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

117: Fire pitThe night wind cut through the valley; the mountains in the southwest were like ink splashed across a canvas.

When Zhang Xuanyi walked along the muddy mountain road, the sky had not yet brightened.

Slung across his shoulder was that tattered cloth stall—once the source of ten thousand methods, filled with photocopy yellow paper and heavenly eye mung beans, now only a burnt corner remained, swaying gently in the cold wind.

The reverse fate altering compass on his wrist was already covered in cracks, its needle as dead and still as withered bone, yet his eyes were brighter than fire.

Outside the ancestral hall, iron chains rattled.

Seven youths were tied to pillars, crimson veins faintly visible beneath their skin, like heated copper wires moving throughout their bodies.

When they got close to each other, it stirred up waves of Qi; when one trembled, the other six followed by breathing out fire, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of scorched flesh.

The Elder of the village, holding a copper bell, was about to order them locked in the cellar when a soft chuckle suddenly came from behind.

”Yo, this temper is even more restless than the popcorn at my stall.”

Everyone turned around to see a young man wearing a faded Daoist robe leaning against a tree trunk, a foxtail grass in his mouth, smiling carelessly.

”Who are you?” the Elder demanded sternly.

”Just passing by to light a fire,” Zhang Xuanyi patted the tattered cloth on his shoulder, ”and incidentally treat the ’fire plague’ you have here.”

No one believed him.

Until he crouched down, dug a pit with his bare hands, moved stones to build a stove, formed a low circular platform with stones, and spread dry wood and moss in the middle.

He called it—a Fire Pit.

”Fire is not a sin, nor is it a god, and it should not be ’contained’ by anyone,” he stood by the pit, his voice not loud, yet it suppressed all other noise. ”It is something that grows within your body, just like a heartbeat, breathing, or dreaming. The more you try to lock it away, the more it wants to explode.”

The children opened their eyes wide, and one asked in a low voice: ”Then... what should we do?”

Zhang Xuanyi took out a pottery bowl from his bosom, scooped half a bowl of mountain spring water, and handed it over: ”Hold a mouthful of water, sit by the pit. Close your eyes, imagine the flame breathing in your throat, but do not let it out. Let it burn, and do not run; let it jump, and do not suppress it. Remember—fire is not afraid of people; it is afraid of being treated like a monster.”

The first night, six people coughed up blood, and one fainted.

Zhang Xuanyi kept watch all night, using the heavenly eye mung beans to clearly see the trajectory of the fire Qi running wild in their bodies, personally adjusting their sitting posture and breathing rhythm.

By the second half of the night, someone finally had a stable red glow in their throat, like a furnace core smoldering.

The second night, five people successfully controlled the fire.

The embers in the pit were not extinguished, and at dawn, they spontaneously reignited, rising with a wisp of golden flame.

The third night, the seven sat together by the pit, seven lines of fire surged from their throats and merged into the Fire Pit, neither overflowing nor dispersing, like stars returning to their positions.

Zhang Xuanyi smiled.

He opened the last bottle of Pseudo-Three Caves True Qi Concentrate and dripped it into the spring water at the bottom of the pit.

The water rippled slightly, creating waves like golden scales.

”Whoever boils this pot of water first tomorrow,” he clapped his hands and stood up, turning to leave, his back lazy yet determined, ”will be the Pit Master.”

No one asked where he came from or where he was going.

Only that Fire Pit burned quietly in the depths of the mountains, becoming the first place of wild fire that relied on no Legacy, depended on no School, and gathered only by voluntary will.

Meanwhile, above the East Sea, the sound of the tide was like thunder.

Su Qingzhu stood on the deck of a rusty fishing boat, the sea breeze tousling her short hair.

She had just finished showing a video—in the depths of the sea, a School of fish swam slowly around the flame in a fisherman’s palm, even actively laying eggs on the warm reef, forming a flowing ”fire ring ecosystem.”

”This is not destruction; it is symbiosis,” her voice was calm and sharp. ”You say we are disrupting the ecosystem? But have you ever looked into their eyes? That is trust.”

The hundred or so fishermen below were silent for a long time, then suddenly someone lit a fire in their palm, followed by a second, a third... finally, the entire fishing port was brightly lit.

She named this ship ”Power Of Will” and announced the establishment of the ”Fire Pit Governance Association,” issuing the thirteen articles of the ”Wild Fire Convention.”

The first article read: Fire does not leave the hand, does not leave the heart, and does not harm life.

That night, a hundred fishing boats simultaneously lit the fire in their palms, and the surface of the sea looked like a starry river inverted.

The official monitoring ship approached to investigate, and the radar captured abnormal energy fluctuations, but it could never define them—they were neither offensive spells nor pollution sources.

In the end, they could only return silently.

Meanwhile, in the city underground, Cui Wujiu was kneeling at the end of a tunnel in an abandoned subway station.

He used a red-hot iron rod dipped in fire-starting mud to draw diagrams of breathing rhythms on the wall.

A dozen or so homeless people sat in a circle, their chests heaving, trying to make the flickering flame inside their bodies keep up with the rhythm of their heartbeats.

”Fire is not afraid of being poor; it is afraid of being stifled,” he said, his voice hoarse.

During the practice, a young girl lost control, and the flame shot straight along the drainage pipe towards the gas valve.

At the critical moment, Cui Wujiu threw himself forward, using his Physical Body to block the fire, his shoulder instantly turning charred and curled.

He didn’t cry out in pain, just shook his head gently: ”When it hurts, you know the boundaries.”

