Day ten began with rain.
Li Yuan sat on his doorstep, listening to the sound of raindrops on the thatched roof. It wasn't the heavy rain of a storm, but a soft, gentle rain that seemed to fall just to greet him.
In his Understanding of Water within the Wenjing domain, every drop of rain carried a story. A story about their journey from the sea to the clouds, from the clouds to the rain, and now back to the earth to continue the endless cycle.
But there was something different about the stories they carried today.
Li Yuan closed his eyes and let his consciousness flow with the rainwater. Usually, he heard stories from distant places—continents across the ocean, mountains hidden in mist, large rivers flowing through foreign lands.
This time, the stories he heard were closer. More personal.
The rain that hit his face carried memories of the drops that had once touched the skin of the Millbrook family. Anna standing in the rain collecting laundry. Thomas working in the fields during a morning drizzle. Lila playing in puddles after a storm had passed.
"They are still here," Li Yuan whispered, his voice mingling with the sound of the rain.
Not physically—the souls of the Millbrook family had moved on, saved by the sacrifice of his Understanding of Soul in the turbulent sea. But their traces remained in the water, stored as a memory in a cycle that never ends.
Water forgets no one it has ever touched.
Li Yuan rose and stepped out into the rain. The drops that fell on his skin felt warm despite the cool weather. In every touch, he felt the echoes of warmth from those who were no more.
"Thank you," he said to the cloudy sky, "for reminding me that nothing is ever truly lost."
He walked toward the plant formation that had become his small community circle. In this rain, they seemed more alive than usual. Their leaves glistened with drops of water, and the fresh scent they released mixed with the smell of petrichor—the scent of earth after rain.
Li Yuan knelt in the middle of the formation, letting the rain soak his clothes and hair. His hands touched the damp soil, feeling how the rainwater was absorbed by the roots of the plants around him.
Through that touch, he began to hear a new conversation.
The plants were talking about the rain—not just as a source of life, but as a messenger. They had learned, over their thousands of years of evolution, that every rain brings information about conditions in distant places.
The quality of the water tells them about the coming weather. The minerals it contains provide clues about the changing seasons. Even the temperature and intensity of the rain become signals about larger climate patterns.
"You've become spiritual meteorologists," Li Yuan realized with a sense of awe.
He spent the morning in the rain, learning from the plants about how they read the messages carried by the water. Not just messages about physical weather, but also about "spiritual weather"—the subtle changes in the energy flowing through nature.
They taught him that every element of nature has its own language. Water carries messages over long distances. Wind brings coming changes. The earth stores memories of the past. Even sunlight has different tones depending on the spiritual condition of the environment.
As the rain began to subside toward midday, Li Yuan felt he had learned a completely new communication system. Not just communication between living beings, but communication between life and the universe itself.
"Nature is a library," he mused, wringing water from his hair. "And you are the librarians who have learned to read every word written in it."
The afternoon brought a warm sun, making the puddles of rainwater glisten like small mirrors all over the island. Li Yuan used this opportunity to explore a part of the island he had not yet visited—the western area, which was more rocky and steep.
There, he found something surprising.
A cave.
Not a large cave, but a fissure between the rocks wide enough to enter. What interested him wasn't the cave itself, but what he felt from within it.
An ancient spiritual echo.
Li Yuan approached the mouth of the cave carefully. His Understanding of Water detected high humidity inside—water that had been trapped there for perhaps thousands of years, becoming like a very old, spiritual wine.
He stepped inside.
In the darkness of the cave, his senses, which had been cultivated for thousands of years, allowed him to see clearly. The stone walls filled with stalactites and stalagmites created a beautiful and mystical space.
But what drew his attention the most was a small pool in the deepest part of the cave.
The water in the pool was still—there were no visible inlets or outlets. But when Li Yuan approached, he felt a very strong spiritual vibration from it.
This was not ordinary water.
He knelt at the edge of the pool and lowered his hand into the water. The sensation he felt shocked him.
This water was filled with an almost pure spiritual concentration. Not from human cultivation or energy manipulation, but from natural accumulation over thousands of years. Like a spiritual crystal that had formed naturally in the right environment.
"A spiritual spring," Li Yuan whispered in a reverent tone.
Through his Understanding of Water, he began to hear the story contained in this pool. The story of how the rainwater that fell on top of this cave, for thousands of years, had slowly seeped through layers of mineral-rich rock. In that very slow journey, the water absorbed not only physical minerals but also the spiritual resonance of the rocks and soil it passed through.
When the water finally reached this cave, it had become something far more than just water. It had become a medium that could store and concentrate spiritual energy.
"And for thousands of years," Li Yuan continued his understanding, "this pool has been collecting the spiritual resonance of the entire island."
Every spiritual vibration that occurred on the surface—the growth of plants, the change of seasons, even the spiritual evolution of the ecosystem—was all recorded in this water as if in a liquid library.
Li Yuan pulled his hand from the water and sat in a lotus position at the edge of the pool. He realized that he had found something extremely valuable.
Not just a powerful source of spiritual water, but also a living archive of the spiritual history of Narau Island. Stored in this water was a record of thousands of years of natural spiritual evolution—something he would probably never find anywhere else in the world.
"Is this," he asked himself, "the real reason I was brought to this island?"
Not just to learn from the spiritually evolved plants, but also to find this natural archive—a record of how life can spiritually develop in total isolation, without intervention or guidance from cultivators.
The sun began to dip to the west when Li Yuan finally left the cave. He didn't take any water from the pool—it felt like taking a book from a library without permission. But he carried something more valuable: a new understanding of how nature itself can be a cultivator.
The journey back to his house was filled with reflection. Every step took him past a landscape he now saw with different eyes. Every tree, every stone, every puddle of water was part of a complex and interconnected spiritual system.
Narau Island was not just a biological ecosystem. It was a spiritual ecosystem—a living organism that had developed the ability to cultivate itself.
As the sun set, Li Yuan sat in his yard, surrounded by the plants that had become his teachers and friends. In the twilight, they vibrated with a harmony he now understood far more deeply than before.
They were not just plants that happened to have spiritual resonance. They were an integral part of a natural cultivation system that had evolved over thousands of years.
And the spring in the cave was the heart of that system—the place where all of the island's spiritual resonance was collected, purified, and stored for future generations.
"Tomorrow," Li Yuan decided as he watched the stars begin to appear, "I will try to understand how this system works as a whole."
Perhaps in understanding the natural cultivation of Narau Island, he could find new insights into his own Daojing. About how to make his cultivation not only powerful, but also sustainable and in harmony with the life around him.
The night wind carried the scent of the sea and of life, and in that scent, Li Yuan heard whispers of possibilities yet to be touched. Of lessons still waiting to be learned from the greatest teacher of all: nature itself.