92: I didn't leave, you all became stall owners

That darkness pressed heavily upon the summit of Mount Longhu, as if it had accumulated centuries of loneliness.

Su Qingzhu's breath turned into a wisp of white mist in the cold, rain-washed air.

The stone ring remained silent, half-hidden beneath overgrown vines. The still water that once held Power Of Will and hope had long since dried up, leaving only a dark, damp ring in the center of the charred earth, stubbornly maintaining the outline of a stall cloth.

This was the beginning, and also the end.

She slowly crouched down, her movements as gentle as brushing dust off an ancient book, and placed the last volume of "self-salvation" she held in her hand right in the center of the charred mark.

The pages rustled in the mountain wind, like a silent recitation.

"You said you wouldn't preach the Dao." Her voice was very soft, carrying a hint of a smile, as if she were catching up with an old friend, "But look, in this world, there are already three hundred and seventy thousand people setting up stalls."

The moment her words fell, a strange change occurred between heaven and earth.

Fine rain began to fall again without warning, yet it did not touch the ground.

Like billions of suspended pearls, they hung motionless three feet above the ground. Inside every crystal-clear droplet, there was, surprisingly, the phantom image of a completely different market!

On Vermilion Bird Avenue in Chang'an, the lights merged into a galaxy, with the singing and dancing of the Hu girls intertwined with the sizzling sound of roasting lamb; in the Tanka fishing villages of Lingnan, stove fires flickered on small boats, reflecting the dark and satisfied faces of the fishermen; in the snowfields of Mohe in the far north, clusters of cyan flames danced stubbornly in the wind and snow, dispelling the bitter cold that could crack steel... Three hundred and seventy thousand water droplets, representing three hundred and seventy thousand hearths of human life.

Facing such a miracle, Su Qingzhu felt not a shred of fear.

She simply closed her eyes slowly, letting the light refracted by the rain droplets suspended across the sky cast mottled light and shadows upon her face.

The smile on her lips grew even more gentle.

"So... it wasn't that you left," she murmured to herself, her voice so soft it was almost blown away by the wind, "It's that all of us have walked onto the path you took back then."

Meanwhile, in a water town thousands of miles away in the south, the morning market was already bustling.

Zhang Xuanyi had a blade of grass he'd swiped from somewhere dangling from his mouth, looking like an idle street loafer, squatting in the most inconspicuous corner of the market, slowly chewing on a freshly cooked piece of glutinous rice cake.

In front of him was a stooped Granny, guarding a dilapidated roasted sweet potato stove.

The stove fire was a dim yellow, listless, with a thick layer of white ash covering the charcoal. The heat it emitted was not even enough to disperse the morning mist. Passersby walked hurriedly, and almost no one stopped at this desolate stall.

Zhang Xuanyi swallowed the last bite of the glutinous rice cake and unhurriedly fished a small oil-paper packet from his bosom.

He pinched the last pinch of charred leaf mung bean powder, which was finer than sand, and while the Granny turned to get water, he flicked his finger, and the powder fell silently into the ashes at the bottom of the stove.

There was no earth-shattering change, only an imperceptible shift.

At the base of the originally dim yellow stove fire, a touch of warm, gentle cyan quietly emerged.

The next moment, an indescribable warmth spread out from the stove like ripples.

The warmth was not scorching; instead, it carried a power that soothed the heart, making everyone who passed by subconsciously slow their pace.

"Huh, these sweet potatoes smell so good!" A woman holding a child stopped.

"Granny, give me two hot ones!" A man who had just finished work rubbed his hands and stepped closer.

In just a moment, a small circle of people had gathered in front of the previously desolate stove. Some bought food, some chatted, and a lively little market spontaneously formed.

The Granny selling sweet potatoes was completely unaware of this, assuming it was just a lucky day. She was busy, sweating profusely, but her face beamed with joy.

She raked out the largest and most fragrant roasted sweet potato from the stove, wrapped it in oil paper, and happily handed it to Zhang Xuanyi, who had been squatting nearby: "Young man, this one is the biggest, the first one to be roasted. Here, have a taste!"

Zhang Xuanyi took it; the sweet potato was hot to the touch, but the warmth went straight to his heart.

He took a big bite, and the charred, sweet, soft flavor instantly exploded on his taste buds.

He squinted his eyes and mumbled softly: "This fire is much stronger than the one I set up back then."

Shifting the scene to the frontier fortress in the far west, Cui Wujiu, who was patrolling the world, stood amidst the wind and sand.

The market in his memory, composed of retired veterans and centered around a large stove on a high platform, had disappeared.

Replacing it was that faint yet resilient cyan flame deep within the hearth of every household.

They were almost invisible during the day, only revealing a faint, ghostly glow when night fell, as if every household were tending an eternal lamp.

