In the third week on the ice continent, Li Yuan found a layer that made him stop for a very long time.
It was unremarkable in appearance—just a layer of ice like the thousands of others he had touched. But within five centimeters of his hand, he heard something different.
An organic trace. Extremely faint, almost undetectable, but it was there—molecules from life, from the bodies of creatures that had died and decomposed, their water eventually evaporating, falling as snow, freezing into ice.
And through his Comprehension of Water, Li Yuan could feel the age of this layer.
Fifteen thousand years.
Precisely at the time he was born as Li Yuan, the son of Li Houming and Ye Ling, in a small village called Ziran that might not exist anymore.
But this layer was not from his birthplace. This was ice from the southern continent, from a region untouched by humans at that time. The water that froze when he took his first breath—even though he wasn't truly breathing now.
Fifteen thousand years, he mused, his hand still touching the layer. If counted in the normal human way, that is my age. Fifteen thousand years since the first physical body was born.
Humans have existed for sixty-five thousand years—fifty thousand years before I was born, and fifteen thousand years since my birth.
But I don't count age that way. Never have.
He sat next to the ice wall and stared at the layered strata—thousands of years above, thousands of years below, all preserved with perfect fidelity.
My age is not counted by time, he mused with a clarity he had never articulated before but had always felt. But by questions.
How many questions have I asked? How much understanding have I achieved? How many times have I stood before something I didn't understand and said: "I want to understand"?
That is the true measure of my life. Not the years that have passed but the questions that have been asked.
He recalled the first question he could remember—when he was a child, sitting by the river with Mu Yi and Fan Tu:
"Why does the water flow like this? And where does it go?"
A simple question from an ignorant child. But a question that opened the path—a question that eventually led him to the Comprehension of Water, to Daojing, to a fifty-thousand-year journey not measured in years but in answered questions and new questions that emerged.
Every answer only opens a deeper question, he mused. I understood how water flows, and that opened the question: how does water remember? I understood how water remembers in flow, and that opened the question: how does water remember in stillness?
And now, here, I'm beginning to understand how ice stores memory. But that doesn't close the question—it only opens a new one: how do the three phases—solid, liquid, gas—relate? What is the underlying rhythm of transformation between them? What happens to memory when ice melts, when water evaporates, when vapor re-condenses?
The questions are endless. And that is good. Because the day I have no more questions is the day I truly stop living—not physically but spiritually.
He stood and touched a different layer—ten thousand years older, from a time when humans were just beginning to spread from their places of origin, when civilization had not yet been born but its seeds were already growing.
Humans have existed for sixty-five thousand years, he mused. I was born fifty thousand years ago—when the species existed but civilization had not. When humans still lived in small groups, hunting and gathering, not yet building cities or developing writing.
And since then, I've seen civilization born, grow, and flourish. I've seen writing invented—a way to store knowledge outside of oral memory. I've seen cities built, empires rise and fall, technology evolve from stone to bronze to iron.
But I didn't watch from the outside as a separate observer. I lived within it—sometimes as Li Yuan, sometimes as Li Qingshan, sometimes just as a pure soul observing from a distance.
And in each iteration, I asked new questions. About water, yes, but also about humans—how they live, how they make choices, how they find meaning.
That is my true cultivation. Not the accumulation of power but the accumulation of questions. Not becoming stronger but becoming more curious over fifteen thousand years of life.
In the afternoon, Li Yuan returned to the surface and walked to an area where he had seen a colony of seals a few days earlier.
They were still there—some sleeping, some playing in the water, some lying in groups for warmth.
Li Yuan sat at a safe distance and observed.
One of the seals—a younger one, perhaps still a teenager—approached with cautious curiosity. It stopped a few meters from Li Yuan and stared with large, dark eyes.
Within a ten-meter radius, Li Yuan heard its intention—simple curiosity, no fear because this creature had never learned to be afraid of something that looked like Li Yuan.
They stared at each other for a few minutes—no communication in words but a kind of recognition. Two different beings, sharing a moment in a harsh place.
Then the seal made a sound—a short bark—and returned to its colony.
Li Yuan smiled faintly.
Even here, he mused, in such a remote place, there is curiosity. That young creature approached not because it needed to but because it wanted to know. It's the same impulse that brought me here—not a need but curiosity.
And maybe that is the true definition of a quality life—not just surviving but being curious. Not just existing but asking why and how.
He looked at the colony now returning to their routine.
These creatures do not cultivate in the way that I do. They do not develop Comprehension or achieve spiritual realms. But they live fully—hunting, playing, resting, reproducing, caring for one another.
That is also a form of cultivation. The cultivation of life itself. To be fully what they are, without pretense, without trying to be something else.
And perhaps that is the lesson I am still learning—not just to understand water in all its phases but to be fully what I am. Not a human, not a pure soul, not a cultivator in a legend—but Li Yuan. A traveler who asks questions. An observer who wants to understand.
That is my true identity. Not a role or a title but the essence of who I have become over fifteen thousand years.
That night—or what passed for night in this region—Li Yuan returned to his journal and wrote.
Not with ink but with traces of spiritual energy, he wrote about questions:
Today I realized something I had always known but never articulated: my age is not counted by time but by questions.
Fifteen thousand years in human time—from birth until now. Fifty thousand years after the first humans appeared in this world. But how old am I in questions? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Countless?
Each question is a new birth. Each understanding achieved is a death and a rebirth—the death of old ignorance, the rebirth into new awareness that brings deeper questions.
I'm not seeking an end to questions. I'm not seeking a final understanding that will close all mysteries. Because that would be the true end—not the death of the body but the death of curiosity, which is far worse.
Here, on the ice continent, I'm asking new questions: How does ice store memory? How are the layers of time arranged? What happens to information when the phase changes?
And every answer I find only opens up even deeper questions.
That is the true Daojing—not a cultivation system that leads to a clear endpoint but a path that never ends because each step reveals a new horizon.
And I... I am grateful for that. Grateful that after fifty thousand years, I can still stand before something—like this ice—and feel wonder. Feel the desire to understand.
That is the true gift of longevity. Not the accumulation of knowledge but the preservation of wonder. The ability to still be amazed, to still ask, to still be curious.
He closed the journal and stared at the sky that never truly grew dark—the eternal twilight of the polar region.
How long will I stay here? he asked himself. How many questions need to be answered before I am ready for deep meditation?
I don't know. And that is good. Because not knowing is the beginning of every true question.
The wind blew, carrying dancing ice crystals.
And Li Yuan—whose age was not counted by time but by questions—sat in reflective silence, adding one more question to the countless collection that had shaped who he had become.
A new question: What will the ice teach me about memory that I didn't learn from water?
And with that question, he became a little older—not in years but in depth.
Like the layers of ice that grow—not quickly but steadily, crystal by crystal, until a depth that cannot be easily measured is reached.