Chapter Six · The Cracks in Heavenly Authority

The first time I met Axiang was in a very, very early morning. At that time, during the summer break of my first year in university, I had come to Sihui to learn jade work. I was riding a bicycle with one hand and carrying a pile of rough stones with the other. I had lost money on most of them. But at that age, I also knew very clearly that buying losing stones was part of the cost of learning jade. At that stage, I could still see my own inadequacy. Greed and fear were very balanced, and I could wander freely between the two sides of heavenly authority.

Sihui at that time always carried a damp feeling. In the air there was the smell of chain-saw oil, and also the powdery smell left after jade had been cut open. Many workshops opened very late. That morning I got up especially early, carrying the stones by myself and searching all along the area near the International Jade City for a factory.

Day had only just broken. There were almost no people on the street. Most of the rolling shutters were still down. Only one small stall had not been fully closed. I remember it very clearly: between a cluster of workshops full of sliced slabs and jade cylinders, there was a signboard for custom processing, and its metal shutter had been left open by only a very narrow slit, about thirty centimeters wide.

I stood at the door and knocked, but there was no response. I knocked again, gently, and still nobody answered. So I carefully pulled the door a little farther aside and stuck my head in to look. It was dark inside. Someone was lying asleep on a sofa, an old sofa with cracked leather. Beside it was a crutch. He was covered with a cheap coral-fleece blanket that even covered his face. The outline of the person beneath the blanket was very clear. Most of his left leg was gone.

My heart jolted. It was not fear. It was simply that, at that teenage age of mine, I had rarely seen a truly damaged body from so close. The feeling was very strange. It was as though you had always thought life was only a matter of "success" and "failure."

Then one day, someone places another thing in front of you.

Fate.

A heaviness you had thought about many times before, but never really felt.

His head was still not visible. I stood at the door and softly asked, "Boss, are you there?"

He did not get up. Wrapped in the blanket, he only replied, "What is it?"

His voice was lazy, as though someone had just dragged him out of a dream.

I said, "I have some stones. I want to get them worked."

He was silent for a while, then asked, "Is it urgent?"

I said, "No."

Then I watched him slowly, very slowly, push himself up from the sofa. First he reached around everywhere, searching for his glasses. He felt around for a long time before finally finding them and putting them on. Then his other hand kept searching, searching for the crutch. After a while, he finally gripped it. Then, little by little, he used it to raise himself to his feet. But the very instant he stood up, a smile appeared on his face. I remember that smile with extraordinary clarity. It was not the kind of smile that suddenly bursts into laughter. It was very natural, as though someone had opened a window just a little. Even many years later, I kept remembering that smile, because there was something strange about it. It was not the smile of "happiness," and it was not a smile of "pleasing others." It felt more like the only remaining warmth left behind after someone had already grown used to life.

Later I learned that when Axiang was young, he had been infected by bacteria and his leg had been amputated. For many years he slept on that battered sofa, because going upstairs was inconvenient, and also because he did not really have anything that could truly be called a home.

But he was always smiling. He smiled at whoever he met. If someone spoke to him, he smiled. If someone joked with him, he smiled. Sometimes even when people spoke too harshly, he still smiled.

Many people would think that someone like that simply has a wonderful attitude. But later I slowly realized that a person who always smiles is not necessarily truly at ease.

Sometimes it is only because he no longer has any way left to express another expression. Human beings are strange. When hands stay cold too long, they go numb. When pain lasts too long, legs also go numb. It is like putting your hand into snow in winter. At first the cold cuts to the bone. Later, you begin to feel as though it is not so cold anymore. Many people think that is adaptation. It is not. It is the beginning of sensation withdrawing.

I once asked Axiang a question.

I said, "If one day you got cancer, what would you do?"

Smiling, he said, "If I got cancer, then I'd just go die. It's nothing. That's fine too."

He said it lightly, as though he were talking about something far away, as though death were not a wall but only a stone by the roadside.

