Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1302: Liu Xuanji

The ancient divination texts say: The sages must react to great signs in heaven.[1]

It was spring in the year Heavenly Restoration in the imperial palace of the capital city of the Great Posterity Dynasty.[2]

A spring rain fell in a cobblestone alley in the southwestern part of the imperial capital.[3]

A middle-aged man named Liu Xuanji sat underneath a dark canopy just outside the alley, running his finger along the bronze divination plate in front of him.[4][5]

“Well, what’s it say, Mr. Liu?” The person who had just spoken was a young man in fancy embroidered clothing, also standing under the dark canopy, flanked by some burly attendants. He was looking eagerly at the middle-aged man in the green jerkin in front of him.

Liu Xuanji didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on the divination needle, which was vibrating a bit but pointing directly at the Kan trigram.

This was his third divination job today. The first was for a commoner seeking real estate advice. The second was an old man whose grandson had gone missing. And now he was dealing with a young nobleman who had a jade pendant hanging from his waist, covered in dragon designs. As one might expect, the young nobleman wanted to know about his future prospects as a government official.

After a long moment passed, Liu Xuanji looked up at the young man. “Young Sir,” he said in a raspy voice, “you will end up in charge of the Crapemyrtle Palace, and—”

Before he could finish speaking, the divination needle suddenly jerked in the direction of the Li trigram. The sudden development caused Liu Xuanji to frown. The divination was indicating that this customer’s fate involved the Kan hexagram, which meant fortune, but also the Li hexagram, which meant loss.

Normally speaking, this divination result would indicate an early death. But this young nobleman was past the age when a death could be considered premature. His aura seemed more like that of a forty-year old rich person, and the dragon on his jade pendant had four claws. It was all typical of the heir apparent to an imperial prince.

Liu Xuanji was quiet. The rain fell harder. As he watched, the divination needle spun back and forth between Li and Kan.[6]

That was when he finally started to understand what he was seeing. The strange phenomenon caused his frown to deepen. The fingers of his left hand, hidden within his sleeve, began to move as he made some calculations about the heavenly stems and earthly branches. However, his calculations only caused a cold sweat to break out on his back.

How could this be…?

Three days ago when telling the fortune of a young girl who sold flowers, the divination signs had been equally strange and difficult to interpret. The girl was obviously destined to work hard her whole life, but the divination results had indicated she would end up happily married. Today, something similar was happening.

“Sir?” The young nobleman tapped on the table and looked at Liu Xuanji, who seemed to be in a daze. Finally the nobleman shook his head. According to what he’d heard, this Mr. Liu had once had a very good reputation. But about ten years ago, he went mad. After recovering, he gave up his old life and took to hiding out in the marketplace.

“What a pity,” the young man said. He left.

Shortly thereafter, a metallic flavor rose in Liu Xuanji’s throat, and he came to his senses. At some point, the divination needle had come to rest, trembling, on the Kun position. Cracks were now visible on the surface of the divination plate.

Liu Xuanji noted the cracks, then looked up at the figure of the young man disappearing into the crowd. He suddenly dissolved into a fit of coughing. He instinctively pulled out a white cloth and put it up to his mouth. When he lowered it a moment later, it was flecked with spots of crimson.

“739….” he muttered.

Finally, he stood up, closed up his vendor stall, and then made his way through the rain back toward his residence, which was a crude hut. Inside the hut, he sat at the table, looked out at the rain, and reminisced about the past.

Thirty years. At sixteen years of age, he mastered all the knowledge in the Green Scripture Illusory World Text, and had then spent the subsequent thirty-six years performing accurate divinations without making any mistakes. But then, ten years ago, a hexagram divination created a star chart that looked like the scribblings of a street urchin child. Lines of fate that should have been straight were in complete and baffling disorder. After that, nothing went right for him.

Time passed, and the rainy night grew dark faster than usual. Just like Liu Xuanji’s mood. Late that night, his room was illuminated by an oil lamp.

Within the lamp light, Liu Xuanji stood up. He pulled a bundle of divination books out from a dusty corner, then slowly started leafing through them. The yellowing pages were covered with star charts, the sight of which caused him to look more perplexed than ever.

These were the records of all of his past 738 failed divinations. Now, underneath this lamplight, he realized there was a terrifying pattern…. The lines of fate all seemed to converge on one spot, where they overlapped in a very bizarre way.

Liu Xuanji’s finger found the record from the third year of Eternal Prosperity. In that year, the star chart of an old soldier from a border garrison overlapped with that of the newest top scholar from the imperial examinations, on the first day of Awakening of Insects. In that year, the fates of an oil merchant and the revered prime minister intersected during their shared 22nd birthdate.

The clues would not make sense to most people. But the implications were appalling to Liu Xuanji.

How could this be…? It’s as if the lives of numerous people are slowly unifying over the past ten years…. And today….

