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

153: If you don’t look for me, I will look for youThe morning sea breeze, carrying a salty, fishy tang, whipped against his face as Zhang Xuanyi stepped onto the gravel road and entered the fishing town.

Dawn had just broken, yet the market was already bustling; fishing boats were docking, fishermen were shouting as they unloaded cargo, and street vendors were setting up stoves to simmer seafood porridge.

He wrapped his old Daoist robe tighter around himself, its cuffs worn white, the soles of his shoes caked with that persistent pinch of ash—it followed his shadow as if it had a life of its own.

Yet, amidst this mundane bustle of daily life, he suddenly came to a halt.

In a corner, a group of people were squatting, dressed in rags, draped in tattered sacks, their faces sallow, yet their eyes were unnaturally clear.

They clutched sealed glass jars tightly to their chests, filled with ashes of various colors: golden-brown, dark red, ink-black, and even some shimmering with a ghostly blue luster.

One of them suddenly coughed violently, curling up on the ground and shivering, teeth chattering as if invaded by an extreme cold.

Without a word, a companion beside him unscrewed his own jar, grabbed a small pinch of golden-brown ash, and gently sprinkled it into his palm.

In an instant, a fine, Talisman-like golden thread spread from the lines of his palm, instantly covering his entire arm.

The man’s body shuddered, his coughing ceased abruptly, and the trembling slowly subsided, leaving only heavy breathing and the look of someone who had just survived a disaster in his eyes.

Zhang Xuanyi’s pupils constricted.

He walked forward slowly, crouching down until he was barely three inches from the pile of ash.

Before his fingertips could touch it, his Divine Sense probed it—that lingering trace of aura made his heart jump violently.

”Is this... ash from burning photocopy yellow paper?”

Impossible!

That thing should have dissipated long ago when the System collapsed.

It was the first exotic treasure he had sold when he first set up his Myriad Laws Street Stall at the foot of Mount Longhu, a crude Magical Artifact that copied one Talisman into three; it didn’t even count as true Qi, purely a ”shortcut to sorcery” forged by borrowing the power of the System.

Yet the ash before him, despite having been burned and passed around many times, still retained a trace of a familiar spiritual trajectory—it was the remnant of the very ”Myriad Laws Seal” he had stamped by hand back then!

”Where did you get this?” he asked the group in a low voice.

No one answered.

An old man raised his cloudy eyes and shook his head: ”No one gave it to us. It was a dream... In the dream, someone told us to dig. Under the old locust tree outside the village, three feet deep, red soil wrapped around an earthenware jar.”

”Others dreamed of ash seeping from the cracks in the ancestral hall floor tiles,” another young man added. ”As long as you believe, you can see it.”

Zhang Xuanyi froze.

It wasn’t a Legacy, not a teaching of Dharma, nor was anyone manipulating it from behind the scenes.

They found it themselves, believed in it themselves, and used it themselves.

And this ash... had already learned how to ”live” in the human world.

He slowly stood up, gazing at the rolling waves in the distance, a storm rising in his heart.

He had once thought he had only lit a cluster of fire, which would extinguish as soon as the wind blew.

But now he understood—once the spark landed, it no longer belonged to anyone.

It would take root on its own, spread on its own, and even... evolve on its own.

Just like this pinch of ash by his feet, still clinging to his shoe sole, as docile as ever, yet as stubborn as a vow.

It was not a tool, nor was it power. It was the ”beginning.”

Meanwhile, deep in the mountains of the Southwest, night had fallen.

Su Qingzhu stood by the bonfire in the center of the village, her voice recorder quietly running in her hand.

Surrounded by villagers in a circle, the village elder brought out an ancient earthenware jar, its mouth sealed with wax and red cloth, marked with a crooked yet solemn ”Xiaoyao Token” symbol.

”A hundred years ago, a Daoist passed through here and fell ill in the wind and rain,” the elder’s voice was old and raspy. ”Before leaving, he left behind a bag of ash, saying, ’If the cold plague rises again, burn this to warm people’s hearts.’ We have worshiped it ever since, calling it the ’talking ash’.”

