The night breeze blew gently through the gaps in the windows of the empty house. However, for Li Yuan, the previously familiar silence had now become a deep echo.
The last book was still open in his hands. That sentence… lingered in his mind:
"If you read this, then your inner world has opened its first gate."
Li Yuan stood. His steps were heavy, not because his body was tired, but because his consciousness was beginning to tremble. Something inside him was moving not Qi, not energy, but something quieter… more private.
He sat cross-legged in the center of the house. His breathing was calm. He had nothing to do, just listen.
One breath in…one breath out…
Then…
His inner world shook.
However, it wasn't a tremor like an earthquake. Rather, it was like a thin curtain that had been covering something… beginning to part.
In the darkness of his inner being, a single point of light appeared. Very small. But it was enough.
It wasn't a flame. It wasn't a glimmer of energy. But recognition that he had arrived at something beyond words.
"I see."
Not seeing with his eyes. But with understanding.
He saw himself... the world... and the thin line connecting the two.
And when he realized that…
The gate opened.
There was no sound. No flash of light. But inside him, a space formed.
Calm.
Still.
Empty, but not emptiness.
A place not made, but found.
A space not explored with steps, but with understanding.
Li Yuan slowly opened his eyes.
He was still in the house. But everything felt different. The air was clearer. The silence was deeper. The world seemed to... acknowledge his existence in a way it had never before.
He stood. He said nothing.
Only in his silence, he knew:
The world within him had been born.
And that… was just the beginning.
After the gate within him opened,
Li Yuan stepped out of the old house.
Morning greeted him with a thin mist
that clung to the earth,
as if the world were holding its breath.
But something had changed.
His steps no longer felt like they merely touched the ground.
Each movement carried an echo—
not outward, but inward.
The air felt deeper.
The morning light seemed to slip beneath his skin,
grazing his understanding.
He stopped before the old well.
Its surface was still, reflecting his image.
But that reflection…
was not just himself.
Within it, he saw something else.
Not a physical shadow
but the shadow of understanding.
As if the outer world no longer stood alone.
It was a mirror of the inner.
Li Yuan whispered,
"The outer world… reflects the inner world."
He bowed down, took a single drop of water from the well,
and gazed into it.
Within that tiny drop,
he saw mountains.
He saw the village he had passed.
He saw himself
sitting, silent, observing.
But more than that,
he saw a choice:
that everything he came to understand
would cast a reflection into the world.
The cloudy sky in the distance began to part.
And as the morning dew clung to the tip of a leaf,
the world appeared more honest.
Not more beautiful.
Not more grim.
But more… real.
"The inner gate opens the mirror outside."
"And the world is no longer a place separate from me."
Li Yuan knew, from this moment on…
Every understanding
would not only change himself
It would shape the reality around him.
The outer world was not a realm to be conquered,
but a realm that responds
to the understanding he brings into it.
And this...
was only the beginning
of a greater transformation