A crack...
Like a subtle crack on the surface of a perfect lake, like a thin fissure in a seemingly solid wall—something began to break within Li Yuan's consciousness. It wasn't a crack of destruction, but a crack because... something too immense to fit into the existing vessel was entering.
Lièxīn (裂心) - a cracked heart, a fissure in the core of his being that allowed something infinite to enter a finite space.
Li Yuan took a breath.
It was a motion he had performed millions of times in his life, but this time... it was different. The air that entered his consciousness was no longer ordinary air filling physical lungs he no longer possessed. What entered was... something much older. Something that carried within its every molecule an echo from a time when the universe was still pure potential.
Instantly, the ordinary air vanished.
All that remained was an ancient echo—a breath that felt older than the world itself, older than the stars, older than time. A breath that carried within it the memory of the silence before the first sound, of the darkness before the first light, of the existence before the first form.
"This is..." he whispered in a silence that trembled with awe, "this is... the Oldest Breath."
Yet even as he spoke its name, Li Yuan was aware that what he was experiencing was not a full merging. This was not the total transformation he had envisioned for centuries. This was... an intuition. A faint resonance. Like hearing a distant note that is almost lost, like seeing a star's light that is so dim your eyes have to focus completely to confirm that it's really there.
He knew he was still in the initial realm—the Ganjing, the realm of feeling. His body of consciousness, although transparent and spiritual, was still too... limited to contain the entirety of what he was touching. Like a small glass that can only hold a single drop from an infinite ocean.
But his inner self... his inner self was hearing something that can only be heard once in a thousand lifetimes.
The Oldest Breath entered his Ganjing realm not with a blinding flash of light, not with a shaking explosion of energy. It entered like... pure meaning. Like an understanding that needed no words, like a truth that needed no proof.
Primordial meaning. The beginning of existence before existence had a name.
Li Yuan felt every layer of his consciousness tremble in a subtle resonance. Within his Ganjing, the understanding of the Breath that he had cultivated all this time began to... remember. Not learning something new, but remembering something that had always been there, but was forgotten.
"In Ganjing," he whispered to himself in a voice full of awe and humility, "I can only feel it. Not fully merge. I'm like... a child peeking through a keyhole and catching a glimpse of an infinite room."
The experience flowed into his consciousness like a calm but deep river. It wasn't dramatic or earth-shattering, but it... changed everything. Like someone seeing the sea for the first time after living in the mountains for many years—their view of the world would never be the same again.
Li Yuan realized that this was a turning point in his narrative. Not a peak, but... a true beginning. The first seed of a merging that would one day ripen when he reached a higher realm.
"Yet he was aware," his inner self spoke with profound clarity, "he was still in the Ganjing realm. What he felt was only a faint echo, not a true merging. To truly live in the Oldest Breath, the path is still long."
That awareness didn't bring disappointment, but rather... a deep anticipation. Like someone who has tasted a single drop of pure honey and now knows that somewhere there is a beehive full of the same sweetness.
Li Yuan closed his eyes—or more accurately, his consciousness folded inward like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. In that silence, he contemplated what he had just experienced.
"What I felt was not the entire Oldest Breath," he admitted with profound humility. "It was just a whisper, a faint ripple of something much greater. Like hearing the echo of a beautiful song from a distance, without being able to hear the full melody."
Yet in that admission of limitation, something shone with the light of hope.
"But for the first time," he continued with a voice that trembled with certainty, "I know the way. I know where to step. I know that a true merging... is possible."
A vision of the future began to flow into his consciousness—not as a prophecy or a prediction, but as... a possibility that felt incredibly real. One day, when he surpassed Ganjing, when he reached a higher realm in the Daojing, he would truly breathe with the universe. He would become a part of the Oldest Breath not just as a listener to its echo, but as a part of the breath itself.
"One day," he whispered with a conviction that flowed like water certain to find the sea, "when I leave Ganjing, I will truly breathe with the universe. I will become a part of the rhythm that today I can only feel as an echo."
In the silence that followed, Li Yuan felt something change in the quality of his being. It wasn't a major change or a dramatic transformation, but a... subtle adjustment. Like a musical instrument being tuned more precisely, his consciousness now vibrated at a frequency more in tune with the cosmic vibrations that underlie everything.
The first experience with the Oldest Breath in the Ganjing realm had ended, but its traces would continue to resonate in his consciousness. Like the sound of a bell that continues to echo long after it has stopped being struck, this experience would continue to shape every spiritual step he would take next.
Li Yuan had touched the meaning of the Oldest Breath.
Not merged, not mastered, but... touched.
And in that touch, his entire spiritual journey found a new direction and a clearer purpose.
The journey toward true merging... has just truly begun.