The wind was no longer silent.
Heng Zhen opened his eyes on the fourteenth morning since the Yuanqi mist had descended upon the valley. During that time, the world seemed still — or at least undisturbed. But this morning, the wind blowing from the north carried a bitterness, like metal scraping against the roof of the mouth.
He sat quietly longer than usual.
Lu Wen was drawing water from the river, but the water now felt heavier, as if bearing an invisible burden. He glanced toward his master. "Has something changed?"
"Yes," Heng Zhen replied softly. "The world is beginning to respond."
The valley, once peaceful, began to tremble. No sound, no cracking earth. The vibration came from beneath the skin of reality — from a depth without shape.
"This is Chaosqi…" Heng Zhen whispered in his heart. "Or as the ancestors called it: Hundunqi."
For fifty thousand years, this world had known only one form of power — wild, blurred, uncontrollable power. Chaosqi knew no harmony; it was the raw source of aimless change. It cloaked the land, filled the sky, and weighed on human souls since the dawn of civilization.
And for fifty thousand years, humans tried to tame it.
They drew it into their bodies, burned it in their chests.
Some grew strong for a moment... then exploded.
Others lost their minds... or became creatures no longer human.
Yet they kept trying.
"Yuanqi… how could it exist in a place like this?" Heng Zhen pondered.
He reflected behind a rock facing the sun. He knew: Yuanqi was not born from this world. It did not arise from achievement, but from inner emptiness from someone who no longer asked anything from the world.
And that was what made it different from Chaosqi.
Chaosqi was wild because humans desired it.
Yuanqi appeared because Heng Zhen... stopped wanting.
But when Yuanqi arose amid a world of Chaosqi, imbalance occurred. A world accustomed to being pulled now felt... unneeded. The wild Chaosqi began to approach. Not out of jealousy. But because it wanted to understand or perhaps destroy something that did not follow it.
That night, Heng Zhen sat in the middle of the valley. He did not meditate. He simply... listened.
And from the distance, from the edge of the sky, from where the world folded upon itself, the first sound came. Not a human voice. Nor an animal's.
The sound of the world.
Trembling.
Shaking.
Resisting.
The first vibration had come.