At the time I did not really understand. I even thought he was truly detached. Five years later, he really did get liver cancer. Then I discovered that human beings are not so easily detached. He began to want very badly to live. He called me and asked me to help him find medicine. He wanted to live, desperately wanted to live, and in the end he left anyway.

Everything that came after kept proving the same thing again and again: people who say they are not afraid of death are often the most afraid of death. And the more they want to live, the closer death seems to come. Even now, after empathizing with that pain, I still do not dare to think back on it too much. During that period, I sometimes hardly dared to go see him.

It was not that I did not want to see him. It was that I knew that when a person who has stood for a very long time on the side of "If death comes, then let it come" is suddenly dragged back by the force of "I want to live," that is not ordinary pain. That is the pain of an entire bridge being torn open and shattered.

He had once looked as though he were not afraid of death, but that did not necessarily mean he truly was not afraid. It may only have meant that the fear was so great that he could suppress it only by pressing it down under an extreme kind of cheerfulness. Suppress it long enough, and a person begins to think he truly is not afraid.

That is what it looks like when heavenly authority splits open along a crack.

He had lived too long on only one side of fear, only on the side of fear, or else only on the side of greed. Once that goes on long enough, he loses the ability to move back and forth.

A normal person ought to be contradictory. He ought to be both confident and insecure, both brave and cowardly, both wanting to live and afraid of death. That contradiction is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it shows that the bridge of heavenly authority is still there.

Greed can walk over and look at fear. Fear can also walk over and look at greed. He can move back and forth, and so he can still adjust. But if a person is left with only one side, then the problem begins.

Only confidence, without insecurity

That person will become wildly arrogant without limit and not even know it. By the time he destroys himself, the realization comes too late.

Only insecurity, without confidence

That person will keep deceiving himself, keep self-justifying, and the accumulation of that self-justification will eventually collapse.

Only greed, without fear

That person will keep raising the stakes, and keep turning more and more manic.

Only fear, without greed

That person will keep retreating until, however vast the world may be, there is no place left where he can live inside it.

At that point, it is not that he cannot think. It is that the bridge of heavenly authority has broken. He cannot cross over anymore. He cannot go from one side to the other and see his whole self.

Why does the bridge break? Not because a person suddenly loses reason. Very often it is because he wants comfort too badly. Human beings are born with a powerful instinct to let themselves off the hook: to explain a complex world through one simple reason.

Because complexity is painful. Complexity means uncertainty, and uncertainty makes people afraid. So people go looking for the most comfortable explanation and use it to soothe themselves.

That explanation is not for truth, and not for understanding.

It is only because once the explanation seems to make sense, he can tell himself:

It is not that I am inadequate. It is that the world is the one with the problem.

At that moment, the heart feels balanced again.

But that is also where the trouble begins. Because the explanation a person uses to comfort himself will eventually become the logic by which he acts.

This sentence matters.

Today, for the sake of comfort, you explain the world wrongly. Tomorrow you will act according to that wrong world.

That is what is truly terrifying about a broken bridge. It is not that you deceived yourself once today. It is that later on you will live your whole life according to the logic produced by that deception.

I myself have had times like this too, and at the time it was serious.

I made money very young. By the time I was twenty-two, I had already earned ten million. At that time I was arrogant. Instinctively, I felt that among people my own age, as long as they were not relying on family, nobody had more money than I did, nobody was more successful than I was, and nobody was smarter than I was.

You can see it: at that time I was already in a state where the bridge was close to breaking. That was completely different from the earlier period when I lost money buying stones and still felt that losing money was only natural. Because at that later moment, I was standing only on the side of greed. I was not looking at the world. I was using the world to prove myself.

Then, when I was twenty-three, I saw someone: Yu Jiawen from Super Class Schedule. At the time his label was loud. The strongest post-90s founder. The king of post-90s entrepreneurship. He had even loudly declared that he would give everyone a bonus of one hundred million. His company's valuation was very high, tens of billions, and the media were all saying how impressive he was.

