Chapter 1310: Liu Xuan===GLOSSARY===

The ancient hexagram says: Heaven hangs its signs, and the sage follows them.

In the spring of the Tianqi year of the Great Yin Dynasty, the capital was in the midst of imperial court.

The early spring rain slanted across the blue-stone alley in the southwest corner of this imperial capital.

Under the rain curtain, beneath the black umbrella, a man in a blue robe, already middle-aged, Liu Xuanyi, raised his withered fingers and wandered over the bronze divination board before him.

"Master Liu, how is it?"

The speaker was a youth in fine brocade, standing beneath the black umbrella, gazing at the middle-aged man in blue; in the distance behind him, sturdy attendants could be seen in the rain.

Liu Xuanyi did not lift his head, his eyes fixed on the divination board, watching the needle tremble incessantly at the Kan position, his gaze filled with contemplation.

This was the third divination of the day.

The first was a commoner asking about farmland, the second an old woman seeking her lost grandson; now this noble youth, whose waist bore a dragon-patterned jade pendant, had come specially to ask—naturally, it was about official career.

After a long while, Liu Xuanyi lifted his head, looked at the youth, and spoke in a hoarse voice.

"Your lordship commands Lady Young Master Zǐwēi to enter the temple, to preside..."

Before he finished speaking, the divination needle suddenly jumped to the Li position.

This sudden change made Liu Xuanyi frown.

According to his calculation of the youth's fate, the Kan position governed prosperity, while the Li position governed early death.

What was now displayed was clearly the omen of premature death.

Yet the youth had already passed the age of early death, and between his brows lingered the aura of forty years of wealth and honor; even the jade pendant at his waist was carved with a coiling four-clawed dragon.

This was the standard insignia of a princely heir.

Liu Xuanyi remained silent, while the rain grew denser.

He watched the needle tremble back and forth between the Kan and Li positions, until it finally traced a closed circle.

This strange transformation made his frown deepen, and his left hand in his sleeve began to calculate the heavenly stems and earthly branches.

But the more he calculated, the colder the sweat on his back became.

"How can it be again like this..."

Three days ago, when he divined for the flower-selling girl, the hexagram was also this perplexing and indecipherable; though that girl was clearly of a toiling fate, the hexagram showed the omen of a phoenix crying to the nine heavens.

Today, it was the same!

"Master?"

The youth tapped his finger on the divination table, seeing Liu Xuanyi still lost in madness, he shook his head and gave Liu Xuanyi a deep look.

He had heard of this Master Liu before him, who once enjoyed great fame, but went mad ten years ago, and after recovery abandoned everything, choosing to hide in the market streets.

"What a pity."

The youth departed.

After dozens of breaths, as a taste of iron rust rose in his throat, Liu Xuanyi finally awoke, and the divination needle had at some point stopped at the Kun position; moreover, from the earlier trembling, it had actually scraped fine cracks into the jade board.

Gazing at the cracks, Liu Xuanyi lifted his head, watched the youth's distant receding back, and suddenly began to cough violently; instinctively he took out a silk cloth, but when he lowered it, the white silk handkerchief he had gripped tightly already bore blossoming red plum spots.

"Seven hundred thirty-nine..."

Liu Xuanyi murmured.

After a long while, he silently rose, packed up his stall, and in this rain curtain returned to his humble dwelling.

In the simple house, Liu Xuanyi sat before the table, gazing at the rain outside, lost in memory.

Thirty years had passed.

Since he was sixteen and penetrated the《Qing Jing Huan Shi Shu》, until thirty-six, he had never erred in a single divination.

But ten years ago, the hexagrams became like star charts disturbed by a mischievous child; those fate trajectories that should have proceeded straight ahead were all twisted into strange circles.

Everything had become wrong.

Time flowed slowly, and the night in the rain curtain came sooner than usual.

Just as Liu Xuanyi's heart sea was now.

Until deep night, as the oil lamp was lit and illuminated the room.

