Ren Zu sat on the jagged summit of the mountain peak, a solitary figure carved from bronze and tragedy. The wind howled around him, whistling through the empty, bleeding caverns of his eye sockets.
He was the First Human. He was the ancestor of all. But in this moment, he was merely a broken man sitting in the dark.
He had paid the ultimate price. To escape the crushing, maddening silence of the Heart of Loneliness, he had reached into his own face and dug out his eyes. He had sacrificed his vision to create Verdant Great Sun and Desolate Ancient Moon, hoping that by creating kin, he would banish the void in his chest.
For a moment—a brief, golden moment in the history of time—it worked.
He felt the rough, warm calluses of his son's hand. He felt the cool, silky skin of his daughter's arm. He heard their voices, distinct and alive, breaking the eternal silence of the mountain.
"Father," Verdant Great Sun would say, his voice booming like a morning bell. "I am here."
"Father," Desolate Ancient Moon would whisper, her voice soothing like a midnight stream. "I am near."
Ren Zu laughed then. He could not see them, but he could sense their presence. The Heart of Loneliness in his chest slowed its painful rhythm. He felt the warmth of family, a fire that heated him better than the sun ever could. He thought he had cheated the Great Dao. He thought he had traded light for love, and that it was a bargain well struck.
But good things in this world do not last forever. In fact, the brighter they are, the faster they burn.
Verdant Great Sun and Desolate Ancient Moon were not merely children. They were the incarnations of Ren Zu's eyes.
Eyes are not meant to stay shut. Eyes are not meant to stare at the same spot forever. By their very nature, eyes must move. They must scan. They must seek the new.
The children were young, vibrant, and filled with a terrifying curiosity. They had just been born from the ancestor, and the world was vast, colorful, and teeming with the ten thousand beings.
They saw the green forests swaying in the wind.
They saw the blue rivers carving through the canyons.
They saw the magnificent, strange beasts roaming the plains.
The mountain peak, which was Ren Zu's entire world, was merely a cage to them.
"Father, look at that bird!" Verdant Great Sun would shout, pointing at a golden eagle soaring on the thermal currents. He would shake Ren Zu's shoulder, forgetting in his excitement that his father sat in eternal night. "Its wings are like fire! It is diving! Look, father, look!"
Ren Zu would turn his head, his empty sockets facing the direction of the voice. "I... I cannot see it, my son. Describe it to me."
But Verdant Great Sun was already distracted. "Oh, it's gone behind the cloud. You missed it."
"Father, I want to see what is over that hill," Desolate Ancient Moon would whisper, her attention drifting away from Ren Zu's hand to the misty horizon. "The shadows are longer there. The secrets are deeper. I feel something calling me."
"Stay," Ren Zu would plead, reaching out blindly. "Stay and tell me about the wind here."
"But the wind there smells sweeter," she would reply, her voice drifting further away.
Soon, the nature of the children overpowered their loyalty. They started to crave the scenery of the outside world like a starving man craves bread. They found the mountain peak too small, too silent, too boring. They began to wander.
At first, they only went for an hour. Ren Zu would count the beats of his heart until they returned.
Then, they went for a day. Ren Zu would sit freezing in the night, waiting for the sound of footsteps.
Finally, they would disappear for weeks.
They were captivated by the flowery world. They chased the butterflies of desire; they climbed the trees of ambition. In their joy, they forgot all about the old, blind man sitting on the rock. They forgot to bring him food. They forgot to bring him water.
Ren Zu sat alone in total darkness.
The wind bit at his skin. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. But the greatest pain came from his chest.
The Heart of Loneliness, which had been lulled to sleep by the voices of his children, woke up.
Thump... thump... thump...
It began to beat again. A slow, heavy rhythm of sorrow that echoed in his ribs. With every beat, it pumped a cold fluid of despair through his veins.
"I gave my eyes for you," Ren Zu whispered to the empty air. "I made myself blind so I could see you. And now, you leave me where I cannot follow."
He turned his head left. Blackness.
He turned his head right. Blackness.
He looked up. He could not see the sun he had created.
He looked down. He could not see the moon he had birthed.
He could not see the smiles of his children.
The world was a boundless abyss of black. It was a prison without walls. He was the Ancestor of Humanity, the Master of Rules, the Wielder of Strength... and he was utterly, pathetically discarded.
He sat there until his lips cracked from thirst. He sat there until the moss began to grow on his boots.
But, as he sat there in the deepest despair, sinking into the ocean of his own misery, Ren Zu noticed something strange.
It was not a sound. It was not a touch. It was a visual sensation.
In the absolute, suffocating darkness of his vision—a darkness that should have been total and permanent—he saw a speck.
It was a faint, tiny speck of light.
Ren Zu blinked his ravaged eyelids, thinking it was a hallucination of a dying mind. But the speck remained.
It was not external light; the sun did not shine in this abyss. It was coming from within, yet it seemed to exist in the distance of his soul. It was smaller than a grain of sand, yet it was steady. It was eternal. It was unshakeable.
It burned with a white-gold hue that was neither hot like the sun nor cold like the moon. It simply was.
Ren Zu felt perturbed. He touched his face to ensure he hadn't grown new eyes. He felt only scars.
"I am blind," Ren Zu muttered, his voice raspy. "How can I see? Am I going mad? Has the Heart of Loneliness finally broken my mind?"
He reached into his palm and touched the smooth, cool surface of the Attitude Gu.
"Oh Gu," Ren Zu whispered, clutching the mask. "You are the observer of souls. Tell me the truth. I have lost my eyes. The world should be pitch black. Why do I still see a glimmer of light in the distance? Is this a trick of the mind? Is this a phantom of memory?"
Attitude Gu, which had been silently observing the human soul through all its trials, let out a long sigh. It was the sigh of an entity that has seen this cycle a thousand times.
"Oh, Ren Zu," Attitude Gu explained, its voice resonating in Ren Zu's mind. "You are not mad. And you are not seeing a memory."
"This is not the light of the sun, which burns the skin," Attitude Gu continued. "Nor is it the light of fire, which consumes wood. This is a light that requires no fuel."
"This is the eternal light given out by the Faith Gu."
"Faith?" Ren Zu asked, the word feeling strange on his tongue.
"Yes," Attitude Gu said. "Faith."
"When you had eyes," the Gu explained philosophically, "you relied on Sight. You believed only what you could see. If a cliff was in front of you, you stopped. If a fruit was red, you ate it. Sight is the tool of the certainty."
"But now," Attitude Gu whispered, "you have lost your sight. You are surrounded by the unknown. You do not know if your children will return. You do not know if the sun has risen. You do not know if the next step will lead to a fall."
"When you stopped seeing with your eyes, you were forced to begin seeing with your spirit. That speck of light is the belief in things unseen. It is the trust that the sun is there, even when the sky is black. It is the trust that your children love you, even when they are gone."
"Faith is the only light that shines in absolute darkness," Attitude Gu declared. "It is the only Gu that can live in the shadow of the Heart of Loneliness without being consumed."
"As long as you have Faith," Attitude Gu concluded, "you are never truly blind. For while eyes show you the world as it is, Faith shows you the world as it could be."
Ren Zu listened to the wisdom of the Gu. He focused his mind on that tiny, impossible speck of light in the darkness.
He didn't know if his children would come back. Logic said they had abandoned him. Experience said the world was cruel.
But the light of Faith remained steady.
Ren Zu fell silent. He stopped weeping. He clutched the speck of light in his mind like a drowning man clutching a plank of wood.
He sat on the rock, blind and alone, and he began the hardest task of all.
He waited.