The sound of drums suddenly erupted, and the earthenware jar was opened.

The moment the ash fell into the raging fire, the flames suddenly soared several meters into the air, tongues of fire twisting and spiraling, actually coalescing into a blurred human figure—slender, Daoist robes fluttering, the face vaguely resembling a youth, lips opening and closing as if whispering.

The entire scene fell silent.

Su Qingzhu held her breath and quietly pressed the playback button.

The recording was filled with static, but when she pulled up the spectrum analyzer, a very low-frequency sound wave appeared, almost below the limit of human hearing.

She put on her headphones, repeatedly filtering out the noise...

Finally, a youthful yet clear voice pierced her eardrums:

”Don’t be afraid... fire is not a thing...”

Her breathing stopped.

She had heard this sentence countless times in the archives.

Six years ago, the little girl that Zhang Xuanyi saved had said exactly this as her first words after waking up from a three-day coma.

At the time, no one understood what it meant, assuming it was just a child’s delirious ramblings.

But now, it had actually reappeared from the fire ignited by century-old ash?

She looked up sharply at the phantom, her heart struck like thunder.

This was not a manifestation of a spirit.

This was a resonance of memory.

It was the belief of millions of people that allowed a phrase long dissipated to be reborn in the fire.

Meanwhile, in the Northwest wilderness, a wild wind whipped sand and gravel against the earth.

Zhang Xuanyi knelt on the frozen earth, his hands digging into the hard crust.

Below, a broken bronze Talisman shard was half-buried in the rock layer; it was the remains of the pulse Talisman left behind after Cui Wujiu died in battle years ago.

But now, it was wrapped in countless golden threads that delved deep into the ground, like a neural network woven by a living creature, leading straight to the Earth’s core heat source.

Even more bizarrely, a dynamic map appeared on the surface of the Talisman shard—seventeen points of light flickering across the globe, in perfect rhythm, like a heartbeat.

He reached out to take it.

Hum—

The fragment shook violently, and a stream of consciousness slammed into his mind:

”I am not a tool, I am a thread; if you do not seek me, I will seek you.”

Before the words faded, the entire land slightly warmed.

In the distance, the sand dunes moved without wind, sand churning and rising, actually piling themselves into the shape of a nameless stele, its surface as smooth as a mirror, as if waiting for an inscription.

Zhang Xuanyi stood up and looked toward the Southeast.

The spark no longer needed a master.

It was looking for a new vessel—the heart of a Mortal.

Several days later, Su Qingzhu boarded the train home. The city lights drew near, neon reflecting off the crowds in the streets.

She paused briefly at the station exit, her gaze sweeping over a small street corner stall.

Suddenly, her steps faltered.

An inconspicuous shop had a wooden sign hanging in front of it, the handwriting sloppy yet striking:

”Authentic Xiaoyao Ash · Limited Sale”

The stall owner was a man wearing a mask, showing the ashes in a jar to the surrounding crowd, boasting that it ”originated from the secret transmission of Mount Longhu” and could ward off evil, avoid disaster, clear meridians, and open apertures.

She narrowed her eyes and slowly approached.

At this moment, she did not know that the voice recorder in the inner pocket of her backpack was growing slightly warm.

Su Qingzhu stood at the neon-lit street corner, the cold wind carrying the city’s distinct smell of metal and exhaust fumes rushing toward her.

She stared at that crooked wooden sign—”Authentic Xiaoyao Ash · Limited Sale”—and a cold sneer tugged at the corner of her mouth.

Six years ago, when she was still a reporter, she had grown accustomed to such scammers who used the ”Other” craze to make money.

But this time, it was different.

She pulled down her hat, put on a mask, and blended into the crowd.

