Intellectuals often fall into the double dilemma of survival and morality. The moral values of intellectuals mainly come from Confucian culture and Western knowledge tradition. In the context of China, the development of the two factors is not balanced, and traditional culture constitutes the most important moral pedigree, which will inevitably lead to cognitive bias and reality entanglement. In this sense, the novel The Water of the Waves should not be understood as a history of intellectual spiritual collapse, but as a breakthrough of a method to get rid of mental dilemmas. By anatomizing the intrinsic relationship between knowledge and power, showing the contradictions of interests and benevolence, the novel reveals a new spiritual dimension to construct a new moral pedigree.