Li Yuan felt a subtle change in the water around him.
The familiar vibrations suddenly stopped. The currents that had been his companions in a silent conversation abruptly fell silent. Even the water pressure that had felt like a gentle embrace now felt... neutral.
Empty.
In that emptiness, Li Yuan saw something that silenced him.
A reflection.
In the absolute darkness of the deep sea, where light never touches, Li Yuan saw his own reflection in the water that had suddenly turned into a liquid mirror.
The reflection looked exactly like him, but there was something different in the eyes of the reflection. Something that was... judging.
"We finally meet," the reflection said in a voice exactly like Li Yuan's, but with a colder tone. "I've been waiting for you to acknowledge my existence."
Li Yuan did not answer. He knew this was not just a hallucination. In Daojing cultivation, as one approaches the boundary of a realm, certain trials come on their own.
The Inner Trial. Xīnjìng Shì.
"You think you have accepted yourself," the reflection continued, smiling a smile that didn't reach its eyes. "You think you have become like water—gentle, flowing, accepting. But I know the truth."
The water around the reflection moved in an unnatural pattern, like a fluid moving against gravity.
"Your gentleness is a mask," the reflection whispered. "You are gentle not because it's your nature, but because you are afraid. Afraid that if you show your true power, you will lose their love. Afraid that if you are firm, they will leave you."
The words pierced directly into the heart of the fear that Li Yuan had been hiding. Memories of his interactions with the Millbrook family began to spin in his mind in a different light.
Was he truly gentle with Anna when she was first suspicious of him? Or was he gentle because he was afraid of being rejected?
Was he truly patient with Marcus's questions? Or was he patient because he didn't dare to show frustration?
"You see," the reflection said, moving closer, "gentleness born from fear is not true gentleness. It's cowardice in disguise."
Li Yuan felt the vibrations in his Comprehension of Water become unstable. Like the surface of a calm lake suddenly disturbed by a thrown rock.
"No," Li Yuan finally whispered. "That's not true."
"Is it?" the reflection laughed, its voice sounding like bursting air bubbles. "Then why, when Thomas asked you to go hunting, did you never truly refuse even though you don't like to kill? Why, when Anna needed help with heavy work, were you always willing even though you prefer to be alone?"
"Because I care about them."
"Or because you were afraid they would stop loving you if you said no."
The reflection extended a hand, as if to touch Li Yuan's face. The water around the hand moved like a living fluid, creating patterns that made the eyes dizzy.
"You want to be like water?" the reflection whispered. "Water is fragile, Yuan-er. Water has no form, no power to defend itself. Water always follows, never leads. Water always accepts, never resists."
"If you become like water, you will lose everything. Your power will dissolve. Your identity will disappear. The five million souls in your Sea of Souls will be released because you are not strong enough to hold them."
The real fear surfaced. Not the fear of being rejected or unloved. But the fear of losing the ability to protect those who depended on him.
"Anna, Marcus, Elena, Thomas... even little Lila. They all depend on your strength to protect their souls. If you become weak like water, what will happen to them?"
Li Yuan felt his body of consciousness begin to tremble. His Comprehension of Water shook violently, as if it would shatter into pieces.
The reflection smiled with cruel satisfaction. "You're starting to understand the truth, aren't you? Gentleness is a luxury that can only be had by those who have no responsibility. But you... you are responsible for millions of souls. You cannot be gentle. You cannot just flow."
"You must be hard. You must be strong. You must maintain your form or everything will be destroyed."
Li Yuan closed his eyes, feeling the storm of emotions raging within him. A part of him wanted to accept the reflection's words. The part that had worried for years that gentleness was a weakness, that accepting was giving up.
But then he remembered something.
The memory of Lila crying from a nightmare, and how he soothed her not with force, but with sincere gentleness. The memory of Anna finally trusting him not because he showed strength, but because he showed consistency in caring.
The memory of a waterfall he had seen years ago—how the gentle, flowing water was able to carve a deep gorge in hard rock, not in a day or a year, but in thousands of years of patience.
Li Yuan opened his eyes and looked at the reflection with a new serenity.
"You are wrong," he said in a voice that was not loud but firm. "Water has no fixed form, but it is precisely because of that that water can become everything. Water may flow downward, but water can also rise to become a cloud and fall as life-giving rain."
The reflection frowned. "You still don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly," Li Yuan cut in. "You are my own fear speaking. You are the part of me that believes that to protect others, I must be hard as a rock."
"But water taught me something different. Water protects not by being a barrier, but by being the medium in which life grows. Water protects not by resisting change, but by flowing with change while remaining itself."
Li Yuan extended his hand toward the reflection. "Gentleness born from fear is indeed false. But gentleness born from strength—from the belief that love is stronger than hardness, that patience is more enduring than coercion—that is true gentleness."
"And true gentleness does not make a person weak. True gentleness is the purest form of strength."
The reflection looked at him with widened eyes. "But what if you are wrong? What if the world really needs hard strength?"
"Then I will face the consequences," Li Yuan answered calmly. "But I will not betray what I feel to be the truth just because I am afraid of the consequences."
"I choose to be like water. Not because water is weak, but because water is... honest. Water never pretends to be something else. Water never tries to be fire or stone. Water just is water, with all the strength and gentleness that comes with it."
The reflection was silent for a long time. Then, slowly, its expression changed. The cruelty in its eyes softened, replaced by something that looked like... acceptance.
"You are truly ready," the reflection whispered in a voice that was no longer cold. "You have learned to distinguish between gentleness born from fear and gentleness born from strength."
"You have learned that accepting yourself does not mean accepting weakness, but accepting the truth about who you really are."
The reflection began to dissolve, like ink spreading in water.
"Water indeed has no fixed form," the reflection whispered as it disappeared, "but precisely because of that, water can become a vessel for all forms of life."
When the reflection had completely disappeared, Li Yuan felt a dramatic change in his Comprehension of Water.
The familiar vibration suddenly changed. No longer the warm and calming vibration of "feeling." But a more complex, deeper vibration.
The vibration of... hearing.
The water around him no longer just moved. The water began to speak.
Not with words, but with a meaning that directly touched his consciousness. Each drop told a story about the journey it had taken. Each current carried memories of the places it had visited.
Li Yuan heard stories of rain that fell on distant mountains. Of rivers that flowed through lush forests. Of seas that embraced the coast with gentle waves.
All the stories came at once, but were not confusing. Like an orchestra playing a complex symphony, every note sounded clear even when played simultaneously with thousands of other notes.
This is it, Li Yuan thought with deep admiration. The Wenjing Realm. The Realm of Hearing.
His Comprehension of Water had completely transformed. From merely feeling the presence of water to truly hearing the universal language that all water in the world uses to communicate with each other.
At a depth of ten thousand kilometers, surrounded by absolute darkness but filled with the never-ending conversation between trillions of drops of water, Li Yuan smiled with deep peace.
The Trial of the Inner Mirror had been overcome. Not by rejecting the dark reflection within him, but by accepting it as part of the whole that made him who he was.
And in that acceptance, he found a strength greater than he had ever imagined before.
The strength to remain gentle in a hard world. The strength to keep flowing in a rigid world. The strength to remain himself while continuing to change and grow.
Like water that is never the same from moment to moment, but is always water.