One Person: I, the Dragon Tiger Stall King! I Won!

She gently poured the ash into the pit at the child’s feet and covered it with a layer of soft, fresh soil with her own hands.

”I have returned it too,” she whispered, as if to the earth, and also as if to someone far away.

When she stood up, her pant cuffs were stained with mud, but she did not brush it off.

This soil, this ash, these silent old tree roots... all were worth getting one’s pant cuffs dirty for.

At the same moment, the summit of Mount Longhu, early morning of the Winter Solstice.

The cold mist was like gauze, wrapping around the stone steps of the Star-Gazing Platform.

The world was silent, only the north wind swirled at the edge of the cliff, then quietly retreated.

Zhang Xuanyi stood alone on the peak, his black clothes fluttering, his shoulders covered in frost and snow, yet he was completely unaware.

In his hand, he held a mottled clay pot, the body of the pot carved with seventeen scratches, each representing the resonance of a fire vein node.

What was contained in the pot was not ordinary ash.

It was the salt-grain ash from the fishing port, carrying the smell of the sea; the rust ash that the old master at the steel mill clutched in his palm until death; the subway ash that fell when passengers breathed out white air on the last subway train of the city; the firewood ash that the old man guarding the stove on a winter night in a mountain village raked out while telling stories... Every handful was sent from thousands of miles away, attached with a note, a sentence, or a ”thank you”.

He had refused to accept them many times.

But people insisted: ”This is not for you, it is to return to the fire.”

He smiled bitterly, and finally accepted it.

Tonight, the Winter Solstice, the Yang Qi just budding, the thinnest moment of the intersection between heaven and earth.

He slowly lifted the pot lid.

”Thanks, everyone.” The voice was very light, yet seemed to pierce through the mountain wind, ”Your fire, I will return it on your behalf.”

As his voice fell, he tilted the pot and poured.

The ashes rose into the air, like black butterflies fluttering, swirling into the sky with the wind.

However, just three feet from the ground, a sudden change occurred—

Every grain of ash actually ignited with a tiny glimmer on its own!

It was not flame, nor was it sparks, but like stars rising back up, flowing against the current, drawing dense light trails in the pitch-black sky, like the Milky Way pouring backward, ten thousand points returning to the source!

Even more strange was that those light points did not dissipate, but instead gathered in the high sky into a blurred Talisman shadow—resembling the character ”Xiaoyao”, and also like a ”fire” pattern, passing in a flash.

When the last grain of ash disappeared into the sky, from the direction of the mountain gate, came a very faint ”click”.

Like a lock cylinder turning.

Zhang Xuanyi did not look back.

But he also knew—some doors do not necessarily need to be pushed open.

He placed the empty clay pot upside down, gently on the highest step, as if making an offering.

Then, he turned and walked into the morning mist.

And thousands of miles away, the stove chambers of countless households ignited without wind at this moment, the water in the pot not yet boiling, but a ”thank you” word, so faint it was almost invisible, quietly appeared, passing in a flash, like a whisper.

On the morning of the third day, Zhang Xuanyi did not go down the mountain.

He sat cross-legged on the stone steps of the Star-Gazing Platform, eyes slightly closed, as if sleeping yet not sleeping.

The morning mist gradually dissipated, the mountain gate remained tightly closed, and everything was silent.

Only on the bottom of that upside-down clay pot, unknown when, a drop of water condensed.

Extremely small, extremely clear, hanging without falling.

The sunlight shone obliquely upon it, refracting a barely perceptible line of golden patterns—

Like a character, like a Talisman, and like fate.