What, exactly, was fate?
First, there was destiny!
From birth to death, a life was what was called destiny. It was ordained, because no matter what one experienced in between, the outcome of being born and dying basically would not change.
For instance, matter existed, and by the same token, it would also vanish.
It was like every sip and every peck—there was a before and an after, yet it was basically predetermined.
That was destiny.
Fortune, on the other hand, was precisely the opposite. It was always changing and never remained fixed.
It was like daily life. No matter how one tried to maintain the same rhythm, the details could never be exactly identical. Even a stone in nature could not possibly experience two completely identical days.
From this, it could be seen that destiny and fortune were, in truth, contradictory.
Like change and constancy, yet they were inextricably intertwined.
That was why people often said that fate was impermanent and ever-changing.
Take a person's death, for example.
How they died was merely the process; the result itself did not change.
Or take the wind encountering a certain tree and ending ahead of time.
Its ending was the inevitable result, while encountering the tree and causing that result to come early was merely the process.
And clearly, for the vast majority of material things that existed, the process mattered more than the result. Thus, if someone died an unnatural death, people would say their fate was poor; if someone lived out their natural lifespan, they would say they were blessed.
Thus, fate itself was actually a rather subjective thing.
As he continued to comprehend and feel, and as the power of fate he grasped grew greater and greater, Li Su gradually began to form some insights of his own