Toshishun, born into affluence as the scion of a prosperous Chinese family, spirals into destitution after recklessly depleting his inheritance on decadent excess. Homeless and broken, he contemplates suicide by a riverside until an old man intervenes, guiding him to hidden riches that briefly resurrect his fortune. This cycle spirals twice more: wealth resurges through the stranger’s cryptic tips, only to crumble each time under Toshishun’s impulsive indulgences and the opportunism of fair-weather companions.

When the old man proffers a third chance, Toshishun refuses, hardened by the pattern of betrayal—crowds adoring him in opulence, vanishing in poverty. Disillusioned by humanity’s transactional nature, he renounces materialism and petitions to join the old man, now unveiled as an ascetic possessing otherworldly wisdom.

Under the hermit’s tutelage, Toshishun endures grueling spiritual trials: months of mute meditation, resisting phantoms conjured by his psyche. A hallucination of his parents tormented in hell fractures his resolve—he screams, violating his vow of silence. This lapse exposes his enduring tether to mortal empathy, despite cultivated cynicism. Though deeming him unready for transcendence, the hermit bestows a humble homestead, signifying balance between detachment and earthly existence.

His odyssey—from profligate heir to jaded seeker—mirrors cycles of greed and societal duplicity, interrogating the futility of wealth as a salve for existential voids. Yet his visceral grief over spectral parents betrays an unshakable truth: human bonds, fragile and flawed, hold irreducible worth even for the disenchanted. The hermit’s final gift reframes enlightenment not as eradication of desire, but as harmony with life’s modest sustenance.