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

181: The Taoist robe is buried in the soil, and the fire sprouts out.Countless chimneys rose from rooftops, their smoke ascending straight into the brightening sky, like incense, like prayers, like the first autonomous breath of this new era.

Before the morning light broke through, only a sliver of dawn appeared on the horizon, and Zhang Xuanyi’s silhouette had already merged into the distant, hazy mountains.

He walked alone along the edge of the abandoned railway tracks, his feet treading on rusted sleepers, each step like treading on the talismanic lines he had laid down in his early years—familiar yet distant.

Those lines were once restraints, protections, a microscopic manifestation of the order of heaven and earth, but now they were merely a path leading to a deeper unknown.

He did not look back, though he knew that the old Daoist robe, stained with the scent of hearth smoke and the marks of time, would not remain long in the collapsed signal box.

The perfectly timed gust of wind last night had blown open the ‘Dao De Jing’ tucked into the window crack, and the greyish-green ashes scattered between its pages were the starting posture for “Sending Fire to Dust,” the final form of “Nine Steps to Pacify the Hearth.”

This was the last “gift” he left behind, not for any individual, but for this land.

A faint smile played on his lips.

Within three days, a mischievous child, guided by curiosity, would surely stumble into that dilapidated signal box and pick up the incomplete ancient text.

Perhaps he would cherish it as a treasure, or perhaps merely a toy, but it would eventually be brought to the newly opened “Ash Return Academy” in the county town.

There, the teachers—those he had once supported and who were now the enlighteners of the new era—would point to the ancient yet powerful script on the tattered pages and, with a hint of nostalgia and reverence, say to the children: “Look, doesn’t this handwriting resemble that of the Daoist who never charged any money back then?” That was not just a name, but a transmission of spirit, the dawn of a new epoch.

He had sown the seeds of a prairie fire in the most discreet way.

Three hundred li away, on the outskirts of a city, a “Common Kitchen” converted from an abandoned community center was filled with warmth.

Granny Lin, the elderly attendant, hunched over and laboriously lifted the lid of a large pot; a rush of steam, mingling the fragrance of rice with the sweet freshness of wild vegetables, instantly dispelled the last trace of chill before dawn.

Squinting, she saw by the faint glow of the stove fire a circle of dark green patterns slowly swirling at the bottom of the pot, like living veins, exuding an inexplicable vitality.

Of course, she didn’t understand that this was the “Vow-Pattern” formed by the resonance of “Warmth Moss” mycelium and ashes, a profound mystery she had never heard of in her youth.

She only knew that ever since she followed the online post, widely shared and attributed to Su Qingzhu, titled “How to Cook the First Pot of Porridge,” and learned to mix in “three-day old porridge base” and a pinch of “stove-heart red earth,” this pot of porridge cooked exceptionally well, its aroma rich and mellow.

Even the old chronic patients who suffered from damp cold year-round marvelled, saying, “One sip, and the bones feel loose.”

As she added firewood to the stove, she casually tucked a printed sheet of paper under the pile; it was Su Qingzhu’s post, and beside the title, in her trembling hand, she had neatly written a line of annotation: “The heat is more important than the incantation.” These simple eight characters contained the most core truth of the new era—the power of mortals can also reach the heavens.

In the afternoon, Zhang Xuanyi’s figure appeared on a desolate hillside.

Wind swept through the broken clouds, revealing a half-broken stele, leaning isolated in the earth, faintly carved with the words “Mount Longhu Fire Patrol Boundary.” The paint had peeled, the inscription blurred, as if recounting a forgotten past.

He squatted down and gently tapped the base of the stele with his fingertips.

A dull thud, followed by a faint, regular tremor from underground.