The Grand Academicians nearby watched Zong Ming kowtow incessantly, blood pooling across the ground. They were all dumbstruck with fear, unable to understand what was happening.
Only after a long while of thinking and deducing with all their might did they realize one possibility. They hurriedly knelt alongside Zong Ming and kowtowed with him.
In the end, all of them battered their heads bloody and lost consciousness.
At the pavilion in the Old Peach Residence.
Zong Moju remained silent.
"Your Zong Family has produced a fine young qilin." Fang Yun still gazed at the peach blossoms halfway up the mountain, his eyes resting on no one.
Zong Moju did not answer. He was still pondering Fang Yun's deductions and everything Fang Yun had told him.
He far surpassed Zong Ming. The instant Fang Yun spoke those three sentences, he understood Fang Yun's intention and connected it with the reforms Fang Yun had carried out over the years.
After a long while, Zong Moju opened his mouth with difficulty and said, "I have made deductions myself, but only after seeing yours did I realize that your ability to deduce is far above mine. Everyone says worldly affairs are like a chessboard, but a chessboard ultimately cannot compare with worldly affairs."
Fang Yun said, "Whether we deduce or think, all our thoughts and actions are fundamentally determined by one rule after another. We use these rules to approach everything, including ourselves. Such rules can be called frameworks, patterns of thought, mental models, or many other names. The most frightening thing is not that we fail to understand these rules, but that we believe the rules we have mastered are correct. This is also the fundamental reason that limits personal development-perhaps even the only reason."
"Look at the Sacred Way of the Myriad