbol, like a cold key, instantly unlocked the fear Su Qingzhu had buried deep within her memories.

Her heart trembled violently, and she stumbled toward the depths of the study, her trembling fingertips pushing open a heavy sandalwood secret door.

Behind the door, the scent of decaying books rushed to meet her. Only on the stone platform in the center lay an ancient book, locked with black iron chains. The cover had no name, only a brand identical to that flame symbol.

This forbidden book recorded a secret deep within the Su Family—a secret regarding a primordial fire known as the "Fire of Carefree."

The book prophesied that this fire was formless and imageless, belonging to neither of the Five Elements. It used the Power Of Will of human hearts as fuel; with a single thought, it could start a prairie fire, and with another, it could freeze everything over.

Initially, it would choose a "vessel" to descend into the world, triggering celestial phenomena, before breaking free from its shackles, fragmenting, and scattering into the lights of ten thousand homes, never again to be controlled by anyone.

"A vessel..." Su Qingzhu murmured in a daze, a thunderous explosion sounding in her mind.

She whipped her head around, her gaze nailing itself onto the manuscript of My First Stall.

The faint cyan marks in the corners of those charcoal sketches were incredibly glaring in her eyes now, as if they were the residual warmth left behind after being licked by an invisible flame.

She hesitated no longer, cradling the thin booklet and walking quickly toward the Still Water Altar in the courtyard.

This altar of water was a treasure used by the Su Family to observe Luck, capable of reflecting the Origin of all things.

When she placed the manuscript on the altar, the reflection on the water surface, which was usually as clear as a mirror, did not show the scene of Zhang Xuanyi teaching the children how to ignite their heart fires as it usually did.

The water surface turned as black as ink, bottomless.

Immediately after, a faint flame ignited in the center of the water. The light spread, reflecting a group of faceless people sitting around a stove. They had no features, no bodies, just blurry humanoid outlines.

In the center of the stove fire, the character "Xiao" branded on the forbidden book slowly rose. The moment it reached its peak, it shattered with a boom, turning into billions of starlike specks that drifted down into the pitch-black water and vanished.

The water surface returned to calm, reflecting Su Qingzhu's deathly pale face.

She understood. She understood completely.

The world all believed that Zhang Xuanyi was preaching the Dao and bestowing fire, but the truth was that the fire was self-ignited after the Power Of Will of all living beings converged!

The so-called "Zhang Xuanyi" was, from beginning to end, nothing more than the first and most perfect vessel that the primordial fire named "Carefree" had found in order to descend into the world!

At the same time, in a border town thousands of miles away to the north, under the eaves of a dilapidated teahouse, the cold wind whipped up grit and sand.

Zhang Xuanyi wrapped his tattered cotton-padded jacket tighter around himself, silently listening to a few old stall owners chattering, shivering from the cold.

"Sigh, there are more and more markets these days, but I always feel like something is missing." An old man selling steamed buns rubbed his hands together and exhaled a puff of white air.

"It's not that something is missing; it's that the fire no longer reaches the sky." The stall owner next to him, who sold lamb offal soup, pointed to his long-extinguished stove, his face full of worry. "Before, when that cyan flame lit up, the whole market would prosper. Now, it's just great—everyone is learning from those big places to use 'hidden stoves.' The fire is there, but that spirit is gone."

Zhang Xuanyi did not make a sound. He pulled an oil-paper packet from his bosom, which contained half a bag of mung beans that had been stir-fried until charred black, emitting a strange, grassy fragrance.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention, he walked slowly to the side of the lamb offal soup stove and silently sprinkled the half-bag of charred green beans into the residual ash at the bottom of the stove.

After finishing this, he squatted back in the street corner, pulled a cold bun from his bosom, and gnawed on it expressionlessly.

He had only one thought in his heart: "The fire doesn't need to be called; it will find its own fuel."

The next morning, before the teahouse had even opened, a cry of surprise shattered the peace of the border town.

The old stall owner selling lamb offal soup pointed at his stove, stuttering and unable to speak.

The stove had clearly not been fed new fuel all night, yet at this moment, it had ignited without fire, rising with a steady and gentle cyan flame.

Even stranger was that the lamb soup brewed in it carried a faint, ethereal Qi. Everyone who drank it felt that their chronic old injuries seemed to ease up a bit.

This stove fire burned for three days and three nights, attracting people from ten miles around to come and watch.

The old folks clicked their tongues in wonder, but no one could explain who had done it, simply regarding it as a divine miracle.

And the culprit had long since embarked on a new journey.

At almost the same moment, Grand Steward Cui Wujiu was inspecting the veteran stall market in the Western Regions.

This place had once been where the cyan flames were most intense, the killing intent of gold and iron horses blending with the Dao fire of the Power Of Will in a spectacular display.

