[When I awakened in this fifth era, I learned of the message my [future self] had left using [golden heaven's mandate: Heaven and Earth Soul].]
[It was laughable, really.]
[The first words of the great Dao's voice inscribed upon the world were actually:]
["A breathtaking journey, but an ending doomed to bear no fruit."]
["The best possible ending, but a bland journey filled with regret."]
["What... would you choose?"]
[This was the question my [future self] had left for himself.]
[Back then, I understood what he meant, but had no answer.]
[I gleaned only two words from it.]
[—"Not reconciled."]
[What had always puzzled me, in truth, was how I differed from my other two selves.]
[My [present self] had been active in the third era of the [past].]
[Amid one desperate predicament after another, what... had he possessed?]
[I thought it was his steadiness and sense of measure.]
[Otherwise, how could he have survived that era that had driven him to despair...]
[And what about my [future self]?]
[He was an old man with one foot in the grave.]
[It was hard to imagine that he was who I would become.]
[He had inscribed all his experiences into [Heaven and Earth].]
[All I could see in them was his placidity and composure.]
[It was a state of mind taken to its utmost extreme.]
[His entire life had been so bland and flavorless.]
[I had never spoken with him, nor had he ever met me.]
[Yet he had willingly devoted everything to me, clearing the road ahead for me.]
[He seemed to care little about any of it.]
[Yet this very being, who disregarded everything, even his own life... had filled the opening with those words: "not reconciled."]
[And me?]
[What did I possess?]
[As the [past self], what made