A Little Broken House to Start With

It could approach infinity, but never be absolutely correct. It was inherently imprecise; fate had no fixed number. This was one of the Fundamental Grand Laws of Fate Arts.

Li Qingxian pondered, When in doubt, Fate Arts and Fate Studies?

Li Qingxian found the crux of the problem.

The Fundamental Grand Laws referred to immutable truths and unshakable rules within Fate Arts.

No matter how powerful a Destiny Arts Master was, when using the Qi-Gazing Technique, the Fortune they saw was merely a hazy mass of vapor.

As for Destiny Mansions and Destiny Molds, no one could see them. They could only force themselves to deduce them.

Li Qingxian could see them.

Does this mean I've shattered a Fundamental Grand Law?

No, I've mastered a Fundamental Grand Law!

Li Qingxian's heart blazed hot.

"The Book of Fate also says that ancient Destiny Arts Masters believed the royal road of cultivation was to visualize one's Destiny Mansion. But Destiny Arts Masters simply can't visualize Destiny Mansions, so they changed to visualizing Destiny Artifacts. I seem to be able to..."

Focus the mind upon the Spirit Platform!

The Thunder Dragon Fire Seal hung high in the void, lightning leaping and flames surging.

Strands of pale white mana, like flying serpents, continually darted and condensed around the Thunder Dragon Fire Seal.

One step further: focus the mind upon the Destiny Mansion!

Boom!

Li Qingxian felt only the heavens and earth roaring, deafening him.

In the depths of endless void, a point of light abruptly exploded, spraying boundless, resplendent radiance that flew across all heavens and overflowed through countless ages.

It was like the creation of heaven and earth, the Big Bang of the universe.

An instant later, the streaming light withdrew, gathered, and wove itself into a...

Thatched cottage.

Li Qingxian was dumbfounded.

He focused fiercely on his Destiny Mansion.

That was right: a little wooden house, suspended all alone in the pitch-black void.

Its walls were made of yellow wood, its roof covered in white thatch.

This was a Destiny Mansion? Wasn't Ye Han's Destiny Mansion built with golden bricks and jade tiles, crimson pillars and red beams, magnificent beyond measure?

Why did he get a broken shack? It would have been better to put up a grave mound.

Li Qingxian suddenly fell silent.

He was already dead, after all. A thatched cottage seemed pretty decent now.

At least it was better than starting with a grave mound.

Li Qingxian looked around and discovered that his consciousness possessed no form at all. It was like a point too tiny for the naked eye to see, able to observe everything here and move about freely.

The small courtyard outside the wooden door was paved with a layer of rough green stone slabs. In its center sat a black-stone pool, and within the pool stood a grayish-white rockery as tall as a person.

The rockery's solitary peak was strange and elegant, its form richly splendid. If enlarged, it would surely become a famed mountain for scholars and poets to praise in droves.

The pool had a white base streaked with chaotic black patterns, and its water was clear to the bottom.

Several tiny, translucent white fish, each barely an inch long, drifted slowly through it.

"This is..." Li Qingxian stared at the little white fish and sensed the aura of Fortune.

They had been transformed from Fortune, and their number matched as well.

Above the edge of the courtyard floated a white cloud, about the size of a single bed.

"This should be a Destiny Cloud. Legend says that for some people born to great nobility, their Innate Destiny Stars are too powerful to enter their Destiny Mansions before they mature, so they remain above the Destiny Cloud. However, Innate Destiny Stars on a Destiny Cloud are also easily stolen."

Li Qingxian "walked" to the little wooden house, and its door slowly opened outward.

The wooden house was warm and bright within. Its plank walls bore natural grain, while the hard yellow-earth floor was level.

Three steps ahead of the doorway lay a square white stone slab over three yards wide, raised half an inch above the ground. It was divided into nine neat squares, a perfectly regular nine-palace grid.

Other than the central square, the eight surrounding squares formed a Bagua pattern.

Qian was at the top, Kun at the bottom: the Earlier Heaven Bagua Diagram.

Each of the three squares in the first row held a black stone pillar. The second row was completely empty, while the middle square of the third row also held a black stone pillar.

The stone pillars stood half a person tall. They were pure black without a trace of impurity, plain and unadorned.

Based on the Fate Arts knowledge he had learned, Li Qingxian determined that the nine-palace grid and Bagua on the white stone slab were the Destiny Ground.

The four pillars atop the Destiny Ground were Destiny Pillars.

According to Fate Arts theory, Destiny Stars ought to float above the Destiny Pillars...

Above the four Destiny Pillars was nothing at all.

Li Qingxian fell silent.

Where was the great and noble Destiny Mold Li Qingxian was supposed to have?

Where was his Zǐ-Wǔ Double Enclosure? Had it been enclosed away again?

