Path is a Chinese-inhabited planet in Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Inhabitants include Han Fei-tzu, his wife, Jiang-qing, their daughter, Qing-jao, and their servants, including Qing-jao's secret maid, Wang-mu.
The inhabitants of this planet are divided into two classes–normal people and the godspoken. The "godspoken" are actually genetically-modified human beings with both superhuman intelligence and a crippling OCD-like disease. Any research into this disease would result in the researcher being sent off-world.
At the end of Xenocide, a newly-spawned copy of Peter Wiggin bearing Ender's aiúa shows up in the FTL starship controlled by Jane. After dropping off the retrovirus to make everyone on Path supergeniuses (minus the OCD), he takes the one person who is already in this state, Wang-mu, with him to reunite humanity as Hegemon once again.
At the end of Shadow of the Giant, it is suggested that the geneticist Volescu - responsible for Bean's genetic condition - has been, or will be, sent off to a colony. Since Volescu had previously been developing a means of changing human DNA by means of a virus - not unlike the descolada in Children of the Mind and Xenocide - it is speculated amongst fans that Volescu may have some connection with the emergence of the godspoken on Path.
Path is the English translation of the Chinese Tao (道).
Read more about this topic: List Of Ender's Game Series Planets
Famous quotes containing the word path:
“Every path to a new understanding begins in confusion.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn’t know where it was or where it led to.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)