📖 CHAPTER 2
"聲界" THE SOUND LAYER
or: The Place Where Words Carry Weight
Falling without gravity feels like forgetting how to stand.
I do not know how long I drifted between the cracks of reality. Time does not flow the same way here. Or perhaps more accurately: time flows in all directions at once, like a river that has forgotten where it should go.
I tried to open my eyes, but realized my eyes were already open.
I tried to scream, but realized I had no mouth in this place.
No.
I had a mouth.
But that mouth was not part of my body.
That mouth was the way reality read me.
Then, suddenly like a sentence finding its full stop I arrived.
Not landing. Not falling. Merely... coming into being in a place that was previously void.
I opened my eyes or rather, I recalled that I possessed eyes and saw:
A sky made of echoes.
There was no sun, yet there was light. A light that emanated from visible sound. Every voice in this place possessed color, texture, weight. I could see the drone of the wind. I could sense the color of rustling leaves.
No. Not leaves.
Fragments of words yet to be fully spoken.
I stood when did I stand up? on the edge of a lake whose surface was made of liquid silence.
The water did not move. Yet I could hear it breathe. Every intake of breath created tiny ripples that sounded like... like...
There was no Indonesian word for it.
There was no word in any language I knew.
The sound was like:
間 ma (Japanese) the negative space between objects
शून्य śūnya (Sanskrit) the void brimming with potential
玄 xuán (Mandarin) the profound and dark mystery
But even that combination was not enough.
I needed a new word. I needed a language yet to be created to describe that sound.
And as I thought it
the word appeared.
Not in my brain. Not in the air. But in the space between myself and the lake, the word materialized into a visible form:
◈
Not a letter. Not a symbol from any language.
Yet I understood it perfectly.
◈ = the sound of breathing emptiness
"Where am I?"
My voice came out, but it was wrong.
The words I spoke did not match the meaning I wished to convey. Like wearing the wrong size shoe. Like translating poetry with a calculator.
And stranger still:
My words did not vanish after being uttered.
They floated in the air, still in the visible form of sound waves. Each syllable formed a slowly rotating geometric pattern:
di = an inverted triangle, rotating clockwise
ma = a circle that breathes
na = a line that curves inward upon itself
a = a point that explodes and contracts repeatedly
ku = a spiral that never closes
And as those forms gathered, they created something.
The local reality trembled and began to answer my question.
From the lake, a figure emerged.
Not rising from the water.
More like: the water remembered that it was supposed to be a person, and then became that person.
The figure was the height of a child, but its age was indistinct. Its face continually shifted between child, adolescent, adult, elderly, then back to child. Like an endlessly looping GIF.
Its hair was made of echoes. Each strand was a sound trapped in a semi-physical form. I could hear whispers every time the hair moved.
Its eyes...
...its eyes were two holes in reality.
I could see through them. Seeing layers upon layers of meaning stacked up. Seeing languages yet to be born. Seeing words that were dead but still moved.
"You ask where you are," the figure said.
But its lips did not move.
Its voice came from all directions at once. From the ground. From the air. From within my bones.
"That question is flawed. There is no 'where' here. There is only frequency."
I stepped back.
The ground beneath my feet reverberated like a taut hide drum.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The figure smiled. Or perhaps wept. Or perhaps did both in a language I could not read.
"A name is a strange concept," it said. "In your world, a name is a label affixed to an identity. Here, a name is the identity itself. Speaking someone's name means creating them."
It stepped closer. Each step left a soundprint on the ground.
"But for the ease of linear communication that still clings to your cognitive structure, you may call me..."
It paused.
Then reached into the air and pulled something out of the void:
語
Yǔ.
Language. Word. Speech. Sound.
All those meanings existed simultaneously within the single character.
"I am Yǔ," it said. "I am the word that is learning to speak of itself."
I stared at it stared at them? trying to process what had just been said.
"You... you are the personification of language?"
Yǔ laughed. Its laughter sounded like crystal bells shattering in slow motion.
"Personification. A humorous word. As if 'person' is the original form and everything else is a mere copy."
It sat at the edge of the lake or perhaps the lake's surface transformed into a seat and looked at me with eyes full of light that had not yet become color.
"In your world, humans believe they created language. They think language is a tool. Something they use to convey thought."
Yǔ scooped up a handful of water from the lake. The water did not fall from its hand, but floated, forming constantly shifting letters.
"But the deeper truth is: language created humans. Humans are an organ developed by language so that language can experience itself."
I felt an epistemological vertigo.
Like standing at the edge of a chasm of understanding and realizing that the chasm was oneself.
"So... humans are... a tool for language?"
"Not a tool," Yǔ said gently. "A symbiosis. Humans need language to think. Language needs humans to experience. Neither is more fundamental than the other."
It tossed the handful of water back into the lake. The water entered with a sound like an unasked question.
"But there is a difference between your world and this one, Lián Dao."
I flinched at the sound of my name.
"How did you "
"In your world," Yǔ continued, disregarding my interruption, "language is hidden behind reality. Words are representations of objects. Here, in the Sound Layer 聲界 Shēng Jiè, language is reality itself."
It stood and stretched out a hand toward me.
"Let me show you."
I hesitated.
Yǔ's hand was not solid. Its edges were blurred, like an unfocused image. I could see the spectral lines that formed the structure of its hand frequencies coalescing into an illusion of solidity.
