Liezi

Liezi, or Lie Yukou, is the master to whom the Liezi is attributed, a Daoist text in the line of the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, with which it shares many themes and some almost identical passages. According to the text he lived in a game preserve in the state of Zheng until famine drove him to Wei. Because the Zhuangzi refers to him, a real Liezi would have lived before that book was written, in or before the fourth century BCE; the Zhuangzi also says he could ride the wind for a fortnight.

Whether there was a real Master Lie is uncertain. He is missing from the early lists of philosophical schools, and scholars have long doubted both his existence and the authenticity of the text, though some argue that a real person lay behind the stories. The seventh chapter of the Liezi, which teaches that life is short and should be lived for pleasure, sits so oddly with the rest that it seems out of place.