The seventh week on the ice continent—and Li Yuan felt something shift within him.
Not a dramatic change. Not a sudden revelation. Just a quiet awareness that he was almost ready.
Almost—but not yet completely.
He walked to the natural amphitheater he had found several weeks ago—the place with a very smooth ice surface, surrounded by higher formations, where the resonance felt most distinct.
He stood in the center and sensed with his tightly wrapped Ganjing.
Yes. This place still felt right. It still resonated in a way that let him know it was the right location for the deep cultivation.
But there was still something missing. Something he needed to understand before he could sit down and enter a meditation that might last for months.
"What is it?" he asked himself as he walked slowly around the perimeter of the area.
He had observed the ice for seven weeks. He had read the layers of time, understood how memory was stored, felt the resonance of the three phases of water. He had reflected on Ganjing as the foundation, an awareness of humility, the understanding that he was discovering not creating.
"What is still missing?"
Then he realized.
"Integration," he mused. "I have learned many separate things. About ice, about water, about vapor. About how they store, carry, and scatter. About the three breaths as a cycle."
"But I haven't truly felt everything as a single whole. There is still a separation in my understanding—like learning individual notes without hearing the complete melody."
"I need integration. I need to feel—not just understand intellectually—that the three phases are one essence. That the transformation from one to the other is not separate but continuous."
The decision was made: he would spend the next few days—maybe one more week—just feeling the complete cycle. Not analyzing, not taking notes, just... feeling with a full Ganjing.
The next day, Li Yuan found an area where all three phases were visible at once.
A large fissure with liquid water flowing at the bottom—the result of pressure and friction creating enough heat to melt the ice.
The ice surrounding the fissure—layer after layer stacked, storing thousands of years of memory.
And vapor—very thin but present—that rose from the water as it met the cold air, molecules that broke free and dispersed into the atmosphere.
Li Yuan sat at the edge of the fissure and let his Ganjing—which he had intentionally opened slightly wider than usual, though still very controlled—feel everything at once.
The ice around him resonated with stability, with a desire to store, with a structure that maintained its form despite pressure.
The water below resonated with movement, with a flow that followed gravity, with the ability to carry and mix and transform.
The rising vapor resonated with freedom, with dispersion, with becoming part of something bigger than the individual form.
And most importantly—Li Yuan felt the transitions.
The moment when ice became water: the structure that broke, the molecules that were suddenly free, a transformation that was instant but which required energy that had accumulated slowly.
The moment when water became vapor: breaking free from bonds with other molecules, rising because it was lighter, becoming invisible but not ceasing to exist.
The moment when—somewhere else, in the higher atmosphere—vapor became water again: cooling, condensation, returning to a denser form.
The moment when—on the surface, on a very cold night—water became ice: molecules that slowed down, that found a position in the crystal lattice, that froze into a structure that would last thousands of years.
"A cycle," Li Yuan felt with a Ganjing full of awareness. "Not a straight line from one phase to another but a cycle that never truly ends. Water becoming vapor becoming water becoming ice becoming water becoming vapor... continuously, for as long as this planet exists."
"And every transformation is a breath. Inspiration, expiration, rest. Three breaths that repeat in an eternal pattern."
He sat there for hours—not moving, not thinking, just feeling with a Ganjing open to this cycle.
And slowly, something began to shift in his understanding.
The separation began to fade. Ice, water, vapor—no longer felt like three different things but three expressions of the same single thing.
"Like the same person in three different moods," he mused with a suddenly clear analogy. "I can be sad, happy, or neutral. Three different states but I am still me. The essence doesn't change, only the manifestation."
"Water is like that. Ice that stores, water that flows, vapor that scatters—all are water. The same essence, different manifestations."
"Three breaths of one being."
That awareness soaked in deeper—not just as an intellectual concept but as a visceral feeling, one he felt with his entire being.
And he knew: now he was almost ready. Very nearly.
Three days later—after spending time just feeling the cycle, letting his Ganjing absorb the pattern until he could feel the rhythm even with his eyes closed—Li Yuan returned to the natural amphitheater.
He brought a package of his belongings—the black shell from Shell Island, the map from Eldric, the bread from Kira that he hadn't eaten but carried as a reminder of human connection, the journal he had filled with notes about this journey.
He placed everything at the edge of the area carefully—a safe place, protected from the wind.
Then he walked to the center of the amphitheater and stood there, feeling this place for the last time before entering meditation.
The smooth ice surface under his feet. The formations that surrounded it like a wall that protected but did not imprison. The pale sky above with the low sun. The wind that blew with a steady force, carrying dancing ice crystals.
And the resonance—the resonance of this place that Li Yuan felt with a wrapped but still sensitive Ganjing.
A place that reflected. A place that didn't absorb but returned with fidelity. An ideal place to listen to what was reflected back from the depths of his own consciousness.
"Yes," he decided with a quiet finality. "It is time."
"I have learned as much as I can from external observation. Now it's time to go within—for a meditation that will bring the understanding from an intellectual and feeling level to an even deeper level."
"A level where the three breaths are not just something I feel externally but something I live internally. Where the phase transformation is not just a phenomenon I observe but a process I directly participate in."
He sat down—not cross-legged in a formal meditation position but in a position that felt natural for his body of consciousness. His back was straight but not rigid, his hands in his lap, his open eyes staring at the ice surface in front of him.
He would begin tomorrow, after one last night of mental preparation.
But now, here, sitting in the place where he would spend months in motionless meditation, he felt something he didn't expect.
Anticipation. Not an excessive excitement but a quiet anticipation—an awareness that something important was about to begin.
"The deepest cultivation I have ever done," he mused. "Not because I am trying to 'achieve' something—I have already learned that that is the wrong mindset—but because I will be exploring a depth I have not yet touched."
"A depth where the three breaths become more than a concept. Where they become a way of being."
"Where I not only understand transformation but become the transformation itself."
Li Yuan stood up and walked back to the ice crevice that had become his shelter.
One more night. One night to prepare mentally, to finish the last notes in the journal, to enter the right state of consciousness.
And then—tomorrow—he would sit.
And he might not stand up again for a very long time.
Months. Maybe years—he didn't know how deep this cultivation would go.
But it didn't matter. Time was not an issue for someone who had lived fifteen thousand years and whose age was not counted by time but by questions.
What was important was depth.
Always depth.
Depth after depth.
Without end.
And tomorrow, he would dive into a new depth—which might be the deepest he had ever reached.
Or maybe not. Maybe there would be an even deeper depth after this.
But there was only one way to know.
By diving.
By meditating.
By a cultivation that was not rushed but was total in commitment.
Like water that seeps into the ground—slowly, steadily, unwavering in its goal of reaching the deepest possible depths.
Tomorrow.
The cultivation begins tomorrow.