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

195: The blue veins on the bottom of the pot lit up on their own.The night in the Northwest was cold enough to gnaw at one’s bones.

Inside the kitchen of the border village primary school, the wind crept in through the cracks in the wall, carrying sand grains that tapped against the tin chimney with a faint, crisp sound.

The child on duty crouched before the stove, their frostbitten little hands stuffing the last handful of camel thorn into the furnace. The dry wood crackled, but before the fire could even ignite, the bottom of the pot lit up first.

A ring of green patterns appeared, glowing faintly.

It looked as if someone had drawn a circle on the bottom of the iron pot with extremely pale ink, slowly spreading out like rippling water.

The old cook, who was scooping rice, suddenly froze. He rubbed his cloudy eyes, but when he looked again, the green patterns had vanished. Only for a fleeting moment, as steam rose, did a short arc form on the bottom of the pot before disappearing instantly.

His heart skipped a beat.

That arc... it was too similar.

It was so much like the first light that appeared when the yellow paper caught fire on the stall of the young Daoist who, ten years ago, used to carry a canvas bag and sell Talismans with a grin.

”Could it be the Kitchen God manifesting?” he muttered, his voice kept extremely low, fearing he might disturb something.

But the children just giggled as they added firewood and blew on the flames; no one looked up, and no one asked any questions.

To them, this was just another morning where the water would boil a little faster.

The teacher had taught them: ”Cut the meat three times, turn the firewood seven times, and whisper ’Time to cook’ while blowing on the fire.” They followed the instructions, and the fire appeared; it was as simple as that.

No one found it strange.

Just as no one would ask why the sun rises.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, deep in the heart of the city’s concrete jungle, on the third underground level, lay the core secret chamber of the Power Of Will Archives.

Su Qingzhu stood before the resonance induction platform, her fingertips gently brushing over a tattered piece of yellow paper.

That was the original piece of photocopy yellow paper, part of the first batch of goods Zhang Xuanyi sold when he first set up his stall at the foot of Mount Longhu.

Now, the ink was mottled, the edges weathered like dry leaves, and even the outline of the Talisman was blurred.

It should have been nothing more than dust of history, sealed away at the very bottom of the ”Elementary” anomalous item filing cabinet.

But she didn’t believe it.

She always felt that this piece of paper wasn’t dead yet.

The technician shook his head: ”The energy is zero, the frequency is silent, and even the molecular structure is decaying; it’s impossible to reactivate.”

Su Qingzhu didn’t speak; she simply laid the yellow paper flat on the induction platform, her movements so light as if she were afraid of waking an old dream.

The instrument screen remained dead silent.

Until the duty officer rushed in, clutching a report on thermal anomalies: ”Seventeen border villages have reported non-natural temperature increases in their stoves within the same minute, lasting for seven seconds. The peak temperature is highly similar to the residual fluctuations of ’Pseudo-Three Caverns True Qi Liquid’... but there are no traces of spellcasting or human intervention at the scene.”

She took the report, her gaze sweeping over the seventeen red dots on the map, and suddenly paused.

Her fingers trembled slightly.

She remembered something.

She leaned over slowly and gently placed the weathered yellow paper over the report.

One second. Two seconds. Suddenly—

A faint, pale glow appeared on the surface of the paper. It wasn’t the reappearance of the Talisman, nor was it a return of energy; rather, the entire sheet began to peel away, as if ignited from within by an invisible fire.

The ashes fell softly, piling up on the metal surface into a ring of fine dust. The edges were uneven, yet they perfectly overlapped with the locations of the seventeen villages marked in the report.

Her breath hitched.

At that moment, she heard something waking up.

It wasn’t the System, nor was it a Divine Ability, but a deeper, long-silenced resonance.

It was as if... the phrase ”Time to cook” that simultaneously echoed in the hearts of thousands of people had finally been understood by the earth.

She looked up abruptly at the national Power Of Will base frequency monitoring chart hanging on the wall.

The previously steady curve was now trembling slightly, with seventeen nodes pulsing in synchronization. The frequency was eerily stable—with a deviation of no more than 0.03 seconds from the waveform of a syllable unconsciously uttered by a newborn seven days ago.

She suddenly understood.

Those children weren’t imitating a ritual.

They were instinctively repeating a rhythm that had long been embedded in their Bloodline.

And what Zhang Xuanyi did back then was never about ”bestowing fire.”

He taught the fire to find people on its own.

Deep in the Gobi Desert, the wind finally tore off the last withered branch.

A scrap of blue cloth spun into the cellar, piling up into a small cone between the cracks of the frozen earth, resembling a miniature altar.

The night was cold as a blade, and the air was stagnant.

Then—a tiny, deep blue flame silently shot up.

There were no sparks, no sound of burning firewood, and not even any heat.

The fire seemed to have ”grown” out of thin air, as if the air itself had suddenly remembered how to burn.

The flame remained motionless—not warm, not extinguishing, not flickering—it only quietly illuminated a blurred fingerprint on the wall.

That was the starting gesture for ”Equalizing Objects and Qi Gathering” that Zhang Xuanyi had carved into the mud wall with his finger when he took shelter here three years ago.

Now, it had been mostly worn away by wind and sand, leaving only a crooked arc and a small bump.

The firelight shone upon it for seven breaths before extinguishing.

The entire process went unwitnessed.

But at that very instant, faint green patterns appeared simultaneously on the bottoms of seventeen pots.

Su Qingzhu stood before the observation platform, her fingertips still resting on the edge of that ring of ash.

She slowly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she opened them, there were no ripples in her eyes.

”Seal all public opinion reports regarding ’spontaneous stove ignition’,” she said, her voice calm yet unquestionable.

