Chapter 16: The Capital: Ten Taboos of Divination
[The time pause is about to end. LA will briefly explain the card contents and usage to the owner.]
[First of all, all the Chinese Heroic Spirit Cards provided by this system are not equivalent to real historical figures, but are a combination of historical prototypes, historical records, and later re-creations;
Secondly, if the card detects that the owner has the ability to trace back souls and perceive multi-dimensional space, after the card is activated, the character on the card will overlap with the owner in a dual dimension, ensuring that the owner can control and use the abilities on the card while fully retaining self-awareness;
Third, the overlap of two dimensions may cause excessive physical energy consumption on the host's body. The specific consumption is determined by the host's soul compatibility with the character on the card and the attributes of the card skills activated by the host. After entering the double dimension overlap state, please pay close attention to the physical health bar in the lower right corner. If the physical health bar is less than 5% when activating a skill, it may cause permanent loss of self-awareness.
Finally, the Zhouyi Sixty-Four Hexagrams are a bundled gift pack for the Wenwang Jichang card. After activating the Wenwang Jichang card, using the Zhouyi will only incur the energy consumption caused by the Wenwang Jichang card, with no additional consumption.]
[——Brief introduction complete, the time-stop state enters the countdown. Please use the card with caution after the time-stop state ends!]
[…Three! Two! One!]
The golden light suddenly disappeared, and the time-stop state ended.
Duren, who knew nothing about time-stopping, lashed out with rage, accusingly saying, "—Don't think I won't punish you just because you're a direct descendant of the Holy Family! After all, I'm the president of the Imperial Academy appointed by His Majesty the Emperor! And you're a student!"
"The dean wants to expel me?"
Xiao Yun sneered.
"……I!"
Du Lun choked and said sullenly, "How dare I expel you? I expel you from school without waiting for His Highness to return from Denos. I've already asked His Majesty, who is afraid of being punished by His Highness, to expel you!"
"so--"
"Let's end today's events here and just pretend nothing happened, how about that?"
Duren is willing to keep things quiet.
Xiao Yun shook his head: "My goal has not been achieved yet, I will not leave."
"Young Master's purpose—"
"Withdraw the new rule prohibiting Royal Academy professors from lecturing at private schools, and continue the Royal Academy's tradition of treating all students equally, without discriminating between commoner and aristocratic students."
"I'm sorry, I—can't do it!"
"What if I really want you to take it back?"
"Both of the above new rules come from His Majesty's orders. I am merely His Majesty's tool."
Duren straightened his back and tried to use the emperor to force Lucien to compromise.
"The Emperor's order..."
"yes."
Duren raised his chin arrogantly.
"Where is the document?"
"ah--"
Duren was stunned.
Xiao Yun pressed on, "Can't you produce the royal document with the shield and sword emblem of the Yula Dynasty?"
"I...I...I am carrying out His Majesty's verbal orders..."
"Verbal orders?"
"Yes! Verbal command!"
Duren blurted out, then came to his senses and exclaimed: "...you...I...I fell into a trap!"
(I see, Your Majesty treats me like a knife, a knife to be thrown away after use!)
(The so-called verbal order is actually——)
"Sir, agreeing to your request would be a betrayal to His Majesty, and refusing it would severely offend His Highness, so I choose to be loyal to His Majesty."
"Why?"
"His Highness is a magnanimous man. You won't die if you offend him, but betraying His Majesty will result in death."
After saying that, Duren turned aside and asked Lucien to leave.
"I see... You're only afraid of death... Then I..."
Xiao Yun glanced at the crystal ball and divination stick on the table and suggested, "Let's have a competition."
"Um?"
Du Lun was stunned: "Sir, you——"
"Before you became the Emperor's occult mentor, you were a fortune teller at King's Square. You must be quite accomplished in the field of divination."
"I am indeed good at fortune-telling."
When talking about his areas of expertise, Duren gained some confidence.
Xiao Yun took the opportunity to coax him: "I'm not as good as my brother, but I do have some special abilities, such as using divination tools to see the future of a designated person."
"How about this? We'll each perform divination on the other, predicting what will happen to the other within three days. If my divination is more accurate than yours, you must withdraw the ban restricting academic exchange and swear not to discriminate against civilian students. The emperor will ask my brother to help you exonerate after he returns from Denis. How do you do that?"
"--no problem."
Duren agreed readily, but what he was thinking was——
(Even if your divination is more accurate than mine and I lose the competition, so what?! I am the dean, and I am carrying out the emperor's orders! You are still too young!)
Thinking of this, Duren stretched out his left hand, which looked like dry bark. "Sir, what kind of divination tools do you like?"
"During my four years of wandering, I learned a very ancient divination technique called 'Yarrow Spelling.' Since there's no yarrow here, I'll use fifty thin wooden sticks instead."
"Fifty thin sticks..."
Duren pushed all the divination sticks on the table in front of Lucien: "There should be more than fifty of these."
"Excuse me."
