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

102: The fire is out, but the talent is brightThe rain of the Qingming Festival stopped as suddenly as it had started, leaving Mount Longhu washed in a fresh, vibrant green, the air filled with the earthy, sweet scent of soil and vegetation.

Su Qingzhu walked alone, stepping on the slippery stone stairs, returning to the old stall site that had long since been trampled into a wasteland.

Everything had changed, yet it seemed as if nothing had changed at all.

The remaining pages of ”self-salvation” within the stone ring had long since been dissolved by the spring rain, blending into the soil beneath her feet, no longer distinguishable from one another.

Only that tender blade of grass, which Zhang Xuanyi had casually planted, now grew with extraordinary vitality. Its slender leaves unfurled, faintly forming the outline of a stall cloth, swaying gently in the mountain breeze as if silently beckoning to unseen guests.

She slowly crouched down, her fingertips tentatively touching the emerald blade of grass.

There was no expected chill; instead, a warmth spread from her fingertips to her palm.

It was not the scorching heat of a flame, but the first ray of warmth that falls upon the world after sunlight pierces through thick clouds.

Su Qingzhu paused, then smiled, a smile filled with relief and a hint of wistfulness.

She took out the last pen from her small cloth bag, the Hero-brand fountain pen that had recorded countless storms.

But this time, she did not uncap the pen.

She simply held the pen, using its hard nib to carefully draw an irregular circle in the mud around that peculiar blade of grass, as if marking the final boundary for a legend.

”You spent a lifetime bringing him to life,” she whispered to the grass, as if speaking to herself. ”Now, it is his turn to live in the stories of others.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she stood up and brushed the dirt from her pant legs.

The moment she turned, a wisp of extremely faint cyan smoke rose silently from the very tip of the grass enclosed within the circle.

The smoke carried no hint of heat; it was as light as a phantom, curling upward, not toward the sky, but stubbornly and straight toward the distant south.

At the same moment, in Lingnan, a thousand miles away.

At the entrance of an old alley, polished smooth by the passage of time, Zhang Xuanyi sat idly under a low eave.

The Daoist robe he wore had long been washed until it was faded and frayed at the edges, and a chipped bowl sat carelessly by his feet.

He was not begging; he was simply waiting for Granny, who sold sugar water at the alley entrance, to pour him a free bowl of hot sugar water.

Granny walked over, trembling as she carried the bowl, her cloudy eyes filled with kindness.

Zhang Xuanyi hurriedly stood up to take it, carefully blowing on the steam, then took a sip, the sweet fragrance filling his mouth as he squinted his eyes in contentment.

Deep in the alley, a few naked-bottomed children were roasting chestnuts around a small clay stove, the chestnuts crackling over the charcoal fire.

A little girl with a high ponytail sang the Tan Huo Yao at the top of her lungs, a song that had spread across the land, though her tune was so off-key that not even an ox could pull it back.

”Hahaha, you sang it wrong! Shame on you!” an older boy pointed at her and laughed.

”That’s how my Granny taught me!” the little girl said, hands on her hips, her face flushed red with indignation.

The children argued, but finally, someone started, and they all began to sing the original version in unison.

The singing was childish yet carried an unadorned sincerity, echoing through the ancient alley.

Hearing this, Zhang Xuanyi’s lips curled up involuntarily.

He quietly poured the last, sweetest drop of sugar water from his bowl into a crack in the stone by his feet, as if paying tribute, or perhaps sharing it.

”Fire does not pick ears; it only cares for the heart,” he murmured, his voice so soft that only he could hear it.

Almost at the same instant, the stove in a house at the end of the alley suddenly ignited with a ”boom,” without any fire.

The rising flame was not the usual orange-red, but a gentle cyan flame, rippling like water, illuminating a newly pasted child’s drawing on the wall.

On the drawing, a little person with a blade of grass in their mouth squatted by a stove, smiling carefreely.

In the Northwest border town, the wind and sand continued.

Cui Wujiu had set up a small stall in the bustling market, with a crooked wooden sign that read: ”Roasted Sweet Potato, 50 cents.”

He was no longer the Fire Patrol Envoy with sharp eyes who chased strange fires, nor did he preach those grand theories about fire.

He was now just Stove-head Cui, an ordinary person who kept his head down, tended the stove, and made a living by his craft.

He hummed the off-key Tan Huo Yao nonchalantly while skillfully turning the sweet potatoes in the stove.

At dusk, when it was time to close up, a group of teenagers gathered around. The leader had wind-chapped red cheeks, but his eyes were startlingly bright.

He hesitated for a long time before asking, ”Excuse me... are you the Fire Patrol Envoy Cui?”

Cui Wujiu didn’t even look up, simply raking out a roasted sweet potato dripping with sugar from the stove ash: ”Now it’s Stove-head Cui.”

