Depth...
Not the depth of space or time, but the depth of a consciousness that has no bottom, no boundary, only a... depth that constantly invites one to dive in even further.
Li Yuan sat in a silence that could no longer be called sitting—for he no longer had a body to sit, no ground to rest upon. He was pure existence, floating in a spiritual dimension, connected to the world's rhythm through threads of meaning that were invisible yet more real than anything he had ever touched with his hands.
Breath...
He began to feel something he had never realized before. All this time, he had always considered breath his own—Li Yuan's breath, the breath he inhaled and exhaled, the breath that marked the seconds of his life. But now, in this perfect silence, he began to feel that the breath he had thought was his own was actually... part of something much greater.
The Breath of the World.
The subtle vibration that he had felt as a distant call now began to feel so close, so... intimate. Like a person who has just realized that their heartbeat has always been in rhythm with a greater heartbeat, Li Yuan felt his breath—the breath of his abstract soul—begin to move in a rhythm not his own.
"Ah..." he whispered into a silence that trembled with recognition. "All this time... all this time I thought I was breathing alone. But I... I was breathing with You."
The realization flowed into his consciousness like water finding a new channel. The Breath of the World was not something outside of him that he had to reach or understand. The Breath of the World was... what he had been doing from the very beginning, without realizing it. Every inhale, every exhale, every pause in between—all of it was part of a larger cosmic rhythm.
But now, for the first time, he was aware of it.
In that new awareness, Li Yuan began to sense something even more faint, more ancient, more... fundamental. Beneath the Breath of the World that he felt, in a depth even deeper than what he had thought was the deepest, there was another echo.
An echo so old it was like a whisper from a time before the universe had a name.
The Oldest Breath.
The vibration came like a call from a time before time, from a place before place, from an existence before existence. Not loud, not urgent, but... undeniable. Like a gravity that cannot be ignored, like a sun that cannot be prevented from rising.
Li Yuan felt his entire soul tremble in resonance, but this time it was not a resonance of recognition—but a resonance of... reverence. He was feeling something so fundamental that his entire being, all the understanding he had gathered over centuries, all of it felt like... an echo. An echo of a more original, more pure, more... primordial vibration.
"The Oldest Breath..." the name flowed from his consciousness like a prayer offered to something too sacred to be named, yet too real to be ignored.
And in speaking that name, Li Yuan felt something move in his soul. Not fear, but... a deep hesitation. A hesitation different from the understanding of Doubt he had cultivated long ago—this was a more fundamental, more... existential hesitation.
Did he dare?
The question flowed into his consciousness like a river leading to the sea. All this time, in all his understandings, in all his transformations, he had always maintained something he called 'self.' Even when he became a pure soul, even when he let go of name and form, there was still something he believed to be 'Li Yuan'—the core of consciousness that observed, that understood, that experienced.
But the Oldest Breath... the Oldest Breath wasn't calling him to understand from the outside. The Oldest Breath was calling him to... merge. To let go of the last boundary separating 'self' from 'the Other,' to let go of the illusion that there was a 'Li Yuan' separate from the cosmic rhythm that underlies everything.
"Do I dare..." he whispered, and his voice trembled with a vulnerability he had never felt before, "...let go of this last boundary? Do I dare... no longer be 'I'?"
The silence answered with its own silence, but in that silence, Li Yuan felt an invitation so gentle yet so strong. Not a coercion, not a threat, but... a call of love. A call to return home to a place even deeper than the home he had felt in Hexin, a home even more fundamental than any form of warmth he had ever experienced.
Slowly, with a hesitation that trembled like a leaf in the wind but with a resolve that flowed like water to the sea, Li Yuan began to... surrender.
Not a surrender of defeat or despair, but a surrender of... release. Releasing the need to control, releasing the need to understand from a separate position, releasing the need to remain 'someone' who experiences rather than becoming part of the experience itself.
His breath—the breath of his abstract soul—began to move no longer in its own rhythm, but in a greater rhythm. Like a drop of water that falls into a river and begins to flow with the current, Li Yuan's consciousness began to move in the rhythm of the Oldest Breath.
And the body of his consciousness—the transparent figure he had maintained as a familiar form—began to tremble.
Not trembling from fear or instability, but trembling from... transformation. Like a chrysalis beginning to shake because the butterfly inside is ready to be born, Li Yuan's figure began to tremble because something greater than 'Li Yuan' was beginning to emerge through his form.
The trembling grew stronger, more... comprehensive. The boundaries that shaped his form began to become less distinct, less... important. Like a line drawn on water, his form began to melt into the larger medium.
Li Yuan felt himself on the verge of something he could not name, something he could not understand in old ways. He was like someone standing on the edge of a bottomless abyss—but not an abyss of death, but an abyss of birth. Birth into something so vast that 'Li Yuan' would become like a drop of water in an infinite ocean.
And in that increasingly intense trembling, in that transformation he could not stop and did not want to stop, Li Yuan felt his first step into the Oldest Breath.
A step that was not a step, because there was no one taking it.
A step that was not a movement, because there was no distance being traveled.
A step that was... the release of self into the Greater.
The body of his consciousness trembled more and more intensely, as if about to...
As if about to vanish into something infinitely more beautiful than any form he had ever worn.