Junzhou, Prince Qiao's residence.
Beneath the night sky, Prince Qiao's residence blazed with lights, the faint strains of music and song drifting through the air.
"Accompanied" by the spies Empress Wei had sent-nominally the residence's Chief Secretary, registrar, and the like-Li Chongfu was indulging in his customary feasting and revelry. In the quiet chamber of a secluded side courtyard, however, an entirely different scene unfolded.
The quiet chamber had no windows and was lit only by luminous pearls.
An antique ebony tea table stood at its center.
Dressed in a gray cloth Daoist robe, Zhang Lingjun sat cross-legged, a sheet of plain white silk spread before him. Several dozen tea leaves lay scattered across it, seemingly dropped at random, yet faintly forming a hexagram.
At his level, divination had become almost instinctive. A gust of wind, a falling leaf-anything could form a line or a hexagram. With the slightest stirring of his mind, he could discern fortune and calamity.
Zhang Lingjun's brows slowly knitted. Kan above, Gen below: water over mountain, the hexagram of Obstruction.
Its judgment read: "Favorable to the southwest, unfavorable to the northeast; favorable to see the great man. Perseverance brings good fortune."
Yet within the hexagram, the surging waters of Kan concealed muddy currents, while the solid mountain of Gen revealed faint cracks. What had originally signified obstruction and stagnation had become perilous and inscrutable, the road ahead uncertain.
"It's an ill omen..."
Zhang Lingjun's brows drew tight, but the hexagram's indication was vague, its source shrouded in confusion.
Alarm bells rang furiously in his heart.
He rose abruptly, hesitating no longer. In a flash, he left the quiet chamber and headed toward the main hall.
Inside the hall, Li Chongfu was pretending to flirt with a dancing girl. When he saw Zhang Lingjun appear in