Hua Shan is a very special place for every practicioner Taoist. Mentor Zhang Fen Nei used to tell Nei that he will have to spend five days inside a cave hollowed out in the granite slope, meditating in complete solitude and darkness. This practice is required in order to learn to feel the energy flow within, as part of events, taking place in the world.

Nei woke up when it was still dark. Gathered his things into a traveling bag and, trying not to wake a sleeping grandmother by the noise of his footsteps, walked out the door. A part of the road Nei overcame upon a peasant cart, which was going to a market in a neighboring city. From there, until the foot of the mountains, Nei Gu walked, all alone. One night he had to spend in the woods, climbing up on a tree. Nei lounged upon a fork made of thick branches, tying himself to the trunk with a rope, so that when he would fall asleep he would not fall down and become prey to the wild animals. Half of the night Nei Gu shivered from the cold and worries, looking down , besides the tree, as the branches were crackling and the eyes of wolves were gleaming ...

The whole next day Nei walked the road, allowing himself to rest only a few times. Towards the evening, the road started to move uphill, and when it got completely dark, Nei saw a little flickering light of a candle in the window of a little mud hut, stuck on a slope like the swallow's nest. Getting closer, Nei saw as the door swung open and a figure of a Caretaker appeared. Without even asking Nei about the purpose of his visit, Caretaker gestured to follow him- he knew why people come here.

A few steep steps led them to a big iron-bound wooden door. “This is the entrance to the cave where you will have to pass the test”-stated the Caretaker. The heavy door clanged, opened, and the cold of the dungeon struck their faces. The watcher lit the candle and started descending the stairs leading down. Nei followed him. Carved out of granite corridor made a few turns and ended in a big opening, which resembled a room.

In the candle light Nei could make out lots of _____ of aroma sticks, stuck in the little cave holes, left there by the practitioners which were here before him. “Making fire here is forbidden”- the Caretaker calmly stated as he was leaving. As soon as he disappeared behind the corner of the corridor, the room submerged into darkness.

Having spread out the felt rug Nei Gu sat down and listened to his feelings. At first all he heard was the loud thumping of his heart, as if somebody invisible was drumming inside of him, when he calmed down, a very quiet , very deep but very strange noise caught his attention. Something which didn’t resemble anything that he has heard before. The stone floor beneath him started to shake, then everything went silent. Nei thought that it was the mountain breathing…

Nei sat, focusing all his attention on the inner world, as his mentor taught him in a temple and breathed in a secret Tao way, which is called the Empty Power. Very soon Nei Gu felt, as the bottom of his stomach started to warm up, and along his back, bottom up toward the head rolled a hot ball of energy.

Cave no longer felt cold and all the other sensations were gone with it. The granite walls parted and Nei was in the sunlit garden on the bank of a clear stream, running along shiny pebbles.

Indescribably beautiful music, having mixed with a stream of warm breeze, hovered around, sometimes subsiding and sometimes coming from somewhere else again.

Then the vision disappeared. Nei once again felt the stone floor shake and opened his eyes. Now he again felt his arms and legs, and even the cold. His tongue was swollen and barely fit into the mouth. Nei knew that this usually occurs after a long meditation. Having barely taken a sip of water from his leather bottle, the young man rose to his feet, warmed up and sat back down on the felt rug. Nei wrapped himself in a black Taoist sarong left by the Caretaker – he knew that practice had to be continued with as little distractions as possible.

At this time the vibration was longer and stronger and lasted for so long that even the cave walls started to tremble like the waves of the sea, rolling toward the feet of the meditating Nei Gu. Then the sea water absorbed him, pulling into the abyss. Nei sees the sea floor, strewn with stones, covered with brown algae, gradually drifting deeper and deeper into an impenetrable blue-green haze. Nei Gu feels like a fish, trapped in its element - he breathes underwater, he breathes water, like the usual air in his village and temple.

Finally, up front, there is a spot of light. Having swum closer to it, Nei sees, that it is the underwater city that's illuminating, describing which would have been to difficult for all the residents of his native village due to lack of imagination.

Proper series of stone columns, stepped pyramids with temples, crowning their summits, the giant figures of armored warriors ... The main light came from the giant gates of the yellow metal, embedded in an underwater mountain chain. Opposite the gate, in the water column pierced by rays of light, at different levels, hung creatures, resembling jellyfish with two curved down limbs , egg-shaped heads with a pair of large almond-shaped black eyes. Jellyfish-like beings sailed to the sides, letting Nei pass, while underwater currents entrained him into the opening gate leaves. Nei Gu noticed, that inside the crater of an underwater volcano is yet another city, quite unlike the one he just now swam by. There were big glowing domes, connected corridors with rounded arches, jagged peaks, towers with lots of windows, arranged in rows.

From the shimmering light streams around, Nei got dizzy as if he'd fallen into a hole.

Consciousness slowly returned. Nei came to his senses while sitting in a chair made of white metal, in a small room lit by a soft, diffused light, pouring in from an invisible source. It seemed as if walls, floor and the ceiling were all glowing. Suddenly the wall before the eyes of Nei Gu flared brightly, and on it came into focus an image, as if Nei was witnessing performance of a market troupe in his native village, standing three paces away from the scene. He saw himself walking along the mountain road into the Caretaker's cave, temple's mentor, his relatives that have remained in the village ... Suddenly the picture changed - there were scenes from the ancient history of the land: live dragons, dice that were sometimes found along the sandy bank of the river after the flood. People similar to animals, or animals similar to humans, the first cities, wars, death and love ... In just a few moments Nei Gu learned what was and what was yet to come.

... the vision dissapeared. Cave walls no longer swayed like sea waves, and Nei Gu, was still sitting on the rug, shaking from coldness. The door upstairs creaked, and he heard descending Caretaker's footsteps - five days of meditation passed.

All the way home Nei Gu thought about what prompted the Taoist monks to dig these caves by donating thirty years of their lives, so that later, having deprived themselves of ordinary human pleasures, live there. What did he see there and what did it all mean? Perhaps all the visible reality has its limitations, as had the the cave walls, where he spent a few days ... or had they?

Hoisting his traveling bag on his back, Nei Gu briskly walked down the road, going down into the valley where his village was. One of the seven practices of Taoist alchemical formula was grasped. Ahead lay six more.