After leaving the village of Ziran,
Li Yuan's steps turned toward the nameless mountains.
Each stone beneath his feet felt unfamiliar,
each whisper of wind carried the scent of a world he had never known.
Yet there was no fear in him.
He had not left home
he carried it within.
The sky opened wide,
and in the silence between breath and step,
Li Yuan sensed something.
Not from the outside,
but from within
a world growing without sound,
slowly, yet certainly.
This was Zhenjing.
Zhenjing was not a space to be created,
nor a place to be found.
It was the reflection of every understanding planted,
nurtured, and alive within inner silence.
A realm within,
born from the depths of comprehension.
The Understanding of Water formed a lake without end.
Within Zhenjing, that water flowed nowhere—
yet it moved in silence.
It spun in whirlpools,
rippled with small waves,
and formed raindrops that fell from the sky of the inner mind.
It was no ordinary water—
it was liquid awareness,
reflecting Li Yuan's own face in contemplation.
When he sat in the silence of night,
he saw that lake within himself.
He touched it without fingers,
and the water returned his understanding:
"Water chooses no shape—it follows.
But in following, it erodes, it shapes, it holds."
The Understanding of Stillness was a boundless sky.
In Zhenjing, it had no clouds, no sun, no name.
Only a soft emptiness that enveloped all
without ever touching.
In this space, all worldly noise faded,
all ambition dissolved.
It was there that Li Yuan often remained
not thinking, not feeling
simply being.
One day, while walking in the rain,
the outer world was loud.
But within his Zhenjing,
the sky of stillness remained silent.
As if whispering:
"Stillness is not a place without sound,
but a state where sound no longer disturbs."
The Understanding of Absence created a gap.
Not an empty space
but the absence of space.
In Zhenjing, it was like a black hole,
not consuming, but calling.
Not a place to hide,
but a place to release.
Li Yuan often stood at its edge,
gazing into something without a name.
In one long meditation,
he entered this space.
There, he felt not as a man
not even as awareness
but as part of not-being.
And the void whispered:
"Absence is not emptiness,
but where all things stop being something."
The Understanding of Fear created a moving space.
It constantly shifted shape
sometimes a fog,
sometimes a forest,
sometimes pure darkness.
But in Zhenjing, fear was no enemy
it was a mirror.
Li Yuan once saw himself
as a trembling child.
But that child was not him.
It was the residue of old understandings,
a shadow of past wounds.
And in that space,
Li Yuan did not reject it.
He sat beside it,
held its small hand.
Fear whispered:
"I am not something to be fought,
but something to be understood.
Within me, courage waits to be born."
The Understanding of Envelopment appeared as a soft mist.
In Zhenjing, it was no wall,
no boundary
but a veil that wrapped around the other spaces.
It did not trap,
but protected.
In meditation, Li Yuan realized
this understanding had no center.
It flowed between all other inner realms,
uniting and embracing them.
The mist said:
"To envelop is not to divide,
but to guard.
Like night embracing the world
so that we may dream."
Yet when all these spaces were formed,
and he began to walk within the realm of Ganjing,
something happened.
These inner spaces no longer lived only within him.
They began to resonate with the world outside.
When he sat beside a river,
its water moved in tune with his inner lake.
When he stood beneath the night sky,
the outer heavens mirrored his stillness within.
When he walked through the forest,
its darkness greeted him
like an old friend who remembered his wounds.
The outer world became a mirror—
not because he sought to change it,
but because he had changed,
and the world responded
with the same silence.
Zhenjing within Ganjing
was no longer just an inner space
but a bridge.
The understandings that once formed
landscapes of the soul
now flowed outward as resonance.
Not as power.
Not as technique.
But as a feeling that spread
quiet, gentle, and real.
And in that moment,
Li Yuan understood:
"I am not alone.
My understandings live.
They breathe with the world."
He closed his eyes
then opened them again.
The sky remained the same.
But to him,
the world had become
a part of his Zhenjing.