Weak Points and Strong (虚实) has one usable job on this site: Empty place — 避实. Leave the solid place alone. A head-on collision is the expensive road. 少打无谓之仗 does not teach you to hunt soft people. It teaches you to end the conflict at an empty point so both sides spend less.
Sun Tzu: whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will and does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him. Who moves whom. Do you set the terms, or answer theirs. Answering theirs means their brief runs on your ledger.
You can march far without fatigue if you march where there is no enemy. You can take what you attack if you attack what is undefended. You can hold what you defend if you defend what will not be attacked. Emptiness is not a fantasy. Emptiness is the real gap left when they must save something else. An imagined gap turns solid on first contact.
This page is not a business-war post about exploiting a rival’s weakness. The live chapter says: solve the problem at the empty place. Read that chapter after this note.
What 虚实 actually asks
By discovering the enemy’s dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated while the enemy’s must be divided. We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split into fractions. Showing a shape is so they divide — not so you look strong. Wanting to hit everywhere is not emptiness; it is fatigue.
Military tactics are like unto water: water shapes its course according to the ground; the soldier works out his victory according to the enemy. Emptiness moves. What is empty today may be solid tomorrow. So the next step verifies one thing only: is that gap actually empty. If verification fails, stop. Do not escalate into the solid.
On sun-tzu.ai, 虚实 comes after 军形 and 兵势. Shape holds. Momentum spends fewer. Then you avoid the solid. Skip those, and “empty place” becomes speculation: you drill gaps before you can stand. Drilling a gap is still an entry. 始计 still applies.
Four checks
- Object: where the conflict actually sticks.
- Who moves whom: your brief, or theirs.
- One solid place: what you will not hit head-on.
- One empty place: what they must leave open because they save elsewhere.
- Judgment: work the empty place, or admit there is none and return to shape or a stop date.
If you cannot name one empty place, do not write several you “want” to hit. Many attacks is the shape of a losing side.
Avoiding the solid is not fear of the solid. It is admitting the solid is expensive. This teaching site reads expensive as people, trust, and the next cycle. Hit the solid, and those three break first.
What “weak points and strong” wants in search
Queries like weak points and strong, 避实击虚, and sun tzu empty want a judgment: solve it where it is empty. This site does not read 虚 as a person you may bully. Emptiness is structural — a place they must leave because they guard something else. Toward people, kindness remains fewer unnecessary fights.
Contact is for a real conflict, class, or content — not for help pressing someone’s soft spot.
虚实 is sixth because after shape and momentum, the dearest error is adding force to the solid. Kindness nearby and under heaven is one move: leave the solid alone; work one real empty place.
Verify the gap; do not invent it
“Strike the empty” is often misread as “hit the soft person.” This teaching site refuses that reading. Softness in a person is not a licence. Emptiness is structural: a place they must leave open because they guard something else. Verification is dull: write one sentence, go check it. If the check fails, admit there is no gap, and return to shape-work or a stop date.
Imposing your will rather than receiving theirs is not a craving for control. It is whose ledger runs. When you receive their will, they set the meeting, they set the agenda, and your people idle on their calendar. That is not emptiness work. That is handing momentum away.
Leizi’s rule still applies to content sites: an article with roughly zero Search Console impressions after about three months must be revised. Chapter queries like weak points and strong already show impressions with unstable rank — a long method note is the right bait. Internal links feed the chapter page; the chapter page feeds training and contact. Contact remains teaching, not an RFQ factory.
How to keep the note timely
Date the page. Put lastmod in the sitemap. Link the newest related judgments on the homepage once. When Google sends a reader for “weak points and strong,” they should land on Empty place, not on a war-manual rewrite. If three months later the note is still dark in GSC, rewrite the title and the first screen — do not delete sentences that already rank.
One empty place in practice
Name the object. Name the solid place you will not hit. Name the empty place you will verify this week. If verification fails, write that failure down — that sentence is worth more than a clever attack that never had ground. Then either return to Hard to defeat and finish shape-work, or open Waging War and write the stop date. Emptiness work that cannot fail closed will become a long campaign by another name.
Readers arriving from search should leave with one gap and one check, not with a map of every soft spot they wish the other room had.
Close
Kindness under heaven, in this chapter, is refusing to spend a room on a solid wall. The empty place is enough work for one week. Teaching stays teaching. The chapter evidence stays under the judgment. Publish, link, and stop.