The garden was a map of moral ambiguity. Every path led somewhere, but nowhere was clearly right or wrong.

Master Hong sat in meditation, contemplating the nature of virtue. Was it virtuous to serve a corrupt emperor? Was it virtuous to abandon one's family for spiritual purity? These questions had no answers, only deeper questions.

His student, young Wei, struggled with the same dilemmas. He loved a woman he could not marry, served a master he could not respect, and wrote poetry that questioned everything his society held sacred.

One evening, walking through the garden, they found a dead bird—a nightingale, its neck broken. "Is this tragedy?" Wei asked. "Or merely nature?"

Master Hong considered. "Perhaps," he said, "the question itself is the answer. We suffer not from what happens, but from our inability to accept that there is no moral order—only the order we imagine."

Wei carried that thought like a stone in his heart for the rest of his life.