Source Fire

Biodata

Nature

• Collective fortune: Human researchers describe Source Fire as the embodiment of humanity as a collective concept—equivalent to the fortune of the human race, rather than merely one nation 14.
• Faction strength: Source Fire also manifests the fate of Spirit Realm factions. For these factions, fortune is closely tied to strength; the dungeon’s Manticore held at least thirty percent of its faction’s fortune because it represented its peak military power 111.
• Territorial survival: Source Fire is the foundation sustaining a territory. If it goes out, the entire faction is exposed to the Soul-Devouring Mist 138.
• Limited access: Ordinary adventurers benefit from its protection and passively absorb related energy, while effective, active use is reserved for heroes and lords 15 81.
• Special perception: Lin Xu observes it through the Spirit Eye Technique. Qiuqiu eventually develops an ocular technique capable of seeing Source Fire Fragments as well 72 93.

Source Fire Protection

Function and Limits

Source Fire Protection surrounds an adventurer with faint flames that drive away the Soul-Devouring Mist 14.

• Everyone entering the Spirit Realm from the present world receives this initial protection 14.
• Without special protection, someone lost in the mist suffers soul erosion and can become a walking corpse 14.
• The protection only dispels the mist; it does not repel or damage Spirit Realm monsters 14.
• An ordinary person’s supply gradually dims and lasts at most one month without replenishment. This is the reason for the Spirit Realm Trial’s one-month limit 14.
• Protection can cover a group: Lin Xu’s rescue force travels beneath its light, while the combined Source Fire of a thirty-thousand-person army clears an area more than ten kilometers across 31 215.

Replenishment and Lin Xu’s Modification

• Protective Source Fire also manifests around Lin Xu when his trial mission is completed, although it had previously appeared only when the mist was eroding him 61.

Sources and Acquisition

City Bonds and Development

• A lord receives more Source Fire as the Bond between their territory and its anchored city deepens 171.
• Greater involvement in the city’s development—and greater prosperity—raises the amount obtained. Lin Xu identifies investment in production, infrastructure, and residents’ daily lives as practical ways to strengthen this connection 181.
• These incentives help explain why heroes and lords hold Night Watcher posts and participate in suppressing real-world Spirit Realm invasions 82.
• Combat income can be comparatively modest: Lin Xu estimates that obtaining eight units would require killing at least a hundred low-tier monsters, with no guarantee of that yield 85.

Applications

Recruitment and Sentience

Source Fire can recruit both building-generated NPCs and eligible captives 82 115.

• It reactivates a recruitment option after the ordinary monthly slot has been exhausted; an additional Daoist acolyte initially costs five Source Fire 82.
• Captured human bandits can be recruited for six points each. Their attributes remain unchanged, but a loyalty field appears and Lin Xu senses a trace of life in them 115.
• According to Xia Jingyi’s research, unrecruited NPCs lack emotions and self-awareness. Source Fire recruitment allows them to gradually develop sentience and individual personalities 174.
• Human heroes and lords ordinarily recruit only human NPCs, not even humanoid races such as elves and dwarves. Lin Xu’s Dharma-protector conversion technique provides a separate exceptional method of bringing monsters under his control 83.
• Recruiting real-world humans who have lost their memories to mist erosion does not require additional Source Fire 15.
• Repeated Source Fire recruitment becomes progressively more expensive. At the Fallen Demon camp, Lin Xu considers the markup beyond three rounds uneconomical 86.

Resurrection and Body Reconstruction

A lord can spend Source Fire to rebuild the bodies of preserved souls and recruit them into a Spirit Realm territory 170.

• Reconstructed people retain memories of their previous lives and can reunite with surviving relatives 170.
• Their bodies are essentially newborn despite their apparent ages. They remain subject to aging and death, but can live healthily for a full century barring accidents 170.
• Soul quality affects the available transformation. Trained Night Watchers can become acolytes, outer disciples, or Daoist soldiers rather than ordinary villagers 170.
• Previous strengths can carry over: transformed Night Watchers possess better basic attributes than the monastery’s original menial workers 170.

Territory Construction and Upgrades

Source Fire supports construction, territorial expansion, and the improvement of resource-producing buildings 81 99 180.

• Source Fire upgrades remain subject to territory and building conditions; possessing a territory does not automatically grant the full authority of a true lord 81 178.
• Lin Xu reduces the Zombie Mine project’s cost by shaping the floor first with the Illusory Rock Form-Refining Spell, then using Source Fire to finish the spirit patterns. He judges the resulting resource efficiency to be five times greater 196.

Civilization Conversion

Source Fire can convert an occupied territory to the lord’s primary civilization 178.

• Lin Xu spends 2,000 points to occupy the level-four Orc Tribe 178.
• Buildings change from crude hide structures into gray-brick, dark-tiled pavilions and palaces; available recruits change from orcs to humans 178.
• Not every structure survives: a stone totem pole splits and collapses under the flames 178.
• Conversion does not remove every territorial restriction. The occupied territory still cannot fuse with Lin Xu’s other holdings until its authority has fully condensed through an upgrade 178.

Agricultural Acceleration

Source Fire directly accelerates plant growth and improves livestock infrastructure 180.

• One point causes over a thousand Emerald Immortal Mushroom seeds to germinate and spread into a patch exceeding ten square meters 180.
• Continued acceleration drives flowering, seed production, and further propagation across the pasture 180.
• Farm upgrades double output, bringing monthly recruitment to 30 cattle and 60 sheep 180.
• Expense limits further development: upgrading all thirty farms to level three would require many thousands of points, exceeding Lin Xu’s reserves 180.

Lord Revival

A territory’s Source Fire can help reconstruct its dead lord 138.

• The dungeon’s giant lord reforms beside the Dungeon Heart through surging Source Fire and magic 138.
• Accelerating the revival consumes these resources heavily and temporarily destabilizes the dungeon’s Earth Vein and rules 138.
• The revived giant consequently cannot use its Lord Authority until that upheaval subsides 138.

Order Source Fire

Central State’s Protective Network

Order Source Fire is an invisible web of rules covering Central State, formed from its national order and the Spirit Realm’s rules 166.

• It recognizes Lin Xu after his territory preliminarily anchors to Meng City and grants him guardian status 166.
• It transmits the Lord Covenant and Spirit Realm and Reality Agreement, which define obligations and rights among lords and between lords and the government 166.
• Its activation at the birth of a new guardian is perceptible to powerful observers across Central State 166.

Enforcement and Support

• Covenant enforcement: Lords may not damage one another’s real-world territories or attack a lord in the process of being born. A violator can be expelled from the real world 165.
• Long-range authority: The network extends a lord’s power, enabling established lords to project attacks across hundreds or thousands of kilometers 166.
• Emergency reinforcement: It empowers lords resisting Spirit Realm invasions. Lin Xu uses its support to tear open the shrinking passage to the beastmen’s territory 166 167.
• Accountability: While drawing on this support, the lord’s decisions and uses of power are recorded by Order Source Fire 167.
• Resource distribution: The Central State Order Network can transfer substantial Source Fire reserves through city nodes, as demonstrated by Lin Xu’s 20,000-point allocation 204.