The Witch of the Huai River

It was just as Li Boyang had guessed.

The Witch of the Huai River from a thousand years ago had been born with the ability to know Heaven's mandate.

Predicting celestial phenomena, regulating earth veins, divining fortune and misfortune, and, most importantly, defying Heaven to change fate...

The Witch of the Huai River could do all of these with ease, and had thus been reverently called the "Witch of the Huai River."

But the Witch of the Huai River had not been satisfied with this.

She had tried to summarize and organize the heavenly principles and myriad phenomena she observed, arriving at a method of divination that ordinary people could understand and even use.

For ordinary people, the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination covered a vast assortment of subjects, but they could all be summed up in one phrase-seek good fortune and avoid calamity.

The greater tides of fortune, blessings and disasters, heavenly principles and allotted fate, the mutual generation and restraint of zodiac signs...

As long as they understood these most basic principles, even if they could not use those maxims, they could still do things that accorded with heavenly principles.

By reading Heavenly Timing in full, they could distinguish the four seasons and solar terms...

By reading Clouds and Rain in full, they could predict wind direction and timely rainfall...

By reading Mountain Terrain in full, they could travel through mountain forests and wilderness...

By reading Earth Veins in full, they could identify fertile soil and water systems...

By reading Fate Principles in full, they could judge which way people's hearts would turn...

By reading Facial Features in full, they could understand the good and evil in human nature...

By reading Auspicious Omens in full, they could recognize spirits and mountain gods...

By reading Ominous Baleful Intent in full, they could identify malevolent fiends, ghosts, and gods...

These were the specific contents of the latter eight chapters of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination, and the crystallization of that Witch of the Huai River's wisdom from a thousand years ago.

Once one understood the essence of myriad phenomena, one could naturally determine the corresponding ways to respond.

Take Ruifu, who had cursed Li Boyang before dying.

The Witch of the Huai River had considered him a ghost-god born from the earth's Sha Qi, innately vicious and violent.

Unless he was tamed, or a temple was built to enshrine him, he would sooner or later bring disaster upon the region.

According to the classifications in Ominous Baleful Intent, Ruifu was an earth fiend of the yang attribute.

Thus, to destroy him completely and prevent him from being reborn through the earth's Sha Qi, one could only seal him with a yin-aligned method or slay him through an utmost-yang means.

The Witch of the Huai River had used the former, while Li Boyang's golden Sword Pill belonged to the latter.

This was the simplest form of divination, and the most basic method of seeking good fortune and avoiding calamity.

In Li Boyang's own understanding, that Witch of the Huai River had actually been using "big data" to draw conclusions and tell fortunes.

It was just that all her "big data" had come from her own observations and understanding of myriad phenomena.

Or, taking the speculation a step further, perhaps the Witch of the Huai River had never needed to perform any divination at all; her Heavenly Mandate Divine Ability could let her see the final outcome.

It was only so ordinary people could also make predictions and perform divination.

That was why the Witch of the Huai River had compiled the phenomena and Heaven's mandates she observed, eventually distilling them into the complete contents of this volume of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination.

For ordinary people to reach her level was simply impossible.

In fact, even Li Boyang, who came from another world and possessed dialectical and logical thinking skills, found the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination a tremendous headache.

Not to mention that the Witch of the Huai River was someone from a thousand years ago in this world.

Just like the ancients in Li Boyang's previous life.

When dealing with things she could not comprehend or understand, she would often force explanations onto them through various theories of ghosts, gods, and Heaven's mandate.

It was like someone who had seen the correct answer forcibly using that answer to work out the process.

All one could say was that the result was indeed correct, but whether the process was correct was unknown.

If those who came afterward followed her calculations to derive the result anew, whether their answer was correct would depend entirely on luck.

Besides, this world was not the world of Li Boyang's previous life.

This world also had mysterious supernatural powers that constituted and influenced the workings of all things.

Fortunately, the Witch of the Huai River's Heavenly Mandate Divine Ability was extraordinarily absurd, allowing her to see directly into the essence of all things and reach a final conclusion.

Otherwise, a work on the level of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination would usually be a crystallization of civilization that could only emerge through generations of observation and contemplation over long years.

So it really was big-data fortune-telling?

The more Li Boyang read the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination, the more familiar it felt.

Setting aside those abstruse theories of ghosts and gods, wasn't this just a twenty-first-century AI big-data algorithm?

As long as it had enough information, it could dig up eight generations of your ancestors, even ones you yourself could not remember.

The only problem now was that, compared with twenty-first-century online big data, the information recorded in the latter eight chapters of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination was far too sparse.

Without the support of the Heavenly Mandate Divine Ability, forcing a deduction from so little data would often yield only erroneous conclusions-a hair's breadth of deviation leading a thousand miles astray.

Would that witch who knew Heaven's mandate have failed to consider this difficulty for beginners?

Or would all of this ultimately have to circle back to the maxims in the Chapter on Myriad Phenomena?

Under normal circumstances, diviners had to fill in and deduce the specific circumstances themselves based on the various details they observed.

This led different diviners to divine different results, greatly affecting the accuracy of divination.

But what if prophets and diviners could use cheats?

Even if they could not see the result directly and then work backward through the process like the Witch of the Huai River.

At the very least, shouldn't they know how accurate their divination results were?

Otherwise, wouldn't they be just like those blind fortune-tellers from his previous life, with accuracy depending entirely on personal interpretation?

Besides this, your sister must have left something else behind, right?

When Li Boyang looked up at Xiluo again, his expression was utterly certain.

"What the hell! You actually understood it?!"

This time, Xiluo was genuinely shocked, her eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

Despite being unable to read, he had realized that her sister had left behind more than just this volume of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination, solely from Big Girl's halting rendition, riddled with errors and omissions.

Truthfully, although Xiluo had repeatedly overestimated Li Boyang's talent, he had still given her a tremendous fright.

You already mentioned that your sister possessed the Heavenly Mandate Divine Ability...

And the opening of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination mentioned the wondrous uses of the maxims. Isn't it perfectly normal to guess this much?

Only after hearing Li Boyang say this did Xiluo finally confirm that he had indeed understood this volume of the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination.

Yet as she looked at Li Boyang in his swaddling clothes, Xiluo hesitated, for once.

"Little one, you're very talented, and very clever."

"But you need to understand that merely comprehending, or even mastering, the Nine Chapters on the Secrets of Divination is no great matter."

"But if you accept the other thing my sister left behind, the responsibilities and mission you bear will be different."

"Are you truly ready?"

At this, Li Boyang merely raised his eyebrows slightly, making that baby face look rather intriguing.

Since you chose to bring me to this mountain god's temple, hadn't you already prepared to have me inherit your sister's legacy?

How come, now that the moment is here and I'm already ready, you're the one hesitating?

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