This article offers an in-depth reading of the chapters on 'the virtue of ghosts and spirits' and 'sincerity is self-completing' in the Zhongyong, exploring their significance as the core of Confucian metaphysics. Through an analysis of pre-Qin conceptions of ghosts and spirits, it demonstrates that the chapter on spirits serves to prove that 'sincerity cannot be concealed,' and further elucidates how the substance of cheng (sincerity) matches Heaven and supports all things, revealing the ontological foundation of the Doctrine of the Mean.

This article offers an in-depth examination of the "Dali" chapter of the *Xunzi*, focusing on the dialectic between penal law and moral virtue (*xingde*) alongside the discourse of the "heaven-ordained people" (*tianmin*). By analyzing the historical evolution of penal practices, it elucidates the core tenets of pre-Qin Confucian populism and governance philosophy, underscoring the critical role of ritual and music in moral transformation while uncovering the metaphysical foundations of social order embedded in pre-Qin political thought.

Approaching the subject from the standpoint of pre-Qin Confucianism, this article examines the origin, essence, and civilizational foundations of ritual propriety (li), seeking to understand the profound meaning it carries between human ethical order and the Way of Heaven.

This essay undertakes an in-depth study of the 'Yi' ode from the Greater Odes (Daya) section of the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) through the lens of pre-Qin thought. It examines the philological origins of the character 'yi' (restraint), confirms Duke Wu of Wei as its author with 'self-vigilance' as its guiding purpose, and elucidates the poem's emphasis on dignity, virtue, its critique of King Li's misgovernance, and its enduring political philosophy and moral cultivation significance.

A line-by-line exegesis of 'Substantiating Intent, Modeled on the Flying Serpent,' the third technique of the Seven Techniques of the Yin Tally in the Original Canon of the *Guiguzi*. Beginning from the definition 'substantiated intent is the deliberation of qi,' it traces the pathology of a hollow intent, the cultivation sequence from calming the five viscera to contemplating the Great Void, the cognitive attainment of 'knowing all under Heaven without leaving one's door,' and clarifies the image of the flying serpent through three pieces of pre-Qin evidence drawn from the *Xunzi*, *Shenzi*, and the *Great Treatise*.

A complete study of the *Zhengming* (Rectification of Names) chapter of the *Xunzi*. It takes up the Master's chain—"if names are not rectified, speech does not flow"—and opens onto the distinction between names having no fixed appropriateness and names having a fixed goodness; it traces in detail the boundary of convention-becoming-custom, the Heavenly Faculties' sorting of categories and the mind's verifying cognition, the three delusions and the inevitability of disputation, the three grades of speech, how order and disorder lie in what the mind approves, the Way as the true balance across past and present, and ends with "the self enslaved to things" and "valuing the self and putting things to service." It takes Confucian and Daoist principle as its foundation, drawing on the *Analects*, *Mencius*, *Doctrine of the Mean*, *Laozi*, *Zhuangzi*, *Zuo Tradition*, and the *Book of Songs*.