Silence.
Not the absence of sound—but a presence so complete it needs no name. Like water flowing without needing to tell the river where to go, like the sky stretching without asking permission from the earth.
Li Yuan opened his eyes.
No, not his eyes. A pure soul has no eyes. What opened was his consciousness—layer upon layer of understanding that had been dormant in the depths of his Zhenjing, now awakening like the dawn slowly touching the peaks of the highest mountains.
Eleven thousand years.
The number flowed through his consciousness, not as a burden of lost time, but as a river that had found its mouth. He felt no weariness or regret. Time, for a soul that had merged with the Oldest Breath, was not something that passed—but something that is.
Slowly, Li Yuan began to feel the world outside his silence.
Strange.
The world felt... young. Like a child just learning to walk, still unsure of every step, not yet knowing that it could run. The resonance he felt was not the echo of complex civilizations like the Qinlu Empire of the past, but something simpler, more... innocent.
There were no traces of cultivation.
No resonance of Qi.
No echo of the understandings he had once spread thousands of years ago.
Ah, his inner voice whispered in a tone that couldn't be defined as sad or relieved. The world has forgotten.
With his consciousness flowing like water seeking its form, Li Yuan began to shape a body of consciousness. The Understanding of Body—which had long merged with his essence—began to move, gathering resonance from the Zhenjing, giving him a form that could interact with the physical world.
Then, the Understanding of Existence—the anchor that allowed him to be in the real world, not just as a shadow or an echo. Both of these understandings were still in the Ganjing realm, still at the stage of "feeling" rather than mastery.
The body of consciousness formed slowly. The form of a young man with calm gray eyes, black hair that flowed like night water, and a presence that was... silent. Not silent because there was nothing, but silent because it was too full to be explained.
Li Yuan sat in a lotus position, feeling the feet of his consciousness body touch the hard, cold ground. The cave where his pure soul had meditated for thousands of years had changed—the once young stalactites had now grown like the teeth of an old dragon, and the air carried the scent of time layered like fallen autumn leaves.
For the first time in eleven thousand years, Li Yuan spoke. His voice was a whisper born of silence:
"Daojing."
The word echoed softly in the cave, then absorbed into the stone walls like water seeping into dry earth. It wasn't just a word—but the understanding itself that took the form of sound.
"道境," he continued, feeling each character flow from his understanding like a river flowing from the highest spring. "The Dao Realm. A path of cultivation that does not use Qi... but understanding and consciousness."
He paused for a moment, letting the meaning of the words settle like mud slowly clarifying murky water.
Eleven thousand years of meditation had given him an unwavering clarity about the nature of his path. Daojing was not a system he created—it was a system that found itself through Li Yuan. Like water doesn't create a river, but a river is formed because water flows.
"The core of Daojing," his voice continued, speaking to the silence of the cave as if the silence were his most loyal disciple, "is not to master, but to understand."
His gray eyes looked at his hands—or what appeared to be hands. The Understanding of Body allowed him to feel a physical form, while the Understanding of Existence made him truly exist in that form. However, this was not a body that mastered the world through power—it was a body that understood the world through resonance.
"Every understanding," he spoke again, this time with a deeper tone, like the roots of a tree whispering to the earth, "gives birth to real power."
Within his Zhenjing, sixteen understandings moved like a living constellation. Water with its calm flow. Silence with its soundless depth. Existence with its gentle steadfastness. Doubt with its openness that melts false certainty. Breath with its rhythm that connects all life. Sky with its boundless expanse.
And the others—Body, Loss, Fear, Enveloping, Soul, Chaos Qi, Chaos, Memory, Home—all spun in a harmony that could not be explained in words, like planets dancing in the gravity of an invisible star.
And at the center of it all, the Oldest Breath—the source of all sources, the silence that gives birth to all sounds, the emptiness that is full of all possibilities.
