Lights of a Thousand Homes

He stopped directly above the city center, with a vast sea of ​​lights stretching out below. The large red lanterns at the entrances of teahouses and restaurants, the dim oil lamps behind the paper windows of residents, the paper lanterns carried by night watchmen, the ever-burning lamps offered before the incense altar of the City God Temple, and the official lanterns hanging high at the entrances of the prefectural and county government offices—countless lanterns burned quietly in the night, each telling a story of a person or a family.

He closed his eyes, formed a hand seal, and the pale golden flame at his fingertips suddenly lit up, transforming into a tiny golden star that hovered in front of his brow. Centered on this star, a circle of pale golden ripples spread out silently, penetrating rooftops, window paper, and brick walls, sweeping across every burning lamp in the city.

The lights responded. They didn't extinguish, nor did they dim; instead, they all flickered slightly at the same time, like the instant a candle flame bursts open. Each light, in that flicker, released a wisp of extremely faint smoke, thinner than a hair, paler than morning mist, invisible to the naked eye. Simultaneously, the lights throughout the city released smoke, countless wisps of pale golden light rising slowly from the windows, door cracks, and eaves of countless homes, like a golden drizzle falling backwards, drifting from the ground to the sky.

The wisps of light gathered around Liu Jin, growing thicker and brighter. From a distance, it looked as if a very faint golden cloud had appeared above Jinhua City, its edges edged with silver by the moonlight, while its center grew brighter and brighter until a blurry figure could be vaguely seen sitting cross-legged within the cloud.

Several guests who were still awake in the inn opened their windows, rubbed their eyes, and looked at the golden cloud in the sky. One of them woke up his companion, who squinted at him, muttered, "What's so interesting about the moon hiding in the clouds?" and turned over to go back to sleep. In the City God Temple, the temple keeper was about to blow out the last ever-burning lamp when he suddenly sensed something. He looked up at the sky, his hand holding the incense stopped in mid-air, and after a moment, he bowed slightly. Without making a sound, he simply turned the ever-burning lamp a little brighter.

Under the eaves of the government office's backyard, a night watchman, who had been dozing, groggily opened his eyes. He saw a vague human figure silhouetted against the golden cloud in the sky, thought he was still dreaming, yawned, and closed his eyes again. Several reclusive cultivators in the city simultaneously looked up, silently noting the location, but none of them took to the air to investigate. A cultivator capable of causing such a commotion was not someone they could afford to offend.

Liu Jin slowly clasped his hands together, and the golden clouds surrounding him suddenly contracted, drawing in the flame mark between his brows along with the golden wisps that had gathered from across the city. The spark of ten thousand lights grew from a small star into a fist-sized golden orb, hovering and slowly rotating within the inner vision. Countless tiny points of light flowed across the orb's surface, each a lamp, together forming the myriad lights of the city. He glanced one last time at the city beneath his feet, then vanished silently into the sky, leaving only a faint golden afterimage that was gently dispersed by the night breeze.

Everything in Jinhua City seemed normal. The lights were still on, the night watchman's clapper was still ringing, and the companion who had been woken up in the inn was still snoring. No one knew what had happened that night, except for the temple keeper of the City God Temple, who had sat by the eternal lamp all night and added new oil to it just before dawn.

......

"This guy is really good at special effects. The golden rain falling backwards, if I were a resident of Jinhua City, I would think I was dreaming."

"Those two inn guests made me laugh so hard. One saw it and said, 'Look, there are people in the sky,' and the other said, 'The moon is hiding in the clouds.' That's the difference between mortals and cultivators."

"The night watchman was even more audacious; he thought he was still dreaming, turned over, and continued snoring. Brother, you missed the closest you ever got to cultivating immortality in your life."

"The temple keeper really knows what he's doing; he doesn't say anything, he just adds oil to the lamps."

Zhao Fengnian: Brother, next time you make such a big fuss, could you please let me know in advance? I was almost blinded by the golden light in the yard.

"But honestly, the 'Thousands of Lights' setting is absolutely brilliant. It's not about plundering or extracting; it's about sensing, with the city lights responding to him on their own."

......

Liu Jin returned to the courtyard, still bathed in the lingering pale golden afterglow. Zhao Fengnian was sitting cross-legged on a stone bench, his hands cradling the ball of dark blue Qi fire, his eyes closed in deep meditation. The Qi fire within his body had completed most of its transformation, and the blue flame in his dantian burned more than twice as brightly as before, with only a few stubborn impurities remaining deep within his bone marrow.

As Liu Jin walked past him, the pale golden glow of the lights from thousands of homes inadvertently swept over Zhao Fengnian. The glow was extremely faint, even softer than moonlight, but it was this sweep that made Zhao Fengnian's whole body tremble violently.

The stubborn impurities within him cracked automatically when gently illuminated by the golden glow of countless lights. They weren't burned apart; rather, the lingering attachment to "home" contained within the lights stirred within those impurities the fear and loneliness left behind when Zhao Fengnian was betrayed in his Western fantasy world.

The reason those impurities were so stubborn was not because they were strong in themselves, but because they were rooted in Zhao Fengnian's deepest fears: the fear of being betrayed, the fear of being treated like meat on a chopping board, and the fear of being alone in the basement for three days and three nights without daring to close his eyes.

The lights of countless homes, however, carry the exact opposite of these fears: the smoke from the stove, the sewing of shoe soles under the bedside lamp, the patience of a private tutor grading essays by lamplight, and the hope of waiting to get medicine at the pharmacy. These obsessions, though faint, are the most basic and resilient warmth of humanity.

Impurities cracked open in the golden light, and the Qi Fire surged in, burning the cracked impurities and the fear beneath them into nothingness. The Qi Fire in Zhao Fengnian's dantian suddenly grew stronger, and at the same time, the essence fire that had been suspended in his soul space automatically rose and collided with the Qi Fire.

The body was refined by the essence fire, and the qi was tempered by the qi fire. The two fires merged and ignited a brand new flame—the divine fire. This divine fire rose from the dantian, traveled along the meridians and rushed straight into the soul space, completely enveloping the dark red Gluttony Mark. The Gluttony Mark struggled wildly under the scorching of the divine fire, all the tiny mouthparts on its surface opened, emitting silent shrieks. But the divine fire remained unmoved, like a precise scalpel, peeling away the Gluttony Mark and Zhao Fengnian's soul bit by bit.

The peeling process lasted for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn. When the last trace of dark red flesh was burned away by the divine fire, the backlash from the Gluttony Mark was refined into a wisp of pure divine power within the divine fire, slowly merging into Zhao Fengnian's soul. He opened his eyes and stood up.

As the Mark of Gluttony was completely refined, the remaining fat in his body melted away under the tempering of the divine fire, and his originally loose skin was reforged by the refined fire, clinging tightly to his muscles. He stood in front of the water vat in the courtyard and looked down. In the water was reflected a slender young man with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, a clean and neat jawline, and distinct facial features.

That face was almost identical to the one he wore before he was ambushed in the Western fantasy world, only his eyes had changed. Before, Zhao Fengnian's eyes only held the naive honesty of someone who accepted his fate and the weariness of a lowly errand boy. Now, those eyes were bright and steady, like fiery scales that had been polished countless times, gentle yet sharp.