The wind and snow did not cease; the night was far from over.
That night, three figures reached the Absolute Cold Plains at the northernmost edge of the Nine Provinces—a place where, legend said, even the Flame God's footsteps had once been extinguished. The blind girl A Mian suddenly stopped. Her bronze pot trembled faintly, and the words "Fire belongs to the people" peeled away from its base of their own accord, becoming flecks of light that scattered through the wind and snow like stardust.
"They're about to scatter," she said softly.
The boy Nian Hui gripped his bamboo slips and raised his head. "It's time."
The old man lifted his lamp. Its flame swayed faintly, as though a thousand words hovered unspoken. In the end, he merely tilted the lamp gently—
The blue flame within the lamp became countless seeds of fire, falling like stars from the sky, drifting on the wind into wastelands, deep valleys, frozen rivers, abandoned villages, lonely houses, ruined temples...
Each seed of fire that touched the ground kindled no great blaze. It merely lay dormant like a faint spark, quietly awaiting its moment.
"This is no longer 'our fire,'" the old man said. "This is 'their fire.'"
"Seeds of fire are like stars. They vie neither with the light of heaven nor with the sun and moon. Only in the darkest night do they tell the world—you are not alone in the cold."
The three figures exchanged silent glances, then slowly sat cross-legged in the snow, letting the wind and snow cover them. Like three stone statues, they gradually became one with the wasteland.
They traveled no farther.
They had become part of the seeds of fire.
Spring came, and the snow melted.
Across the Nine Provinces, strange phenomena appeared one after another:
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