A heartbeat.
An Jing sensed a heartbeat.
Heaven and earth were rumbling.
Like tides surging through a boundless sea, clouds racing across the vast firmament, wind, thunder, rainwater, dewdrops, grass and trees, the earth, fresh shoots blooming amid scorched soil, shattered eggshells in birds' nests, fledglings taking flight, the shining sun, the revolving stars—and above those stars, eyes gazing down upon all things and the mortal world, watching over the past and future.
And all of it—the grand and the minute, the sounding and the silent, the existing and the vanishing—became a single heartbeat in an instant.
Then all returned to silence.
The great image has no form; the great sound is scarcely heard.
Within that absolute silence, An Jing slowly rose to his feet.
In the void, a hazy Grotto-Heaven abruptly flared with light, flickering amid the boundless chaos like a star.
The star and the serpent coiled around it gazed at one another.
Like a point gazing upon a revolving ring; like heaven gazing upon man; like an eye gazing upon an even greater eye.
"Your sorrow..."
An Jing said softly. He raised his hand as though to touch that enormous silver serpent, his voice filled with boundless pity. "I understand now."
Yes. How sorrowful.
The Dao was nameless, imageless, formless, soundless—the being concealed within emptiness. If it were truly the Dao, it should not be understood, communicated with, or described, because it was an "existence that does not exist."
How should one put it?
It was like things such as nations and morality.
From a material standpoint, they did not exist at all. They were merely some shared understanding imagined within people's minds—seemingly real, yet in truth unreal.
The Heavenly Dao was similar, yet utterly opposite. It seemed not to exist, yet truly did exist.
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