What Heaven-Sent Opportunity Is There?

"Please, senior, speak," Gu Yuanqing said, neither servile nor overbearing.

"What do you think of this world?" The man in blue raised a hand and swept it through the air. Flowers burst into bloom throughout the mountains, while birds and beasts frolicked.

Looking farther away, cities, towers, and pavilions emerged, people streaming to and fro—a fine scene of the mortal world.

Everything was incomparably peaceful.

Gu Yuanqing praised, "Senior's art of illusion is unfathomable. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I fear I would find it hard to distinguish true from false."

The man in blue gave a meaningful chuckle. "Little friend entered the painting and has also entered illusions before. Do you believe that all you see within an illusion must truly be false?"

Gu Yuanqing pondered for a moment, then said, "The Dao of truth and illusion lies within the heart, in a single thought.

In the eyes of ordinary mortals, that which can be touched and is indestructible is real; that which is ethereal and elusive, vanishing in an instant, is illusion.

For cultivators like us, a single thought can give rise to illusion, and a single thought can shatter it. If the heart is a mirror, it reflects the myriad forms; if the heart is a furnace, it can refine the false into truth.

All things are in a state of flowing change. To cling to the truth of outward forms is itself a delusion. The workings of laws, the gathering and dispersing of energy—these make up the infinite myriad phenomena.

Truth is not eternal, illusion is not nothingness; in the end, they return to the same source."

The man in blue turned and stared at him. "Then look upon the mountains and waters here, the clouds rolling and unfurling, flowers blooming and