Freedom in death

After parting from the hairy man leader, Ren Zu meets winged feathermen in Green Heaven who understand him, and asks them to fly down into Ordinary Abyss and rescue his daughter. The feathermen laugh him off, boasting that they are the freest beings in the world and answer to no one’s request, and they mock him as a pitiful, wingless creature while he pleads. Angered on his behalf, self Gu seizes every featherman from the sky at once. Grown strong from its earlier bite of strength Gu, it pins them all to the ground. Self Gu adds that without strength, freedom is only an illusion. Cursed by the grounded feathermen, Ren Zu apologizes and asks again for their help, but three days and nights of pleading change nothing, and he lets them go. ^{ch. 870}

Ren Zu decides the feathermen cannot be forced and must be made willing instead. He builds a house nearby and has self Gu gather food, and when feathermen shelter under his roof on a cold night he wears the mask of attitude Gu to open the door and invite them in. Once enough of them have grown dependent on the house, Ren Zu takes off attitude Gu, shuts the door, and stops feeding them. Grown too soft and fat to hunt or fly well, the feathermen cannot fight Ren Zu’s strength and starve or freeze rather than yield; when he raises the matter again, they still refuse, and in time every one of them dies. ^{ch. 870}

Small, colored lights fly free of the feathermen’s corpses, uncatchable by Ren Zu’s hands. Cognition Gu tells him these are wild freedom Gu, and that the feathermen, having chased freedom their whole lives, found it only in death. ^{ch. 870}