That made perfect sense!
Beneath the wide sleeves of his black straight-hemmed robe, Shen Le secretly gave a thumbs-up. No wonder the man could serve as Grand Shaman-Priest. A qualified shaman-priest had to know how to spin nonsense. Whenever something that looked inauspicious happened, he had to step forward, calmly spin nonsense, and steer the matter in another direction.
For example, when Emperor Wu of Jin, Sima Yan, had just ascended the throne, he divined, "For how many generations will my Jin Dynasty endure?" and received this result:
One!
Qin had fallen in its second generation. Did that mean your Jin Dynasty could only last one generation?
Well then, the faces of both ruler and ministers had gone stiff. No one dared make a sound.
At that moment, a man named Pei Kai calmly stepped forward and said, "This minister has heard that Heaven attains the One and thereby becomes clear; Earth attains the One and thereby becomes tranquil; kings and lords attain the One and thereby become the steadfast foundation of the realm—"
Never mind whether he was talking nonsense, and never mind how many generations Western Jin actually lasted—after Sima Yan died, Western Jin swiftly descended into the War of the Eight Princes, and then it was finished—
At the very least, he had smoothed things over. He had not let the ceremony collapse on the spot!
These words of Master Pei Kai's were also recorded in the Book of Jin: Biography of Pei Kai, portraying him as a positive rather than negative figure.
No one mocked him as a fawning petty man. Everyone felt that remaining calm and adapting to the situation on such an occasion was an exceedingly remarkable feat—
Sure enough, the moment the Grand Shaman-Priest spoke, the atmosphere immediately relaxed. The ruler of Chu,