"There are more people here."
Heng Zhen opened his eyes for the first time in what felt like an immeasurable span. He saw young people, elders, even animals sitting in silence. No sounds, no requests. Only a presence slowly adjusting to something unseen.
Lu Wen sat across from him, gazing at the valley that had once been empty but now brimmed with living silence. He tried to speak, but no words could capture the feeling growing in his chest. He did not feel strong, nor weak. He simply felt... present.
"They don't come for power," Heng Zhen continued, his voice barely a whisper like the wind. "They come because the world calls them. Or because they have fought the world for too long."
Lu Wen nodded. "But what is really happening? Is this Qi? But Qi isn't like this..."
"It's not the Qi they chase. This isn't energy for attack or defense. This... is something that arises when we stop taking. When we... absorb."
Heng Zhen closed his eyes again. He began to feel a subtle current flowing beneath the ground, tracing the roots, climbing the bones of the rocks, gently floating among the breaths of the valley's inhabitants.
That was Yuanqi. Qi that does not force the world to submit, but Qi that emerges when the world feels accepted. Not to be dominated, but to be absorbed, understood, and enjoyed like air that is never forcibly drawn.
Yuanqi does not roar. It does not dazzle. It leaves no scars.
It simply exists like dew before dawn.
Like the sound of water dripping between stones.
And like the feeling of silence that feels whole, even without sound.
"Isn't power born from resistance?" Lu Wen asked.
"That's what they teach," Heng Zhen replied. "But true power isn't about winning. True power is when the world no longer needs to be denied. When body, soul, and sky... are in harmony."
Lu Wen fell silent. He didn't fully understand, but for the first time in his life, he felt no need to hurry.
That night, Yuanqi descended for the first time like a soft mist not from the sky, but from within their chests. And everyone breathing in that valley began to feel something they couldn't explain.
Not change. But the return of something long lost to humanity.
The awareness that they... are enough.
"How old are you?"
Lu Wen asked as they sat by a small river that had only begun to flow a few days ago. The river did not come from mountains, nor from rain. It appeared suddenly from cracked stones, flowing silently, reflecting a sky no longer divided between day and night.
Heng Zhen didn't answer immediately. He scooped water with his palms, watching the ripples that never broke.
"I don't know," he finally replied. "Maybe seventy. Maybe seven hundred. Or... maybe time hasn't moved the same since I first sat down."
Lu Wen looked at his face. Heng Zhen looked like a man in his forties — with lines beneath his eyes, some hair turning white, but his eyes... his eyes were too deep for any age. He looked like someone who had lost an entire life, and because of that, had gained something more.
"I thought humans only live up to a century," Lu Wen said softly.
"Humans who keep fighting the world, yes," Heng Zhen said. "But since I stopped walking, my body no longer ages the same way. I'm not extending my life. I'm just... stopping adding burden to it."
He gazed into the distance, at the forest beyond the valley. Birds flew slowly, neither in flocks nor alone. Not in a hurry.
"Yuanqi doesn't extend life like medicine. It doesn't reject death, only makes life not rush toward it."
Lu Wen nodded quietly. "So... will I live long too?"
"That depends," Heng Zhen said. "If you live to extend your life, you'll age as usual. But if your life becomes a reflection of the world, and the world doesn't rush to age... maybe your body will forget how."
Night fell, but the valley remained calm. Neither dark nor bright.
Under the timeless sky, age lost its meaning.
And for the first time in his life, Lu Wen stopped counting the days to come. He simply sat, listening to the flowing water, and felt... present.
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.