I'd try to put together some thoughts about your proposition.

1. I wonder if it isn't a little bit too far removed from the original, though I can't make sure of it, for I don't read Chinese even simplified...

2. I suppose in this case we can't use asyndeton, because there isn't any opposition between each clause; the logical relation between them (which indeed is somewhat comple is effect/consequence-cause (it couldn't have been a puff of wind, for/because [if it were] it wouldn't have been so everlasting), isn't it? Hence we need some syntactical connection (coordination or subordination).

3. Consequently I still believe that the so-called hypothetical system (if-clause) is the most suitable here.

4. However, the best way to translate it properly would certainly be to find in Latin authors (probably in poets) some locus in which similar ideas were expressed in a similar way...

Now, "cogitating" about this text, I really wonder if τρόπος that it shows could have been use in this way by a Latin author...

Ideas that are expressed or suggested here are quite subtle: as far as I can understand it, it means that a gesture (head silently dropping) or a feeling (the suffering that the speaker feels) (probably the first one or both = an atmosphere/circumstance : there is a deliberate vagueness), whereas it could be compared to a puff of wind or a dream (both are vague and immaterial things), is however perceived as something not transient or unreal. This is a essentially poetical way to associate contradictory aspects in the depiction of a state.

The ordinary τρόπος in poetry is, as we know it, comparison (or metaphor): It was as transient as a puff of wind. It was like a dream. It was a puff of wind, a dream...

In this text, there are two evocations of possible comparisons (in conditional clauses), which are in turn denied in one of their main aspect: transience and unreality.

We should try to find some way to produce the same effect in Latin...

I'm afraid that "ego ipse" am turning to be somewhat vague.