The summer heat hangs heavy in the air,
The quiet morning breathes a silent care.
A father lost, a brother drowned in shade,
Amid the ash, the silent steel is made.
The Scripture opens and the mind turns bright,
The spinning Wheel illuminates the night.
The roots lie buried deep beneath the dust,
The boundless Dao outlasts the mortal trust.
The Shadow of Youth
Long before he understood the examination in his dream, Hoa Long had already been placed before the first great trials of his mortal life.
That year, Hoa Long was in his final year of high school—a time when most young people were preparing for university entrance examinations and imagining the lives that awaited them. For him, however, youth had already begun to carry the unbearable weight of adulthood.
July arrived with suffocating humidity. The intense summer heat hung low over the village, making the air feel thick and heavy even in the early hours before sunrise.
Inside their small home, the family struggled under relentless hardship. His father, a war veteran, had long suffered from fragile health. The family's economic burden pressed heavily upon the household day after day. His father’s temper sometimes grew volatile—not from a lack of love, but from absolute powerlessness before the endless demands of survival.
His mother rarely answered back. She simply rose before dawn and worked until late into the night, carrying the entire household upon her thin shoulders.
Hoa Long was young, but he had already begun to understand that some adults did not become silent because they had nothing to say. They became silent because there was simply too much to bear.
The School Behind the House
When Hoa Long was younger, his father worked as a security guard at a nearby primary school. The family managed to raise several dozen chickens in the space behind the school yard. Hoa Long carefully gathered the eggs into baskets and sold them to the teachers.
The money was modest, but his father handed every single coin to him: “Use it to buy books.”
And Hoa Long did exactly that. Whenever he saved enough, he hurried to the small bookstore. Little by little, the volumes accumulated until his desk compartments could no longer hold them. To others, they were merely old books filling a poor boy’s room; to Hoa Long, they were windows looking out into distant lands, deep philosophy, and cosmic questions.
While his classmates attended private tutoring lessons, Hoa Long studied entirely alone. He read, reflected, and searched for truth independently. Those quiet years forged an unyielding foundation within his spirit—a habit of independent thought that would one day become his greatest strength.
The Dawn of Tragedy
In July 1999, tragedy struck with devastating swiftness in the heavy quiet of an early morning.
At break of dawn, while the humid summer air still held the stillness of the night, his father woke up feeling an ominous weakness and asked Hoa Long to uncap a small bottle of medicated oil for him. The boy unsealed the bottle, applying a little to his father's temples with the simple, innocent assumption that the soothing scent would ease his morning discomfort.
Hoa Long ran back to the house to check on his mother. Aging and worn down by years of relentless labor, her body ached terribly in the sultry morning heat, preventing her from getting up immediately to visit the guardroom.
Seeing her resting, Hoa Long walked over to the well to wash his school clothes. Wanting to make sure his father had something warm to eat before the day began, he grabbed a packet of instant noodles and carried it back toward the school guardroom.
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When he stepped inside, his heart froze.
His father lay on the small wooden bed, his entire body trembling violently. Hoa Long called out, but received no answer. Panic surging through him, the boy screamed into the morning air, calling desperately for help from neighbors and family.
A local doctor arrived shortly after, but upon checking his condition, shook his head in grim alarm—a sudden, massive stroke had taken hold in the early hours. Desperate and weeping bitterly, Hoa Long pressed his hands against his father’s chest, attempting chest compressions and artificial respiration, pleading for him to wake up.
It was to no avail. His father passed away right there on the modest guardroom bed, leaving the teenager holding a cold hand in absolute shock as the morning light broke.
At that exact time, far beyond the borders of his village, a massive persecution was unleashed against the disciples of Falun Dafa in China. Hoa Long knew nothing of the Great Fa then, nor did he know the name of the path that would one day define his existence. Yet severe tribulation had already arrived at his doorstep.