But inside me, I felt uncomfortable. It was not ordinary jealousy. It was that one corner of my world had been knocked open. Because the explanation I had previously given myself was: among people my age who did not rely on family, nobody was stronger than I was. And now suddenly there was someone who seemed to stand higher and stronger than I did. It made me miserable.

Unable to bear that misery, I called the people in my company into a meeting.

I asked them, "What do you think of this person?"

The people following me were simple inside. They said, "He's very impressive."

At that moment I could not take it. What I was really asking in my heart was not "What is he like?" What I was really asking was: Is he impressive, or am I impressive?

That is greed. It is the wish to prove oneself. But behind that greed, fear follows immediately. I was afraid that I was not the strongest, afraid that my self-narrative would be shattered, afraid that the set of things I had believed about myself would no longer hold. So I began to search for explanations.

I said: that is capital's money, not his own cash.

I said: that is valuation, not money he has really earned.

I said: he has investors, packaging, media. He is not like me.

Could all those explanations have been entirely false? Of course not. But the issue was not whether they were true or false. The issue was why I was in such a hurry to explain. Because I needed comfort. I needed to explain away the thing that stabbed me and cracked my world open. I needed to tell myself: it is not that he is truly stronger than I am, only that his strength and my strength are different.

That is where the bridge begins to have trouble.

If at that moment I had been able to walk from greed over to the side of fear, what I should have seen was this:

Why am I so afraid that someone else may be stronger than I am?

Why do I have to be the strongest among people my own age?

Why can I not accept that someone in the world may have taken another road?

Why can I not admit that some people are willing to bear costs that I myself am unwilling to bear?

Many, many years later, when I livestream, people often ask me about the success rate of AI entrepreneurship. I only want to tell them this: right now, the probability of succeeding in AI may be only one in a million, but if ten million people are willing to try, someone will definitely succeed.

And me? I am too unwilling to do a one-in-a-million thing. I would rather do something whose success probability is above sixty percent. Because I have been deeply shaped by The Art of War. I understand the principle of securing the win before the battle.

This is not a matter of who is higher or lower. It is only a matter of different choices. I trade a lower ceiling and a greater price for a higher certainty. Other people trade greater risk for greater possibility.

That is the complete way of looking at the world and at entrepreneurship. That is what one should be able to see when the bridge still stands.

But at the time, I did not think that way. I only wanted to explain away his strength. Once I had explained it away, I felt comfortable. Negation can make a person feel very comfortable. But that comfort comes with a price, because it will make me continue to look at the world through faulty logic afterward.

I will become more and more likely to explain other people's success by saying:

He has capital.

He has resources.

He has connections.

He has packaging.

All of those may indeed be factors. But if I see only those, then I cannot see other things.

I cannot see the risks he dared to bear.

I cannot see the probabilities he was willing to gamble on.

I cannot see the price of the path he chose.

I cannot see what he had to withstand while standing in that place.

That is what is terrifying about the thinking of the person inside the painting. It makes you comfortable, but it also blinds you while you do not even realize it.

So you see many people like this. You see a girl, a beautiful girl, and one of her classmates becomes a huge star. Inside, this girl feels uncomfortable. She does not want to admit that the other girl may really be prettier, may really work harder, may really express herself better, may really dare to gamble more, or may simply have run into an opportunity.

All of that is too complicated. So she gives herself one explanation:

Didn't she just sleep with the director?

The moment that explanation appears, she feels comfortable. Because then she no longer has to face the gap between them.

When he sees someone become the president of the student union, he says: didn't he just know how to flatter the teachers?

When he sees someone get promoted, he says: didn't he just know how to flatter the boss?

When he sees someone make money, he says: didn't his father just have money? Didn't he just have connections?

Do you see it? He never wants to search for the true laws of the world. He is searching for an explanation that makes him feel comfortable.

But that explanation does not remain only an explanation. It becomes the guide for how he acts afterward. It becomes the compass that points his direction.

