In the quietest corner of the village stood a small house made of old wood. Moss grew on its roof, and its walls leaned slightly to one side. People rarely went near it—not out of fear, but simply because there was nothing interesting there.
But Li Yuan often went to that place in secret. Not to play. Not to hide.
But to learn.
Inside that old house lived an elderly man. His hair was completely white, and his back slightly hunched. No one ever spoke his name, and no one knew where he came from. But to Li Yuan, he was someone deeply important.
“A written character is not just a shape… every stroke carries meaning, and every meaning can open a door to understanding,”
said the old man in a raspy, yet profound voice.
Li Yuan’s days began to change. After helping his mother in the fields or playing with Mu Yi and Fan Tu, he would head to the old house carrying dry leaves to sit on, and sit quietly, listening as the old man taught him character by character.
There was no payment, no conditions.
“Why are you teaching me?” Li Yuan asked one day.
The old man gave a faint smile.
“Because you asked with your eyes—long before you knew how to ask with words.”
The lessons went beyond reading and writing. Sometimes, the old man would write a short phrase in the dirt and let Li Yuan reflect on it.
“The sky is not high, the earth is not low. It all depends on where you stand.”
Li Yuan read it again and again. He didn’t fully understand it yet, but there was something in those words that felt… alive.
Day by day, his handwriting became more refined, and his understanding sharper. And even though he was learning from an old man in a crumbling hut, the knowledge he received slowly became the seed of true insight.
The old man had once been a scholar, wandering through life in search of meaning.
Li Yuan gradually began to realize—the lessons he was receiving were not just about letters, but about seeing the world through words. Every sentence, every poem, even every moment of silence the old man taught… seemed to carry a weight that words could not express.
One day, as the rain fell softly and the air turned cold, Li Yuan arrived as usual. The old man sat on the wooden floor, gazing out through a cracked window.
“Master… who are you, really?” Li Yuan asked suddenly.
The old man didn’t answer right away. He took out an old scroll from a wooden box and slowly unrolled it.
On it was written:
“They called me a scholar, but I was more of a wanderer.
I once sought answers in books and palaces of knowledge.
But the more I read… the more I realized that true meaning is not written on paper.”
He looked at Li Yuan, his aged, cloudy eyes filled with a strange depth.
“I once lived in a king’s palace.
Taught nobles.
Wrote hundreds of texts.
But all of it only made me feel… empty.”
Li Yuan sat in silence, listening.
“So I left.
I gave up titles, honor, and walked across this land… for one thing: to seek meaning.”
“And did you find it?” Li Yuan asked softly.
The old man gave a faint smile.
“No. But I found something better…
The desire to keep understanding.”
He gently patted Li Yuan’s head.
“And you, little gray-eyed child…
I see in you a path I have never seen in anyone else.
Not a path of strength… but a path of understanding.”
That day, Li Yuan understood something:
Sometimes, the wisest person isn’t the one who lives in a palace—
but the one who sits in a crumbling hut, speaking softly.
And that old man, though he looked like an ordinary person,
was in truth a remnant of another era—
a scholar who had left the world behind in pursuit of something far greater:
truth.