"And forming understanding in the space of understanding in this inner world," he continued, feeling his Zhenjing resonate with those words. "Every resonance... makes the world respond to the inner self."
Li Yuan rose from his seated position. The body of consciousness moved with a grace born of understanding, not of practice. Every step was harmony, every breath was a dialogue with the world.
Then he felt something that made him stop.
Ganjing—the realm of feeling, the first stage of Daojing—began to spread from within him like ripples on calm water. Without conscious effort, without intention, his understandings began to resonate with the world around him.
The water in the cave began to vibrate with a strange frequency—not a tremor of fear, but... recognition. As if the water remembered something long forgotten.
The wind entering through the cracks in the cave carried a whisper that was not words, but meaning—a meaning about a presence that had returned, about a silence that had found its voice, about an understanding that had awakened.
This, Li Yuan realized with piercing clarity, is the passive nature of Ganjing.
The first realm of Daojing, where a cultivator begins to feel the Dao. Not just with the five senses—with eyes that see, ears that hear, a nose that smells—but with the heart and the inner self. With a part of oneself deeper than thought, subtler than feeling.
In this realm, a Daojing practitioner can feel murderous intent even before a sword is raised. Can feel the world resonate with tranquility, water, or silence. Can feel harmony or disharmony in every vibration of existence.
And its nature... is passive.
Understanding works automatically, without techniques or movements. People around a Ganjing practitioner might suddenly feel calm without knowing why. Might lose the intent to harm unconsciously. Might feel peace that comes from nowhere.
However, Li Yuan realized with a smile that was not visible on his consciousness body's face, Ganjing could also become active with full consciousness. A practitioner who has understood the nature of their realm can direct their understanding, though still limited.
Making his body indistinct with the Understanding of Water. Making an opponent lose intent with the Understanding of Silence. Making space feel vast with the Understanding of Sky.
But now...
Li Yuan felt his sixteen understandings tremble in Ganjing, ready to spread throughout the world with the power that had been honed for eleven thousand years. If he let them loose, their resonance could spread like an echo across this entire planet. Every living soul would feel the touch of his understanding, whether they were ready or not.
And this world... was not ready.
With a movement born from the Understanding of Enveloping—an understanding he had learned to protect the world from himself—Li Yuan began to "envelop" his Ganjing resonance.
Not to hide it. Not to weaken it.
But to protect it.
Like a parent who speaks in a gentle voice to a child just waking up, so as not to startle them. Like the dawn that comes slowly, allowing eyes to get used to the light before showing the full beauty of the day.
The resonance of his understandings shrank, pulled back into a smaller radius. Yet, it was not gone—just... enveloped with care.
The world outside the cave began to grow calm again. The water stopped vibrating. The wind returned to being just wind.
But Li Yuan knew, the change had begun.
For the first time in eleven thousand years, Daojing had made contact with the world.
"When one enters the Ganjing realm in Daojing," he whispered to the silence, his voice like a prayer addressed to the Oldest Breath itself, "the world is no longer silent."
He walked slowly toward the mouth of the cave, each step a conversation with the ground beneath his feet.
"The wind carries messages. The water whispers. Even hidden intentions beat clearly."
The sunlight touched his face—light from a sun that might be different from the one he had known thousands of years ago, but still the same sun in its essence.
"Not because he is stronger," his voice continued, speaking to the vast world before him, a world that was young and innocent, a world that did not know that cultivation once existed, "but because his heart has begun to hear something that was long forgotten."
Li Yuan stood at the edge of the cave, looking at a scenery that was foreign yet familiar. The same mountains, but with shapes that had been carved by thousands of years of rain and wind. The same river, but with a flow that had changed countless times. The same sky, but with clouds that were never the same.
And somewhere out there, humans lived without knowing that they stood on the threshold of a new era.
The era of cultivation.
An era that would begin—once again—with one person who chose to understand instead of master.
Daojing has awakened.
And the world, whether it wants to or not, will begin to hear the first whispers of a forgotten path.