In the West, scholars like Pythagoras and Plato once explored hidden patterns in the world, seeking order in chaos through numbers and reason. In the Three Kingdoms period of China, a young philosopher named Wang Bi turned to the I Ching, the Book of Changes, searching not for superstition, but for the principles underlying life itself.
Wei Kingdom, around 226 CE
The candle flickered in Wang Bi's small study. Scrolls of the I Ching lay open before him, their hexagrams and commentaries etched into the thin silk. Outside, the night wind stirred the bamboo grove, whispering like a distant chorus of voices.
Wang Bi's friend, a fellow scholar, leaned over his shoulder. "The patterns are endless. How can one ever understand them?"
Wang Bi traced a line with his finger, eyes narrowing. "It is not the lines themselves that hold meaning," he said, voice steady, "but the mind that interprets them. Change is constant, yet principles remain. Understand the principle, and the flux no longer overwhelms."
Hours passed. The scholar watched as Wang Bi methodically annotated each hexagram, connecting its ancient symbols to human conduct, ethics, and governance. Every stroke of his brush was deliberate, almost meditative.
At midnight, Wang Bi stepped outside. The moon was high, silver on the rooftops and garden paths. He whispered to himself: "To read the world, one must first read the self. Only then can the harmony of Heaven and man be glimpsed."
By dawn, Wang Bi's notes were complete, each insight bridging the eternal and the immediate. Centuries later, another literary prodigy would awaken hearts not with hexagrams, but with words—turning thought into verse. That man was Lu Ji, whose brilliance would light the way for generations of writers and scholars.