Two months had passed since Li Yuan left Zhardar.
In those two months, he hadn't followed the paths most people took. There were no bustling trade roads, no safe caravan routes, no scattered villages along familiar travel paths.
Instead, he walked through places that most humans would avoid—steep valleys filled with rocks as sharp as giant thorns jutting from the earth, dense forests where sunlight barely touched the ground, and high plateaus so silent that the wind was the only sound accompanying him for days.
He found no humans. Not a single one.
And he didn't eat. He didn't sleep.
Not because he couldn't—his consciousness body could simulate those needs if he chose to, as a way to stay connected to the mortal human experience. But in these two months, he chose not to.
He chose to simply exist—walking, observing, listening through the ever-open Wenjing Realm within a five-centimeter radius of his body, and allowing himself to be immersed in a stillness undisturbed by the complexities of human interaction.
Sometimes, he reflected as he walked through a valley full of strange rock formations—like giant hands clawing at the sky—I need this. This distance from emotional noise. This space to remember that I am not just a conflict mediator or a catalyst for change, but also just... an observer.
The first valley he passed through was a place that would make most travelers tremble with unease. Sharp rocks jutted from the ground in irregular patterns—some as tall as a man, others as tall as a tree, all with edges that could easily cut flesh if one wasn't careful.
Li Yuan walked among them with absolute calm. His consciousness body didn't have the same weight as a flesh body, so he could step on the sharp rocks without feeling pain, and move through the narrow crevices without difficulty.
But he didn't do so in a hurry. Instead, he walked slowly, with full attention to every detail.
The way the morning sunlight touched the edges of the rocks, creating long shadows that moved like creeping fingers on the ground. The way the wind blew through the crevices, creating a shifting sound—sometimes like a low whistle, sometimes like a deep breath, sometimes like a song that was almost comprehensible.
Through his Water Comprehension which was in the Wenjing Realm, he could hear the story carried by the morning dew that clung to the rocks. The story of rain that fell centuries ago, of slow but inevitable erosion, of the patience of the stone that allowed the water to shape it without resistance.
Water and stone, he mused with deep appreciation. Teachers who always teach the same lesson from different angles. Water teaches flexibility, stone teaches resilience. And when they interact, they create a beauty that neither could achieve alone.
He stopped in front of a particularly unique rock formation—a natural arch formed by thousands of years of erosion, where wind and water had carved away the stone from below until only a curved structure remained, like a bridge connecting two sides of the valley.
Li Yuan stood beneath the arch, looking up at the patterns carved by time. He reached out to touch the stone—not with any purpose, just to feel its texture, to acknowledge its existence.
Thousands of years to create this, he mused. And perhaps thousands more before it collapses. But eventually, it will return to dust, just like all things that seem permanent. And in that dust, something new will grow.
He continued his journey, letting that reflection settle in his consciousness without trying to force it into a formal comprehension. Just letting it exist, like the morning dew that would evaporate as the sun rose higher.
In the second week, he entered a forest so dense that the canopy of ancient trees above almost completely blocked out the sunlight. The ground under his feet was damp and covered in moss, muffling the sound of his every step.
The silence here was different from the silence in the rocky valley. There, the silence felt harsh—like an empty space demanding to be filled. Here, the silence felt full—like a living presence, like the breath of the forest itself.
Li Yuan stopped walking and closed his eyes, allowing his Silence Comprehension—one of the seventeen comprehensions that were in the Ganjing Realm but tightly bound by the Binding Comprehension—to resonate within his consciousness without being released into the outside world.
Silence is not emptiness, he recalled a lesson he had learned thousands of years ago. Silence is the space where everything else can be heard more clearly. The more subtle sounds. The deeper meanings.
He opened his eyes and began to walk again, but this time with a more focused attention on what existed within that silence.
The sound of dripping water from damp leaves. The faint rustle of a small animal—perhaps a squirrel, perhaps a fox—moving through the bushes. The rare and distant call of a bird, like dots of sound on a canvas of stillness.
And beneath it all, if he listened deeply enough through his Wenjing Realm, he could hear something more fundamental—the intention of the forest itself. Not in an anthropomorphic way, not as if the forest had a mind or a desire in a human sense. But there was something—a quality of diffuse awareness, a rhythm of collective life from all that lived within this forest, from the largest tree to the smallest mushroom growing on decaying wood.
That rhythm spoke of slow growth. Of death that was not feared but accepted as part of a cycle. Of interdependence—how every creature, every plant, depended on the others in a complex and beautiful way.
This is a different harmony from the one I saw in Qingxi, Li Yuan mused as he walked through the dark forest. In Qingxi, harmony was created through human consciousness—through a choice to live according to certain principles. Here, harmony exists without choice, without self-awareness. It's just... the way things work when left to follow their natural flow.
He found a very old tree—its trunk so massive it would take five men to circle it, its bark full of grooves and scars from centuries of growth. The tree was dead—no leaves on its branches, no life flowing in its wood.
But it was not alone. Thick green moss covered most of its trunk. Mushrooms grew in beautiful patterns at its base. And within the decaying wood, Li Yuan could feel—through the Wenjing Realm connected to the water still held in the wood fibers—new life thriving. Insects making their homes. Larvae decomposing the wood. The roots of young trees starting to grow from the soil enriched by the decay.
Death feeding life, he mused with quiet appreciation. This tree stood for maybe a thousand years. Now it lies, and in its final giving, it becomes the foundation for the next generation. Nothing is wasted. Nothing truly ends.
Li Yuan sat beside the dead tree—not because his consciousness body needed to rest, but because this moment felt like something to be honored with an unhurried presence.
He sat for three days.
