Fifteen...
Fifteen understandings had flowed into Li Yuan's consciousness like rivers emptying into the same lake. Each understanding brought its own richness, each one added depth to the spiritual landscape of his Zhenjing, each was a small stone thrown into a calm lake—creating ripples that spread without limit.
Water... which flows with gentleness yet penetrates stone. Silence... which envelops without judgment. Existence... which whispers the importance of being fully present. Doubt... which directs one's gaze inward. Breath... which harmonizes all life. Heaven... with its vastness that accepts without choice. Body... as a loan best used to help. Loss... which is sometimes the beginning of a deeper understanding. Fear... which invites honesty with oneself. The Veil... which protects and filters. Soul... as the conductor that harmonizes all. The Qi of Chaos... the trace of the corrupted that longs for harmony. Chaos... which teaches flexibility in uncertainty. Memory... of loving without getting stuck in sadness. Home... the deep realization of the true meaning of existence.
Fifteen understandings he had gathered over four centuries, the last one—Home—he had felt as Li Qingshan amid the warmth of the Hexin community.
But now...
Now, in resonance with the Oldest Breath in the Ganjing realm, something new was beginning to form. It didn't come from the outside like a sudden revelation, but emerged from within like a flower blooming after a long winter.
The sixteenth understanding.
Li Yuan felt a subtle vibration in his Zhenjing, like the ground beginning to shake because a new tree's roots were starting to grow. In the spiritual landscape he had formed over centuries, a new space began to open—not as an addition to what was already there, but as... the essence underlying all that was already there.
"The Oldest Breath..." the name flowed in his consciousness, no longer as something he felt from a distance, but as something that was beginning to... become a part of him.
This understanding was different from the previous fifteen. If the other understandings were like musical instruments, each with its own unique tone and characteristics, then the Oldest Breath was like... the silence between the notes. The silence that allows the music to exist, the space that allows the instruments to resonate, the foundation that allows the symphony to be played.
In his Ganjing, Li Yuan began to feel how all his previous understandings resonated with this new one. Water flows because there is a more fundamental rhythm that moves it. Silence holds wisdom because in that silence, the cosmic breath echoes. The soul harmonizes all understandings because the soul vibrates at the same frequency as the Oldest Breath.
"You..." Li Yuan whispered to this newborn understanding, "you are not an additional understanding. You are... the understanding that has existed from the beginning, which I have only now recognized."
The Oldest Breath as an understanding didn't come with a dramatic vision or a sudden transformation. It came like... a recognition. Like someone who suddenly realizes that the music they've been listening to has a basic rhythm they had never been aware of, yet that rhythm has been guiding every motion, every step, every breath.
Within his Zhenjing, the understanding of the Oldest Breath didn't form a new mountain or a new river. It became... the atmosphere. The air that allows all other spiritual landscape forms to exist and interact. It was the medium in which all other understandings move, like the ether that connects all the stars in the sky.
Li Yuan felt how this sixteenth understanding changed the quality of the previous fifteen without altering their essence. Water still flowed, but now he knew why it flowed—because it moved in the rhythm of the Oldest Breath. Silence still enveloped, but now he knew where the depth of that silence came from—from the primordial silence of the Oldest Breath.
"With You," he whispered in deep awe, "all previous understandings find... their true context. They are not separate fragments, but... aspects of the same single harmony."
The understanding of the Oldest Breath in the Ganjing realm felt like... remembering a song that had been long forgotten but had actually been sung all along by the soul in solitude. It wasn't learning something new, but remembering something that was always known but not realized.
Li Yuan felt a subtle shift in the way he understood the Daojing itself. If before he saw the Daojing as a path of understanding with many separate aspects, now he was beginning to see the Daojing as... a single understanding that expresses itself in many ways. And that single understanding was... the Oldest Breath.
"The Daojing..." the realization flowed like water finding its level, "is not a collection of understandings. The Daojing is... the way the Oldest Breath understands itself through a limited consciousness."
In this new perspective, his long spiritual journey gained a different meaning. He wasn't collecting separate understandings. He was... remembering different aspects of a single truth. Each understanding was a different point of view to see a single reality that was too vast to comprehend all at once.
The sixteenth understanding—the Oldest Breath—was the recognition that all those viewpoints referred to the same single object. Like a group of blind people touching an elephant and each thinking they were touching a different animal, until one of them steps back and realizes that everything they touched was part of the same single creature.
Li Yuan felt the Oldest Breath flowing through every aspect of his spiritual being. Not flowing like energy in motion, but flowing like... existence itself breathing. Like a person realizing that they aren't breathing, but that breath is breathing through them.
"Sixteen..." he counted with undiminished awe, "sixteen understandings in the Daojing. Or... one understanding seeing itself from sixteen different perspectives."
With the formation of the Oldest Breath understanding, something changed in the quality of Li Yuan's Ganjing realm. If before, Ganjing was the ability to feel the echoes of the Dao from various separate aspects, now Ganjing was beginning to feel... the source of all those echoes. No longer hearing the individual instruments in an orchestra, but beginning to hear... the conductor who harmonizes all the instruments.
Li Yuan knew that this was still just the beginning. In the Ganjing realm, he could only feel the Oldest Breath as an understanding, not yet fully merge with it. Like someone who has just recognized the melody of a beautiful song but can't yet sing it perfectly.
But the seed had been planted. The sixteenth understanding was born. And in that birth, Li Yuan's entire Daojing system gained a new foundation—a foundation that allowed not only for individual understandings, but for an understanding of the relationship between all understandings.
The Oldest Breath as the sixteenth understanding was not the end of Li Yuan's journey. It was... the key that opened the door to a spiritual realm he had not even imagined.
The door to true merging.
The door to becoming a part of the cosmic harmony, not just as a listener, but as a part of the music itself.
The journey toward understanding... had found its true center.