On the third day of his journey south, Li Yuan entered a different land.
Not only in geography—though the northern mountains had now given way to gentle, green hills—but in… energy.
The air felt heavier, like the moments before a storm.
The sounds of nature were more alert.
Even the sky seemed lower, pressing down upon the earth with an invisible weight.
Li Yuan stopped atop a small hill and gazed out before him.
In the distance, thin smoke rose from several points.
Burned villages? Military encampments? From here, it was impossible to tell.
But one thing was clear—he was drawing near to the border, a place where war had not yet begun, yet its shadow already clung to the land.
Li Yuan sat beneath a solitary old tree that stood at the hill's crest.
It was tall and broad, with thick foliage and a sturdy trunk.
It had likely stood here for decades, witnessing countless changing seasons, weathering all storms, watching the comings and goings of human affairs.
Leaning against its trunk, Li Yuan closed his eyes.
He entered his Zhenjing with a different intent than before—not merely to reflect or examine his existing understandings, but to live within that inner world for as long as needed to truly comprehend something new.
Time flowed differently within the Zhenjing.
Fifty years inside for five days outside—a ratio Li Yuan had learned and mastered through years of training.
Enough to reach depths impossible in ordinary awareness.
Within his Zhenjing, Li Yuan found himself standing on an endless plain.
No horizon line.
No walls, no fences, no boundaries at all.
Only space—stretching in every direction without end, beneath a sky without edge.
Water flowed far away—the rivers of life that never dried.
Silence spread like a vast, clear ocean of air.
His other understandings existed as living landscapes, each with its own nature, yet all in unshakable harmony.
And above all—there was the Sky.
For the first ten years within, Li Yuan simply walked.
No destination, no direction, no urge to arrive anywhere.
Walking only to experience what it meant to be in a space without boundaries.
Each step brought a new scene—now grasslands, now fine desert, now forests whose trees reached the heavens.
New, yet the same.
New in form, but the essence unchanged: unconditional openness.
In the tenth year, Li Yuan stopped walking and began to sit.
From the tenth to the thirtieth year, Li Yuan sat in various places within his Zhenjing, observing the Sky.
This Sky was unlike the physical one.
No rising or setting sun, no clouds drifting with the wind.
Here, the Sky was the pure essence of vastness—presence without limit, space without end, freedom unthreatened because there was nothing to threaten it.
Li Yuan observed how the Sky related to everything else in the Zhenjing.
Water flowed beneath it, yet never wetted it.
Silence merged with it, yet never made it silent.
Fear arose and faded beneath it, yet never darkened it.
The Sky accepted all, yet was changed by nothing.
Li Yuan began to understand.
From the thirtieth to the fortieth year, Li Yuan began to be the Sky.
Not by changing his form or losing his individuality, but by sensing what the Sky felt in simply being itself.
The process was not easy.
Each time he tried to let go of his boundaries, some part of his mind panicked:
If I become boundless, will I still be myself?
But slowly, very slowly, Li Yuan began to grasp the paradox:
To be without limits, he did not need to lose himself—only to stop limiting himself.
Like water poured from a small cup into the ocean—still water, but no longer confined by the cup.
From the fortieth to the fiftieth year, Li Yuan lived as the Sky.
There was no Li Yuan apart from the Sky, and no Sky apart from Li Yuan.
Only vast, open being—receiving all without attachment to any.
In these last ten years, Li Yuan understood the true nature of freedom.
Freedom was not the ability to do anything.
Freedom was needing nothing to be whole.
The Sky was free not because nothing could hinder it,
but because it had no desire within it that could be hindered.
No ambition to be thwarted, no plan to be spoiled, no hope to be disappointed.
When there is nothing you want, nothing can be taken from you.
When there is nothing you fear, nothing can threaten you.
When there is nothing you must protect, nothing must be confined.
At the close of the fiftieth year, Li Yuan—now the Sky, now vastness itself—felt a vibration within his being.
Not the localized tremor of an ordinary insight, but one that spread through the entirety of the Zhenjing, altering the very quality of its space.
Like a fundamental note changing the harmony of an entire orchestra.
And then, with the same gentleness as dawn sweeping across the horizon, the understanding of the Sky reached full maturity—ready to enter Ganjing.
Li Yuan opened his eyes beneath the old tree.
Five days had passed in the outer world—he could tell by the sun's changed position, the faint shift in the scent of the air, the way light fell through the leaves.
But within him, fifty years of wisdom had taken root.
He rose slowly.
His body was not stiff despite five days seated.
Instead, he felt… spacious—as though his chest had become boundless.
He gazed at the wide midday sky above—blue with white clouds, the physical sky, not the inner one he had lived in for half a century.
Yet now, the two felt the same. Equally vast, equally open, equally accepting.
The Sky had no boundaries not because it was infinite, Li Yuan understood with the clarity of five decades' contemplation—
but because it had no need for them.