Troubles of love

Reaching Cheng Bai mountain’s foot, Desolate Ancient Moon is blocked by the rockman that love Gu woke to obstruct her, because her arrival there ruined a dream love Gu was having. She kills him and climbs to the mountain’s waist, where love Gu still waits. Furious that she still means to take success Gu, love Gu vows to topple the whole mountain and crashes into it. The mound of stacked rocks crumbles, and love Gu leaves smugly, its dream avenged. Facing the scattered pile, Desolate Ancient Moon has no way to tell one rock from another. She returns to cognition Gu for advice. ^{ch. 547}

Cognition Gu says even it and its child wisdom Gu avoid crossing love Gu, and that with the mountain collapsed she can only search the scattered rocks one by one for the real success Gu. Success Gu sat at the peak and failure Gu at the bottom, and the fallen rocks are failure Gu’s other children, siblings of success, each one liable to cause disaster when picked up. Success Gu and failure Gu look almost the same. Holding one, cognition Gu says, reveals which it is. Affirming her own self will clear a rock’s disaster gradually, but failure Gu is the greatest danger of all, since holding it can leave her completely lost and her life at risk. Cognition Gu asks her not to name it as her source, since even it fears provoking love Gu, and she agrees and returns to the mountain. ^{ch. 547}

Rock by rock she searches, and the first wounds her hand, the second floods her with fear, the third with despair, and a fourth gives her a pig’s nose, each pushed back, never wholly, by affirming herself. Day after day she finds only failure Gu’s children, gaining scars, a rat’s tail, and other marks that chanting can no longer fully undo. Six heads, three arms, five tails, and sixteen mismatched legs grow onto her. Even so, she grows hundreds of times stronger. ^{ch. 547}

With only two rocks left, one success Gu and one failure Gu, she hesitates between the two, unsure which to trust. Already so changed and so strong, she reasons she could endure even failure Gu, and reaches for one. She picks failure Gu. A wave of loss and self-doubt washes over her, and though she keeps affirming herself, her voice grows softer and her mouths fall still. She falls into endless perplexity and loses herself completely. Losing one’s sense of self, the legend states, is the greatest tragedy that can befall a human. ^{ch. 547}