That night was quiet.But Heng Zhen's thoughts were not.
He sat on a flat stone at the edge of the valley, beneath a dark sky filled with stars. A soft wind brushed the grass. Yet what stirred inside his chest was no longer calmness... it was doubt.
"How can this exist…?"
He gazed toward the horizon, where the Chaosqi mist hung, never dispersing. In his mind, he murmured:
"Chaos is what exists at the moment of creation.But what comes before creation?"
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. The voice of Yuanqi could not be heard tonight. He felt the silence... not as peace, but as distance.
"It seems... I am still far.So far... from uncovering it."
Across the valley, three of those who had sat with him nights before had already left. They could not endure the long silence. One had wept before going. Another left in anger. The last vanished wordlessly.
Lu Wen said to Lao Wen,"Not everyone can endure silence."
Lao Wen replied,"Because not all silence is peaceful. Some... only whisper the old failures they carry through life."
Heng Zhen opened his eyes. He looked at the Chaosqi mist that never vanished. He drew a deep breath.
"Yuanqi is the first reflection of Chaosqi.The first Qi after Chaos."
"But that would mean...Even Yuanqi was born from something deeper."
And if Chaos was the beginning of everything that is, then before that... there must have been something that was not.
His body trembled.
"I haven't failed.But I haven't truly begun."
Elsewhere, San Lie sat beneath the stone tree. He tried to listen, to feel. But that day brought no vibration. He opened his eyes. Cold sweat clung to his back.
He understood one thing:
"Yuanqi doesn't come at will.It comes... only when we are ready to let go of every desire to possess it."
And he had not yet reached that place.
This chapter ends in silence.But not a silence of hope.
It is the silence that demands honesty:
Not all who walk will arrive.But those who stop... will never reach it.