Diviner of Distant Reach

For many long years he never once took the Jade Abacus off his head, as though it were a part of the body he had been born with.
Rays of light as fine as silk threads curled into his gray hair, connecting with his thoughts.
At a speed far beyond human ability, he decoded vast and complex data and arranged it into clear hexagrams. Even while he slept, omens would turn into all sorts of strange dreams and appear before his eyes.

Admiring his title of "Divine Calculator", students meeting him for the first time would often ask out of curiosity:
"Lord Jingtian, the Jade Abacus is truly marvelous, so in time will it not be able to comprehend the will of heaven completely?"
He would often answer with a puzzling question of his own:
"The answer lies... in your eyes, what is it?"
Many people flattered him, and he would only shake his head and smile, silent and giving no answer. Among the students, one mischievous girl said bluntly:
"It looks like... a shackle."

He was not angry at all; on the contrary, he burst into hearty laughter.
For an outstanding Diviner, the most dangerous thing of all is that nothing escapes his own calculations.
"If one believes only in the Jade Abacus, how can one know the mandate of heaven?" he murmured.
But many years afterward, he chose another road: the only road that fate pointed to.

In the battle of Thalassa, the army of Yaoqing faced the Borisin.
The newly re-established "Dharma Realm of the Ten Directions' Radiance" calculated a result that was impossible to believe: instead of mobilizing Yaoqing's powerful, battle-hardened fleet and its million soldiers, they should call for aid from the Xuanzhu Guard of the far distant Xianzhou Fanghu.

This ran counter to ordinary military doctrine, and in the end the generals of course chose the first option.
The Diviners of Yuque in the rear would study the arcane calculations deeply and then present the results to the Celestial Generals, to be used as the basis for their decisions. This had always been the tradition.
But when the divination result ran contrary to common sense, he resolved to go to the front himself and verify it.

Disguising himself as a traveling merchant, he slipped into the camp of the local sea dwellers.
When the Borisin surrounded the sea dwellers, he stepped in to help them, and in the end he paid with an arm, but in exchange he gained the sea dwellers' trust. From what they told him, he learned a secret that had never been recorded in any Bestiary:
Under the disturbance of the moon, the "Demon Wave" would engulf the battlefield one month later... The Yaoqing army, unskilled in naval warfare, would certainly not be able to hold, and only Fanghu's Xuanzhu Guard, well versed in the waterways, would have any chance of victory.

On the day he returned, beneath his sleeve was a prosthetic arm.
The Diviners of Yuque had always cherished their own hands, and even after finishing a divination they would apply a hand-protecting salve handed down from ancient times.
But having lost an arm, he could no longer calculate as meticulously as before, and every time he turned the Astral Chart it gave off a hollow sound.

That hand was always cold, just like his divination results, which grew ever more accurate.
Gradually he came to see the whole picture of the road ahead, greater than anything he had imagined...
Fate cannot be resisted, and there is absolutely no possibility of turning it around.

The demon planet Ketu Divine Tower hung high overhead, and the Xianzhou Fanghu was in peril.
He knew that the ominous hexagram from many years before had finally come to pass, only he had not expected it to arrive in this way.
He was very glad, because his student had grown strong enough to protect the safety of the Xianzhou, even though it forced him to use Yuque's most important instrument, the "Skycloud Mirror", to send a distress signal to the Siming Imperial Palace.

That day, over his pilot's uniform, he put on a Taoist robe that was still fairly new.
"I am sorry, I have to trouble you with this."
He entrusted another outstanding disciple of his to perform the calculations within the Dharma Realm of the Ten Directions' Radiance, to make sure that the Imperial Palace's Arrow of Light would land exactly on schedule.
"A Diviner has no need of farewells. In the future we have already foreseen, farewells have already happened tens of thousands of times."
After saluting his colleagues, he boarded the warship and set off toward Fanghu.

The Skycloud Mirror had already sent its signal to the place where the Imperial Palace last left its trace.
In an atmosphere as still as death, he lifted his head, as he had so many times before, and looked up at the stars in the sky.
A point of light appeared high in the sky, his Taoist robe was lifted by a light wind, and he narrowed his eyes to look closely, then smiled with satisfaction.
"I... have seen it."

The Arrow of Light shrieked like a roar of fury, like a burning sun plunging down to the ground, and the demon planet, the abominations, the officers and soldiers, the Diviner... all of them turned to ash.

The relics of every generation of Diviners are kept by Yuque's Celestial Phenomena Bureau.
Ruyi scepters, armillary spheres, divination boards... Among these exquisite astrological instruments, one pair of worn old shoes truly stands out.

Whenever the Celestial Phenomena Bureau gains a new member, their first stop is to come here to pay respects and look around.
Ever since taking office, the general everyone calls "Boss Yao" has begun to preside personally over ceremonies of this kind.

Most of Jingtian's relics were destroyed on the battlefield, and not even his remains were left behind.
In his lifetime, wanting to verify divination results for himself, he made these cloud shoes, so that he could move freely between battlefields and gather information quickly.
Yet the general noticed for the first time that these cloud shoes, which never touch the ground, were still covered with small cracks and stains from long use.

"Even though fate is already fixed, the Diviner still has the duty to find out why it is so."

Her master's voice sounded beside her ear once again.
Now the cloud shoes still hover unconsciously, spinning in midair, like a child who has lost a father, dazed and confused.
Do they long to go to farther places? Do they long to keep wandering across the sea of stars?

The Diviners gaze at them, seeming to see them fly farther and farther away, turning into a tiny point of light in their vision, and finally merging into that endless night and its starlight.
Like the words engraved beside the relic...

"The road up to heaven begins from a single step."