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

167: Those who bought on credit have started to pay back their debtsThe morning mist in Southern Anhui was like a thin veil, wrapping around the eaves of the ancestral hall.

The newly hung ”Ash Registry” wooden plaque hung quietly; the ink was dry, yet the characters seemed to still carry moisture, pressing heavily into people’s hearts.

Where the wind passed, no one answered.

For the first seven days, there was nothing in front of the Ash Registry.

The villagers stood far away, their eyes filled with both awe and suspicion.

No one believed that burning some rags and scraps of paper could truly bring warmth to their lives.

Even fewer were willing to be the first to act—what if they offended the Fire God and brought trouble upon themselves?

Zhang Xuanyi did not persuade them.

He simply pulled an old Daoist robe he had worn for five years from his bundle; the cuffs were worn white, and the collar was still stained with cinnabar spilled while drawing talismans last year.

In front of the entire village, he took out scissors and, with a ”snap,” cut it into palm-sized pieces, tossing them one by one into the large coarse pottery jar in front of the ancestral hall.

The fire started.

Wisps of blue smoke curled up, burning neither too fast nor too slow.

He took out a small porcelain bottle, caught a few drops of the warm liquid melted from the ashes, and turned to walk toward the old well at the entrance of the village.

”Splash.”

The liquid entered the water, silent and traceless.

On the morning of the third day, a miracle arrived.

The child from the Wang family, who had coughed since childhood and couldn’t sleep, didn’t cough upon waking; instead, the first thing they said was a clear, bright ”Mother, my throat doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Granny Li rubbed her knees and walked three laps in the courtyard, tears falling: ”I haven’t felt this relaxed in thirty years.”

The news spread like wildfire.

At first, it was a few pairs of old shoes and a few scraps of paper quietly placed beside the ash jar.

Later, someone wrapped leftover food scraps from the previous night in rough paper and brought them over, saying it was to ”repay the fire for a meal.”

Even later, people from neighboring villages rushed over to watch the spectacle.

A skinny teenager squatted beside the ash jar, staring at the flames for a long time, before finally gathering the courage to ask Zhang Xuanyi, ”Is this... really useful?”

Zhang Xuanyi, who was squatting and roasting a sweet potato, grinned upon hearing this, his teeth dazzlingly white: ”I don’t know if it’s useful, but I remember you said you wanted your mother to stop coughing—did she sleep soundly last night?”

The teenager was stunned, his eyes suddenly turning red.

He nodded, his voice trembling: ”She slept, the whole night, without coughing once.”

Zhang Xuanyi gave an ”mm,” broke open the sweet potato, and handed it over, steaming hot: ”That’s enough.”

Meanwhile, Su Qingzhu sat on a hillside outside the village, a laptop spread across her knees, her fingertips dancing across the keyboard.

The title of her report had long been decided: ”We Have Finally Learned to Say Thank You to the Fire.”

Before the article was even published, the number of shares had already exceeded one hundred thousand.

In the three southern provinces, nineteen villages hung signs and set up ash registries overnight.

Someone took a photo of an elderly person trembling as they tossed in fingernails clipped by their granddaughter, with the caption: ”This is my family’s first Repay the Debt.”

But the more she wrote, the tighter her brows knitted.

Because she discovered that the places that had once fought tooth and nail to snatch the ”Spirit Fire” were now the most perfunctory in ”returning the ash.”

Some hired homeless people to burn cold ash on their behalf; a pile of paper money was thrown in without even a spark appearing. Even worse, wealthy families hired retired supernatural individuals to set up formations to protect their fire, terrified that others would ”steal” their family’s luck.

In the dead of night, she visited the wealthy family who had spent millions to hire someone to set up a formation and questioned them: ”What are you afraid of?”

The man sat in a grand chair, sneering, his eyes like knives: ”I’m not afraid that the fire won’t work; I’m afraid that others understand how to deceive it better than I do.”

She didn’t change a single word of this sentence, bolded it, pinned it to the top, and it became the Soul of the entire report.