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

104: Sudden changeThose hands, with thick knuckles and covered in chilblains and cracks, rubbed frantically against two pieces of dry wood.

Sparks did not erupt as expected; instead, under the extreme low temperature, the wood shavings were ground into cold, fine powder, falling with a rustle.

The stove fire in the cabin was clearly only a few steps away, its orange-red light licking the iron stove walls and emitting a negligible warmth, yet Lin Shouhai ignored it, as if that warmth were a gut-wrenching poison.

Zhang Xuanyi, wrapped in a tattered cotton coat he had picked up, huddled in the shadows of the cabin, witnessing this eerie scene for the third time.

His gaze passed through the flickering light and shadows of the oil lamp, landing on the old man’s hands, which had almost lost all sensation.

It was not for warmth; it was more like a ritual of self-harm.

“Only when it is cold enough, is the fire true.”

Lin Shouhai squeezed these words out of his hoarse throat, as if swearing an oath to this icy sea, or perhaps whispering to his own long-frozen Soul.

He rubbed faster and faster, the sound of his knuckles grinding together sounding exceptionally harsh in the deathly silent cabin.

Finally, a wisp of faint blue smoke rose, and then, with a ”poof,” a spark of fire was born tremblingly on the wood.

That flame was not large, even weaker than the stove fire, yet it carried a wild, unyielding vitality.

A sharp glint flashed in the depths of Zhang Xuanyi’s pupils.

This fire was not right.

Ordinary flames weaken in the cold, but this fire seemed to have drawn some kind of power from the extreme cold, burning exceptionally... ”true.”

In the dead of night, the waves gently lapped against the hull, creating a lullaby that coaxed one to sleep.

Lin Shouhai had already fallen into a deep sleep, his breathing heavy with exhaustion.

Zhang Xuanyi rose silently, his figure sliding toward the bottom hold like a ghost.

The air in the bottom hold was even colder and more humid, carrying the scent of rotten wood and salty seawater.

Borrowing a sliver of moonlight filtering through the gaps in the deck, he saw the wooden box the old man treasured like a precious jewel.

The surface of the box was covered with countless repeated patterns drawn in charcoal—a blurry figure crouching on the ground, frantically rubbing something.

The posture was identical to Lin Shouhai’s movements every night at midnight.

It was the ”Fire-Rubbing Man.”

Zhang Xuanyi shifted his gaze from the wooden box to the mottled ship wall beside it.

Something was nailed to the wall with a rusty iron nail.

It was the shell of a mung bean, its edges scorched by fire, presenting a charred black color, but the greenness of the bean shell itself was eerily preserved, as if both time and fire had solidified on this small bean shell.

Zhang Xuanyi reached out and gently removed the scorched mung bean shell.

The moment his fingertips touched it, a chill that seeped into the bone marrow spread from his fingertips.

He frowned slightly; this was not just a physical low temperature, but a kind of... coldness originating from the depths of the Soul.

He took a mung bean, entirely emerald green with faint, flowing luster, from his bosom and carefully placed it in the original position of the iron nail.

This ”heavenly eye mung beans” was not a Magic Treasure, but merely a token used by his Mount Longhu lineage to mark the flow of Spiritual Qi.

He left it here, not to cast a spell, not to break the situation, but for a simple thought—to let certain things know that, here, someone remembered this feeling of being afraid of the cold.

Meanwhile, in the capital thousands of miles away, a letter from a remote fishing village in the South Sea was spread out on Su Qingzhu’s desk.

The letter paper was rough, the handwriting crooked, but the charcoal drawing enclosed with the letter made her straighten her body instantly.

On the drawing, a hunched figure crouched in front of a stove that looked like it was built from ice blocks.

A cluster of fire burned in the stove, its light weak, yet it cast two shadows behind the figure.

One old, one... young.

She recognized the old man at a glance—Lin Shouhai.

Three years ago, she had interviewed him for a special report on ”Ocean Watchers.”

That reticent fisherman had left a deep impression on her, especially the unsheddable sorrow in his eyes when he talked about his son.

His son, in order to save a companion who had fallen into the water, froze to death in the cold current.

Since then, every winter, Lin Shouhai would sail alone, patrolling along that deadly cold current line, rain or shine.

“Double shadows...” Su Qingzhu’s fingertips caressed the drawing paper, murmuring to herself.

This was definitely not simple artistic exaggeration.

She immediately opened her computer, pulled up the winter ocean current data maps from the National Meteorological Center for the past three years, and then plotted Lin Shouhai’s patrol route onto them.

The moment the two curves overlapped, Su Qingzhu’s breathing suddenly stalled.

Lin Shouhai’s route almost perfectly overlapped with an anomalous region on the weather map marked as ”Cold Source Fire Extinction.”

The temperature in that sea area would periodically plummet below the theoretical freezing point, and any conventional combustion phenomenon would be instantly suppressed.

Yet on Lin Shouhai’s boat, there was fire. A cluster of fire that was not afraid of the cold.

She immediately booked a flight, disguised herself as a reporter for the fishing channel, and boarded that remote island.

The villagers on the island were not surprised by her arrival, but when she asked about Lin Shouhai, everyone’s expression became somewhat complicated.

