Li Yuan walked with no particular destination, letting his feet take him wherever the path led. After learning that his legacy had grown on its own, he felt free to focus on something simpler: learning to be human again.
His consciousness body felt every sensation with an almost painful clarity. After two hundred and eighty years as a pure soul, the most basic things felt like a miracle. The texture of dust under his feet. The salty taste of dried sweat. The smell of wet earth after the rain.
At a small river, he stopped to "drink"—even though his consciousness body didn't need water, his Understanding of Body longed for that simple ritual. The cool water on his lips brought back vague memories of thirst and satisfaction.
It was strange.
He could recall the sensations from before, but he couldn't truly feel them in the same way. It was as if he was a very skilled actor playing a character he once knew well.
"What am I really looking for?" he whispered to the flowing water.
The water didn't answer, of course. But in the silence that followed, Li Yuan realized something surprising.
For three hundred and eighty years, he had been searching for understandings that were deeper, higher, and broader. But now, for the first time, he wanted to understand something simple.
What it felt like... to just be human.
That night, he slept under a large tree by the roadside. His consciousness body didn't require sleep, but he tried to lie down and close his eyes, hoping to remember what it felt like to be tired.
What came was not sleep, but a different kind of silence. Not the spiritual silence he had known for centuries, but a silence that was more... empty.
The silence of someone who isn't looking for anything.
In that silence, he heard the sounds of the night. Crickets. The wind in the leaves. An owl in the distance. Sounds he once heard when he was the ordinary human Li Yuan, before he became a soul searching for the Oldest Breath.
"Maybe," he murmured softly, "the Oldest Breath is very simple. Maybe it's just... breathing."
He took a breath—a breath he didn't need, but one that felt right.
The night air filled his consciousness body with a strange calmness. Not the tranquility of a sage or a cultivator, but the calmness of a man who was tired after a long day.
For the first time in centuries, Li Yuan fell asleep.
Not in deep meditation or a spiritual journey, but in the simple sleep of an exhausted human.
He woke up when the sun touched his face. Vague dreams of his father, of the mother who died when he was young, of Mu Yi and Fan Tu, still echoed in his mind.
Not a spiritual vision or a cosmic revelation.
Just a dream.
Li Yuan sat up and laughed softly. In that laughter, there was a pure and simple joy. The joy of remembering what it felt like to wake up with heavy eyes and a blank mind.
"Good morning," he said to a small bird perched on a branch above him.
The bird chirped once, then flew away.
A meaningless interaction. There was no philosophical lesson in it. No profound symbolism.
Just a man greeting a bird, and a bird continuing its day.
Li Yuan felt something shift within his Zhenjing. It wasn't a new understanding being born, but... relaxation. As if his entire inner world had sighed in relief.
Perhaps, after centuries of searching for meaning in everything, he had finally learned not to look for meaning in some things.
Maybe that's what it means to be human: the ability to sometimes just... be, without a higher reason or purpose.
That day, Li Yuan walked with a lighter step. When he passed a farmer working in a rice field, he waved. When a small child smiled at him, he smiled back without thinking about spiritual resonance or cosmic impact.
Just simple human interaction.
In the afternoon, he arrived at a small market. Instead of observing from afar with the eyes of a sage, he entered the crowd. He bought a pear from a chatty vendor. He listened to a mother's complaints about her naughty child. He laughed when an old man told a story about a chicken that could count.
Small stories. Small lives. Small joys.
Nothing profound. Nothing that changed the world.
But in that simplicity, Li Yuan found something that had been lost for a long time: joy without a reason.
When night fell and he found a place to rest again, Li Yuan felt something strange in his heart.
Satisfaction.
Not satisfaction from reaching a higher spiritual level, or from solving a complex cosmic mystery.
Satisfaction from a good day spent well.
The satisfaction of a human who had lived a day as a human.
"Maybe," he whispered to the stars that were beginning to appear, "being human is an understanding I could never achieve as a pure soul."
"Maybe to understand the Oldest Breath, I have to remember how to breathe like an ordinary human."
The night wind blew gently, carrying the scent of grass and wild flowers.
Li Yuan closed his eyes, not to meditate, but to sleep.
The sleep of a man who was satisfied with a simple day.
And in that sleep, without him realizing it, something within his Zhenjing began to shift.
A new understanding was growing.
The understanding of simplicity.
The understanding of being human.