Understanding one's purpose

Woken by her brother, Desolate Ancient Moon joins him in asking cognition Gu again how to save Ren Zu. Cheng Bai mountain has vanished, cognition Gu says, and it knows no other way, but its child wisdom Gu might. Wisdom Gu once escaped Ren Zu after he caught it with Rules and Regulation Gu. Seeing the siblings sent by its mother, it agrees to help for a price: one of them must give it their middle age. Desolate Ancient Moon offers hers at once, since bringing their father back is the very meaning her brother gave her life, and Northern Dark Ice Soul cannot talk her out of it. Once her youth passes she will skip straight to old age. ^{ch. 591}

Wisdom Gu directs them west, to a still blue sea at the center of the golden desert, the source of all living beings, where countless life Gu shine in the depths. They must catch a human shaped life Gu and bring it ashore to give their father new life, but staying past fifteen minutes will see them assimilated by the sea itself. Only someone who has grasped life’s truth could find one, wisdom Gu warns. It flies off before they can ask more. ^{ch. 591}

Crossing the desert, the siblings dive into the sea and find life Gu of countless shapes and sizes, colts, tigers, eagles, snakes, but no human shaped one among them, so they surface empty handed. The instant they leave the water, a deer shaped life Gu Northern Dark Ice Soul is holding glows and leaps onto the sand as a living fawn. It is a new life, born before her eyes. Desolate Ancient Moon suddenly understands why wisdom Gu fled before she could question it. A human shaped life Gu brought ashore would become a living human exactly as the fawn did, she reasons. That means humans themselves are these gems given life, and Ren Zu was once one such gem from the sea’s own depths. ^{ch. 591}

A faster way exists, she realizes: since her humanity is unchanged beneath the monster’s shape, she can sink into the sea herself and return as a human shaped life Gu. Northern Dark Ice Soul begs her not to sacrifice herself, but she answers that doing so is the very meaning of her life. Far stronger than him now, she cannot be stopped. Humans are gems polished by every choice and every effort, she tells him, and life is obtained only by sacrificing life. She sinks into the sea. ^{ch. 591}

After fifteen minutes she is assimilated and becomes a human shaped blue gem, but a damaged one, less than half a proper human shape, because she had already given her middle age away. Understanding what life is, the legend adds, usually costs a person half of it. Northern Dark Ice Soul carries the gem out of the golden desert in tears. He feels no triumph, only remorse, since in a way it was he who gave her the meaning that killed her. ^{ch. 591}