Dawn on the ice continent—or what passed for dawn in a region where the sun never rose high.
Li Yuan sat in the center of the natural amphitheater in the meditation position he had used thousands of times over fifteen thousand years—back straight, hands in his lap with his right palm over his left, eyes open staring at the ice surface without focusing on anything specific.
His breath—though he didn't truly need to breathe—slowed. It became a rhythm that was almost imperceptible. In, out, rest. In, out, rest.
Three breaths.
His external awareness began to fade—not disappearing completely, as he was never fully unconscious of the outside world, but receding into the background, becoming peripheral.
And Li Yuan began to descend inward.
Into his Zhenjing—the inner world he had cultivated for thousands of years, an internal landscape as real as the external world but which existed only within his own consciousness.
The transition was not dramatic. There was no flash of light or sensation of falling. Just a gradual shift from external to internal awareness.
The world of ice disappeared. The cold disappeared. The wind disappeared.
And Li Yuan found himself standing in a place that was familiar yet always astonishing—in the center of his own Zhenjing.
He stood in the middle of a vast circle—there were no visible edges, just space that stretched in every direction. The sky above was not a physical sky but a representation of consciousness that transcended individual understanding—colors that had no name, light that came from no visible source.
And around him, spreading in a complex pattern that felt intuitively correct, were his Understandings.
Eighteen spaces.
Seventeen were fully formed—solid spaces, with clear boundaries, with rich internal landscapes. These were the Understandings that had reached Ganjing, that had matured through thousands of years of cultivation and experience.
One space—the Understanding of Water—shone with an intensity different from the others. It was the only Understanding that had reached Wenjing, that had evolved beyond just "feeling" to "hearing."
And one space was still forming—faint, with unstable boundaries, like a mist that was slowly taking shape. This was the Understanding that had just begun, that had not yet reached Ganjing but had already begun to exist as a possibility.
Li Yuan walked toward the space of the Understanding of Water—the brightest, the most vast, the most developed.
As he stepped across the boundary, the world changed.
He stood in a landscape that was entirely water in all its manifestations.
In front: a vast ocean, stretching without a visible end, waves moving with an eternal rhythm.
To the left: a river flowing with power and grace, clear water that carried stories from upstream to downstream.
To the right: a lake as still as a mirror, reflecting a sky that didn't exist in the physical world.
Above: falling rain—not rain that soaked but rain that carried the essence of the cycle, of the transformation from vapor to water.
And behind: ice. Towering walls of ice, glittering crystals, a frozen landscape that stored thousands of years of memory.
"The space of the Understanding of Water," Li Yuan mused, feeling this place with full awareness. "All that I have understood about water, all that I have learned over fifteen thousand years, is stored here in a form that is not just a memory but a living internal reality."
He felt the vastness of this space—not by physical measurement but with a spiritual awareness that translated into numbers he could understand.
Radius: about one million kilometers from the center.
"One million kilometers," he mused with a quiet awe. "If I were to release the Ganjing wrapping completely, the passive effects of the Understanding of Water would spread this far. Every living creature within that radius would feel the resonance—water becoming more 'conscious,' emotions related to water becoming more intense, spiritual awareness of flow and transformation increasing."
"And within this radius, the effects would be very strong. Not subtle but overwhelming for those who are not ready."
But radius was only a measure of power. The total vastness of this space—calculated as the volume of a sphere with a radius of one million kilometers—was an almost unimaginable number.
About 4.19 × 10^18 cubic kilometers. Or in a more easily understood way: 4.19 quintillion cubic kilometers.
"But that's not the important number," Li Yuan corrected his own thinking. "What's important is the depth. This space is vast because my understanding of water is deep. Every experience with water—every river I've observed, every ocean I've swum in, every piece of ice I've touched—adds a layer to this space."
"And this space continues to expand. Every time I understand something new about water, this space grows. There is no maximum limit—only a depth that continues to expand."
Li Yuan walked to the edge of the ocean in this space and touched the water.
A familiar but always surprising sensation—water that felt more "real" than water in the physical world, because this was the pure essence of what he understood about water, without the impurities of misunderstanding.