”We... we want to learn...” the boy said, rubbing his hands nervously, ”how to make fire listen.”

Cui Wujiu’s movements paused.

He broke the piping hot sweet potato in two; the golden flesh steamed, and a sweet fragrance instantly filled the air.

He handed one half over: ”Fire is not a dog; it doesn’t listen to anyone.” He looked into the boy’s eager eyes and said slowly, ”It only asks you one thing—are you cold? Do you want to get warm?”

The boy took the sweet potato, dazed, the scorching heat transferring to his palm.

He took a big bite, and the sweet, soft warmth slid down his throat to his stomach; for some reason, his eyes suddenly turned red.

In the distance, a new stove in a house was lit for the first time. There were no complex Talismanic Incantations, no profound spells, just a young mother hugging her child, comforting them softly: ”Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. The fire is here, and the house is warm.”

Su Qingzhu worked almost without sleep, finishing the final draft of ”The Person Who Lights the Fire.”

But she did not submit it to the newspaper as usual, nor did she go to the trouble of having copper plates engraved.

She bought high-quality yellow paper, cut it into thirty-six sheets, and copied the entire text, word by word, in the neatest regular script.

Then, she placed these manuscripts, along with thirty-six dried blades of grass, into envelopes and mailed them to markets and schools all over the country.

Three days later, replies flew in like snowflakes.

There was not a single line of text in the envelopes, only drawings made by children with childish strokes.

In the drawings, some people had blisters on their hands from trying to make fire by rubbing wood; others were clumsily striking flint, sparks splashing like meteors in the night sky; and one drawing depicted a stooped old man teaching his grandson hand-in-hand how to add wood to the stove, the figure appearing incredibly warm in the firelight.

The furthest letter came from the icy Mohe; on the letter paper was only one crooked line: ”Auntie Reporter, it’s too cold here, but the fire is very bright.”

Su Qingzhu looked at the drawings and that line of text covering the table. At first, she smiled silently, but as she smiled, tears began to fall.

She spread all the letters and drawings on the table, as if setting up a silent stall that covered the entire land.

Outside the window, night fell, and the lights of thousands of homes in the city lit up one by one, as if in the grandest response to this silent ceremony.

Just after Chinese New Year’s Eve, the morning market in the southern town returned to its usual bustle.

Zhang Xuanyi still sat by that roasted sweet potato stall, though the owner had changed to the grandson of that old woman.

The young man was quick and nimble. Seeing Zhang Xuanyi, he immediately took the most beautiful roasted sweet potato from the stove and handed it over, grinning: ”Old Immortal, you are the first customer today, this one is free!”

Zhang Xuanyi did not stand on ceremony; he took it and bit into it, still sweet and soft.

Just then, a sudden change occurred.

In the entire market, whether it was the stoves selling breakfast or the charcoal braziers for warmth, all the fires jumped upward in unison with a ”whoosh” at the same instant!

It was not a resonance, nor a summoning, but every cluster of flames simultaneously flared with three breaths of cyan flame, like a synchronized deep breath.

The entire market went quiet for a moment.

But no one panicked; no one even looked up.

The person selling fried dough sticks kept turning the oil pan, and the person drinking soy milk kept their head down, but everyone’s movements seemed to have been slowed down, as if by this method, they were silently paying tribute to some existence.

Zhang Xuanyi slowly stood up and gently stuck the remaining half of the grass root into the mud by the roasted sweet potato stove.

Then, he turned around and walked step by step into the bustling crowd.

This time, there was no pursuit behind him, and no one called out.

Su Qingzhu stood at the entrance of the alley not far away, quietly watching his back until he completely merged into the crowd, no longer distinguishable.

She did not move; she only gently closed the notebook in her hand.

On the brand-new cover were three words she had written with her fountain pen: ”Fire Ignites Itself.”

In the Northwest, a thousand miles away, Cui Wujiu gnawed on a cold sweet potato, looked up at the stars, and muttered to himself: ”It’s good that he’s gone. Anyway... the fire has arrived; whether he is here or not, it’s all the same.”

The camera slowly pulled back; the morning light pierced through the mist, gently sprinkling over the bustling market, and every fire appeared so warm and intimate.

That stall that once drifted in the wind, that tattered stall cloth, had long since disappeared—because it had turned into light itself, into warmth itself, into that instantaneous, never-extinguishing stubbornness that ignited in everyone’s heart when they lowered their heads to light a fire.

Su Qingzhu withdrew her gaze, no longer looking for that disappearing back.

Her gaze fell on this ancient Lingnan alley, on those breakfast stalls steaming with heat, and on the figures of children chasing and laughing.

The end of the story seemed to be the beginning of everything.