If he thinks other people succeed by giving gifts, then later he will go give gifts.

If he thinks other people rise by pleasing others, then later he will go please others.

If he thinks other people make money through relationships, then later he will only go looking for relationships.

By the very end, perhaps he truly lowers his head, truly gives gifts, truly flatters others, perhaps even sleeps with someone. He truly places himself low enough. But he still does not get the result he wanted.

Why?

Because the cause-and-effect pattern he saw in the beginning, the one he summarized by deceiving himself, was wrong from the start. He used it to comfort himself, but he never truly saw the world.

That is the thinking of the person inside the painting. It is not stupidity. It is a choice to abandon becoming someone outside the painting in exchange for temporary comfort. It numbs you by lowering the dimension, and in numbing you, it also controls you.

So the cracking of heavenly authority is not some abstract concept. It is when you can look at the world through only one explanation. You can stand only on the side of greed, or only on the side of fear.

You can no longer move back and forth. You can no longer move between "I want" and "I am afraid" to verify each side against the other. At that point, a person begins moving toward extremes.

Those who are extreme in greed become wilder and wilder. They see only what they want and cannot see the cost.

Those who are extreme in fear keep shrinking smaller and smaller. They see only risk and cannot see all the things they still want.

These two kinds of people look opposite on the surface.

One charges forward.

One retreats.

But underneath, they are the same.

In both, the bridge of heavenly authority has collapsed.

After many, many years, I have increasingly felt that of course human beings need to explain the world. Without explanation, a person cannot live. But you must know that your explanation is only temporary. It is not the ultimate truth. The only truth in the world is that there is no final truth. Every explanation is only a tiny part of movement and change themselves.

Of course, that includes Human Choice, Heavenly Choice itself. It too is only my temporary explanation of the world. I predict that in less than ten years, I will overturn my own earlier explanation. But that does not mean this explanation has no value.

A person's growth is not that he possesses one explanation that will be correct forever. It is that he knows: my explanation may only be here to make me comfortable. What I am seeing now may only be one side of the coin. The place where I am standing now may only be one side of the bridge.

If we can still think like that, then our bridge is still there.

If we can no longer think like that at all, then cracks have already begun to appear in the bridge.

Axiang's story let me see the bridge breaking on the side of fear. My own story let me see the bridge breaking on the side of greed.

One smiles after too much pain.

One hurts after too much pleasure.

On the surface they are completely different, but in essence they are the same: a person stays too long on one side, and in the end cannot come back.

So why does the bridge crack? Not because people have no wisdom. It is because people need comfort too badly. They want too badly to feel at ease, too badly to believe they are not wrong, too badly to make the world simple.

So they cover pain with one explanation, and then are forced to let that explanation guide the direction of their life.

In the end, the explanation becomes a prison, and the bridge slowly cracks.

It is now half past midnight in Tokyo. The night is deep, and I am still on the balcony writing. Xiaolong brought me a blanket and poured me a cup of water. He stood beside me and watched me write, wanting to see what I was putting down. When he reached this point, Xiaolong asked me whether it meant that as long as one does not crave, does not fear, and does not explain the world, then everything will be fine.

My answer was no. A person will certainly crave. A person will certainly fear. A person will certainly explain the world. What truly matters is this: after you have given your explanation, are you still willing to turn back and look once more? After you have become comfortable, are you still willing to ask: is this explanation for the sake of truth, or for the sake of protecting myself?

As long as you can still ask, the bridge has not yet broken.

Once you stop asking entirely, then that bridge of heavenly authority has already begun slowly collapsing.

So please remember this. We will definitely create reasons and excuses for ourselves. That is an inborn human capacity for inward repair, and it is also an inseparable and deeply important part of heavenly authority.

But we must also remember that greed and fear are not the root of human nature that we are meant to overcome. What matters is that every action carries a cost.

In the next two chapters, we will speak about the cost of fear, and then the cost of greed.