And through that touch, he felt everything he knew about water—all the stories he had ever heard, all the transformations he had ever witnessed, all the resonances he had ever felt.
"This is why Zhenjing is not just a visualization or imagination," he mused. "It is an internal reality that is just as valid as external reality. My understanding of water is not just stored as abstract information—it exists as a living landscape, as a space I can explore and learn from just as I explore the physical world."
He turned and looked at the other part of the space—at the towering ice behind him.
"That's the newest addition," he realized. "Before coming to the ice continent, this part of the space was not as rich as it is now. There was ice, yes, but not with the depth and detail that is here now."
"Seven weeks on the ice continent added a new layer to my Understanding of Water. And that is reflected here, in Zhenjing, as an expansion of the internal landscape."
He walked toward the ice wall and touched it.
And he heard—not with his ears but with his Wenjing that only worked for the Understanding of Water—all that the ice had taught him.
About storing. About reflecting. About memory stored in crystals. About the solid phase as one of the three breaths.
"Yes," he decided. "This is why I came here, to Zhenjing. To integrate what I learned on the ice continent with the entirety of my Understanding of Water."
"To make ice not just an addition but an integral part of this landscape. To understand how the three phases—solid, liquid, gas—are a single perfect whole."
Li Yuan left the space of the Understanding of Water and walked to another space—the space of the Understanding of Fear.
The transition again. The landscape changed.
He stood in a dark place—not an absence of light but a presence of meaningful shadows. Around him, formations that represented the various kinds of fear he had felt and understood over thousands of years.
Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change.
But there was nothing frightening about this place—because this was the space of Understanding, not the space of fear itself.
"Fear is the most honest teacher," he remembered the words he had written in his journal years ago.
He found himself here—not literally but in the sense that he understood fear with a depth that allowed him to stand in the middle of it without being consumed.
"Every space is like this," he mused as he walked through the meaningful shadows. "Every Understanding is a living landscape, that I can explore, that continues to grow with every new experience."
The space of the Understanding of Fear was not as vast as the space of the Understanding of Water—maybe only a few hundred thousand kilometers in radius—but it was just as deep and rich.
Li Yuan didn't linger here. Today was not about Fear. Today was about Water, about the three breaths, about the integration of the phases.
He returned to the center of his Zhenjing—the point where all eighteen spaces met.
And from here, he could feel the entire structure of his inner world.
Eighteen Understandings. Seventeen already mature in Ganjing. One had evolved to Wenjing. One was still forming.
And all of them continued to expand—every second, every moment of new awareness, every depth reached added a little to the total vastness of the Zhenjing.
"If all the spaces were counted together," he estimated with an awareness that didn't require precise calculation, "the total vastness of my Zhenjing now might reach tens of millions of kilometers in radius for strong effects, and billions of kilometers for weaker effects."
"But numbers are not important. What is important is the depth, is the richness, is the complexity of what is stored here."
"Daojing is so complex," he realized with an awe that never faded despite thousands of years. "Not just a cultivation system but an entire internal universe that is as rich as the external universe."
"And it continues to grow. There is no endpoint. There is no 'completion.' Just an expansion that never stops as long as I keep asking questions, keep learning, keep understanding."
Li Yuan sat in the center of his Zhenjing—the same position his physical body sat in the ice amphitheater.
And he began the true cultivation.
Not in the external world but in the inner world.
Not by observing external ice but by integrating what he had learned into the internal landscape of the Understanding of Water.
A cultivation that would last—he didn't know how long. Months, perhaps years in external time.
But within the Zhenjing, time moved with a different rhythm. He could spend what felt like decades here and only a day would pass outside.
Or vice-versa.
Time was not linear in the inner world.
Only depth mattered.
And Li Yuan, with a patience born from fifteen thousand years, began to dive into that depth.
Into the integration of the three breaths.
Into an understanding that would bring his Understanding of Water to a new level.
Into a cultivation that had no final goal except the depth itself.
Depth after depth.
Without end.
As always.