Mengzhi's Retreat

This story comes from ancient Chinese military history, featuring a warrior named Mengzhi Fan (孟之反) during the Spring and Autumn period. When his army suffered a crushing defeat, Mengzhi was among the last soldiers to retreat from the battlefield. His comrades praised him for his courage under fire, assuming he stayed behind to cover their escape.

But Mengzhi deflected the praise with characteristic humility, claiming his horse was simply too stubborn to run faster. This became a famous example of how true virtue often wears the mask of modesty. The Chinese valued this kind of understated excellence — doing the right thing without seeking glory for it.

It's the opposite of showing off; real skill speaks quietly.

Stick 64 hands you the figure of Mengzhi Fan, the soldier who held the rear of a retreating army and then waved off the praise by blaming his horse. The verse lands on this question of studies because some part of you already suspects you are the slower one in the room. Maybe your classmates finished the past paper while you were still on question three. Maybe the group chat is trading exam tips in a register you don't quite share. The stick is reflecting that quiet self-comparison back at you, and asking whether the discomfort is actually evidence of anything real.

What Mengzhi understood is that being last out is not the same as being behind. He stayed in the danger zone longest and learned the most about it, then refused to dramatise that into a story about himself. Read against your studies, the verse points less to a ranking and more to a temperament: the people who eventually understand a subject deeply are often the ones who sat with the confusion rather than rushing past it. The grade on this stick is moderately good, not because brilliance is promised, but because the way you are working — slower, more thorough, less performative — is closer to the real thing than the polished surface of your faster peers.

Pick the one topic you keep half-understanding and spend a full session on it without moving on, even if it feels inefficient. Stop benchmarking your pace against the loudest student in the chat; their confidence is not your data. When someone asks how your prep is going, answer plainly instead of downplaying or inflating.

Keep a short page of questions you cannot yet answer and revisit it weekly. The stick is not asking you to be more impressive, only to stay honest about what you actually know.