In this lamplight, Liu Xuanyi rose, took from the hidden compartment a treasured book of fate, and slowly unfurled it before him.

Gazing at the yellowed pages covered in star charts, Liu Xuanyi's expression once again became bewildered.

This was the record he had kept for ten years of seven hundred thirty-eight erroneous fates; now, under the lamp, they actually revealed a horrifying pattern... all fate lines, upon extending to a certain node, began to strangely overlap.

Gazing at these, Liu Xuanyi's fingertip traced the record of the third year of Yonglong.

That year, the star charts of the border garrison veteran and the newly crowned top scholar overlapped on the day of Jingzhe.

That year, the fate trajectories of an oil peddler and the prime minister's daughter coincided at their twenty-second birthday.

Stroke by stroke, to others it meant nothing, but in his eyes, it was shocking to behold.

"How could this be... as if the fate of all beings, in these ten years, has converged into one trend..."

"And still today..."

Liu Xuanyi's mind re-presented today's hexagram; the fate line of that princely heir should have been severed at the age of weak crown, yet at a certain node it abruptly turned...

After a long while, he suddenly took out white silk, and rewrote all those years of recorded aberrant fate lines, according to the fate method he mastered.

The copper pot dripped, its sound urging haste.

When the east began to show fish-belly white, Liu Xuanyi had already traced the seven hundred thirty-nine fate lines onto a length of white silk several zhang long; the last line was that of the princely heir.

The ink-still-wet fate lines, like a spider's web intertwined, ultimately all pointed to the third moment of the You hour on the Jingzhe day.

This moment was exactly the time ten years ago when he suddenly went mad.

Gazing at the white silk, Liu Xuanyi's body began to tremble, and at this moment the divination chamber was suddenly swept by a great yin wind.

The silk was lifted by the wind, soaring and dancing in midair, spinning on its own; within it, the seven hundred thirty-nine fate lines seemed to have come alive, appearing one by one, forming a set of birth characters.

In Liu Xuanji's disbelieving gaze, he saw all the destiners' birth charts flowing in the void, overlapping each other, and finally…… they actually pieced together his own birth chart!

It became one!

It was as if all destinies were merely appearances, and hidden within was the oneness of all beings!

At this moment, the bronze divination plate beside him let out a piercing hum, and seventy-two divination positions simultaneously shot out green light, the jade divination needle spinning wildly and shattering into powder.

From the fragments of the divination plate flew out a jade cicada, which was the object his master had stuffed into his palm before dying.

At this moment, the jade cicada unfurled its wings in the green light, and on its abdomen was clearly engraved the "一" character he had written when practicing calligraphy as a child.

"It is actually like this……"

Liu Xuanji gazed at the drifting jade fragments, suddenly went mad with laughter, raised his hand to grab the fluttering white silk, and in this madness, he burst out of the door.

……

When the morning bell shattered the thin mist, in the southwest corner of the capital's inner city, outside the blue stone alley, a crowd had already gathered to watch the spectacle.

They discussed heatedly.

And the subject of their discussion was precisely Liu Xuanji.

At this moment, Liu Xuanji, with bloodshot eyes, disheveled hair and bare feet, stood on the divination stall, holding a torch, and in the ferocious expression reflected in the firelight, he ignited the white silk recording destinies.

He also let the flames spread over himself.

As the flames licked over line after line of destiny, in the ashes drifting with the wind, there appeared seven hundred and thirty-nine identical destinies.

Liu Xuanji laughed maniacally as he burned himself, and the onlookers screamed and retreated.

No one came to save him.

Until the flames completely engulfed Liu Xuanji, in the fire his expression suddenly calmed, and gazing at the terrified crowd, he whispered softly.

"This world does not exist, and all of your destinies are but one destiny, which is mine."

Before his words finished, his figure had already collapsed in the fire.

In the fire, no one saw the jade cicada, now perched on his charred remains, its wings bearing a shifting star chart, and faintly, as if the face of a suffering god flashed by.

——

There is still