Everyone took turns standing watch as Fu Dongcheng and you began once more to deduce the suitable Eight Trigram positions according to the daily shifts of time within the Heavenly Emperor's Treasury.
This was no easy task.
Qi Ling and the others initially tried to help, only to find the method of deduction you used profound and difficult to grasp. At first, they could barely follow your train of thought, but later, they were completely unable to comprehend it.
Three days passed. Even Yuan Shujian, who had been assisting with the calculation of the changing hours, gradually found it strenuous. His speed of deduction could no longer keep up with the changes, and in the end, he had no choice but to withdraw to the side and watch quietly.
Working backward from the Eight Trigrams produced sixty-four transformations upon sixty-four transformations; continuing the deductions through the twenty-four constellations gave rise to numbers as vast as a sea of smoke, long beyond the limits of mental calculation.
Fu Dongcheng, too, gradually found it hard to endure. Only after receiving the Fate-Star Compass from Sun Miao did he barely steady himself and keep pace with your deductions.
Yet your mind grew ever clearer. Back in the Library Pavilion, you had once happened upon a fragmentary page of the Plum Blossom Numerology. This text was widely circulated and could not be considered some secret transmission; nearly every sect had a copy. Though it was merely the most basic profound art of divination, its origins could be traced back to Medieval Antiquity.
It was said that three further fragmentary pages of the Plum Blossom Numerology were hidden deep within Western Kunlun, though no one had ever seen them.
When it came to the most renowned profound arts of deduction in this world, they were