For a season that felt like an eternity, Ren Zu became the tyrant of the wilderness. He did not merely survive; he reigned.
With the Strength Gu residing deep within his aperture, pulsating with a crimson rhythm, his dominance was absolute. He walked through the dense, primordial jungles, and the ancient ironwood trees, which had stood for ten thousand years, snapped like dry twigs before his passing. He hunted the ferocious saber-toothed tigers not for food, but for their skins to sit upon. He wrestled the colossal hill-bears, forcing their heads into the dirt until they whined in submission.
When Ren Zu roared, the sound was not human; it was the thunder of a god. The mountains trembled, sending loose stones cascading into the valleys, and the beasts that had once viewed him as a soft, hairless snack now fled in terror, their tails tucked between their legs, shivering in their dens.
Ren Zu looked at his hands, which could crush boulders into sand, and smiled with arrogance. He believed he had found the ultimate truth of the heaven and earth: "Violence is the only law. Might is the only morality. And Strength is the key that opens every door."
But the laws of the Great Dao are not so simple, and the heavens are not so easily conquered. As the seasons turned from the warmth of creation to the chill of reality, Ren Zu began to discover the heavy, unseen chains of his new power.
Strength was mighty, but it was not infinite. It was a fire that burned fiercely, but every fire needs fuel. That fuel was his own energy, his own spirit. After every earth-shattering battle, after every mountain he toppled, Ren Zu was overcome by a crushing, paralyzing exhaustion. His eyelids would grow heavy, his limbs would turn to lead, and the demand of his body would become undeniable: He had to sleep.
But the wilderness did not sleep. The wind never stopped blowing, and the river never stopped flowing.
When Ren Zu closed his eyes, his iron skin softened back into flesh. His fists, capable of punching holes in the sky, unclenched. In the realm of dreams, the strongest man was as vulnerable as a babe. The Predicaments, who dared not approach him when the sun was high and his eyes were open, lurked in the shadows of his dying campfire. They waited for the rhythm of his snoring to begin. Ren Zu woke many times with fresh wounds—bites on his ankles, scratches on his back—barely surviving the night, only to find his enemies had vanished into the morning mist like cowards.
Furthermore, Ren Zu realized a more painful truth: Strength could destroy, but it could not build.
He could shatter a boulder with a single blow, turning it into gravel, but he could not stack those pieces to build a warm house that wouldn't collapse. He could kill a leopard with a flick of his finger, but he could not stitch its hide into clothes to ward off the biting cold wind. His fingers were too thick, his touch too heavy. He remained naked, cold, and homeless, merely a powerful beast living among other beasts, shivering in the rain despite his godlike power.
Worst of all was the price he had paid to the Strength Gu.
He had traded away his Youth.
Ren Zu had not understood what this meant until now. Without Youth, his body lost its divine resilience. His joints began to creak like old, dry wood. His back ached when the rain approached. He was no longer boundless in vitality; where once he could run for days without panting, now he tired easily. Wounds that used to heal in a heartbeat now took days to scab over. The heavy armor of muscles that Strength Gu provided became a cage of lead that he had to drag around, step by agonizing step.
The Predicaments, observing this from the darkness, grew smarter. They realized that brute force could not solve every riddle, and that a hammer is useless against water.
They returned. But this time, they did not come as walls of stone or beasts of prey to be smashed.
They came as Swamp Predicaments—soft, yielding, and treacherous. When Ren Zu roared and punched the swamp, the mud did not break. It simply embraced his fist with a wet, sucking sound, pulling him deeper into the mire. The harder he struggled, the deeper he sank. His strength was useless against something that had no form to break.
They came as Labyrinth Predicaments—twisting paths of fog and illusion that led nowhere. Ren Zu ran, smashing through trees and shattering rocks, trying to run in a straight line. But the world twisted around him. He ran until his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, but he only found himself more lost, his strength draining with every futile step.
They waited. They waited until his breath was ragged, until his sweat was cold, and until his limbs were heavy with the crushing weight of his lost youth. Then, and only then, did they torment him.
Ren Zu collapsed onto a jagged rock, his body covered in scratches, mud, and the slime of failure. His mighty chest heaved, rattling with the wheeze of exhaustion.
"Strength is not enough," he wept, his hot tears washing away the dirt on his face. "I have the power to move mountains, but I cannot stop the rain from soaking me to the bone. I can kill a thousand enemies, but I cannot defeat the mud beneath my feet. I have brute force, but I do not know how to use it. I am suffering."
As his tears fell onto the cold earth, the heavens stirred. The second light descended from the sky.
It was not violent like the first. It was cool, composed, and utterly silent. It moved with the grace of moonlight reflecting on a calm lake.
The Wisdom Gu floated down, hovering just before his tear-stained face. It radiated a complex, crystalline light—a light that seemed to dissect the world into countless logical parts, separating the false from the true.
"Brute force is the weapon of the beast," Wisdom Gu spoke. Its voice was not a roar, but the chime of a clear silver bell, piercing through the fog of Ren Zu's despair. "Strength without direction is merely violence. It is a blind bull rushing into a burning fire. You have muscles, human, and you have power. But you lack the mind to command them."
Ren Zu looked up, his eyes red and swollen. He saw his own reflection in the multifaceted crystal of the Gu. "I am lost," he whispered. "Can you help me?"
"I can teach you how to think," Wisdom Gu replied, its light pulsing rhythmically. "I can teach you how to plan, how to build, and how to rule. I can show you that the world is not just a thing to be broken, but a system to be understood. I can show you how to turn the swamp into dry land, and how to find the exit of the labyrinth. But... my price is high."
Ren Zu touched his graying hair. "I have no more Youth," he said hoarsely. "I gave it all to Strength."
"I do not want your Youth," Wisdom Gu said coldly. "Youth is rash and foolish. I want your Middle Age. Give me your prime, your stability, and the years of your greatest endurance. Give me the time between the impulsiveness of youth and the frailty of the end. In exchange, I will give you the light of intellect."
Ren Zu looked at his scarred fists, then at the confusing, hostile world around him. He looked at the swamp that waited to swallow him and the fog that waited to blind him. He knew that if he continued relying only on his fists, he would eventually die of exhaustion in some forgotten corner of the wilderness, a king of nothing but his own grave.
"Take it," he whispered, bowing his head in submission. "Take my Middle Age."
Wisdom Gu flashed with a cold, brilliant light. It flew forward and merged directly into Ren Zu's forehead, sinking into his mind.
Instantly, the world changed.
The mountains did not move, and the rivers did not stop flowing. The wind still blew, and the rain still fell. But in Ren Zu's eyes, they were no longer just obstacles or enemies.
The fog in his mind cleared, blown away by the winds of thought. The chaos of the world reorganized itself into patterns, lines, and structures.
He looked at the vines strangling the trees. Before, he saw only weeds to be torn down. Now, he saw fibers that could be woven into nets to catch fish, or ropes to bind wood.
He looked at the hard, useless stones at his feet. Before, he saw only tripping hazards. Now, he saw flint that could be struck together to create fire, a red flower that would drive away the cold and terrify the beasts more than his roar ever could.
He looked at the Predicaments and realized, with a shock of clarity, that he did not need to fight them all. He could dig ditches to drain the water from the swamps, killing them without throwing a punch. He could mark the trees with scratches to navigate the labyrinth, rendering its confusion useless.
He understood the greatest truth of humanity, a truth that would separate him from the beasts forever:
To overcome a Predicament, one does not always need to break it. Sometimes, one only needs to solve it.