Chapter 1302: Liu Xuan

Chapter 1302: Liu Xuan

An ancient divination states: "Heaven reveals signs; the sage follows them."

In the spring of the Tianqi era, under the Great Yin Dynasty, within the imperial capital’s central precincts—

Slanting threads of early spring rain swept across the slate-paved alley in the southwest corner of the capital.

Beneath a black umbrella in the rain-draped gloom stood Liu Xuanji, clad in plain blue robes, his middle years etched into his gaunt frame. His withered fingers traced slowly over the bronze divination plate before him.

“Master Liu,” asked a richly dressed young man stepping forward beneath the same umbrella, “what do you see?”

Behind him, through the curtain of rain, sturdy attendants waited at a distance.

Liu Xuanji did not lift his eyes. His gaze remained fixed on the needle trembling ceaselessly over the Kan position. He frowned in deep thought.

This was the third reading of the day.

The first had been a commoner seeking counsel about farmland; the second, an old woman searching for her lost grandson. Now this noble youth—his waist adorned with a dragon-carved jade pendant—had come expressly to inquire about his official prospects.

After a long silence, Liu Xuanji finally raised his head and spoke in a hoarse voice, “Your destiny places Ziwei in its temple, which should indicate…”

He stopped abruptly.

The needle had suddenly leapt to the Li position.

Liu Xuanji’s brow furrowed sharply. According to his calculations, this young man’s fate belonged firmly to Kan—signifying strength and longevity—while Li portended premature death.

Yet the youth had already passed the age of childhood vulnerability. Moreover, an aura of forty years’ worth of nobility clung to his brow, and even the jade at his waist bore the four-clawed coiled dragon—a mark reserved solely for princely heirs.

Silence fell between them as the rain grew heavier.

Liu Xuanji watched the needle shudder back and forth between Kan and Li until, impossibly, it traced a perfect circle—head meeting tail.

Bewildered, he began calculating the heavenly stems and earthly branches with his left hand hidden in his sleeve. But the more he calculated, the colder sweat drenched his back.

“How can this be again…”

Three days prior, when reading for a flower-selling girl—whose fate clearly marked her as one destined for hardship—the omens had twisted into something inexplicable: the cry of a phoenix soaring to the nine heavens.

And now, once more!

“Master?” The youth tapped lightly on the divination table. Seeing Liu Xuanji still entranced, he shook his head and cast one last, lingering look at the diviner.

He’d heard tales of this Master Liu—once famed throughout the realm, driven mad ten years ago, only to recover and abandon everything, vanishing into obscurity among common folk.

“What a pity.”

With that, the young noble departed.

Some dozens of breaths later, a metallic tang rose in Liu Xuanji’s throat, jolting him back to awareness. The needle now rested motionless upon the Kun position—and from its earlier frantic tremors, fine cracks had spiderwebbed across the jade surface of the plate.

Staring at those fissures, Liu Xuanji lifted his eyes toward the receding figure of the youth—and suddenly erupted into violent coughing. Instinctively, he pulled out a silk handkerchief. When he lowered it again, crimson plum blossoms bloomed vividly against the pristine white fabric clenched tightly in his fist.

“Seven hundred thirty-nine…”

Liu Xuanji murmured.

After a while, he rose silently, packed away his stall, and returned through the rain to his humble dwelling.

Inside the modest room, seated by the window watching the downpour, memories surged within him.

Thirty years.

Ever since deciphering the *Qingjing Huanshi Shu* at sixteen, until thirty-six, he had never once erred in divination.

But ten years ago, the celestial charts had warped like star maps toyed with by a mischievous child. All destinies that should have run straight ahead now twisted into grotesque circles.

Everything had gone wrong.

Time crept onward. Nightfall arrived sooner than usual beneath the veil of rain—just as darkness now filled Liu Xuanji’s heart.

Not until deep night did he light the oil lamp, flooding the small chamber with golden radiance.

In that glow, Liu Xuanji rose, retrieved a secreted volume from a hidden compartment, and unrolled it carefully before him.

