Yang Zengyue turned back to her master in alarm, her voice catching. “Master, I, I really didn’t touch the stick tube just now. I, I set it down very steadily, very carefully…”
Jiuxiao kept his eyes closed, then opened them after a moment and instructed her, “It’s fine. Just pick up any stick from the floor at random and let me see.”
Although Jiuxiao said it was fine, a storm was raging in his heart.
Xingyun Temple’s fortune-stick tube falling for no reason, the temple’s chronicles had recorded it happening twice before.
And each time it fell, a great upheaval, even disaster, appeared in the Mid-Dimensional Realm.
And this third time, what did it foretell?
Could it be the very thing Zengyue had just spoken of, the apocalypse?
Following her master’s word, Yang Zengyue walked to the scattered fortune sticks, closed her eyes, and picked up one of the ninety-nine on the floor, handing it to Jiuxiao, who had come in after her.
Jiuxiao turned the stick over:
Light air stirs the mountain peaks, a single strand of iron none can withstand.
The earth quakes and rivers churn, guests come from beyond the heavens.
Reading the stick, Jiuxiao paced to where the stick tube was kept, took out the tortoise shell he used for divination at Xingyun Temple, and obtained the hexagram “Ze Tian Guai” [1]the hexagram Guai—”Breakthrough” jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2943114_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2943114_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. At that he let out a breath of relief.
Yang Zengyue and Chen Jia’er watched quietly from the side all the while.
Jiuxiao had passed on everything he’d learned to Yang Zengyue, all except this one skill of divination, which he had never taught her. She’d once asked why, and Master hadn’t answered.
The meaning of the fortune stick she could more or less grasp, as for the hexagram, she’d need Master to explain it before she could understand.
Jiuxiao wiped the stick with a cloth and returned it to the tube Zengyue had tidied.
“Let’s go. We’ll talk as we walk.” Then he stepped out of the great hall.
Yang Zengyue closed the hall doors again and gave a whistle, Pumpkin crawled out through the dog-hole in the courtyard wall and came flying to her side, tongue lolling and dripping water, clearly it had just had a good hard romp.
It rubbed against Zengyue obediently, then trotted ahead to lead the way.
Yang Zengyue shouldered her back-basket and, with Chen Jia’er, followed behind Jiuxiao. After locking the front gate, the three briskly headed down the mountain.
Once they reached level ground, Jiuxiao waited for the two to catch up and explained the meaning of the fortune stick. “Zengyue, the stick shows that a great disaster will befall, but it will not come to a dead end, there is still a sliver of hope.”
Yang Zengyue had more or less guessed as much. “So everything I said is true. It really wasn’t just waking from a dream.”
“Mm. Grandpa never doubted it. Only, what the stick foretells may be even more terrifying than what you described.”
Yang Zengyue reflected. “Is it because Jia’er’s and my rebirth changed certain trajectories?”
After some thought, Jiuxiao said, “No. These things did genuinely happen, but likely elsewhere, in places you may not have noticed. After all, you said that after the apocalypse, information was completely cut off, and once you went to Nanyuan, no one relayed to you the news from Sikun Mountain or from farther south, isn’t that so?”
It was indeed so.
After that she’d never returned to Sikun Mountain, so she had no idea what else had happened here later.
Jiuxiao went on, “Nanyuan lies in the heartland of the Mid-Dimensional Realm, and Sikun Mountain is to the southwest. Unimaginable disasters may have struck along the coast to the south.”
Yang Zengyue did know a little about the news from the south. “After the apocalypse, that area was battered by the sea. The coastal cities all turned into ocean, and of those who escaped, hardly any survived.”
Because it was no longer fit for human habitation, none who left ever went back.
What Jiuxiao found especially striking was the last line. “Also—’guests come from beyond the heavens’, this may foretell a disaster from the stars.”
Yang Zengyue pondered. She didn’t recall any anomaly appearing among the stars, nor any large celestial body striking this planet.
Only scattered meteorites had come down.
“Could it mean something else? Those beasts I spoke of, some people once guessed they came from another dimension,” Yang Zengyue answered.
Jiuxiao said, “None of this can be confirmed for now. First, get the projects you’ve envisioned built, and try to have them finished before the winter month arrives.”
Jiuxiao’s heart had not been calm since hearing Zengyue’s account, and because of the fortune stick, it churned all the harder.
It was a good thing he was healthy and free of ailments, or his heart would surely have given him trouble.
“Mm. Once we’re back, we’ll go over it carefully again, and Master can help me revise it then. There may be some things I haven’t thought of.” Yang Zengyue quickened her steps.
Even having been through the apocalypse, she wasn’t old, and her life experience was more about having witnessed the wickedness of human nature, on these large-scale projects, she could only design by reference to what she’d seen.
She planned to use the wind farm at Sikun Mountain’s Wind Valley to generate electricity. After the apocalypse, with water and power cut off and the workforce sharply reduced, there’d be no one to maintain these basic facilities, she had to be self-sufficient.
On top of that, if possible, she’d also purchase several backup generators.
She’d have to look into the solar option too, after all, once the winter month passed, for about six months this whole land would be under conditions of very short days and very long nights.
The sunlight would be gone for a very, very long time.
Jiuxiao decided to contact the current head of the Shi family, Shi Baigu, and have the Shi family wire over his dividends from all these years.
That sum should be enough to rebuild every corner of Sikun Mountain three times over.
The old man had a fortune of his own.
He’d originally meant to leave this money to Zengyue as her dowry, but as things stood now, a dowry had lost its meaning.
Money kept unspent would, before long, truly become money that could never be spent.
The three soon reached the resting spot along the mountain path.
At a wide point on the trail stood an ancient tree, grown for a thousand years, perhaps as old as Xingyun Temple itself.
Beneath it were simple stone stools and a stone table for travelers to rest at, these stone pieces, steeped in the years, had turned extremely smooth. Whenever she and Master came down the mountain, they’d rest here.
Yang Zengyue was just about to sit when she noticed on the ground a little bird that had only just grown its wing feathers.
It was a young mountain eagle.
Its mother had probably gone off foraging and not yet returned, and the starving chick had struggled in the nest and accidentally tumbled out.
The all-black little bird had a striking tuft of white fluff atop its head, it was flapping and trying to fly, but couldn’t manage it at all.
Its wings weren’t strong enough yet, and its little eyes were adorably earnest, the sight softened Zengyue’s heart.
Yang Zengyue cupped the little bird. “Master, I’ll take this little fellow back. Otherwise it definitely won’t make it through tonight.”
There were still some elusive, prowling carnivores in the mountains, if those things found it, this little eagle would surely end up on their plate.
“Mm, climb carefully.” Jiuxiao wasn’t worried, with Yang Zengyue’s current skills, climbing a tree was the easiest thing in the world.
Yang Zengyue tucked the little bird into the open-top bag she carried, then climbed the ancient tree and returned it to the nest.
Just as she was about to come down, she tapped the little eagle’s head. “Now don’t you be naughty again. If you fall out again there’ll be no one to bring you back. I won’t be coming up the mountain for a while, so wait obediently in the nest for your mama.”
With that Yang Zengyue climbed down, from a tree over ten meters tall, she simply leapt straight down.
Because she was pressed for time, she didn’t notice that she’d scraped her hand climbing up earlier, and a thread of blood from her hand had rubbed onto the bird.
The little eagle was jet-black all over, with only a tuft of white fluff at the center of its crown, and the blood had gotten onto its neck, so Yang Zengyue never realized.
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