Daoism in Arknights: Fantasy in the Mirage

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]You always wanted the stone, didn't you?

[00:00:04]I'll give it to you, but I'm not abandoning it I'll come to redeem it one day You mean this is to be collateral?

[00:00:14]That's right, with it, I'll all borrow some money from you I'll plant saplings were trees were burned down and lay new bricks where the walls collapsed Right, I might be getting old, but I'm not dead yet It's just a fresh start I've done it all once and I can do it all again But this time, I'll do it even better I understand. But... ah, nevermind Don't tell me you only accept it if I give it to you for nothing I wouldn't accept it if you did What I want is a totally ordinary stone You haven't let go of your obsession with it, so this stone would be too heavy for me When I first read those words, it felt like Arknights had opened a hidden window I was expecting a mystery story borrowing Chinese mythology and wuxia tropes, yet Fantasy in the Mirage is far more deliberate It takes and interrogates the entire philosophical framework at the heart of two thousand years of myths and stories This framework is Classical Daoism When we strip away the mysticism, what's left in Fantasy in the Mirage isn't a riddle.

[00:01:37]It's a surprisingly clear and profoundly modern lesson for navigating a world in perpetual tension.

[00:01:45]In the foundational Daoist text *DaoDeJing*, the author *Laozi* begins his essay with the famous couplet *Dao ke dao, fei chang dao* *Ming ke ming, fei chang ming* These lines are often translated literally, as: The Dao that is spoken is not the eternal Dao While poetic, that translation misses the intent *Dao* can mean "speak", "doctrine", or "Way".

[00:02:14]While *chang* is both "common" and "eternal" The couplet is structured to include all definitions, not exclude some Rather, a likelier translation is: The "Way" I am referring to is not teachable doctrine It is the ineffable and eternal order Doesn't sound so abstract, does it?

[00:02:36]Suddenly it reads less like vague gesturing and more like a thesis statement An argument that can be rationalised and debated This is Classical Daoism It's not traditional Daoism, which incorporated Chinese mythology and Yin-Yang natural philosophy since the early Han dynasty That Daoism is far more complex and contentious Rather, Classical Daoism arose earlier, at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period The Zhou dynasty had devolved into a rivalries and wars between each state This turmoil displaced numerous scholars, forcing them to wander and market their expertise to regional lords These are known as the Hundred Schools of Thought Amidst this chaos, one question arose above others What makes a stable society?

[00:03:32]Across two centuries, four major schools came in response Confucianism, Mohism, Legalism, and of course, Classical Daoism Unlike the other three, Classical Daoism posits that stability is not created, but found in the cosmological order the Dao *Laozi* uses the metaphor of a river: continuous and inevitable Likewise, we can align with the flow by returning to *Ziran*, or "nature" This "nature" is defined as spontaneous and self-immanent, like splashes of a waterfall or branches of a tree Conversely, Daoists argue that chaos was caused by artificiality They claimed that imposing doctrine, like Confucian ritual, was akin to putting square pegs in round holes It's physically impossible and the only outcome is friction The story of Fantasy in the Mirage begins with this friction In the distant and rural town of Mangshan, almost half of the townsfolk are geists They are objects that manifested and gained consciousness as a result of supernatural Feranmut influence from Sui's tomb They exist in an uncanny valley Alive enough to want humanity, yet not enough to be mere humans This coexistence of the real and the supernatural is a constant source of tension in Mangshan and has now begun boiling into unrest.

[00:05:07]In order to solve this unrest, we must first understand the town of Mangshan and the folk who live there In the Story of the Stone, we are introduced to the ambitious Master Wan When Wan was young, he lost his family and village to a disaster, forcing him to survive entirely on his own One day, he finds a pretty stone by a river, only to be approached by a kindly man offering to trade the stone for riches In response, the boy decides that the stone is valuable and keeps it for himself Over the years, Wan becomes successful through his hard work The stone, though ordinary, becomes more and more important to him, like a symbol of his perseverance By the present, Wan has a manor filled with riches and three successful children His ambition is vindicated Yet the old and dying Wan is unsatisfied His relentless labour alienated him from the world, and even his own children avoid visiting him All he has is his ambition his stone, so to speak Only by finally letting go of that ambition did Wan hear: "the sound of the thunder, the wind, and the deluge's roar To Classical Daoism, Wan's ambition is a form of *Wei* imposed action Wan's labour is alienating because it is incompatible with nature It is the square peg put in round holes.

[00:06:43]Instead, the Daoists posit that aligning with "nature" requires *Wuwei* Though literally called "non-action", it refers to action-as-response rather than intent It is the river that flows across the earth without thinking of the sea This *Wuwei* is demonstrated in Bai Jin.

