Heng Zhen sat in a narrow cave, far from the valley—a place he had found where the stone walls were damp and moss-covered, as if they held whispers older than the world itself.
He closed his eyes.Not to seek,but to listen.
Not to the outside world,but to the echo that came from before Qi itself.
"Yuanqi is a reflection.Chaosqi is the first turbulence.But… what came before?"
His thoughts wandered into something unnamed.
What exists before Qi?
Not power.Not form.Not meaning.
Something that does not vibrate.Does not move.Does not make a sound.Cannot be absorbed.Cannot be shaped.
It is not Qi.It is not Chaos.It is not even existence.
Yet Heng Zhen knew—everything began from there.
Suddenly, he sensed something that was not Yuanqibut a silence deeper than anything he had ever felt.A silence that couldn't even be called silence.It was like standing at the edge of a bottomless chasm,yet never falling.
"Is this… the trace before Qi?"
When he opened his eyes, the world remained the same.But his eyes had changed.
He began to understand:Yuanqi is not the beginning.Chaosqi is not the beginning.
Before them both…there is something that has no name.
And only in identity-less awarenesscan that trace be touched.
In the valley below,Lu Wen rose from meditation and said to Lao Wen:
"Just now… I didn't hear Yuanqi.""Nor did I," Lao Wen replied."But I felt… something deeper had passed through."
Lao Wen looked up to the sky.
"As if a wind that has never blownfinally turned to face us.But never came."
Heng Zhen touched the left side of his chest.His heart was beatingbut between each beat,he felt a void,like the birthplace of all possibilities.
With his finger, he wrote into the earth:
The first trace is not Qi.But the absence that gives birth to it.
This chapter marks Heng Zhen's step toward an understanding that is not merely about energy,but the source of all formeven before chaos and stillness.