Year twenty of the Firefolk Era, the summer solstice.
A great drought gripped the Nine Provinces, leaving a thousand miles of scorched earth.
In the northern borderlands, windblown sand blotted out the sun. In the Western Desert, heat waves scorched cities. The Eastern Sea's tides withdrew a hundred miles, exposing sand like bare bones. In the Central Plains, riverbeds cracked, and the people dug wells thirty feet deep without finding a single drop of water. The Starfire Hall Council of Elders deliberated for seven days, seeking to activate the "Earth Vein Fire-Channeling Formation," using fragments of Heartfire Jade as a catalyst to forcibly awaken the earth fire and raise vapor into clouds and rain.
Su Li stood outside the hall, listening quietly for a long time, then suddenly asked, "What if the earth fire burns the mortal world instead of awakening?"
No one answered.
She turned and left, leaving only these words: "True rain lies not in the earth veins, but in people's hearts."
That night, on the summer solstice.
Across the Nine Provinces, countless children fell into dreams.
In their dreams, they all saw a woman in plain, coarse cloth, her hair pinned up with a wooden hairpin, standing deep in a wasteland. Before her stood a stove, its fire faint, caught between dying and lingering. She bent down, sheltered the fire with her hands, and blew gently. The flames gradually rose, illuminating her face—it was A Ya.
She said nothing, only lit lamps: one, two, three... The lamps kindled themselves, fueled neither by oil nor by firewood, but by the heart.
She buried the lamps in the soil and whispered, "While the Heart Flame endures, the Lamp River never ceases."
The children woke with a start, rose together, and rushed to their family stoves. They gathered oil, lamps,