Not moving. Not speaking. Just observing how the faint light changed as the sun moved outside the canopy he couldn't see. How the wind occasionally carried the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. How the silence of the forest felt like a gentle embrace—not demanding, not judging, just accepting his presence as it accepted the dead tree, as it accepted the mushrooms and the insects and everything that was a part of the endless cycle.
On the third night, when the darkness became absolute and only the sounds of the night accompanied him—the chirping of insects, the occasional cry of an owl—Li Yuan felt something stir in his Zhenjing.
The sapling of comprehension that had begun to grow over the last year, which had been nourished by the experience in Zhardar, now trembled with something new. Not enough to be named. Not enough to be fully understood. But there was growth—subtle, almost imperceptible, but real.
From death to life, the fragment of comprehension whispered in his consciousness. From an end to a beginning. From the unseen to the tangible. Cycle. Transformation. Continuation.
Li Yuan didn't try to force it further. He just acknowledged its existence, as he acknowledged the existence of the dead tree and the life that grew from it, and then let it recede into the background of his consciousness.
The time has not yet come, he mused with a patience born of fifteen thousand years of experience. Comprehension cannot be forced. It can only be invited, nurtured, and waited for until it is ready to bloom.
In the fifth week, Li Yuan came out of the forest and entered a barren high plateau. Here, there were no trees, no bushes—only scattered small rocks, sparse dry grass, and a wind that blew ceaselessly.
The sky above felt vaster here than anywhere else—no canopy to limit it, no valley to narrow the view. Just an endless blue expanse during the day, and a sea of countless stars at night.
Li Yuan walked through the plateau for days, and for the first time in two months, he allowed his Sky Comprehension to resonate within his consciousness—not released into the outside world, not affecting anything but himself, but enough to feel again the lesson he had learned from that comprehension.
True freedom comes from needing nothing to be whole, he recalled. For there is no desire that can be thwarted. No limitation that can restrict something that is not tied to a specific outcome.
He looked at the sky as the sun set, coloring the horizon with beautiful gradients—from a deep orange in the west to a dark purple that faded into the night blue in the east. The stars began to appear one by one, like eyes opening in the darkness.
I have lived fifteen thousand years, Li Yuan mused with a perspective that could only come from such a long lifespan. And in that time, I have seen thousands of sunsets. Each one is different, each one is unique. But each one is also the same—a reminder that the cycle continues, that a day ends and a night comes, and then dawn will come again.
And in that repetition, there was something calming. Something that reminded him that no matter how chaotic the human world was—with their wars, their slavery, their conflicts—nature still followed the same rhythm. The sun still rose. The moon still went through its phases. The stars still shone.
He lay on the ground—his consciousness body feeling no cold or discomfort from the rocks—and looked up at the night sky with eyes that had seen fifteen thousand years of history but could still feel awe at the simple beauty of the stars.
Perhaps this is what I needed, he mused with a clarity that came from long silence. After Zhardar, after witnessing the horror of slavery and the intensity of liberation, I needed this. Distance. Silence. A space to remember that I am not just a catalyst for human change, but also a part of something much greater.
A part of nature. A part of the cycle. A part of the Dao that does not choose, that does not judge, that simply... is.
On the last night on the high plateau, Li Yuan sat in a meditation posture—not because his consciousness body needed to cultivate in a traditional way, but because the posture helped to focus his awareness. He directed his attention inward, to his Zhenjing—the inner world he had developed over thousands of years.
There, like a spiritual tree he had imagined many times, his comprehensions existed as a living landscape. The water at its center—the Core Consciousness that gave color to all the others. Silence, Loss, Fear, Soul—all the Ganjing comprehensions that were tightly bound. And the still unnamed sapling, growing slowly in a distant corner.
But tonight, his attention was drawn to something different.
The Sea of Souls—the place where the millions of souls he had collected over thousands of years rested in peace. Those who were trapped in a spiritual limbo because of the resonance of his comprehensions on the battlefield, four thousand years ago. Those he had saved from the void after a storm at sea, at the cost of his own Soul Comprehension.
He listened—through the internal Wenjing Realm that connected his consciousness to those souls—and felt something that made him stop.
They were... growing.
Not in a physical way, not in a way that could be easily explained. But there was a development. The souls that had existed in a state of tranquil sleep were now beginning to show signs of... deeper awareness? More complete integration?
He didn't know how to explain it. But he could feel it—like a garden that had been planted was preparing for spring, like seeds that had been dormant in the soil were beginning to feel the call of the sun even though they were still buried.
What is happening to you? he asked softly, in a tone that could only be heard in the internal dimension of his own consciousness.
There was no answer in the form of words. But there was a resonance—a faint feeling, like someone sleeping who was beginning to dream, like an awareness slowly emerging from the depths.
Li Yuan sat with that sensation for hours, just observing, listening, allowing himself to be present without trying to control or direct anything.
You are safe, he finally whispered into the internal silence. I will watch over you until... until whatever happens next is ready to happen.
When dawn came on the high plateau—the first light touching the eastern horizon gently, like the first brushstroke on a blank canvas—Li Yuan stood up.
Two months had passed. Two months without meeting a human. Two months without eating or sleeping. Two months of silence, observation, and pure presence.
And now, he felt—through the intuition he had developed over thousands of years—that it was time to return to the human world.
Not because he had finished his internal journey. Not because he had achieved a new enlightenment or a perfect understanding. But because there was something out there—somewhere in this vast world—that was waiting. A community that might need a mirror. A conflict that might need mediation. A story that had not yet been finished.
Li Yuan began to walk southward, where—if his memory of the region's geography was correct—there should be a trade route that connected the mountains with the more fertile plains.
His steps were calm, unhurried. There was no urgency. Only a clear awareness that the journey continued, as it always does.
One step at a time.
One breath at a time.
Forever.