But looking around now, most of those stoves that had once burned with raging cyan flames had switched to ordinary charcoal, with only a trace of extremely faint cyan light, like a gossamer thread, hidden deep in the heart of the stove.

If one did not close their eyes and concentrate, sensing it with Qi, it would be impossible to detect.

Cui Wujiu frowned. He called over a one-armed veteran who was wiping his weapon and asked, "Why not light an open fire? The imperial court's subsidies have never been cut."

The veteran looked up, his weathered face breaking into an open-minded smile. "Grand Steward Cui, the fire is too bright; it draws attention. In this world nowadays, only by hiding it well can it burn for a long time."

Cui Wujiu's heart stirred. He slowly closed his eyes, sinking his true Qi into the earth to carefully investigate the flow of the Power Of Will throughout the market.

This investigation sent a great shock through his heart.

He had originally thought the Dao fire had faded, but now he realized that the flow of the Power Of Will had not weakened; on the contrary, it was more steady and profound than at any time in the past.

It no longer flaunted itself outwardly as it did in the past, but instead, like subterranean rivers, it intertwined and surged deep beneath the market, nourishing every inconspicuous stove.

He was suddenly enlightened.

The Dao fire had never been extinguished; it had simply learned to "breathe" after experiencing its initial explosion.

The bright flame was inhalation, gathering the Power Of Will from all directions; the hidden fire was exhalation, feeding the rhyme of the Dao back to all living beings.

In this process of inhalation and exhalation, it had already shed its reliance on the image of "Zhang Xuanyi" and quietly merged into the constant laws of the world's operation.

In the capital, Su Qingzhu committed her realizations to paper, and a manifesto titled The Fire Has Entered the Stove was born.

In the text, she earth-shatteringly proposed the "Three Stages of Dao Fire Theory": first, as a spectacular phenomenon to catch the eye, announcing itself to the world with a shocking posture; second, as self-balancing rules, merging into the order in a subtle way; and finally, as daily concealment, turning into the firewood, rice, oil, and salt in the lives of the common people.

She wrote at the end of the article: "When people no longer ask, 'Is this Zhang Xuanyi's fire?' but instead light their own stove with peace of mind—that is when the Dao can truly be considered alive."

Once the article was released, the world was shaken.

Markets everywhere seemed to have received some kind of revelation, spontaneously extinguishing those high-platform bright flames that served as symbols, and instead building more hidden stoves underground for those new stall owners to "ignite their heart fires."

Nosy people were confused and came forward to ask, but the stall owners only smiled honestly: "Do you see anyone cooking while holding a torch every day?"

A grand and vigorous revolution was completed in the most silent daily life.

It was another late night, and Zhang Xuanyi was walking alone on a mountain road heading south, the moonlight stretching his shadow long.

Suddenly, he stopped, feeling a slight warmth coming from beside his feet.

Looking down, he saw a slender cyan flame winding its way out from a crack in the stone, like a small, spiritual snake, affectionately winding around his straw sandals, which had holes in them, and slipping into the soles.

The flame did not burn him; instead, it was like a hot spring, warming his cold soles.

He was not alarmed, nor was he even slightly surprised. He just looked down at that wisp of flame and asked softly, "Found a new home?"

The flame jumped gently on the sole of his foot, as if nodding.

Immediately afterward, it quietly slipped out of the straw sandals and submerged into the moist soil, disappearing completely.

Zhang Xuanyi looked up, gazing at the cold, clear moon in the sky, a smile of relief appearing on his face as he murmured to himself: "Fine, I won't ask what your surname is from now on."

The camera slowly pulled back, only to see that the wisp of fire that had escaped underground had not been extinguished. Instead, it traveled all the way south deep beneath the earth, passing through mountains and rivers, and finally silently submerged into a fishing village in Lingnan.

At a household at the entrance of the village, an old woman was cooking fish porridge for her son who had returned late. That wisp of cyan flame accurately slipped into her stove, instantly igniting the wet firewood at the bottom of the pot.

Su Qingzhu's theory had received its final confirmation, and the heavy stone in her heart finally fell.

To witness this revolution with her own eyes, she spent several months personally visiting the thirty-seven largest markets in the world, recording the various forms in which the Dao fire had infiltrated the human world.

When she returned to the Su Family in the capital, laden with manuscripts and insights, it was already early winter.

She habitually walked toward the courtyard, wanting to take another look at the Still Water Altar, to see what this changed world would look like in the reflection of the most original Origin.

However, when she stood by the altar and looked at the water surface, she was struck as if by lightning, freezing in place.

The water was still that same pool of water, clear to the bottom.

But in the water, apart from her own face filled with astonishment, there was nothing else.

The mystical water surface that had once reflected the faceless people and the character "Xiao" was, at this moment, just a pool of stagnant water.