The stall owner was a gaunt man with shifty eyes, rambling incessantly: ”This ash comes from the secret transmission of Mount Longhu, passed down by the direct lineage of the Tianshi Mansion! One pinch in water, and a hundred illnesses will retreat! Sold in packs of three, first come, first served!” He held up a glass jar containing dark red powder that shimmered with an eerie, oily sheen under the LED lights.

Su Qingzhu calmly took out her phone, scanned the code to pay, and bought the smallest portion.

The moment her fingertips touched the packaging bag, a pungent smell of industrial solvent drilled into her nostrils.

She sneered inwardly: It was nothing more than rust mixed with dye and a bit of talcum powder.

She flashed her law enforcement badge, her voice cold: ”Routine inspection by the Market Supervision Administration, please cooperate.”

The crowd erupted and scattered; the stall owner’s face changed drastically, and he turned to flee. Just then—

”Don’t touch it!” a hoarse cry exploded.

An old woman with white hair rushed out of the crowd, her withered, thin hands clutching the bag of ash she had just confiscated, like a mother beast protecting her young.

Tears rolled down her deeply lined cheeks: ”This is what my son left before he died! He saved seven people in a fire... Before he breathed his last, he clutched this bag of ash and said—’Mom, don’t be afraid... fire is not a thing... it recognizes me.’”

Su Qingzhu froze.

That sentence rang like thunder in her ears.

She slowly crouched down, her trembling hands unwrapping the packaging.

There was no pungent smell of industrial dust; instead, a faint, almost imperceptible scent of charred fragrance escaped.

Deep within the ashes, she saw a small piece of charred cloth fiber—worn, damaged, yet bearing a familiar pattern.

That was... a corner of the cloth from the Myriad Laws Street Stall.

The tattered cloth that Zhang Xuanyi had laid out at the foot of Mount Longhu had turned to ash when the System collapsed, yet a trace of the residue had drifted into the human world, picked up by some nameless person, cherished, passed down, and finally became the last faith in the heart of an ordinary mother.

She silently closed the package, re-wrapped it with her notebook, and gently stuffed it back into the old woman’s hands: ”Come back next time to exchange it for new ones; I know where you can get them.”

The old woman froze, a glimmer of light reflecting in her cloudy eyes.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away at a steel scrap factory in the South, night fog blanketed the area.

Zhang Xuanyi crouched at the bottom of a cooling pool, the rusted gas pipeline leaving mottled iron filings on his palm.

The sensor showed that remnants of Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid had been buried here, and now a layer of crystalline fire film had grown on the inside of the pipe wall, its faint red light flickering like a pulse, continuously releasing heat and nourishing the surrounding moss and fungi—this was the ”fire” evolving on its own, breaking free from control, and beginning to feed back into the ecosystem.

Suddenly, children’s laughter came through a broken window.

Several disheveled teenagers were squatting below the pipeline, using magnets to collect the falling metal filings.

One of them suddenly jumped up: ”Look! This iron powder is gathering into a Talisman on its own!”

Zhang Xuanyi approached, his pupils shrinking.

Those iron filings, far from being chaotic in the magnetic field, had spontaneously arranged themselves into an extremely precise circular structure—with twelve hexagram positions on the outer ring and an embedded Yin and Yang fish eye, it was clearly the manifestation of a miniature ”reverse fate altering compass”!

Yet the children were just laughing and playing with it, taking photos and posting short videos, with the caption: ”Found some dancing magic iron!”

He stood in the shadows, watching those ignorant and happy figures, a storm raging in his heart.

His stall was long gone, and the System was shattered, yet these things... were still growing, still spreading, still changing.

The wind swept through the abandoned factory, blowing the corner of his tattered Daoist robe.

The last speck of dust belonging to the ”stall owner” on his shoulder quietly drifted away.

Several days later, at the end of the ancient plateau road, the lone lamp at the post station had not yet gone out.

The fire pit was still burning, firewood neatly stacked, as if the owner had just left.

On a bamboo pole by the door, half of an unfinished old Daoist robe still hung.