Xu Chuo fell quiet too. Pei Ye stared fixedly at the fingers whose nails were no longer visible, never having felt so keenly what "heaven and earth and I" meant.
What if I keep dissolving? My fingers, my palms, my arms, my head and neck... until all of me is gone.
Withered grass lies buried underground, and it will die. The pool lies frozen there, and it too will dry up. Now I sit here, and perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a hundred years from now, I too will die.
And all of this has always been the unchanging course of boundless heaven and earth.
Only then did he understand what Mister Zhu meant by "passing on my life's work": "First, I have you cultivate your own heart, then let you see the heaven and earth I see. This is my life's work." Those words had been so earnest, so weighty.
Yes, if everything I am can merge into heaven and earth without obstruction, without conflict, then what difference do my death and my existence... make to heaven and earth?
And isn't this how everything has always worked? People die and become water and soil; water and soil nourish new living things. Which is death, which is life? What distinction is there? Heaven and earth are without feeling. This is precisely what that means.
In an instant, that suffocating agony enveloped him again, more distinctly than before. The boy should not even have felt pain—a drop falling into the ocean was like falling into a mother's embrace. Yet the Heart Slip had just shaped within him a lucid heart that wished to accomplish something.
Gritting his teeth, the boy reached out his hand more desperately than ever. Heaven and earth lay before him; his utmost intent lay within his heart.
"Hey... give