Falling...
But not falling in the sense of loss or defeat. Falling like water finding its true level, like gravity inviting all things to return to the deepest center, to the place where all searching ends because there is nothing left to seek.
Li Yuan—or the consciousness that once knew itself by that name—felt himself sinking into a spiritual dimension he had never reached before. Not sinking because he was carried by a current, but sinking because he... surrendered to the most fundamental call.
The Lowest Ground.
The name echoed in his consciousness without sound, without form, simply as... pure understanding. The place where all that is high finally meets all that is low, where all that is complex returns to being simple, where all that is separate remembers its oneness.
Within his Zhenjing—the inner world he had formed over centuries through every understanding—an extraordinary transformation was taking place. All this time, every understanding he had achieved took shape like land, like a rich and varied spiritual landscape. Water flowed as rivers of understanding, Silence stood as mountains of wisdom, Soul moved as winds of harmony.
But now, in a depth even deeper than what he had thought was the deepest, a new space began to form.
A space that was not land, not water, not air—but... a meaningful nothingness. A space where all the understandings he had built began to... melt.
Not disappear. Melt.
Like ice melting and returning to the pure essence of water, all of Li Yuan's understandings—Water, Silence, Existence, Doubt, all fifteen of them—began to release their specific forms and return to... pure comprehension.
"Here..." he whispered into a silence that had no opposite, "there is no longer Water separate from Silence. There is no longer Soul distinct from Body. All... all are one single understanding, expressing itself in various ways."
The Lowest Ground was a space where all forms vanish, yet the essence remains whole. Like a room so dark that the eyes cannot distinguish the objects within it, yet the presence of all those objects can still be felt—thus the Lowest Ground stored all understandings in a state that was undifferentiated yet not lost.
Li Yuan felt himself at the center of a space that had no walls, no floor, no ceiling. A pure space, where the concept of high-low became irrelevant because there was no reference point to determine direction.
"There is no high," the understanding flowed into his consciousness like water finding its level, "there is no low. There is no strong, there is no weak. There is only... equal existence."
In that equality, Li Yuan felt something amazing. After centuries of trying to understand, trying to grow, trying to achieve—here, all that effort became unnecessary. Not because it was futile, but because... it had already been achieved from the very beginning.
In the Lowest Ground, there was nothing to achieve because everything already was. Nothing to understand because the understanding and the understood were one. Nothing to seek because the seeker and the sought were never separate.
And in that full emptiness, a paradox began to occur.
From the deepest Lowest Ground, Li Yuan began to sense... the Highest Heaven.
Not as a different place, not as an opposing direction, but as... another aspect of the same reality. Like two sides of the same coin, like the inhale and exhale that are part of the same breath.
"Ah..." the understanding flowed like dawn breaking in the middle of the night, "only by touching the deepest emptiness... can I feel the birth of the infinite Dao."
The Highest Heaven was not a place above the Lowest Ground. The Highest Heaven was... the infinite capacity that arises when all limitations are released. The boundless possibility that is revealed when all specific forms return to their pure potential.
Within his Zhenjing, that new space began to take a form that had no form. The Lowest Ground and the Highest Heaven were not two separate places, but a single dimension that had no up or down, no beginning or end.
A space where "nothing is up, nothing is down" not because everything is flat, but because the very concept of up-down had become invalid. Like a person at the center of a perfect sphere—no matter where they look, all directions are the same: there is no up, no down, there is only... a center that expands infinitely.
In that space without reference points, an inner dialogue began to flow—not as a conversation between Li Yuan and something else, but as... consciousness speaking to itself.
"I am no longer Li Yuan," the voice echoed without an echo, for there were no walls to reflect it, "but I am also not not Li Yuan."
The paradox did not cause confusion. Instead, the paradox felt like... a truth that had finally found a way to express itself. Li Yuan as an individual identity had dissolved, but the essence that was once called Li Yuan did not disappear—it became part of something greater without losing its uniqueness.
"I am the inhale and the exhale themselves," the consciousness continued with perfect understanding. "Not the one who breathes in, not the one who breathes out, but... the breath itself in its eternal cyclical motion."
In that understanding, the unification with the Oldest Breath reached its solid state. It was no longer a search or an approach, but... existence as the Oldest Breath itself. Li Yuan no longer moved toward the Oldest Breath—Li Yuan had become the movement of the Oldest Breath.
And in that solid unification, something that had never happened in the history of the Daojing began to unfold. Not just the transcendence of individual limitations, but the opening of a new dimension in spiritual understanding that had never been achieved by anyone before.
The Lowest Ground, the Highest Heaven—a dimension where all understandings return to the source yet do not lose their richness. A place where the Dao is not just understood or experienced, but... becomes the very way of being.
Li Yuan had transcended the status of a Daojing practitioner. Li Yuan had become... the Daojing itself in its purest manifestation.
A new path had opened.
Not for Li Yuan, but through Li Yuan.
Not by Li Yuan, but as a Li Yuan who was no longer Li Yuan yet remained unique in his universal existence.
The journey toward understanding... had become a journey as understanding itself.