Only Then Did I Realize

The night Fang Yan died, it snowed for the first time in three years in Chenjiacun. What he left to his son Fang Zhibai was not gold, silver, or an official position, but a room full of books, an unfinished game of chess, and an "empty" destiny. It turns out that in the third year of Bai Shouxiao's reign, he had read all about Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, Medicine, and Astrology, and played a thousand and one games of chess with himself. In the third winter, he finally understood what his father said - "I'm done with this round, and yours has just begun." But what about after it starts? His life is empty, his words can fit on the paper but don't look good, and his reasoning is clear but no one responds. He went to Qingzhou and wrote family letters to make a living; he went to Jiji and went to the lower house, and argued for three days, but no one paid attention to him; he worshiped modern Confucianism, and his master Liu Xiahui sacrificed his life for benevolence; he studied ancient Confucianism, but the iron inkstone of the pseudo-Confucian taught him that the rules were also shackles. The old blind man said that he had "no life to count", and the mute monk asked him "How can I answer if I have no tongue?" The medical girl Su Banxia could cure his qi and blood but could not cure his "refuse to cure". Fang Zhibai only knew that half of his father's chess game was still there, and his father wrote "I don't understand" on the volume of "The Doctrine of the Mean". He read it nine times and still didn't understand it. But he was about to write his own annotation - not his father's, not the ancients', but his. Only then do you know the truth, only then do you know the truth. This game is not over yet, it is just the beginning.