The wind blew gently as the four of them stood at a natural crossroads. Before them lay four paths: to the north, shrouded in mist; to the east, rising toward towering stones; to the south, a field of ceaseless wind; and to the west, silent beneath the shadows of ancient trees. There were no farewells—only glances exchanged—and then they moved.
Lu Wen chose the eastward path—the stony road that tested both knees and mind.
His footsteps echoed softly through the morning stillness. Upon the hard stones, time seemed to slow. The sun rose, fell, and rose again, yet the path showed no end. On the first night, he sat beneath a hanging rock, staring at the sky. The stars trembled, as if breathing with him.
"Why is my path so quiet?" he wondered. Yet in the quiet, the deepest voice emerged—a voice not from without, but from within his body, now attuned to the universe.
On the second day, he arrived at an old, crumbling temple. There sat a blind old man, gripping a bamboo staff with a broken tip. Without asking who he was, Lu Wen simply sat.
The old man taught nothing. But with every breath, every movement, he conveyed a calm that even Yuanqi itself paused to observe.
"You walk to discover your own steps," said the old man, before disappearing into the stone fog.
Lu Wen continued. On the fifth day, he met a woman who had lost her child—not to death, but to forgetting. The boy had gone to meditate atop the Mountain of Emptiness and had since forgotten his mother.
The woman did not cry. She only plucked wildflowers and let them drift on the wind.
"Will everyone you meet eventually leave you?" asked Lu Wen.
"No. They simply become part of your steps," she replied.
Rain began to fall as Lu Wen reached a wide, open plateau. He sat there, letting his clothes soak through. But the Yuanqi within him remained warm, alive, and still.
In the silence of thunder, he realized—the path he had chosen was not to arrive sooner, but to understand what remained after all meetings had passed.
He looked eastward, and in a flash of lightning, he saw the silhouette of a young boy walking in the distance.
Time continued to move.
So did Lu Wen.