"A cat slept inside a completely sealed wooden box."
"It had not made a single sound, so you knew it was asleep. Yet when you opened a crack in the box, you found yourself staring at the cat, while the cat inside was staring back at you."
"So, was the cat asleep, or had it been peeping at you from inside the wooden box all along?"
"Or had your intervention as an 'external force' awakened the cat, so that when you looked at it, it simultaneously ended its sleeping state and looked back at you?"
The white apple in the sea of clouds split in two with a swift slice. Along with Apple Master's words and that thought-provoking remark from elsewhere, it formed two halves.
The scenes within rose and sank. One half condensed into a Sui Yin Dharma Image, while the other condensed into a Dao Ancestor Dharma Image. Yet neither was stable, as though both were still only half-formed.
Or rather, they were in that subtle dual-faced phase between "the sleeping cat" and "the cat staring back."
"History, too, has two sides."
"When no one observes it, the dust settles upon history."
"Yet when an observer attempts to glimpse the truth, history reveals another, 'unreal' side."
"This 'unreality' may stem from the intervention of an external force, or from one's incomplete understanding of history, causing a side to appear that is both reasonable and beyond your expectations."
Only then did Apple Master point toward the apple half on the left. Gazing at the unstable Sui Yin Dharma Image within, she slowly continued, "We cultivators who study Sui arts fundamentally revere the Way of Sui Yin. Sui arts have been passed down in our Heavenly Realm for tens of thousands of eras; their roots run deep and their stream