A Hundred Years Within
The cave was silent.The phosphor stone continued to glow—neither brighter nor dimmer.As if unaware of time.Or perhaps, this cave did not know time at all—and that is precisely why it could hold eternity within its stillness.
At its center, Li Yuan sat.
His body was motionless. Unmoving.But the world within him was slowly unfolding.
Zhenjing—the inner realm of understanding he had built over many years—gently called him inward.And Li Yuan dove.
No sound.No movement.Not even breath.
"Daojing... is my path."
The sentence was not spoken aloud,but stretched itself across his inner being.It was not an oath, nor a promise.It was a truth—grown out of silence.
Within Zhenjing, the world was neither hard nor soft.It was fluid, but not water.Bright, yet needing no light.It was the shadow of meaning—form without form,sound without sound.
And Li Yuan stood at its center.
He beheld his own understanding—not as ideas,but as living forms within him.And he knew—two of them had surpassed their original boundaries:
Water.Enveloping.
No longer were these mere concepts.They had evolved into entities that could feel the world—entering the domain of Ganjing.They did not simply reside within—they resonated outward.
When Li Yuan touched the meaning of water,he saw an inner river that flowed ceaselessly.The water did not follow the river—the river was formed by the movement of water.It did not seek arrival; it only desired motion.From this, he understood—the meaning of water was not about liquid—but about the will that refused to settle.
And enveloping appeared as mist—mist that cloaked everything,without harming, without intruding.Mist that shrouded the world—hiding and revealing at once.To envelop was not to conceal,but to receive.
These two understandings, within Ganjing,now breathed in harmony with the world.Every falling leaf, every tumbling stonewould stir the Zhenjing—and these two understandings would respond—not as powers,but as echoes from the deepest comprehension.
Li Yuan remained seated.
His body still,yet his thoughts were not thoughts.He did not think—he descended.He did not seek—he opened.And in that opening,time began to shift.
Outside the cave, only a single day passed.
But within...
Ten years.
He did not force it.He did not bend time.He simply aligned himself with the rhythm of his inner world.And that world understood—time is not a line.It is a space.And his inner space had become wide enoughfor ten years to flow in a single day.
And this... was only the beginning.
"I am in no hurry."
This was not a principle.It was a way of life.He did not chase ends.He did not pursue peaks.What he was meant to understand—he would understand in time.
In that silence, he recalibrated his rhythm.
Ten years became foundation.
He tuned the waves of Zhenjing.He did not alter time.He simply invited it in.He shaped a deeper, broader stillness—so that time could flow slower—like a quiet lake swallowing a thousand reflections without stirring.
And slowly...
One hundred years.
Time inside now moved like a single, long breath.One inhalation contained a decade.A single wisp of mist held a lifetime.
Outside, a single year would pass.Inside, a hundred years would live.
This was not illusion.Not a secret technique.Not magic.It was the result of understanding:that one's inner space is not bound by outer time—and that pure comprehension opens the doorway to true time.
Through it all, Li Yuan did not sleep.Nor did he train.
He felt.
Sometimes, he stood in the inner rain of his Zhenjing,observing how water never chose the ground it fell on.Sometimes, he drifted within the mist,and realized the mist never intended to hide.
And sometimes—he simply sat in silence,listening to the echo of silence itself.
In that hundred years,not a single human voice was heard.But he heard leaves fall.Stones crack.The breath of a distant deer beyond the cave.And the tremor of the ancient earth.
He heard everything,for Ganjing had opened the bridgebetween understanding and the world.
His Zhenjing changed.
Not by growing wider,but deeper.
The layer of water now did not just flow—it sculpted forms.The mist no longer only wrapped—it became space itself.
And Li Yuan knew...
The realm of Ganjing was not a boundary.It was a gate.
A gate to understand not just the world within but the outer world,as felt by the world itself.
As he slowly returned after a hundred years within his body still sat in the cave.
The phosphor stone still glowed.The world remained silent.