Beside the weathered window, twilight gleams,
As worldly paths dissolve in endless streams.
The watchers now ascend the stage to fight,
To guard the Fa against the gathering night.
The Silent Flow of Time
That afternoon, Hoa Long sat motionless beside the weathered window of his quiet home. Outside, the hollow torrent of secular life churned frantically—an unalterable rhythm of the Desire Realm. Traffic intertwined in a roaring maze, the isolated cries of street vendors echoed through the alley, and countless faces bore the deep, engraved lines of daily exhaustion, profit, and loss.
The sickly yellow streetlamps cast their reflections onto the wet pavement, resembling a river of memory flowing ceaselessly toward oblivion.
Not a single soul among the roiling masses of the mortal world knew that within this exact moment of absolute stillness, higher dimensions had already traversed tens of thousands of years of reincarnation and change. Nor did anyone know that at the peak of the highest heavens, the grand design had been ordained by Celestial Laws.
Yet here—within this crowded human realm—time crawled slowly by, acting as an invisible trial testing the patience and fortitude of every spirit bearing a monumental vow.
Hoa Long half-closed his eyes. Deep within his consciousness arose a somber, majestic self-interrogation:
“If the curtain falls upon this grand worldly pageant tomorrow, whom have I salvaged today?”
The question did not shatter the heavens like thunder, nor did it roar with heroic grandeur; instead, it fell like a thousand-year stone into the still lake of his pure mind, sending fated ripples expanding endlessly through his inner being.
He recalled his early days upon the celestial trajectory, when each dawn crept by so slowly it felt eternal. Back then, his human mind had prayed for the darkness of this decayed age to vanish quickly, so he could attain his ascended fruit status.
Yet now, having stood seasoned amidst the frantic currents of the world, a profound truth awakened within him: time had never been the enemy of a practitioner. It was only the human mind that hurried, still entangled in selfish gains and losses.
Seeds from the Past and the Eyes of Compassion
Memory carried him across space, back to the impoverished, leaning thatched hut of his ten-year-old self. Beneath that ragged roof saturated with freezing dew, his mother had sat beside the ash-covered hearth, her gaunt, heavily calloused hands patiently coaxing small embers back to life.
She had counseled him deeply: “Cultivate the heart before cultivating destiny.” Back then, those humble words had seemed as simple as an ordinary moral lesson; yet now, standing amidst the tempests of life, he recognized them as a bone-deep prophecy—a supreme seed of goodness planted within his consciousness.
He touched his cheeks. The twin mirrored scars—reminders of the severe physical tribulations he had endured since youth—remained cool and still. All those fragments of flesh, blood, and tribulation merged into a fated current guiding him to this sanctuary of the Fa.
Nothing in the cosmos was random. Absolutely nothing in the lower realm was a coincidence. Every existence was the arrangement of a majestic celestial design.
Out on the street, an old woman was silently clearing away her late vending baskets. Her shoulders bowed under the crushing weight of passing years, yet her eyes still burned with stubborn defiance against the immense darkness besieging her.
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A worker, finishing a late shift, held a cheap roadside lunch box, yet a serene smile illuminated his face as his young child ran out from the alley to meet him. A young couple argued fiercely on the sidewalk, their raised voices laced with bitter calculations, yet deep within their eyes lingered the sacred threads of an unbroken affection.
Those small lives, spinning endlessly within the vortex of fame and fortune, had once seemed trivial and tedious to Hoa Long. Yet now, through the eyes of compassion granted to one who had attained the Fa, they emerged as priceless fragments of souls awaiting awakening:
❖ If heaven and earth end this very day, how many deluded souls will forever lose their opportunity to comprehend the supreme Law of the universe?
❖ If I, out of a desire for comfort, pray for trials to end early, how many fated lives will be left behind in the eternal darkness?
The Colossal Stage and the Inner Essence
Hoa Long walked slowly down the weathered suburban street. He paused before a small bookstore tucked away in a dark corner. Behind its stained glass window lay a worn copy of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, resting alongside volumes of ancient history covered in secular dust.
A deep, knowing smile touched his lips, laced with a boundless sorrow for a world lost in delusion.
Countless generations had been born and had perished while pondering the word Righteousness, yet mortals had only ever read it with their eyes. Unreckoned royal dynasties had praised the word Loyalty, yet the worldly had only ever spoken it with their lips.
The souls of this world had to traverse a massive pageant spanning thousands of years of reincarnation, tasting layers of blood-soaked rise and fall, before they could truly embody the sacred inner essence of those virtues—only to forget, in this final age of decay, why those principles had been ordained to appear in the lower realm.
In that exact moment of absolute stillness, Hoa Long clearly perceived a macroscopic truth: this chaotic human world was, in truth, a colossal stage of the cosmos:
❖ Each passing dynasty was merely the universe drawing back its scenic curtain.
❖ Each historical figure stepped forth, sacrificing themselves to fulfill their prearranged role.
❖ They left behind a traces of inherited cultural essence, and then silently withdrew into the backstage of the wheel of life and death.
The supreme objective of history was never ultimate power, nor boundless territory, and absolutely not the fleeting glory of a mortal kingdom. The entire progression of history existed for one single purpose: to establish the foundational concepts so mankind could recognize the Law when the Fa officially revealed its radiance among men.
Shedding the Secular Mask
Hoa Long stood motionless at the center of the roaring crossroads. The traffic lights shifted, and the rushing crowds dispersed in all four directions. A profound truth shattered his consciousness: the roiling masses of humanity out there had actually walked this ancient stage with him once before. They had merely departed down different paths, cloaking themselves in different roles to patiently await this grand gathering today.
What worldly men worshipped, calling it "status" or "nationality," were in truth merely theatrical costumes designed for this final act. For when the macroscopic pageant reached its ultimate conclusion, all living souls would have to shed their artificial masks to face their true origin.
Hoa Long raised his face to look directly into the deep night sky. The heavens offered no roaring thunder, yet there was a vivid certainty within his consciousness: the human pageant was drawing to its close.
He understood that the ordinary men and women brushing past him carried within the depths of their souls an immense universe of life. A single choice, a single line of unyielding righteous thoughts from him today could decide and salvage the fates of unreckoned cascading sentient beings.
Hoa Long drew a deep, tranquil breath. If this mortal world was a pageant, his primordial spirit was no longer a mere spectator. If this dust was history, he was no longer a bystander. He had descended into the flesh to preserve the light of Truth before the great curtain fell.
His steadfast footsteps turned into a quiet, solitary alley. Behind his back, the torrent of history continued to churn. Before his eyes, his divine mission materialized clearer than ever before.
CANTO 54 — THE HUMAN STAGE
Beside the weathered window, twilight gleams,
As worldly paths dissolve in endless streams.
A thousand years of roles are played and done,
As kingdoms rise and fall beneath the sun.
The watchers now ascend the stage to fight,
To guard the Fa against the gathering night.
Twin scars upon his cheeks illuminate the way,
The ship of mercy shines to seize the day.