Cui Wujiu squatted at the doorway of a house, watching a sturdy child drawing stall grids on the ground with charcoal, while the child's mother taught him softly: "Remember, the fire must be sincere. You cannot be greedy, and you cannot deceive people. Whatever our hearts are like, the fire will be the same."

Upon hearing these words, Cui Wujiu's body jolted.

Something, something that had been coiled in his chest for thirty full years, suddenly shattered with a "crack."

That extreme obsession with laws, rules, and order melted away rapidly like ice under the spring sun.

He had always thought that laws were meant to constrain the human heart, but he had never realized that truly powerful laws originated from the human heart itself.

That night, he returned to his tent and took out the "Power Of Will Notarization Seal," which symbolized the notarization of the world's Power Of Will and represented the authority of supreme law.

He stared at this seal that had once obsessed him and made him crazy for a long time, then suddenly laughed and casually tossed it into the hearth of his own military stove.

The fire flashed violently, and that indestructible seal instantly turned to ashes in the cyan flames.

A wisp of blue smoke rose, forming a line of small characters in the heart of the flame: "Laws are established by the heart, rules are born from will."

Cui Wujiu looked up at the starry sky outside the tent and burst into an unprecedented peal of laughter, his laughter filled with relief and joy.

He grabbed the wine pot beside him and strode toward the distant, brightly lit market.

"Innkeeper, add two catties of good wine! Tonight, I, Cui Wujiu, will be the stove master!"

Su Qingzhu's article, titled "What You Worship Is Not Me, But the You Who Wanted to Set Up a Stall Back Then," was like a stone thrown into a lake, stirring up massive waves across the entire world.

Markets everywhere spontaneously initiated a commemoration called "Nameless Day."

On this day, there were no main stoves, no memorial tablets. Everyone could light a stove fire for their own wishes, and could extinguish the fire and close the stall at any time.

Zhang Xuanyi happened to be passing by a small village in the deep mountains, just in time for the village children to hold their "Nameless Day."

A group of children, still with snot on their faces, sat on the ground around a campfire, taking turns telling stories of "The First Time I Lit a Fire."

When it was the turn of a timid little girl, she nervously twisted the corner of her clothes, lowered her head, and whispered: "My daddy said that the fire was left in the human world by the immortals in heaven... but, but I think, that fire... is something that lit up in my own heart."

As soon as her voice fell, all the children burst into enthusiastic cheers.

At that very moment, the campfire in front of them jumped violently, and a pure cyan flame shot up into the sky, reaching three breaths high, before gently falling back, burning even more vigorously than before.

Zhang Xuanyi stood outside the crowd, listening quietly, a faint smile on his face.

He said nothing, but as he turned to leave, he quietly stuck the blade of grass in his mouth, which had been chewed until it turned white, into the soil beside the campfire, just as he had done on the top of Mount Longhu many years ago.

The moon rose to the center of the sky.

Deep within the earth veins of Mount Longhu, the Old Earth Vein Turtle, which had been sleeping for unknown ages, slowly opened its eyes, which resembled two ancient moons.

It exhaled a long breath, and a gentle, heavy earth Qi silently pierced through heaven and earth.

In an instant, the three hundred and seventy thousand market fires across the country, regardless of size or strength, trembled gently at the same moment.

All the cyan flames bowed slightly toward the east—the direction of Mount Longhu—like all living beings bowing in salute, all fires returning to their origin.

This grand and silent pilgrimage lasted only for a moment before the firelight returned to calm, continuing to illuminate the smiling faces of stall owners, the children's drawings, and the old people's stoves.

Zhang Xuanyi lay under the eaves of a house in the southern town, pillowing his head with his arms and gazing at the starry sky.

Su Qingzhu's figure appeared beside him, handing over a cup of coarse tea that was still steaming.

"Are you still going back to the mountain?" she asked.

He shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the starry sky: "Wherever the mountain is, the stall is there."

She smiled: "Then where should I go to find you in the future?"

He squinted his eyes, and the new blade of grass in his mouth swayed triumphantly: "Whoever wants to find me, just light a stove fire. When the fire is there, I will be there."

The camera slowly pulled back, and across the entire land of China, the lights of ten thousand homes spread out like a sea of stars.

Deep within every cluster of dancing, warm light, there seemed to be a corner of a tattered stall cloth fluttering gently, silently, yet never extinguished.

Several months later.

Su Qingzhu, who had been tracking the source of the cyan flames and recording the changes in the world, received a peculiar "Fire Letter."

It was a message that had peeled away from a stove fire in a distant market, traveled across thousands of mountains and rivers, and manifested directly in the lamp light before her.

The content of the letter was very short, only eight characters, but the handwriting looked as if it had been frozen by extreme cold, exuding a bone-chilling coldness.

Lingnan, Ghost Market, Cold Flame, Do Not Approach.