[00:07:04]Once, a weiqi player named Lan Ke lived in Mangshan with his wife When his wife passed away in a natural disaster, Lan Ke made a bargain In order to see her again, Lan Ke must resolve a weiqi game stuck in a triple deadlock When the martial arts student Yun Qingping encountered Lan Ke's predicament, he recalled his own lessons He had no knowledge of weiqi Instead he knew: First give, then observe, and finally, take He chooses to look at the whole board instead of the deadlocks In textbook *Wuwei* instinct, Yun Qingping solves the game on his first guess By then, more than a hundred years had passed since the bargain, and the real Lan Ke had long died In his stead was actually a geist, borne of his obsession Lan Ke's obsession with the deadlock was so unproductive it took infinitely more time than he had in his life If Yun Qingping's intervention is a demonstration of *Wuwei* then Lan Ke's obsession is a depiction of *Wei* Does this mean that Lan Ke and Master Wan were wrong?

[00:08:19]That love and ambition are unnatural?

[00:08:23]Well, you see, I haven't shown you the full picture Throughout Bai Jin and the Story of the Stone, Fantasy in the Mirage refuses to condemn Wan's ambition or Lan Ke's love Quite the opposite, the narrative wants you to empathise with them To see that Wan's life was bought with his ambition To see that Lan Ke's love was profoundly honest To see that their tragedy was distinctly human The secret passed down my family for three generations has finally borne fruit So why do my tears refuse to stop...... For all the Daoist themes in Fantasy in the Mirage, and indeed across Chinese literature, they don't parrot them uncritically If Classical Daoism names "nature" and artificial, *Wei* and *Wuwei*, the unresolved tension that permeates Fantasy in the Mirage is: Where is the line?

[00:09:25]What defines the difference?

[00:09:28]This question is fully unveiled in the Errant Swordsman On the surface, the titular Swordsman seems to represent a prime Daoist practitioner After losing his sword in Mangshan, the Swordsman decides to retire from the Jianghu, resolving to abandon his former life of violence It looks like he is abandoning *Wei* for a life of *Wuwei* Yet when he was confronted by the Swordswoman he felt drawn to her Each year he would return to Mangshan to visit her The Swordwoman says, "You are tired of the killing, of the constant cycle of revenge, but you could never let go of the freedom of the days when you are loved and hated as you pleased" He could flee from revenge, he could hide from notoriety, but he could not deny his instincts Conversely, the Swordswoman is the embodiment of his instincts Literally, as she is the geist of his last sword Her very "nature" is her striving.

[00:10:32]her desire for freedom, her will to become that leads her to her violence and her malice The swordsman mistook detachment for attachment to nature the *Ziran* In doing so, he ironically rejects his own nature, alienating him from himself.

[00:10:51]Instead, the story offers another answer.

[00:10:55]Perhaps we can travel together, for a while It is not the *Wuwei* the Swordsman first imagined It is not the *Wei* the Swordswoman embodied It is the *Wuwei* of spontaneous emergence from the whole It is transformation The Daoist scholar *Zhuangzi* wrote: The wren nests in the forest, but only occupies a single branch Nature is not static it grows it adapts it decays If it is natural for wrens to build nests, it is natural for us to love and to strive This is profoundly paradoxical Perhaps, then, the line between "nature" and the artificial, *wei* and *wuwei*, is but the presence of the tension itself It is whether the natural acknowledges its unnaturalness and the unnatural its naturalness Geists first appeared in Mangshan when Sui's awakening destroyed the town Yi, the mysterious Kindly Man, tasked his construct Liang to clean up the area All the geists are to be gathered and the rogue ones destroyed Astonishingly Liang instead found that many geists had already developed thought and emotions At this discovery, Liang neither eliminates these supernatural artifacts nor leaves them be Instead, it preserves the tension It instructs the geists to rebuild the town and learn to live with humanity As humans returned to Mangshan, the town became what it is today This is the nature of Mangshan a place where the natural and unnatural meet In turn, it is in that tension where nature is revealed Master Wan and his ambition, Lan Ke and his love, the Swordsman in his sword Each represent the tragedy and humanity from which transformation happens This is not mere Daoism, this is Arknights *Dao ke dao, fei chang dao* *Ming ke ming, fei chang ming* The way is eternal and ineffable, not because it is unobservable or unintelligible but because it is always transforming Rivers change course, and maps fade into obsolescence Only through living are new maps made What makes a stable society?

[00:13:31]In an era of rapid transformation, the line between "nature" and the artificial has never been more stark, yet more blurry Optimization, hustle, self-improvement, self-help Everyone answers with one or the other But those stones, with their obsessions, are too heavy for us Perhaps the real answer is to be Mangshan To refuse imposed, totalising answers about "nature" Instead, to hold "nature's" tension Striving without obsession releasing without escape To observe before taking To rebuild it, live with it, empathise with it and let that tension transform Fantasy in The Mirage borrows from Chinese parables and Chinese fantasy In adapting these ideas for today it not only transforms Classical Daoism, but also performs that transformation Just as Arknights does across its stories Tolkeinian folktale in Ending a Grand Overture Swashbuckling pirates in Exodus from the Pale Sea Noir mystery in Act or Die In turn, this essay tries to transform Fantasy in the Mirage, for that is the most natural thing