Outside of Time - Chapter 1327

Chapter 1305 Liu Xuan

An ancient divination text says: Heaven displays signs, and the sage follows them.

In the spring of the Tianqi year of the Great Yin Dynasty, in the capital city.

The early spring rain slanted across the bluestone alley in the southwest corner of the imperial capital.

In the rain, under a black umbrella, Liu Xuanji, a middle-aged man in a blue robe, raised his withered fingers, moving them across the bronze divination plate before him.

“Mr. Liu, how is it?”

The speaker was a young man in fine clothes. He stood under the black umbrella, looking at the middle-aged man in blue before him. Behind him, in the distance, his strong attendants could be seen in the rain.

Liu Xuanji did not look up, his gaze fixed on the divination plate, watching the needle tremble incessantly at the “Kan” position, his eyes filled with contemplation.

This was the third divination of the day.

The first was a commoner asking about land, the second an old woman searching for her lost grandson, and now this noble young man with a dragon-patterned jade pendant at his waist had come specifically to inquire about his career.

After a long while, Liu Xuanji looked up at the young man and spoke in a hoarse voice.

“Young master, your destiny palace is in the Ziwei position, indicating you will be in charge of…”

Before he could finish speaking, the divination needle suddenly jumped to the “Li” position.

This unexpected turn of events made Liu Xuanji frown.

According to his deduction of the other party’s destiny, the Kan position signifies prosperity, while the Li position signifies premature death.

What he was seeing now clearly indicated an early death.

Yet the young man was already past the age of premature death, and his brows were adorned with the aura of forty years of wealth and honor, even the jade pendant at his waist was carved with a four-clawed dragon.

This was the standard for a prince’s heir.

Liu Xuanji remained silent, while the rain intensified.

He watched the divination needle vibrate back and forth between the Kan and Li positions, eventually drawing a circle that connected end to end.

This strange change made his brows furrow even more, and he began to calculate the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches with his left hand in his sleeve.

But the more he calculated, the more cold sweat poured down his back.

“How can it be like this again…”

Three days ago, when he divined for the flower girl, the divination was just as bizarre and unpredictable. The girl was clearly destined for a life of hard work, yet the divination showed signs of a phoenix soaring to the heavens.

Today, it’s the same again!

“Sir?”

The young man tapped the divination table with his finger. Seeing that Liu Xuanji was still lost in his trance, he shook his head and gave Liu Xuanji a deep look.

He had heard of this Mr. Liu before him. The man had once enjoyed great fame, but went mad ten years ago. After recovering, he gave up everything and chose to live in seclusion in the city.

“What a pity.”

The young man left.

Several dozen breaths later, as a metallic taste rose in his throat, Liu Xuanji finally woke up. The divination needle had stopped at the “Kun” position at some point, and even the previous tremor had scratched a tiny crack on the surface of the jade plate.

Looking at the crack, Liu Xuanji raised his head and watched the young man’s receding figure. Suddenly, he coughed violently. Instinctively, he took out a silk cloth, but when he put it down, the plain white handkerchief he had been clutching tightly was already covered with tiny red plum blossoms.

“Seven hundred and thirty-nine…”

Liu Xuanji murmured.

After a long while, he silently got up, packed up his stall, and returned to his humble abode in the rain.

Inside the simple house, Liu Xuanji sat at the table, watching the rain outside the window, lost in memories.

Thirty years.

Since he deciphered the *Qingjing Huanshi Shu* at the age of sixteen, he had never made a wrong prediction before the age of thirty-six.

But ten years ago, the divination results were like a star chart disturbed by a mischievous child; those destiny trajectories that should have flowed straight forward were all twisted into strange circles.

Everything had become wrong.

Time passed slowly, and the night in the rain fell faster than usual.

Just like the sea of Liu Xuanji’s heart at this moment.

Until late at night, as the oil lamp was lit, illuminating the room,

Liu Xuanji stood up and took out a treasured book of destiny from a hidden compartment, slowly unfolding it before him.

Looking at the dense astrological charts on the yellowed pages, Liu Xuanji’s expression became confused again.

These were the 738 erroneous fates he had recorded over the past ten years, now revealing a chilling pattern under the lamplight… all the fate lines, after reaching a certain point, began to strangely overlap.

Gazing at them, Liu Xuanji’s fingertips traced the records from the third year of Yonglong.

That year, the star charts of the old border guard and the newly appointed top scholar overlapped on the day of the Awakening of Insects.

That year, the fates of an oil seller and the prime minister’s daughter coincided on their twenty-second birthdays…

Each

line, incomprehensible to others, was shocking to him.

“How could this be… it’s as if the fates of all beings have converged in this decade…”

“And today…”

The divination of today reappeared before Liu Xuanji’s eyes; the prince’s fate line should have ended at his age of twenty, but it abruptly turned at a certain point…

After a long while, he suddenly took out a white silk scroll and rewrote all the strange fate lines he had recorded over the years, according to his mastery of the fate-telling method.

The water clock dripped, its sound urgent.

As the first light of dawn appeared in the east, Liu Xuanji had already traced 739

life lines on a length of white silk. The last line was for the heir apparent. The ink, still wet, intertwined like a spiderweb, all ultimately pointing to the third quarter of the hour of You (5:45 PM) on the day of the Awakening of Insects.

This was the exact moment ten years ago when he suddenly went mad.

Looking at the white silk, Liu Xuanji’s body trembled slightly, and at that moment, a sudden, eerie wind swept through the divination room.

The silk was whipped up by the wind, soaring and spinning in mid-air, within which the 739 life lines seemed to come alive, each

emerging to form a birth date and time. In Liu Xuanji’s incredulous gaze, he saw all the birth dates and times of the individuals flowing and overlapping in the void, and finally… they combined to form his own birth date and time!

They became identical!

It was as if all the destinies were merely appearances, and hidden within was the unity of all beings!

At that moment, the bronze divination plate beside him emitted a mournful hum, and all seventy-two divination positions simultaneously burst forth with azure light. The jade divination needle shattered into dust as it spun wildly.

From the fragments of the divination plate flew a jade cicada, the one his master had placed in his palm before his death.

Now, the jade cicada stretched its wings in the azure light, and on its abdomen was clearly engraved the character “一” (one), which he had written when practicing calligraphy as a child.

“So that’s how it is…”

Liu Xuanji looked at the jade dust scattering everywhere, suddenly burst into maniacal laughter, grabbed the fluttering white silk, and in his madness, rushed out the door.

…

As the morning bell shattered the thin mist, in the southwest corner of the capital’s imperial palace, outside the bluestone alley, a crowd of onlookers had already gathered.

Talk was rife.

And the one they were talking about was none other than Liu Xuanji.

At this moment, Liu Xuanji, his eyes bloodshot, stood barefoot and disheveled on his divination stall, torch in hand. In the firelight, his狰狞 (zhengning,

meaning ferocious or hideous) expression illuminated, he lit the white silk scroll recording fates. He let the flames engulf him.

The flames lashed across the lines of fate, and in the ashes scattered by the wind, seven hundred and thirty-nine identical fates emerged.

Liu Xuanji laughed maniacally as he burned himself, and the onlookers screamed and retreated.

No one came to his aid.

Until the flames completely engulfed Liu Xuanji, in the fire, his expression suddenly calmed. Gazing at the terrified crowd, he murmured softly,

“This world does not exist, and all your fates are one fate—my fate.”

Before the words were finished, his figure collapsed in the fire.

In the flames, no one saw the jade cicada perched on his charred corpse, its wings displaying a star map, and in the shadows, the face of a god of torment flashed by.

—And

…