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

152: The stall owner has changedOn the twenty-first night after Qingming, the wind on the eastern foothills of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau scraped across the wilderness like a knife.

Outside the abandoned post station, the world was silent as death, with only the last cluster of sparks in the fire pit flickering faintly, caught between extinguishing and persisting.

Zhang Xuanyi remained sitting cross-legged there, having not moved for seven days.

His fingertips lightly tapped the pile of wood ash. The spot where the phantom of the miniature bronze pillar had just appeared had long since cooled, yet he could still perceive a faint tremor—not from the flames, but from deep within the earth’s veins, as if the very skeleton of the plateau was whispering.

”Open the Shop,” he murmured.

The ashes suddenly rippled, golden patterns oscillating outward from the center, then shattering into countless tiny runes, like paper money scattered by the wind, sinking into the soil in all directions.

The remnant of a folded corner of a photocopy yellow paper flashed by, a sliver of green light from a Heavenly Eye Mung Bean streaked past, and the paper-thin wrapper of a fist soul candy twisted into an arc in the air before finally disappearing.

Zhang Xuanyi’s pupils constricted slightly.

These... were all fragments of the rare treasures he had used?

But they should have dissipated along with the System’s binding.

Yet now, it was as if they had been awakened by something, transforming into wandering ”sparks” that seeped into the veins of the earth.

He slowly withdrew his hand, his palm stained with gray-black slag. A trace of warmth seeped from between his fingers—not the heat of fire, but a pulse like that of a living thing.

”You didn’t leave,” he chuckled, his voice hoarse, ”You dismantled yourself and buried it into the roots of this world.”

The Myriad Laws Street Stall System had never truly belonged to him.

It had merely used his hands to scatter the Dao of Xiaoyao.

And now, when a million people escaped danger relying on a photocopy yellow paper, when millions of eyes saw through conspiracies because of heavenly eye mung beans, when people in streets and alleys held fist soul candy to resist powerful enemies... all those Powers Of Will, obsessions, and desires for survival had settled, becoming new ”soil.”

The System was no longer a Golden Finger; it had become the foundation of the Dao.

He suddenly remembered what Su Qingzhu had said in the conference hall: ”What you need to manage is not the fire, but whether human hearts can believe in miracles once more.”

So she had understood all along.

And he himself was still obsessed with summoning back an existence that had already ascended to a higher dimension.

”Old partner,” he lowered his head and blew out the last spark. The moment the firelight extinguished in his eyes, it reflected a myriad of galaxies, ”You said I was a slacker, but actually, you’re lazier than me—you just abandoned your form entirely and became a part of the Heavenly Dao?”

As his words fell, the foundation of the entire post station trembled slightly.

The golden lines on the distant mountain ridges lit up once more, clearer than before, spreading like blood vessels and connecting scattered villages, broken roads, ruined bridges, and abandoned temples.

Wherever someone lit a fire, the golden lines grew brighter, as if some ancient network was reviving.

Zhang Xuanyi closed his eyes, no longer attempting to communicate with the System.

Meanwhile, on the edge of the North China Plain, a forgotten old industrial city was shrouded in mist.

Su Qingzhu had ridden a slow train all night. With an old canvas bag slung over her shoulder, her footsteps fell on streets interwoven with broken glass and rusted iron sheets.

This had once been a Qi energy testing ground for the Under Heaven Society. The towering cooling towers stood in the morning light like the skeletons of giant beasts, and graffiti on the walls read: ”Fire cannot be controlled, only passed on.”

She stopped in front of a grain and oil store that had been closed for many years.

A bit of warm light shone through the gap in the door.

It was not an electric light, nor was it a candle, but a nearly transparent flame, burning quietly. It emitted no smoke and no heat, yet simply looking at it made one’s heart feel inexplicably at peace.

She pushed the door open and went in.

In the center of a tin bucket, a handful of black ash mixed with broken glass burned quietly. Several children sat around it, the youngest curled up in the corner, cheeks frozen purple.

The leading girl looked up, her eyes clear: ”Big sister, do you want some ’Homecoming Ash’? We take turns bringing some with us.”

Su Qingzhu didn’t speak; she crouched down and looked at the bottom of the bucket.

There, carved with a charcoal stick, were three crooked characters—Xiaoyao Token.

Her breath hitched.

This was not a talisman from Tianshi Mansion, nor was it any officially recognized mark of supernatural arts.

But it was indeed functioning: the flames within those ashes were able to steadily release trace amounts of True Qi, dispelling cold and sustaining strength, with a duration far exceeding ordinary fuel.

She didn’t ask about the source.

She simply took off her coat in silence, spread it on the ground, and gently helped the youngest child up, letting him lean against her.

Outside, the wind and snow began to rise; inside, the firelight flickered slightly.

In that moment, she suddenly felt that the reports she had written and the truths she had exposed were perhaps never meant to change the world.

They were just to wait for this moment—to see how the fire could stand up on its own from the ruins.

Three weeks later, at the core substation of the North China power grid.

At 11:17 PM, the alarm System suddenly went silent.

The investigation team was preparing to install a ”Thermal Suppression Ring” under the main transformer—a military device capable of forcibly suppressing abnormal heat flows.

But just as the bracket was about to be fixed, all the instrument needles suddenly swung three notches counter-clockwise, and the data terminal automatically refreshed, displaying a line of undeletable handwriting:

”It has warmed people, so it can no longer be repaired as a machine.”

The scene fell into dead silence.

The team leader checked the wiring with trembling hands, only to discover a thread of extremely fine golden light seeping from the cable joint. It coiled around the suppression ring bracket like a living snake, melting it within seconds into an abstract fire lotus shape. The petals were layered, strikingly similar to the ”Diagram of Myriad Laws Returning to the Source” recorded in ancient books of Mount Longhu.