Even an ordinary person had at least one Destiny Star, influencing their entire life.

Even without a Heavenly Destiny Star, many people could still condense a Human Destiny Star.

There was nothing here.

Li Qingxian glared at the Destiny Pillars in dissatisfaction, then looked deeper into the wooden house.

It was pitch-black.

Unwilling to give up, Li Qingxian searched everywhere.

A small number of people not only had normal Destiny Stars on their Destiny Pillars, but also Hidden Destiny Stars and Submerged Destiny Stars.

Unfortunately, he found nothing.

So he really was one of the majority. That was a good thing. Only freaks belonged to the minority, Li Qingxian silently comforted himself.

"Having finished looking at my Destiny Mansion, I need to do two things next. First, cultivate Fate Arts. Second, find a way to obtain Destiny Stars and place them on my Destiny Pillars to strengthen my Destiny Mold."

Li Qingxian thought of the Fate Measuring Sect's Fate Hunting Formula.

The annotations for the Fate Hunting Formula boasted to the skies, claiming it was the strongest Fate Art, deduced by the Fate Measuring Sect at the cost of the entire sect's Fortune.

And then... no one used it.

The Fate Hunting Formula required one to forge a "Fate Fishing Rod," using Destiny Stars as bait to fish away other people's Destiny Stars for one's own use.

The Fate Fishing Rod was powered by Fortune. It identified the location of the target's Destiny Star, then cast its hook and fished.

There was nothing wrong with any of that.

The problem was that Destiny Arts Masters could not "see" where another person's Destiny Mansion was, much less the Destiny Stars inside it. They could only rely on deduction.

But Destiny Molds could not be measured accurately.

Each swing of the Fate Fishing Rod required a thread of Fortune. Since one could not precisely locate a Destiny Star, the result was a thousand casts for one star caught.

Powerful Destiny Stars possessed protective power; even ten thousand casts might not yield one.

Weak Destiny Stars were useless even if caught.

The Fate Measuring Sect lost everything down to the last drop of blood.

Even when the Fate Measuring Sect collapsed and the monkeys scattered from the fallen tree, no one could solve this flaw in the Fate Art.

Even after Heaven's Mandate Sect, the foremost sect of Fate Arts, obtained the Fate Hunting Formula, they shelved it away.

The Heaven's Mandate Sect's leader had judged the Fate Hunting Formula to be "trading gold for iron" and "the cause of the Fate Measuring Sect's disaster."

"I can give it a try! But first, I need to obtain my first Destiny Star."

After thinking it over, there was only one way to accumulate his first bucket of gold.

Life Buying.

"Life Buying must follow the Fundamental Grand Law of one life repaying one life. It's rather troublesome; I'll deal with it when I have time."

"Speaking of one life repaying one life, I wonder whether the matter of the Divine Firmament Thunder Seed has ended. In essence, I took Ye Han's life, but he had wanted my life first. And I followed his method to help the Sky Firmament Sect and Jiang Youfei, dealt with the Demon Sect members, and completed the mission that had originally been his. That should count as one life repaying one life too. But fate is the most unfair thing of all..."

Li Qingxian shook his head, no longer thinking about Ye Han, and continued contemplating Fate Arts.

"The so-called Fate-Observing Technique is merely a secret art of deduction. It cannot truly allow Destiny Arts Masters to 'see' Destiny Molds. Can my Fate-Observing Technique see them? Who should I use as a test?"

An idea flashed through Li Qingxian's mind, and he withdrew from visualizing his Destiny Mansion.

The moonlight outside the room was faint, unable to penetrate the window.

The room was dark. On Yu Ping's bed, another little mound bulged beneath the blanket, and soft chewing sounds came from within.

"Sneaking food under the covers again? I'll start with you! I'll bring you more food in the future. Many lives repaying one life—you've struck it rich..." Li Qingxian chuckled inwardly and silently recited the Fate Measuring Sect's mnemonic verse for the "Fate-Observing Technique."

"Heaven and earth were originally one qi; movement and stillness divided into yin and yang. Old and young transformed into the Four Symbols; the Four Symbols gave birth to the five elements. The fortune of the four seasons came through mutual transformation; the fate of the five elements came through generation and restraint..."

He recited for a full five or six minutes before finishing the Fate-Observing Technique. Then Li Qingxian visualized his Destiny Mansion and fixed his gaze upon Yu Ping, hidden beneath the blankets.

Li Qingxian felt his brow twitch lightly, like a little rabbit's leap. The Thunder Dragon Fire Seal spewed pure mana into his own Destiny Mansion.

The Destiny Mansion absorbed the mana and transformed it into an intangible, formless, indescribable aura that seeped into his eyes.