“Uncle Lin, his fire, it’s not afraid of the cold,” an old fisherman said slowly, puffing on a dry pipe, “It’s afraid of warmth instead. As soon as it gets hot, that flame acts like it’s going to die.”

Late at night, Zhang Xuanyi avoided everyone’s notice and dove like a fish into the bone-chilling seawater.

He did not go anywhere else, swimming straight toward the core of that ”Cold Source Fire Extinction” area.

Beneath that sea area, there was a natural cave surrounded by huge reefs.

Deep in the cave, a dilapidated stone altar stood quietly.

The stone altar was carved from a single piece of basalt and covered with dense runes, but the direction of all the strokes was completely opposite to the orthodox Talisman he knew.

A force of extreme cold permeated from the center of the stone altar, as if it wanted to freeze a person’s Soul into ice.

An inverse variant of the ”Burning Wish Grand Formation”—the ”Cold Source Sacrifice Formation.”

A cold smile curled the corner of Zhang Xuanyi’s mouth.

A conventional Burning Wish Grand Formation uses the Power Of Will from the incense of the masses as fuel to achieve a certain goal.

But the one before him did the opposite, using the ”cold” of human hearts in this extreme cold wasteland, using that despair and sorrow that penetrated the bone marrow as a guide, extracting the Spiritual Qi essence of fire from this world to feed back to a certain place in the south.

“Quite a flashy trick; this time, instead of burning ten thousand people, you’ve switched to burning ’cold’.” He muttered to himself, taking a photocopy of a yellow paper fragment from his waterproof bag.

This was a corner of a unique manuscript he had traced from the forbidden pavilion of Mount Longhu, specifically used to restrain such evil Formations.

He precisely stuck the fragment onto the core rune node of the Formation.

“Sss—”

The yellow paper ignited without fire, instantly turning into a handful of fly ash.

As the ashes dispersed, the light of the runes on the stone altar suddenly dimmed, the operation of the entire sacrificial Formation stalled, and it was temporarily Sealed.

Before leaving, Zhang Xuanyi gently buried the scorched mung bean shell, which he had swapped from the cabin and which carried a bone-chilling cold, into the crevice at the bottom of the stone altar.

“Waiting for someone who is not afraid of the cold to break it.”

In the night market of the fishing village, Su Qingzhu was holding that charcoal drawing, asking an old man who was mending a fishing net.

The old man examined it for a long time, a trace of reminiscence appearing in his cloudy eyes: “Come to think of it, many years ago, a fortune-teller came to the village and said something strange. He said, fire, only if it hates the cold, will it burn vigorously.”

Su Qingzhu’s heart gave a violent jolt; this sentence was like a key, instantly opening a dusty corner in her heart.

She pressed for more, but the old man shook his head, saying that the person had left long ago.

She found Lin Shouhai and handed the drawing to him.

The old man looked at the drawing in silence, his rough fingers rubbing back and forth over the young shadow, his eyes gradually turning red.

After a long while, he turned and walked into the cabin, bringing out the wooden box he treasured like his own life.

Su Qingzhu thought it was ashes inside, but when Lin Shouhai tremblingly opened the lid, what she saw was a small pinch of blue-gray powder wrapped in thin ice crystals.

“When my son left, he was mumbling the ’Tan Huo Yao’ that the fortune-teller taught him,” Lin Shouhai’s voice was as hoarse as if it had been ground by sandpaper, “He said, Master said, when it is cold to the extreme, fire will naturally explode from the heart.”

The pen in Su Qingzhu’s hand fell heavily onto her interview notebook, writing a line: The true fire source is not on Mount Longhu, but in the frozen palms.

That night, the midnight hour arrived again.

Lin Shouhai came to the bow of the boat as usual to rub wood and create fire.

Perhaps because Su Qingzhu’s visit had touched the deepest memories in his heart, he rubbed harder than ever before, the old wounds on his knuckles split open, blood seeped out, and dripped onto the wood that was about to ignite.

The moment the blood drops touched the sparks, an abrupt change occurred!

That weak flame gave a ”boom” and suddenly surged, its color shifting from orange-red to an eerie blue-green.

The flame twisted and condensed in the air, actually slowly transforming into a phantom—it was a clear gesture, exactly the same as the starting move of the ’Tan Huo Yao’ that Zhang Xuanyi had taught that cold-fearing child when he was wandering the world years ago!

The phantom formed by the firelight nodded gently toward Lin Shouhai, then with a ”poof,” it turned into thousands of light spots and dissipated in the cold night wind.

Lin Shouhai froze, his cloudy old tears finally breaking the dam and falling.

In the shadows of the distant reefs, Zhang Xuanyi stood quietly, taking it all in.

He looked at the old man kneeling on the bow of the boat, crying bitterly, and said softly: “Your son did not leave. He just planted the fire into the cold.”

Before his words had faded, beneath the sea surface at his feet, it was as if something had been triggered.

With this small island as the center, in three different directions, three Sealed Cold Source Sacrifice Formations simultaneously emitted a slight tremor.

On the stone altar, those rust-red Formation patterns that had been temporarily suppressed, like vines with life, began to spread silently and frantically toward the deeper, more vast dark sea.