Li Yuan broke through the surface of the water for the first time in four thousand years.
The sensation was extraordinary—the transition from the liquid medium that had been his world to the air that suddenly felt foreign. Although his consciousness body did not need oxygen to breathe, the reflex to take a first breath still occurred, and the air that entered his lungs felt like a cold drink after a long thirst.
The sunlight hit his face with an intensity that made his eyes close for a moment. After adapting to darkness for millennia, this brightness was almost painful.
"Too bright," Li Yuan muttered, raising a hand to shield his eyes while slowly allowing his pupils to adjust.
When his vision finally cleared, Li Yuan saw something that left him silent in profound awe.
The sky.
Not the sky as a concept in his Sky Understanding, but the real sky—a boundless blue expanse stretching over his head. White clouds moved slowly across that blue canvas, creating moving shadows on the surface of the sea.
"Beautiful," Li Yuan whispered, and the word felt inadequate to describe what he felt.
The sea around him sparkled in the sunlight, its surface moving in gentle, rhythmic waves. The horizon stretched far in every direction, a thin line separating the blue of the sea from the blue of the sky.
And the sounds—oh, the sounds.
The rustling of the wind blowing across the water's surface. The sound of waves touching each other. In the distance, Li Yuan could hear something that made his heart pound with excitement.
The sound of birds.
A sea bird flew high above, its wings spread with effortless grace against the blue sky. Its wild and free cry echoed over the water, a sound Li Yuan had not heard for thousands of years.
"Life," Li Yuan said in a voice that trembled with emotion.
But then, as the initial euphoria began to subside, Li Yuan started to notice other details.
There were no ships on the horizon. No signs of visible human activity from his position. The sea looked vast and empty, beautiful but uninhabited.
"Where is everyone?" Li Yuan asked himself.
Four thousand years is a very long time. Civilizations rise and fall in much shorter timeframes. But surely humans still existed? Surely there were still communities, cities, nations?
Li Yuan used his Ganjing sensing to expand his awareness, searching for signs of a human presence within a wide radius.
Nothing.
There was no aura of conscious beings within the distance he could detect. No trace of spiritual cultivation or organized communities. Only the presence of marine life below, birds above, and a vast emptiness where human civilization should have been.
"Maybe I'm too far from land," Li Yuan rationalized. "This ocean might be very vast. Human settlements might be on coastlines far from here."
But doubt began creeping into his mind. Four thousand years. What had happened to the world he had left behind?
Li Yuan chose a direction arbitrarily and began to move across the water's surface, using a combination of swimming motions and spiritual manipulation of water currents to propel himself forward with significant speed.
As he moved, Li Yuan marveled at the sensation of the wind on his face, at the warmth of the sunlight on his skin. After millennia in the cold, dark depths, these sensations felt almost overwhelming in their intensity.
But the underlying anxiety about the absence of a human presence could not be erased.
After traveling for several hours in a consistent direction, Li Yuan finally detected something on the horizon that made his heart skip with hope.
Land.
A coastline, visible as a thin line where the blue of the ocean met other colors—greens and browns that suggested vegetation and earth.
Li Yuan increased his speed, eager to reach the shore and hopefully find signs of human habitation.
As he approached the coast, the details became clearer. This was a natural shoreline—beaches, cliffs, forests that grew to the water's edge. Beautiful and wild, but apparently untouched by human development.
Li Yuan beached himself on the sandy shore and stood for the first time in millennia, feeling solid ground beneath his feet. The sensation was strange and wonderful—a stability different from floating in the water.
He walked inland, searching for any signs of a human presence. Trails, structures, cleared areas, anything that would indicate conscious beings like himself had been here.
He found nothing.
The forest was pristine, wild, apparently untouched for a very long time. Trees grew in patterns that suggested no human management or interference. Animal life—Li Yuan could hear rustling in the underbrush, birds singing in the canopy—seemed unafraid and unfamiliar with a human presence.
"This can't be," Li Yuan murmured. "Humans can't completely disappear in just four thousand years."
But the evidence—or lack of evidence—was undeniable.
Li Yuan climbed the highest hill he could find, hoping to get a better vantage point of the surrounding area. From the summit, he could see for miles in all directions.
Forest. Mountains in the distance. Rivers winding through valleys. The coastline curving away into the distance.
No cities. No roads. No structures. No signs of agriculture or civilization or a conscious modification of the landscape.
"What happened?" Li Yuan asked aloud, his voice carrying across the empty wilderness.
Only the echo of his own voice answered him.
Li Yuan sat on the summit of the hill, looking out over a world that was beautiful but eerily empty of a human presence, trying to process the implications of what he was seeing.
Had humanity destroyed itself in some catastrophe? Had they transcended physical existence entirely? Had they simply moved to different areas of the world that Li Yuan had not yet explored?
"Or," a terrible thought occurred to him, "had his own spiritual cultivation somehow contributed to their disappearance?"
Li Yuan remembered the resonance that had escaped from him six thousand years ago, affecting millions of souls. Had there been consequences that were more far-reaching than he had realized?
Sitting in the beautiful wilderness that should have contained evidence of a conscious civilization, Li Yuan faced the possibility that the world he had known, the people he had cared about, the way of life that had defined the human experience for millennia—all of it might be gone.
And he might be alone in ways that were far more profound than even his four thousand years of solitary cultivation had prepared him for.