Morning in the village returned as usual. Sunlight pierced through the gaps in the rooftops, roosters crowed, and the sound of hoes striking the soil echoed from the fields.
Li Yuan woke up earlier than usual.
His body felt light, as if a hidden burden had been lifted. But more than anything… he felt a silence within himself. Not the silence of the world, but a strange kind of peace—as if his entire mind had gone still, and the world had become clearer.
While washing his face in the river, he gazed at his reflection.
His gray eyes looked deeper than before, like mist holding the sky within. He touched the water—and for a moment, he could feel its flow. Not just physically, but as if he understood why the water moved the way it did.
“Water doesn’t choose its path… it simply follows the lowest way,”
he murmured softly.
He didn’t know why he said that.
In the fields, while helping his mother plant vegetable seeds, something felt strange again.
The soil in his hands… seemed to speak. He could tell which part of the earth was rich and which was lacking nutrients. When a tiny insect passed by, he could sense it—not with his eyes, but through something else… a quiet awareness.
Ye Ling watched him in silence.
“This child… with each passing day, he becomes calmer… but also less and less like other children,”
she thought.
Elsewhere, Mu Yi and Fan Tu had begun to notice something too.
“Li Yuan, it’s like you know everything now, huh?” Mu Yi joked, laughing, after Li Yuan explained why the sky looked bluer in the morning.
Fan Tu stared at him for a while, then said,
“I had a weird dream last night… but not as weird as you.”
Li Yuan only smiled. He didn’t know how to explain the feeling—like the world was slowly opening itself to him, revealing hidden layers.
And each of those layers wasn’t about power… but about understanding.
The change was subtle. But certain.
And little by little…
the path of understanding began to open.