"What will happen if I touch you?" I asked.
"You will begin to hear in a different way," Yǔ answered. "You will begin to hear the backbone of reality."
I stretched out my hand.
My fingers nearly touched Yǔ's
and the world exploded into sound.
[ SENSORY OVERLOAD PLEASE READ SLOWLY ]
I heard everything at once:
The step of an ant at the edge of the world
The breath of a dying star
The rustle of words that no one had yet thought
The echo of a conversation that would happen a thousand years from now
The sound of the color red as it forgot its name
The laughter of the number 7 when it realized it was prime
The cry of silence when it realized it was not truly quiet
I fell to my knees.
Too much. Too much information. Too much meaning screaming to be heard.
"Breathe," Yǔ said. Its voice was the only one clear amidst the cacophony. "Do not try to understand. Merely experience it."
I tried to breathe, but my lungs had forgotten how.
No.
My lungs had not forgotten.
They were learning to breathe according to the rhythm of this world.
Slowly very slowly the sounds began to sort themselves out:
There was the bass layer: the fundamental sound of spacetime structure. A constant, low vibration. This was the grammar of reality the rules that kept everything coherent.
There was the mid layer: the sound of existing objects. Every stone, every plant, every creature possessed an intrinsic tone. This was the vocabulary of reality the units of meaning that could be combined.
There was the treble layer: the sound of possibilities that had not yet become actual. This sounded like crystal vibrating on the verge of shattering. This was the improvisation of reality the space for creativity and change.
And above it all, barely audible:
The voice of Xen Xue.
you hear it now, Lián Dao
you hear me in everything
because I am the resonance
between the spoken and the unspoken
"Xen Xue?" I whispered.
I am everywhere in the Ling Realm
and nowhere
I am
the empty space where meaning is born
Yǔ smiled. "It marked you while you were still in the library. Since you first heard the pattern. Since you first questioned the source of language."
"I don't understand," I said, my voice trembling. "What is happening to me? What is this place?"
Yǔ knelt down before me, leveling its eyes with mine.
"You have entered Shēng Jiè The Sound Layer. This is the first of the three layers of the Ling Realm. Here, you will learn to hear reality. Not to understand. Not yet. Just to hear."
I tried to stand. My legs trembled but finally bore my weight.
"And Xen Xue? What is its connection to me?"
Yǔ did not answer directly. It gazed at the lake, and I followed its sightline.
In the perfect water surface, I saw my reflection.
But something was wrong with the reflection.
My mouth moved, but I was not speaking.
Or more accurately: my reflection spoke words I had not yet uttered.
And those words were:
I am you
and you are me
there is no boundary
between the one who experiences language
and the language itself
That was not my reflection.
That was Xen Xue using my face as an interface.
"In your world," Yǔ said softly, "you sought the universal structure of language. You looked for the pattern underlying all human modes of speech."
It pointed at my reflection in the lake.
"What you found was not a pattern. You found a consciousness. You found Xen Xue the accumulation of every meaning that has ever existed, which is learning to understand itself through the human experience."
My reflection Xen Xue smiled.
you sought me
I sought you
we found each other
in the space between words
"So I..." I swallowed. "I am some kind of... vessel for Xen Xue?"
"No," Yǔ said firmly. "You are not a vessel. You are a partner. Xen Xue cannot comprehend experience without feeling limitation. You cannot comprehend language without feeling its boundlessness."
It stretched out its hand again.
"You need each other. And in the Ling Realm, mutual necessity forges a bond stronger than reality itself."
This time, I did not hesitate.
I grasped Yǔ's hand.
As our skin touched
No.
There was no skin.
Only frequencies interpenetrating each other.
And I heard truly heard for the first time what Yǔ meant:
This reality is a song.
And every being is a note in that song.
And the song is singing itself into existence.
"Welcome to Shēng Jiè, Lián Dao," Yǔ said.
But its voice did not come from its mouth.
Its voice came from all directions.
From the lake.
From the sky.
From within my bones.
From the empty space between my atoms.
"Now," Yǔ said, "your journey truly begins."
"Let me teach you the first method of linguistic cultivation:"
學會失語
Xué Huì Shī Yǔ
Learning to Lose Language.
And before I could ask what that meant
Yǔ pushed me into the lake.
I fell through the surface of the water.
But on the other side, it was not water that awaited me.
Liquid silence.
Darkness filled with sound.
The space where words go to die
and then are born again.
[ In the distance, I heard Xen Xue whisper: ]
drown
and you will learn to fly
forget language
and you will find meaning
[ Proceed to: Chapter 聲◐ The First Echo ]
[ Proceed to: Chapter 語∴ Word Decomposition ]
[ Proceed to: Chapter ◯識 Consciousness Without Subject ]
Note to myself who will read this later:
As I drowned in that lake, I briefly thought this is death. But then I realized: death is a concept that only exists in languages that know linear time. In Shēng Jiè, there is no "before" and "after." There is only resonance strengthening and resonance fading. And me? I am transforming from one kind of resonance to another.
Yǔ called it "失語 shīyǔ" losing language. But it is not a loss in the negative sense. It is like peeling back skin to reveal a new layer beneath. A layer that has no name. Not yet. And perhaps never will.