The Great Confluence of Xishui and Xishui Creek

This is a book of geography and philosophy. It is a novel, and also a book of physics and philosophy. It travels across countless mountains and rivers, over and over, returning to the human world. In spring, it sees peach blossoms; in summer, lotus leaves; in autumn, frost settling; in winter, it gazes back at the snow. Decades pass like a single day. Half a dream has already carried it through past lives and the present, flowers blooming and falling, clouds drifting in and out of sight. It is all philosophy, an endless set of questions and answers.

Read every book under heaven, carry the Four Books and Five Classics on your back, walk a hundred thousand li, and witness all the world’s prosperity and decline. Streams converge and eventually become the sea. The sea is boundless, and so are people. Another forty years of wind and rain pass. Swallows fly north and south, and a way can be found in every direction.

Understand the principles of life, and travel the long road of this life to its end. The tree of bitter memories can blossom, and gazing at the stars for long enough can turn them into the Milky Way.

Life is once again a flowing river of years, full of rises and falls. The mountain path is rough, and there is no turning back. The wildflowers and fragrant grasses by the roadside give off a faint scent, like fireflies flickering through the years. Another hundred years of life have passed.