208: Divination

Li Xuan hesitated to speak, his expression looking somewhat grim.

A great Opportunity and a great Legacy within his own borders actually had nothing to do with him; anyone would feel stifled by this.

Perhaps seeing through his thoughts, Mysterious Clarity Master let out a sigh.

"Although I cannot fully peer into the past and future, as a practitioner of the Dao, I always have some vague perceptions. This Opportunity must not be touched, otherwise both you and I will be tainted by Karma, pointlessly drawn into the vortex."

A moment later, Li Xuan picked up his teacup and drained it in one gulp, the bottom of the cup making a soft clink as it hit the table.

He wore a bitter smile:

"This time... I'm afraid I have disappointed the State Preceptor. I have already ordered a unit of the Imperial Guards to station in the Southern Border, so I fear... it will be hard to escape involvement."

Hearing this, Mysterious Clarity Master's gaze suddenly became complex. He stared at him for a long while before looking at the sky outside the pavilion and saying:

"Since you have already made the decision, why come to ask me? One cycle of sixty years, it seems my days of peace and quiet have come to an end."

Li Xuan was greatly alarmed, immediately shifting from his cross-legged sitting posture to a kneeling bow:

"State Preceptor, please forgive me! I will immediately order them to be withdrawn!"

Inside the pavilion, the green tea steam curled and drifted, floating amidst the sunlight.

Mysterious Clarity Master looked down at him:

"Now that you have entered the game, whether you withdraw them or not doesn't matter much anymore. As for the consequences... they are hard to predict."

Li Xuan abruptly raised his head:

"Then... what should be done about this?"

Mysterious Clarity Master remained silent for a moment before slowly taking out six tortoise shells that shimmered with mystical light.

The shells were covered in runes of fortune and misfortune, with various grooves circling these dense symbols into different hexagrams. An ordinary person would likely feel dizzy just by glancing at them.

His fingertips lightly brushed over the tortoise shells, his gaze as deep as the pool water in a Forbidden Ground.

A moment later.

Mysterious Clarity Master slowly spread his hands, and an obscure, indescribable aura spread out from within his body.

"Buzz..."

Six palm-sized tortoise shells, covered in the marks of time, appeared out of thin air before him, suspended in mid-air.

The tortoise shells were carved with dense, twisting runes. These runes were not static but flowed slowly like living creatures, emitting an ancient and mysterious luster.

The six tortoise shells each moved slowly along a path that was profoundly mystical and beyond words.

At times they converged, and at times they dispersed. Every change formed a brand new hexagram, so complex it would strike awe and fear into anyone.

These hexagrams contained the ultimate principles of Heaven and Earth, yet far exceeded mortal understanding. Even an expert who had immersed themselves in this path for decades would likely only understand a few scattered fragments.

Within the pavilion, though there was no wind, the air seemed to have frozen, carrying an oppressive feeling like the calm before a mountain storm.

Suddenly, the space in front of Mysterious Clarity Master distorted slightly, like a pebble being thrown into a calm water surface, rippling out a tiny circle of waves.

"Crack..."

A soft sound, barely audible, rang out exceptionally clearly in this extreme silence.

A tiny crack silently appeared on one of the floating tortoise shells, spreading out like a spiderweb. Although faint, it was already irreversible.

Mysterious Clarity Master, who had his eyes tightly closed all along, had his eyelids twitch violently before suddenly snapping them open!

In that instant, deep within his seemingly cloudy pupils, it was as if billions of stars suddenly lit up and then instantly vanished! The brilliant light flashed and disappeared, yet it carried a supreme Divine Might that could pierce through eternity and see through all falsehoods.

His gaze easily pierced through the layered and infinitely powerful Formation barriers of the Xuanzhen Forbidden Land, through the palace walls and buildings of the Imperial Capital, across thousands of mountains and rivers, looking straight toward the distant East!

"A variable..."

Mysterious Clarity Master's voice slowly rang out, carrying a trace of barely perceptible surprise, as if he had discovered something that overturned his understanding.

"The Luck of the Tianqi Dynasty is actually being suppressed? Yet I cannot calculate what is suppressing it; truly strange."

His brow twitched slightly, his tone filled with disbelief.

Having said that.

His withered fingers began to move again.

His fingertips traced through the Void Realm, bringing forth shadows of profound runes. These runes flickered at his fingertips, forming complex incantation seals that merged into the six floating tortoise shells.

He wanted to perform the deduction again, attempting to find the true reason why the Tianqi Dynasty's Luck was being suppressed from within that turbulent heavenly secret.

However, just as his spiritual power and Divine Thought were fully activated and about to touch the core truth—

A boundless and vast, yet extremely obscure heavenly might, like an angry Dragon hidden beneath a ten-thousand-foot abyss, suddenly released a trace of its aura!

This heavenly might did not fully reveal its ferocity, yet it was already enough to stir the winds and clouds, causing the Spiritual Qi of the entire Xuanzhen Forbidden Land to become turbulent.

Mysterious Clarity Master's Divine Thought was instantly bounced back as if it had hit an invisible bronze wall. The originally clear trajectory of the heavenly secret suddenly became blurred and chaotic.

What alarmed him even more was a sharp, stabbing pain, like a needle prick, coming from the depths of his Sea of Consciousness. As he forced the deduction, this stinging pain became clearer and more intense.

"Hmm?"

Mysterious Clarity Master's brow furrowed slightly. Sensing the danger, he no longer pushed and decisively stopped the deduction.

He withdrew his gaze and turned toward Li Xuan on the other side of the pavilion:

"The Luck of the Tianqi Dynasty is being suppressed, but the root cause is hard to find. It is like looking at a flower through a fog or catching the moon in the water; I cannot calculate the reason."

Mysterious Clarity Master let out a low sigh, his voice dissipating into the dead silence of the Forbidden Ground, carrying a trace of worry and weariness from having insight into the world's affairs.

He paused, seemingly calming the discomfort brought by the forced deduction earlier. After a moment, he sighed lowly again:

"But it is not entirely without clues."

His withered finger lightly lifted, pointing toward the six tortoise shells still floating before him.

Li Xuan hurriedly looked up. Following the direction of Mysterious Clarity Master's finger, he saw an extremely dark, faint purple light that was almost imperceptible, slowly flowing on the tortoise shell that had cracked.

That purple light seemed to have a life of its own, carrying a noble aura.

And around that purple light, golden runes representing the Tianqi Dynasty's national destiny, like swimming golden Dragons, were baring their fangs and claws, attempting to devour this purple light.

However, outside that purple light, there was a larger, more chaotic, and more bizarre gray aura wrapped around it.

This gray aura seemed like a piece of nothingness, yet also like the source of all things. It isolated the attacks of the golden runes and also obscured the true form of the purple light, making the purple light itself appear shadowy, flickering, and difficult to define.

Li Xuan was merely an Emperor; although he also practiced royal Cultivation Techniques, he knew nothing about such profound divination arts.

He only felt that the runes on the tortoise shell were twisting and squirming, as if countless tiny insects were crawling on them, making him feel dizzy and his mind shake violently.

He barely managed to concentrate his spirit to capture that point of extremely unsettling purple light.

His voice was dry, carrying a trace of imperceptible trembling:

"State Preceptor... can this hexagram be interpreted?"

Mysterious Clarity Master did not answer immediately. With a flick of his hand, the six tortoise shells floated before him once more.