Lin Shisan's heart clenched sharply, and his pupils contracted. He lowered his head to glance at his chest.
The dark-gold mark was growing faintly hot, fine patterns flowing along its edges, exactly like the dark-brown patterns on the Little Black Cauldron. He raised his head again to look at the Mountain Guardian. Something was slowly melting in those eyes like ten-thousand-year-old glaciers.
"Senior, do you mean that when the Heavenly Fire fell five hundred years ago, someone bearing a mark like this also appeared at the foot of the mountain?"
The Mountain Guardian did not answer immediately.
Her gaze shifted away from Lin Shisan to a more distant wall of ice, as though she were looking at an old object long buried by time. Wind and snow swept past the edges of her worn gray-white robe, gently lifting the strand of long hair that blended into the ice and snow.
"He was a youth, dressed in coarse hemp clothes, with a gleaming black cauldron on his back, exactly like the one you carry. He stood at the foot of the mountain and watched for a long time, then followed the ridge upward, all the way to where the Heavenly Fire had fallen."
"What did he do?"
The Mountain Guardian fell silent for so long that Lin Shisan thought she would not answer again. But she finally spoke, her voice softer than before, an unconcealable trace of respect flickering in her eyes-the utmost respect, even reverence, for someone who held righteousness in his heart.
"He poured his own blood into the fissure the Heavenly Fire had blasted open."
Lin Shisan's breath caught sharply.
He had never expected that someone carrying a black cauldron exactly like his would perform such a righteous act of self-sacrifice.
"The Chaos Power within the Heavenly Fire