The Command Token trembled faintly.
Zhou Xuan extended two fingers and pressed them against the center of the engraving.
Hum.
A vibration came from inside the pedestal.
This time, there were no star tracks like those of the Bronze Mirror. Instead, a scroll-shaped phantom slowly unfurled above the empty rack.
The scroll was badly damaged, with several chunks missing from its edges, yet countless fine points of light drifted through its center.
Those points shifted their arrangement, as though calculating some result.
Zhou Xuan took only one look before a stabbing pain struck his sea of consciousness.
It was not an attack.
The information was simply too jumbled.
Countless fragments of deductions crowded in at once, their order reversed, truth and falsehood mixed together.
He gave a muffled grunt. Taiyi Divine Power immediately bore down, stripping away a layer of those chaotic currents.
For once, the Supreme One Token behaved, releasing a faint glow on its own to help him stabilize the phantom scroll.
Zhou Xuan caught his breath.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to do that from the start?"
When the phantom scroll had unfurled halfway, a voice sounded.
"Heavenly Derivation Record..."
"Divining heavenly secrets..."
"Before the calamity arose..."
"Variables were recorded..."
Something stirred in Zhou Xuan's heart.
Variables?
The points of light on the scroll suddenly gathered together, as though about to form a line of text.
But the moment that line took shape, a black stain wiped it out from the middle.
The voice grew urgent at the same time.
"...The variable is the answer..."
As the final words fell, the phantom scroll scattered with a snap.
The engraving on the pedestal immediately dimmed by a third.
Zhou Xuan kept his fingers pressed against it, not withdrawing them for a long while.
*The World-Viewing Mirror recorded the