The assistant was stunned: ”But this is a major anomaly! If reported, it could trigger a nationwide wave of faith, and the government would intervene...”

She didn’t turn back; she simply pulled up the terminal interface and entered a string of encrypted commands.

The screen flickered, revealing a previously undisclosed database entry—the National Child Language Acquisition Record, with real-time waveform sampling, covering thirty-two thousand kindergartens and village primary schools.

The Power Of Will Archives in the dead of night was like a sleeping giant that hadn’t closed its eyes.

Su Qingzhu stood before the observation platform, her fingertips still resting on the edge of that ring of ash, as if she were afraid that if she let go, the whole world would forget what had just happened.

Her breathing was light, but her heartbeat was so heavy it felt like it was about to burst out of her chest.

It wasn’t fear, but a confirmation bordering on fate—something had awakened, no longer a fire lit by people, but the Dao that had learned to breathe on its own.

The assistant remained standing at the doorway, his voice trembling: ”Director Su, this is a major anomaly! Seventeen villages heating up simultaneously, source-less thermal energy, synchronized frequencies, even the national anomaly monitoring network caught the abnormal fluctuations... If this leaks, the media will go crazy, the public will kneel, and the government won’t be able to suppress the tide of faith! Why aren’t we reporting it?”

She finally turned around, her gaze like a cold moon shining on a snowfield.

”Because to report it is to kill it,” she said, her voice not loud, yet like a blade cutting through fog. ”Do you think this is a ’miracle’? No, this is a rebirth.”

She turned and pulled up the terminal interface, her fingers diving through layers of encryption until finally, a database entry that had never been made public appeared—the National Child Language Acquisition Record: Real-time Waveform Sampling System.

The data streams from thirty-two thousand kindergartens and village primary schools poured down like a galaxy; every childish ”Mama” or ”Time to eat” was silently recorded, analyzed, and archived.

She entered the keywords: [Ignite Fire], [Cook Meal], [Pot is Hot], [Fire is Here].

The filtering criteria were locked: within five seconds before and after the moment of pronunciation, a source-less temperature increase event occurred within a five-kilometer radius (temperature difference ≥ 3°C, duration ≤ 10 seconds).

The progress bar advanced slowly. 97%... 98%... 99%... It finally settled—

937 valid voice samples, of which 321 were precisely matched with micro-thermal anomalies, with a deviation of no more than 0.05 seconds.

What was even more eerie was that these children had unrelated family backgrounds, were geographically dispersed, and had no records of any anomalous Bloodline.

They had simply... said something completely ordinary. It was as natural as eating or drinking water.

Su Qingzhu closed her eyes, and the noise from the foot of Mount Longhu ten years ago suddenly echoed in her ears—Zhang Xuanyi squatting behind a tattered stall, cracking melon seeds while shouting: ”heavenly eye mung beans, two-fifty a pack! Fist Soul Candy, limited to three per person!” Back then, people laughed at him for being a Jianghu con artist, until the first piece of photocopy yellow paper exploded with blood-colored Talisman patterns in the hands of the Old Ancestor of Quanxing.

But what about now?

She opened her eyes, the blue light of the scrolling data waterfall reflected in her pupils, and she softly uttered: ”It’s not that we are recording the fire... it’s the fire that is learning to speak human language.”

The moment her words fell, an alarm on the top floor of the archives suddenly tore through the silence!

Red light flashed, the buzzing was ear-piercing, and the monitoring matrix automatically popped up a real-time feed from a fishing village on the southeast coast: a rusty, abandoned iron pot sat alone on the stone steps of the pier, with no one around.

The sea wind howled, and waves crashed against the reefs. But just as the third alarm sounded—the green patterns on the bottom of the pot appeared once again.

Once, twice, three times. Each time it lasted for seven breaths, with an interval of exactly twelve seconds, the rhythm as stable as a metronome.

Su Qingzhu’s pupils constricted. This was no coincidence. This was memory.

She abruptly pulled up Zhang Xuanyi’s action log from seven years ago on a fishing boat in the East Sea—that time, to save trapped fishermen, he had used photocopy yellow paper to temporarily draw a stove and ignite a fire. The tune he hummed while cutting taro was a variation of ”Village Primary School Recess Exercises,” and the rhythm of his chopping was exactly: three short, one long, a two-beat pause, and then three short. It was identical to the frequency of this spontaneously igniting iron pot.

The camera zoomed in, and the surveillance footage shook. A five-year-old boy was crouching in front of the pot, wearing a washed-out school uniform, imitating the tone of the village broadcast with his milky voice: ”The fire is here—”

As his voice fell, steam erupted from the bottom of the pot, twisting and rising into the night sky, and it actually condensed into half of a broken character: ”An”. The strokes were crooked, like a dying message written by someone with their last ounce of strength.

A gust of sea wind blew, and it scattered.

Su Qingzhu stared fixedly at the screen, her fingertips ice-cold. She knew what that character was supposed to be. It was ”An”. It was also ”An”. And it was the number of the very first photocopy yellow paper Zhang Xuanyi had stuck to the corner of his stall years ago, half of which had been torn by the wind—AN-001.

She slowly raised her hand and pressed the highest authority for the Global Silence Protocol. ”Seal all images, clear related logs, and mark it as ’weather interference false alarm’.”

”Yes!” the assistant hurriedly replied.

She didn’t speak again, just stared out the window. The night sky was starless, but seventeen house lights flickered slightly at the same moment, like some silent response, or perhaps a whisper crossing form and spirit.

Deep in the mountains of the Southwest, in a primary school that hadn’t yet been connected to the internet, a first-grade child was doodling on a slate with a charcoal stick. The teacher passed by during patrol, glanced casually, and their footsteps suddenly froze—the crooked lines were actually outlining a... familiar Talisman silhouette.