The Emergency Guard and the Unseen Burden
The sudden loss tore the family apart, but life offered no pause for grief. With his father gone, the primary school needed an immediate replacement. To retain the small income and keep the family afloat, Hoa Long stepped up as an emergency guard while attempting to finish his final year of high school.
During the day, he attended classes whenever possible. Outside school hours, he guarded the primary school grounds. At night, he helped his mother sweep and clean all twelve classrooms. The physical exhaustion was overwhelming. When duty called, Hoa Long had no choice but to miss his own lessons.
His teachers, unaware of his devastating reality, saw only his absences. Notices were sent home warning that his academic discipline would be penalized. Hoa Long said nothing. How could he explain that while other students were solving practice exams, he was sweeping twelve classrooms and guarding a school to keep his family from starving?
He grew thin and gaunt. Once, his elder sister took him to buy a new shirt. Every piece of clothing hung loosely from his narrow frame. The shopkeeper looked at him and asked, “How much does he weigh?”
His sister answered softly: “Less than forty kilograms.”
The shopkeeper fell silent. Hoa Long lowered his eyes. No one cried, but in that quiet moment, his sister understood the devastating weight her young brother was carrying.
The Agony of Loss
The sudden shock of their father’s death shattered his elder brother’s mind. Consumed by unbearable regret over past disagreements with their late father, he suffered a severe mental collapse. Depressed and disoriented, he would often wander aimlessly through distant streets, leaving the family in constant distress.
Their mother, thin and exhausted, was left to carry the entire household alone. Yet she did not break. She simply woke up earlier each morning and continued working.
The Cruel Twist of Fate
The family’s chain of suffering grew even heavier. Years later, while Hoa Long was in his second year of university, another devastating blow struck: his elder sister’s husband died suddenly in an accident.
Cruelly, his sister had just given birth to their second child—an infant only one month old.
In an instant, the young mother became a widow, holding a newborn in her arms with a young toddler by her side, immersed in overwhelming grief.
Loss upon loss, poverty upon poverty—it formed a long, unbroken chain of human suffering. Only much later, after encountering the Great Fa, would Hoa Long look back and perceive the deeper divine arrangement within those painful years.
He had not merely been surviving; his character was being tempered in a furnace. Every night spent guarding the school, every classroom swept beside his mother, every book bought with egg money, and every grief endured had forged an indestructible steel within his soul.
He had learned to endure without complaining, to act without waiting for rescue, and to stand firm when the world shook around him.
The Sacred Destiny with the True Scripture
Years later, when Hoa Long finally obtained the True Scripture of the Great Fa, he brought it home and quietly placed the book before his mother.
She turned a few pages, then fell completely silent. It was not the silence of confusion, but the solemn quiet of ancient recognition.
From that evening onward, his mother began practicing the exercises alongside him. She missed no session. When pain spread through her aging body during meditation, she would softly say: “It is nothing. I can endure.”
During the midnight sending forth of Righteous Thoughts, she sat upright, her back—once bent beneath decades of heavy labor—holding a quiet, noble strength. She accompanied him to clarify the facts, offering a steady, compassionate presence.
Once, after a deep meditation session, tears slipped down her peaceful face as she whispered: “Sometimes... I see absolute radiance.”
To strengthen her pure faith, the Master permitted her to witness the spinning Falun—a magnificent, blazing wheel radiating cosmic light across dimensions.
For Hoa Long, who had watched his mother endure decades of silent hardship, it felt as though the hidden light she had carried through the darkest winters had finally manifested into eternal glory.
Canto LXXVI — The Burial of the Roots
The summer heat hangs heavy in the air,
The quiet morning breathes a silent care.
A father lost, a brother drowned in shade,
Amid the ash, the silent steel is made.
The Scripture opens and the mind turns bright,
The spinning Wheel illuminates the night.
The roots lie buried deep beneath the dust,
The boundless Dao outlasts the mortal trust.