Old Qin exhaled a puff of white Qi directly onto the three gold coins. At once, they seemed to come alive, spinning wildly in midair.
Old Qin gave a soft shout. "Heavenly Divination of Easy Numbers!"
Another object suddenly appeared in his palm: an ancient tortoiseshell, covered in coarse, hard ridges. Three lines—one red, one yellow, and one black—divided the shell into sections.
Anyone knowledgeable would have recognized that this shell came from a Heavenly Dragon Tortoise, a rare Primordial Remnant Species. For it to bear such distinct three-colored markings, the creature must have lived for at least a thousand years.
As soon as the shell appeared, the three half-real, half-illusory Gold Coins seemed to come alive and burrowed into its belly. Old Qin murmured incantations, his expression utterly devout. White Qi swords streamed from his mouth, and the shell began to shudder more and more violently.
A faint, clear ring sounded. The three Gold Coins fell onto the battered square table. Old Qin was about to examine them when some inexplicable, uncanny force tugged at them, stacking them neatly atop one another. Old Qin was startled and blurted out:
"From the boundless chaos, yin and yang arise; the workings of heaven are vast, their roots beyond reckoning. How strange, how strange! Since mastering the Heavenly Divination of Easy Numbers, when have I ever seen such a hexagram? What is this person's true origin?"
His astonishment only heightened Old Qin's enthusiasm. He was like a drunkard who'd found fine wine, or a master mathematician faced with a fiendishly difficult problem: rather than being daunted, he was thrilled by the challenge.
Old Qin's hands kept forming intricate seals in the air. A stream of white Qi, sharp as a sword, shot from his mouth and struck the three half-real, half-illusory Gold