Seven days later, the first batch of ”Fire Keepers” was born.

They began to spontaneously patrol the underground pipe network, extinguish ownerless wild fires, and guide newcomers into training.

One by one, hidden ”Dark Fire Corridors” quietly took shape within the city’s Bloodline.

The news spread like the wind.

One morning, Zhang Xuanyi stopped his e-bike outside a border town.

He touched the vibrating communication talisman in his bosom, unfolded it, and looked at it, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly.

It contained only one sentence: ”Southwest Fire Pit, there are children who have kept the fire seed alive for three consecutive days and can pass it to others.”

Chapter 118 Fire Boils the Human World, Human Hearts as Fuel

The e-bike traced an arc in the dust of the border market, Zhang Xuanyi dismounted, the burnt-edged tattered cloth on his shoulder swaying gently in the wind.

He didn’t return to the southwest, nor did he go to report back; instead, he crouched in the center of the market and set up a black pot, the bottom of the pot rusty, looking like an old object dug out of a scrap heap.

”The last pot,” he muttered to himself, opening the pottery jar in his bosom and pouring out amber syrup—this was the raw liquid of the fist soul candy, which had once allowed countless ordinary people to unleash Grandmaster Fist Intent within an hour.

But this time, he shook a small pinch of ash from his sleeve, ink-red like the remnants of a fire, which was the ash from the first Fire Pit in the southwest that had not been extinguished for three years.

He scooped a ladle of mountain spring water and poured it in, with a gurgle, the syrup churned, actually rippling with golden-red waves, and a scorching sweet fragrance suddenly filled the air.

The children came following the scent, gathering in a circle, their eyes wide with longing.

”Eat,” Zhang Xuanyi grinned, scooping up a spoonful and handing it out. ”It’s not hot, just makes your heart beat faster and your legs a bit weak; throw a couple of punches and you’ll be fine.”

The first child bit into the candy, and their eyes widened suddenly—the next instant, a small fist swung out, the wind of the fist wrapped in crimson flames, condensing into a half-inch fire snake in the air, hissing as it darted over the bamboo plaque in front of the stall, burning a piece of talisman paper into flying ash.

The whole place was silent.

Immediately after, a scramble broke out.

A dozen or so children scrambled for the syrup, their fists and feet moving unconsciously, and the flames actually took shape with their Moves: a tiger pounce brought waves of fire, a crushing punch exploded with sparks, and even the thinnest little girl kicked out, and the bluestone beneath her feet cracked with scorched lines.

The ground of the market trembled faintly, as if the sleeping Earth’s veins had been awakened.

A reporter rushed forward, the microphone almost shoved into his face: ”Zhang Xuanyi! You are mass-producing combat power! Are these children going to the battlefield in the future? Do you want to build an army of superhumans?”

Zhang Xuanyi lazily licked the residual syrup from the corner of his mouth and looked up at the sky.

The moon was just rising, and its clear light sprinkled over the seething crowd, like a layer of thin frost covering a raging fire.

He smiled and shook his head.

”I am teaching them—” his voice was not loud, but it suppressed all the clamor, ”Fire can warm a meal, and it can also burn a meal. Which one to choose is a matter of the human heart.”

As the words fell, a cheer suddenly erupted from a village on hundred-year-old permafrost twenty miles away.

The surveillance footage hadn’t been transmitted back yet, but the Spiritual Qi fluctuations had already alarmed the monitoring stations of three provinces: a ten-year-old shepherd boy was holding fire in his palm, walking on snow, and wherever he passed, the hard ice turned soft like pastry, and gurgling clear springs gushed from the ground.

That was this land, unsealing in the dead of winter for the first time in three thousand years.

That night at midnight, the moon was round like a mirror.

The Fire Pits in Seventeen City changed simultaneously.

The flames no longer burned upwards, but spread along the ground, like crimson rivers flowing upstream, quietly connecting along mountain ridges, riverbeds, and subway tunnels.

The firelight was not blazing, but deep like breathing, as if the meridians of the earth had been re-lit.

Su Qingzhu stood on the deck of the ”Power Of Will,” watching the fire streams on the sea echo the fire veins on land, her pupils slightly constricted.

She suddenly grabbed the communicator: ”Cui Wujiu! Do you see it? This is not spontaneous resonance—it is synchronization! Someone is guiding it!”

The channel crackled with static, and it was a long time before a hoarse response came.

”I see it... I am at the peak of the Qinling Mountains.”

The video connected, and the camera shook violently.

Cui Wujiu stood on the highest cliff, the cold wind tearing at his tattered robe.

He held a charred stone slab in his hands, its surface engraved with ancient fire patterns—it was the fragment of the mountain root stone that had shattered at the site of the first ignition three years ago.

At this moment, new characters were slowly appearing on the stone surface, burning bright like blood patterns: The Fire Pit is the meridian, the human heart is the furnace.

Before either of them could speak, a crimson line suddenly cracked open in the distant sky—starting from the southwest, traversing north and south, like the earth opening a burning eye.

In that instant, the global Spiritual Qi monitoring network collectively failed.

And Zhang Xuanyi stood by the embers of the border market, watching the fire scar that pierced heaven and earth, finally putting away his playfulness, and gently stroked the burnt edge of the tattered cloth stall on his shoulder.

Only the next morning, someone delivered a rubbing map formed by connecting the coordinates of the Fire Pits in Seventeen City, saying it had been hanging on the wall of the newly built School at the site of the first ignition for a whole year.

The scroll was unfolded, shaped like a prairie fire, and also like a never-before-seen—Free Fire Map.