No one saw Zhang Xuanyi come by.

But a duty officer remembered that around 1:00 AM, the surveillance camera captured a figure in an old Daoist robe standing outside the wall, holding a pinch of ash in his hand and tossing it gently.

When the wind rose, the ash vanished, leaving only a golden afterglow that flowed along the underground cables toward the distance.

A few days later, Su Qingzhu returned to her city apartment.

In the parcel locker lay a package with no sender information. It was wrapped tightly in kraft paper, its edges already scorched, revealing carbonized fibers.

She opened it; inside was a notebook.

The cover was tattered, but five characters were vaguely visible: ”Myriad Laws Street Stall Transaction Record · Copy 07”

Her fingertips trembled slightly as she opened the first page—Su Qingzhu’s finger stopped on that yellowed photocopy, her fingertips trembling slightly.

The photo showed Zhang Xuanyi from three years ago, standing behind his street stall at the foot of Mount Longhu, that annoying, smug smile on his lips, holding up a photocopy yellow paper, with the stone steps and banners in the morning mist as the background.

Back then, she was just a rookie reporter chasing rumors about supernatural beings, secretly pressing the shutter just to record this ”Jianghu charlatan who spouted crazy nonsense but always made it come true.”

But who could have imagined that this candid photo would be copied into a scorched transaction record book, with a line of childish handwriting added on the back—

”You said the fire would come home, and I believed you.”

It was not printed or photocopied, but written stroke by stroke with a charcoal stick, like some kind of vow.

She slammed the notebook shut, her heart feeling as if it had been gripped by something.

Outside the window, the night rain suddenly began, drumming against the glass as if the world itself was urging her on.

She grabbed her coat and rushed into the rain, catching a taxi, transferring to a high-speed train, then switching to a rural bus, racing all the way to that small village in Southern Anhui that was almost forgotten by maps—the birthplace of the Cold Stove Festival, and also the place where she had first interviewed Zhang Xuanyi.

Just as dawn was breaking, she arrived at the village, treading along the muddy path.

But the sight before her made her pause.

Seventeen households, seventeen stove hearths, all extinguished.

No cooking smoke, no embers, even the eternal lamp in front of the Kitchen God shrine had gone out.

The village was eerily quiet, like an abandoned graveyard.

”Impossible...” she murmured, ”The Cold Stove Festival never runs out of fire; for a hundred years, it has always been ’the cold arrives but the flame does not extinguish’.”

Just as she was puzzled, the village chief walked out of the ancestral hall leaning on a cane. There was no sorrow on his face; instead, he wore a look of almost devout calmness.

”Comrade reporter, you’re here.” The old man handed over a coarse pottery jar, its gray-brown glaze covered in cracks, ”The children have taken the fire seeds to school.”

”Fire seeds? But inside this jar...”

She opened the jar, and a gentle, warm aura rushed toward her—formless and flameless, yet pulsing like breathing, as if a living thing were hidden within.

As the aura circulated, it faintly carried a familiar rhythm.

Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid!

Her pupils constricted sharply.

That was the forbidden item Zhang Xuanyi had used last; a single drop could allow one to briefly step into the Grandmaster realm, at the cost of burning Lifespan.

Yet at this moment, it existed in a different form, condensed but not dissipating, warm but not intense, as if reshaped by some kind of collective will.

”This is not fire,” she said softly.

”Indeed,” the village chief looked toward the school in the distance, his eyes profound, ”Fire needs wood to burn, but ’faith’ does not. As long as there are people willing to pass it on, it can travel on its own.”

Su Qingzhu stood frozen in place.

So they no longer relied on the System, no longer waited for gods to descend.

They themselves had become the vessels for the fire seeds.

Meanwhile, on the cliff of Mount Longhu, the wind cut like a knife.

Zhang Xuanyi stood alone before the thousand-step stone gate, behind him a churning sea of clouds, and before him the Forbidden Ground of the Tianshi Mansion, which had been closed for three hundred years.

He took out the last remnant from his bosom—a piece of charcoal embedded with rag fibers, the only ”bone” that hadn’t seeped into the earth when the System dissipated.

He crouched down and gently placed it on the stone steps.

”Old partner, one last time opening the door, can you do it?”

As his words fell, the charcoal suddenly ignited on its own.

The flames rose, but there was no heat, nor did they singe his clothes; instead, they twisted and extended in the air, transforming into a vast scene—

Thousands of ordinary people holding stove ash walked through cities and countryside: in a subway station, a delivery worker quietly slipped a pinch of ash into a colleague’s pocket; on the podium of a mountain elementary school, a teacher pinched the ashes to draw the ”Xiaoyao Token” on the blackboard; on an ocean fishing boat, an old deckhand scattered a handful of warm ash into the sea breeze...

With every step taken, fleeting marks appeared on the ground, as if the earth were responding.

The Xiaoyao Token took root everywhere.

The scene dissipated, and from the crack in the stone gate came a very faint sigh, so ancient it seemed to have traveled through three centuries.

Immediately following, a barely perceptible golden light spilled from the crack in the door, disappearing in an instant.

The Seal... had loosened a fraction.

Zhang Xuanyi stood up and turned to leave.

In that very instant, there was a slight warmth by his feet.

He looked down—that pinch of ash was slowly moving, following along the soles of his shoes like a Spirit Beast that had recognized its master, or like a heart that refused to stop beating.

He froze, then smiled: ”You’re still following me?”

The ashes did not answer, but simply stayed quietly against his shadow, like a vow.

In the distance, the sea breeze began to rise, blowing across the cliff and curling toward the southeast.