Chapter 1300: Liu Xuan

**Chapter 1305: Liu Xuan**

An ancient divination saying goes: When Heaven reveals a sign, the sage follows its principles.

During the Spring of the Tianqi era of the Great Dynasty, in the Central Imperial District of the capital.

The early spring drizzle swept obliquely across the bluestone alley in the southwestern corner of the imperial city. In the rain, beneath a dark umbrella, Liu Xuanji, a middle-aged man in a blue robe, raised his withered fingers, moving them across the bronze divination board before him.

"Mr. Liu, what is it?"

The speaker was a young man in splendid silken robes, standing beneath the dark umbrella, gazing at the blue-robed middle-aged man. In the distance behind him, robust attendants were visible in the rain.

Liu Xuanji did not look up. His eyes were fixed on the divination board, watching the needle tremble incessantly at the Kan position, a thoughtful expression on his face. This was his third divination of the day. The first was for a commoner seeking land, the second for an old woman looking for her lost grandson. Now, this nobleman, with a dragon-patterned jade pendant at his waist, had specifically sought him out to inquire, naturally, about his official career.

After a long moment, Liu Xuanji looked up at the young man and spoke hoarsely. "My lord, your Ziwei star has entered the palace of destiny, which signifies prosperity..." Before he could finish, the needle suddenly jumped to the Li position. This unexpected turn made Liu Xuanji frown. According to his calculations, the young man's fate should have been prosperous at the Kan position, while the Li position signified an early demise. Yet, what was now displayed clearly pointed to a premature death. However, the young man was past the age of early demise, and an aura of forty years of wealth and status lingered between his brows; even the jade pendant at his waist was carved with a four-clawed coiled dragon, a design reserved for a prince's heir.

Liu Xuanji fell silent, and the rain grew heavier. He watched the needle vibrate back and forth between the Kan and Li positions, eventually drawing a continuous circle. This peculiar change deepened his frown, and with his left hand hidden in his sleeve, he quickly calculated the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. The more he calculated, the more cold sweat trickled down his back. "How can this be again..." Three days prior, when he divined for a flower seller, the divination outcome had been equally bewildering. That girl was clearly destined for a life of toil, yet the divination showed an omen of a phoenix crying from the Ninth Heaven. And today, it was the same!

"Sir?" The young man tapped the divination table. Seeing Liu Xuanji still lost in a trance, he shook his head and gave him a deep look. He had heard about this Mr. Liu; the man once enjoyed a great reputation but went mad ten years ago. After recovering, he gave up everything and chose to live hidden among the common folk. "What a pity," the young man murmured before departing.

Tens of breaths later, as a metallic taste filled his throat, Liu Xuanji finally awoke. The divination needle had, at some point, stopped at the Kun position, and due to its previous tremors, had even scratched fine cracks onto the surface of the green jade board. Looking at the cracks, Liu Xuanji raised his head, watching the young man's receding figure. He suddenly coughed violently, instinctively pulling out a silk cloth. When he lowered it, the plain white silk handkerchief he clutched tightly was stained with specks of red. "Seven hundred thirty-nine..." Liu Xuanji murmured. After a while, he silently rose, packed up his stall, and walked through the rain curtain back to his humble dwelling.

Inside his simple room, Liu Xuanji sat at the table, gazing at the rain outside, lost in thought. Thirty years. Since he was sixteen and fully understood the "Azure Scripture of Illusory Worlds," he had never made a single mistake in his divinations before the age of thirty-six. But ten years ago, the divination outcomes became like a star map disturbed by a mischievous child; all the fated trajectories that should have been straight twisted into strange circles. Everything had gone wrong.

Time flowed slowly, and night fell faster than usual in the rainy curtain, much like the sea of Liu Xuanji's heart at that moment. It wasn't until late into the night, when the oil lamp was lit, illuminating the room brightly. In the lamplight, Liu Xuanji stood up, took out a treasured book of destinies from a hidden compartment, and slowly unfolded it before him. Gazing at the astrological charts densely covering the yellowed pages, Liu Xuanji's expression once again turned confused. This was his record of 738 "erroneous fates" over the past decade. Now, under the lamp, they revealed a horrifying pattern: all the lines of destiny, after extending to a certain point, began to eerily overlap.

As he looked at them, Liu Xuanji's fingertips traced the records from the third year of Yonglong. In that year, the astrological charts of an old frontier soldier and the top scholar in the imperial examination overlapped on Jingzhe Day. In that year, the destiny paths of an oil seller and the prime minister's daughter converged on their twenty-second birthday. Line by line, to others, they would be incomprehensible, but to him, they were shocking. "How can this be... it's as if everyone's destiny, over these ten years, is trending towards unity..." "And today..." Liu Xuanji's mind replayed today's divination; the prince's heir's fate line should have ended in his capping year, but it abruptly shifted at a certain point...

After a long time, he suddenly took out a piece of white silk and, using the divination methods he had mastered, began to rewrite all the strange destiny lines he had recorded over the years. The copper clepsydra dripped, each sound hastening the passage of time. When the dawn's light appeared in the east, Liu Xuanji had finished tracing all 739 destiny lines onto the silk, which was over ten feet long. The last line belonged to the prince's heir. The still-wet ink lines intertwined like a spiderweb, all ultimately pointing to the third quarter of You hour on Jingzhe Day. This was precisely the moment, ten years ago, when he suddenly went mad.

As he looked at the white silk, Liu Xuanji's body began to tremble, and a sudden chill wind swept through the divination room. The silk cloth was caught by the wind, soaring and swirling in mid-air. Within it, the 739 destiny lines seemed to come alive, appearing one by one, forming individual Eight Characters of Birth. In Liu Xuanji's disbelieving gaze, he watched as the Eight Characters of all these fated individuals flowed and overlapped in the void, and finally... they merged to form his own birth characters! They became identical! It was as if all individual destinies were merely appearances, concealing a deeper truth: the unity of all beings!

At that moment, the bronze divination board beside him let out a piercing hum. Seventy-two trigram positions simultaneously shot out green light, and the jade divination needle shattered into dust as it spun wildly. From the fragments of the divination board, a jade cicada flew out—the very object his master had placed in his palm on his deathbed. Now, the jade cicada spread its wings in the green light, and on its abdomen was clearly carved the character "one," which he had written as a child while practicing calligraphy. "So this is how it is..." Liu Xuanji gazed at the scattered jade dust, then suddenly burst into frenzied laughter. He reached out, grabbed the fluttering white silk, and in his madness, burst out the door.

When the morning bell shattered the thin fog, the bluestone alley in the southwestern corner of the Central Imperial District of the capital was already crowded with onlookers. They were all discussing Liu Xuanji. At this moment, Liu Xuanji stood on his divination stall, his eyes bloodshot, hair disheveled, and bare feet. He held a torch, and with a wild expression illuminated by its flames, he lit the white silk that recorded the destinies. He also allowed the flames to spread to himself. As the tongues of fire licked over each line of destiny, the ashes drifting in the wind revealed 739 identical fate patterns.

Liu Xuanji laughed maniacally as he immolated himself. The onlookers screamed and retreated. No one came to save him. Not until the fire completely engulfed Liu Xuanji. In the flames, his expression suddenly became calm. He looked at the terrified crowd and murmured softly, "This world does not exist, and all your destinies are one destiny—my destiny." Before his voice faded, his figure collapsed within the flames. In the fire, no one saw the jade cicada resting on his charred remains. Astrological charts swirled on its wings, and faintly, the face of a suffering god seemed to flash past.