Chapter 351 – Qian Rongzhi’s Melancholy (1/2)
“This is already the sixth trigram. Are you going to continue?” Li Qingshan asked. Although Han Qiongzhi had never mentioned it, they had probably asked Ma Buyi to personally divine for her fate since she was a legalist disciple. If they could determine her fate, then it would not be a search mission, but a rescue mission.
Searching for a live person was searching. Searching for a dead person was also searching.
Xiao An gradually familiarised herself with the usage of the Cloud Bookcase of the Seven Lots, but for six consecutive trigrams, they were all the worst of the worst. She could not find a single chance for survival. However, she refused to give up because this was all very strange.
If Qian Rongzhi were dead, then she should have been able to predict a rough location of her corpse. However, the trigrams suggested that she seemed to be in hell. This was the most unlikely place possible.
Even if hell was where all souls would return to, even Ma Buyi’s arts of divination were unable to extend across worlds.
“I want to divine one last trigram.”
“Alright.” Li Qingshan nodded. Although spirit turtles possessed some prophetic powers, he was two-ninths of a spirit turtle at most. He could only sense life-threatening danger.
When he fell into Altar Lord Black Lotus’ formation in Ancient Wind city, there had been no warnings at all. He even had to rely on his instincts as a daemon to sense that something was amiss in the very end, and he had failed to escape. Of course, he believed it was because his senses were not sharp enough, but sure enough, he had just been shaken up in the end, without encountering any danger at all.
Xiao An closed her hands. Seven types of true qi, yin, yang, and the five elements, condensed according to a special method, as if they were parallelling the propagation and decay of everything in the world, resonating with a sliver of unseen fate.
In the end, it condensed into a round cup. Thousands of colours merged and swirled along a special pattern, like a kaleidoscope, like it was forming various diagrams, images, and words. However, just a single glance of it made Li Qingshan’s head spin.
A thin bamboo lot rose up from it slowly, and the cup disintegrated. Xiao An suddenly snatched up the lot, as if she had grasped the unseen fate.
The Cloud Bookcase of the Seven Lots originated from the most ancient Divination of the Seven Stars. A lot decided a fate, giving her knowledge of good and bad luck, life and death, the past and the future.
Li Qingshan was unable to tell what was going on. He just wondered to himself. If he used turtle shells for divination, then Xiao An would use lots for divination. Of course, he had no idea that his dream lover Gu Yanying’s Six Trigrams Divination used bronze coins as a medium.
Xiao An closed her eyes and frowned. She released all of her imagination as she tried to read the information in the lot.
Fate would never tell you clearly, “Hey, John Doe, you’re going to be unlucky today.” Even just a simple piece of information like that was ten times more informative than all of wikipedia. It was a hundred times more difficult to understand than a piece of art from a drunken impressionist.
The main job of the diviner was to read the information and tell the person, “Hey, John Doe, you’re going to be unlucky today. It’s best if you don’t go out.”
Yet, there happened to be a time limit to this. The bamboo slip of light constantly flickered and twisted, dispersing in Xiao An’s hands very soon.
Li Qingshan asked, “How’s it?”
Xiao An opened her eyes and furrowed her brows firmly. The Cloud Bookcase of the Seven used the first six lots as a foundation, so the seventh lot would be the most accurate one. She finally found a sliver of survival in the hellish images. It was so frail that it was almost hopeless. It was like a lone lantern within a fierce storm, where it could be put out at any moment.
Li Qingshan heard Xiao An’s explanation and pondered for a while. “Are you thinking of finding her?”
The fly confirmed the source of the smell. It circled around a few times cautiously. It failed to discover any other flies, which made it slightly uneasy.
However, it was unable to resist the temptation of the smell. Driven by its instincts, it landed on a widened eye of the “corpse”.
At that moment, something seemed to swim past in the pupil of the “corpse”. The eye of the “corpse” suddenly turned.
It fell to the ground silently, its short life coming to an end. Together with many other creatures of the same kind, they laid on the ground, dead.
Using the momentary clear-mindedness, the eyes swiveled, observing the surroundings. Only through that could she learn how long she had remained here for. Her thoughts had been completely torn apart, while her senses became the greatest lies, making her believe she had already remained here for over a century.
Her rationality only played a measly role, as if she was searching through garbage within ruins, wanting to rebuild a city. It was ridiculous and pointless.
However, she managed to find her long-lost sense of time. Her memories returned to roughly three months ago.
The proud, noon sun barely managed to penetrate the green canopy, landing in this forest and making a wide, shallow stream sparkle.
She stepped into the stream and disturbed the silence there. She tried to focus on finding the whereabouts of the man-eating daemonic beast so that she could forget about her original reason for coming here, but she was unable to forget it.
The world was heading into late spring, but her heart remained in the chilly winter, unable to forget about turmoil. She had found nothing in the past few months, and she would be able to let out a sigh of relief every single day, but there seemed to be another power constantly pulling her towards the sludge.