Gazing upon the yellowed pages dense with astrological diagrams, his expression clouded once more with confusion.

These were records of seven hundred thirty-eight erroneous destinies compiled over ten years—and now, under lamplight, they revealed a horrifying pattern: every lifeline, upon reaching a certain node, began overlapping in eerie synchronicity.

His fingertips brushed the entry for the third year of Yonglong.

That year, on Jingzhe Day, the stars of an old frontier soldier and a newly crowned zhuangyuan scholar converged.

That year, too, the fate-lines of an oil peddler and a prime minister’s daughter intertwined precisely on their twenty-second birthdays.

Stroke by stroke—nonsense to any other eye—but to Liu Xuanji, each convergence struck terror into his soul.

“How can this be… as though all living beings’ fates have, over these past ten years, begun converging toward a single path…”

“And today…”

He recalled the noble youth’s chart: his lifeline ought to have snapped at twenty—but instead veered sharply at some unseen juncture…

Long moments passed before Liu Xuanji abruptly seized a length of white silk and, using every method of fate-calculation he knew, rewrote all the anomalous lifelines anew.

The bronze clepsydra dripped steadily, each drop pressing urgency into the air.

By dawn’s first blush, Liu Xuanji had inscribed seven hundred thirty-nine lifelines onto the vast expanse of silk—the final one belonging to the prince’s heir.

Still-wet ink wove a web-like tangle, all threads ultimately pointing to the hour of You, third quarter, on Jingzhe Day.

Precisely the moment ten years ago when madness had seized him without warning.

As he stared at the silk scroll, Liu Xuanji’s body began to tremble uncontrollably—and just then, a sudden gale howled through the divination chamber.

The silk tore free, swirling upward into the air, spinning of its own accord. Within it, the seven hundred thirty-nine lifelines seemed to awaken, rising one by one as strings of birth dates and hours.

Before Liu Xuanji’s disbelieving eyes, those celestial coordinates drifted through empty space, layering atop each other—until finally, astonishingly—they fused together into a single set of characters:

His own birth chart.

All became one.

As if every destiny were merely illusion, concealing beneath it a singular truth shared by all sentient beings.

At that instant, the bronze divination plate beside him shrieked mournfully. Seventy-two trigram positions blazed simultaneously with azure light. The jade needle spun wildly—then shattered into dust.

From the fragments burst forth a jade cicada—the very token his master had pressed into his palm on his deathbed.

Now, bathed in emerald radiance, the cicada unfurled its wings. Carved clearly upon its abdomen was the character “Yi”—the very first word he’d practiced writing as a child.

“So this is how it is…”

Liu Xuanji stared at the jade particles drifting like snow through the air—and burst into maniacal laughter. Seizing the fluttering silk scroll, he charged out the door, lost utterly to madness.

When the morning bell shattered the thin mist, the southwestern corner of Kyoto’s Nakagyo district, just beyond the bluestone alley, was already packed with onlookers eager for spectacle.

Whispers swirled through the crowd.

And the subject of their murmurs was none other than Liu Xuanji.

At that moment, Liu Xuanji stood barefoot and disheveled atop his fortune-teller’s stall, eyes bloodshot crimson. In one hand he held a torch; in the flickering firelight, his face twisted into something monstrous as he set alight the white silk scroll inscribed with fate-lines.

He let the flames climb over his own body without resistance.

As fire devoured line after line of destiny, ash drifted on the wind—and within those ashes emerged seven hundred and thirty-nine identical fates.

Liu Xuanji laughed maniacally as he burned himself alive; the spectators shrieked and stumbled backward.

No one moved to save him.

Until the fire fully engulfed Liu Xuanji—then, within the blaze, his expression suddenly grew calm. Gazing at the terrified faces before him, he whispered softly:

“This world does not exist. And all your fates are but one—the fate that is mine.”

Before his words had faded, his figure collapsed into the flames.

Amidst the fire, no one saw the jade cicada alighting upon his charred remains—its wings shimmering with constellations, and within them, for the briefest instant, the visage of a god of suffering flickered into view.