The morning mist had yet to clear from the Southern Sea Fishing Port, but a small queue had already formed outside the Guardian Lamp Shop.
There were seven children, ranging from five to ten years old, dressed in coarse cloth and straw sandals crusted with sea salt. Each held an empty ceramic lamp—some were old keepsakes left by grandmothers, some were rough vessels their mothers had shaped from clay, and others were merely broken lamp fragments picked up on the beach, carefully bound with hemp cord and brought before Xiaoman.
"We want to learn Lighting the Lamp." The girl at the front lifted her face, her voice clear and bright. "Grandma said that when the lamp goes out, the soul scatters. I don't want her light to disappear."
Xiaoman crouched to meet her eyes and gently took the broken lamp fragments, brushing his fingertips over the cracks. "A lamp may break, but its light must never be severed. Are you willing to guard it?"
"We are!" the children answered in unison, their voices startling the seabirds roosting beneath the eaves.
At that moment, the Silver-Flame Ceramic Lamp above the Guardian Lamp Shop's doorway, lit by Shouyi's soul-shadow, suddenly flickered and cast a soft halo, like moonlight falling to earth, gently embracing the children within it.
—This was the opening of the "Tale of the Lamp Guarders."
From that day onward, the Guardian Lamp Shop formally accepted apprentices, setting no barriers and asking nothing of their backgrounds. It asked only one question: "Would you be willing to light a lamp for someone else in the darkness?"
Xiaoman taught them himself. The first lesson was neither an incantation nor a ritual, but "cleaning the lamp."
"A lamp isn't a tool. It's a companion." He held an old lamp covered in dust and