Xiao Yun reached out, took the divination sticks, counted fifty, and then overlapped them with the dimensions of King Wen Jichang he had obtained by drawing a card. Using King Wen Jichang's power, he used the most ancient Zhouyi method to cast a hexagram:
The number of the Great Derivations is fifty, and its use is forty-nine. Divide it into two to represent two, hang one to represent three, and count it by four to represent the four seasons. Return the odd number to the number to represent the leap year...
Duren stared in amazement.
He had never seen such complicated and grand divination techniques. Every movement of Lucien revealed the ancient dignity of five thousand years. His blue eyes, which were too watery for a man, now exuded the unknowable mystery and majesty of the deep sea.
As expected of a noble blue blood of the Holy Family, even a bastard child who is considered a flawed product... well...
Duren swallowed subconsciously, cold sweat oozing from his forehead.
He knew that he would definitely lose.
No matter what the result is, no matter—
"Dean, you will face a death crisis within three days, and the one threatening your life is you, not me."
Xiao Yun looked up and announced the divination results.
He also didn't understand why this happened.
But the interpretation of the hexagram given by King Wen Jichang is indeed like this.
"—Nonsense! How could I possibly threaten my own life!"
Duren took three steps back and screamed in horror.
Having studied mysticism for many years, he instinctively knew that the future predicted by Lucien would definitely happen, even though the divination method used by Lucien was something he had never heard of or seen before.
"In that case, then—now it's your turn to tell fortunes for me."
Xiao Yun asked Duren to demonstrate his mysticism.
Duren gritted his teeth, walked to the desk, and took out from the drawer the cards made by the ancient mystic master Anon, which he had obtained through his power after becoming the emperor's mystic mentor. Using the energy provided by the starlight crystal ball, which was also Anon's relic, he divined for Lucien.
blank!
blank!
blank!
(What’s going on?! I got a blank three times in a row!)
(There are only five blank cards in this deck!)
(To think... this kind of thing would happen...)
(…That taboo…that taboo that forbids divine intervention for the direct bloodline of the Holy Family…could it possibly have some other meaning?!)
(Impossible! Impossible! It must be a coincidence! Coincidence!)
Duren's hands were shaking, and his body was shaking even more violently.
(…If the next card is still blank, then I…I…)
Duren gritted his teeth and turned over the fourth card.
This time it’s finally not blank, but the content of the card is even more shocking than a blank card!
(The Joker! It’s actually the Joker! The most mysterious Joker in the deck created by Master Anon! The Joker that both exists and doesn’t exist!)
"——Is the divination not over yet?"
Lucien's voice brought the desperate Duren back to the world.
He raised his head, his already skinny head now looking like a skeleton drained of all flesh and blood. "I lost... I can't predict the future of the sacred bloodline, but... but I won't withdraw the ban out of defeat! Even if your sword is against my neck!"
"What did you say?!"
Xiao Yun was surprised: "As the dean of the Royal Academy, how can you go back on your word?"
"Offending His Highness and you may not result in death, but betraying His Majesty will certainly lead to death. I have always been good at making choices."
Duren acted like a rogue and was ready to deny his mistake to the death.
"As for your divination result—how could I, who cherishes my life so much, threaten my own?"
"—Who said it's impossible?"
John Deere's voice suddenly rang out.
Then, the youngest professor of the Royal Academy walked into the office. He nodded to Lucien first, then glanced at Duren, the dean, and said slowly, "Your curiosity has brought you death threats."
"Um?"
"The first of the ten taboos of occult divination is that you must never divine for the direct bloodline of the Holy Family. Do you know why this taboo exists?"
"Why?"
Duren blurted out.
Xiao Yun also wanted to know the reason.
"After gaining His Highness's support, I searched through all the relevant records in the Royal Library and the Silver Moon Palace study. I discovered that many masters throughout history had performed divinations for the direct bloodlines of the Holy Family. Most of these divinations ended in failure, and the few who succeeded were torn apart and devoured by monsters from another dimension the moment they succeeded—"
"'Torn apart and devoured by a monster from another dimension' is the apprentice's description of the death scene..."
John Deere added: "He who peeks into forbidden things will pay the price of destruction..."
"However, my divination failed. Will a failed divination also attract monsters from another dimension?"
Duren asked John Deere in return.
"A failed divination will not bring monsters from another dimension, but will bring doom to this world."
"—What do you want to say?"
"His Highness is very gentle. He always signs death warrants blindfolded, so there are inevitably some blank death warrants without specific names written on them."
John Deere smiled slightly. "These accidentally mixed-in blank execution warrants are usually not destroyed."
Small Theater:
Yaris (sadly): I'll be gone for about ten days. My cousin the Emperor will definitely take the opportunity to bully my brother, who's as innocent as a newborn lamb...
John Deere (speechless): Your Highness, your brother is already twenty-one years old, he is not twelve years old -
Mikael: But the young master's mental age is really only twelve...
John Deere (shocked): Got it! I will do my best to protect you!
Adrien, who was passing by (wagging his tail like crazy): Me too! Me too! I want to protect my cute little brother Lucien too!
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