Liu Xuanji thought about the divinations from earlier in the day. The thread of fate belonging to that young nobleman should have been severed in his youth. But at some point, some important linchpin had changed…. He took out a fresh scroll. Taking all of the strange threads of fate from years past, he used his mastery of the arts of providence to start writing something new.

The sound of dripping water seemed to grow more urgent.

When the marble white of dawn crept over the horizon, Liu Xuanji had filled the new scroll with all of the threads of fate. The final thread was that of the nobleman. The ink had not yet dried on the threads of fate, which resembled a complex spider web. But they were pointing to one specific moment: 5:45 in the afternoon on the first day of Awakening of Insects.[7]

That was the exact moment ten years ago when he suddenly went mad. Liu Xuanji trembled as he looked at the scroll spread out in front of him. At that exact moment, a strong, cold wind slammed into his hut. The wind picked up the scroll, causing it to spin and dance in the air. The 739 threads of fate seemed to come alive, float up, and turn into birthdate characters.

Liu Xuanji looked on incredulously as all of the birthdate characters of his past customers swirled, overlapped, and then… pieced together to form his own birthdate characters!

All of them were the same! It was as if all the threads of fate were symbolic, and that there was a different life hidden within them!

The bronze divination plate next to him suddenly buzzed loudly. The seventy-two divination symbols all started glowing with green light, all while the jade divination needle started spinning, and the plate began to crumble. A jasper cicada flew out from the rubble of the divination plate. It was the very same precious object his Master had pressed into his hand before passing away.

Within the green light, the cicada spread its wings. Astonishingly, on the belly of the cicada was a character that Liu Xuanji himself had written when he was practicing writing as a child. It was the character “one.” [8]

“So that’s it…” Liu Xuanji said. He suddenly started laughing madly. Grabbing the scroll, he rushed out the door.

***

The dawn bells tolled, clearing the morning mist. Outside the cobblestone alley in the southwest of the capital, there was quite a buzz of activity. Everybody was talking. And the subject of their discussion was Liu Xuanji.

Liu Xuanji’s eyes were bloodshot as he stood barefoot in front of his vendor stall, a torch in his hand. His vicious expression was illuminated by the light as he ignited the scroll with the threads of fate inked on it. The fire soon spread to his own clothes. As the fire spread through the threads of fate and crumbled into ash, 739 threads were revealed, all of which were exactly the same.

Liu Xuanji cackled madly as the fire spread over him. The onlookers screamed and backed up. No one stepped forward to help.

After the fire had completely engulfed Liu Xuanji, his expression suddenly became completely tranquil. Looking around at the horrified crowd, he softly said, “This life doesn’t exist. All of your fates are the same fate. Mine.”

He toppled over onto the ground. No one saw the jasper cicada in the fire. It perched on the burned corpse, its wings flapping. And the star chart on the wings almost looked like the face of the pain god.

1. This saying comes from The Book of Changes. ☜

2. The actual characters used for the imperial palace in this case are the same characters for the Kyoto Imperial Palace in Japan. However, this is just a coincidence, as the specific characters used are not that unique, and can also just be interpreted as “imperial palace in the capital city.” ☜

3. If you do a google search for the specific characters used to describe this cobblestone alley, you will find some very typical Chinese alleyways, the likes of which I have walked a many over the years. Here are some pictures. ☜

4. Liu Xuanji. Liu is a surname that also means “willow tree.” It is not listed in the 100 most common surnames list that I’ve been using, but it does come up on a different list (the top 400 names, different compilation) at number 136. Xuan means “profound, mysterious, dark” and Ji means many things, including “machine, operation, opportunity” and things similar to that. The Xuan character is the same character that I have generally been rendering as “dark” as in Plumdark, Dark Serenity, etc. When you combine Xuan and Ji into the word “xuanji” it is a unique term common in Daoism and Buddhism which means, “Arcane truth, abstruse secret, profound theory, mysteries of fate or of the universe.” From that alone you can probably tell that this is supposed to sound like a profound/mysterious name. Madam Deathblade said as much. ☜

5. Subsequent descriptions make it clear that this divination plate has positions for the 64 trigrams and the 8 hexagrams, as well as a needle that will spin to point to the different trigrams and hexagrams to provide a fortune. ☜

6. Normally speaking, Li and Kan are opposite of each other on a trigram diagram. This would certainly make for an interesting spectacle, as presumably, the needle would be spinning like crazy. ☜

7. The units of time here are ancient time measurements, but when you convert them, they align to about 5:45. Specifically, it’s the “you” time period, which covers from 5-7, and 3 “ke” into that. Each “ke” is slightly more than 14 minutes (usually), so by doing a bit of rounding, I think 5:45 is the best option for rendering this time in a way that Western readers can easily understand. ☜

8. Remember that “unification” is made up of the characters for “return” and “one.” ☜