""Do you remember," said Lifu, "how the Chin Emperor was afraid of death and sent five hundred virgin boys to the Eastern Sea to seek the Pill of Immortality? And now the rock survives him." "The rock survives because it has no mortal passion," said Mulan enigmatically. Darkness was quickly enveloping them. What had been a sea of golden fleece was now only a sandy gray surface blanketing the earth; and wandering clouds, tired of their day's journey, came into the valleys before them and settled for the night, leaving the higher peaks like little gray islands in the sea of night. So does Nature herself labor by day and rest by night. It was peace with a terror in it. Five minutes ago Mulan's heart was excited. Now she was calm and strangely sad, the outward excitement having descended into rumbling depths in her belly, hardly perceptible by her head. Dragging her tired legs up the steps, she thought of life and death, of the life of passion and the life of the rocks without passion. She realized that this was but a passing moment in the eternity of time, but to her it was a memorable moment—a complete philosophy in itself, or rather a complete vision of the past and the present and the future, of the self and the non-self. That vision, too, was wordless."