Year fifty-seven of the Firefolk Era, autumn evening.
The night in Ruin Abyss Alley was so quiet that one could hear dew sliding off the broom shoots.
As always, Granny Li washed her pot beside the well. The earthen pot had three cracks, mended with copper staples, and its bottom was soot-black—the mark of decades of hearth smoke and flame. As she washed, she hummed an old tune: "The hearth fire never dies, the pot never leaves the fire, and people never leave home."
Suddenly, the water left in the pot stirred.
She lowered her head—what the water reflected was not the moon above, but—the Heart Flame River.
A river of light surged from beneath the earth, passed through the veins of the Nine Provinces, flowed through a thousand household hearths, and finally converged in the reflection inside this battered pot. A faint glow even seeped through the cracks in its bottom, pulsing like breath.
"This pot..." She froze. "It actually holds the Heart Flame River?"
Carefully, she lifted the pot and set it on the well platform. The night deepened, the moon rose, and its clear radiance spilled down. The water in the pot was like a mirror, reflecting two images at once—the bright moon above and the Heart Flame River below.
"The Clay Pot Carries the Moon, with Heart Flame for its water." A He had appeared beside the well at some point, a Wandering Lantern in his hand. He said softly, "Granny Li, this pot has become a token."
"An old woman's battered pot can be a token too?"
"Precisely because it is battered, it is the truest of all." A He crouched and gently traced a crack in the rim with his fingertip. "It has held porridge, ferried people across, burned with fire, and remembered fragrance.