The magic circle flared to life, and the gold coins atop the raised platform began to melt away rapidly.
Countless flashes of light and shadow lit up, looking like footage of the City of Alchemy captured from every conceivable angle, with many indistinct silhouettes constantly coalescing and dissipating.
Harvey said excitedly, "It worked! I've connected to fate!"
Harvey had indeed made great progress, but taking control of such a powerful magic circle was still a bit beyond his limits.
Once these lights and shadows appeared, he felt as if a great mountain was pressing down upon him. The immense pressure made his heart race and his body tremble.
Anbaixiu immediately called out in warning, "Don't resist! You're capturing fragments of the future, not fighting fate itself. Don't you believe in destiny? Death will come in due time anyway, so why care whether it's right now!"
Harvey offered a bitter smile. No matter how much one accepted fate, being indifferent to death was impossible. It was easy to say, but hard to do.
All Harvey could do was strive to focus his attention, trying to pick out what he wanted from the ever-shifting scenes.
"The secrets of the sewers..."
As Harvey silently repeated this phrase, the flickering images began to slow. The vistas of the city dwindled, while the dark, damp sewers took up more and more space.
"Well done!" Anbaixiu praised.
This kid really had talent. Who knew who his teacher was? The School of Divination was notoriously difficult to break into. To have such a clever student and, instead of keeping him close to educate him properly, let him wander off to serve as an advisor to some destitute minor lord was a complete waste of raw talent.
Under Harvey's efforts, the shifts in the imagery grew slower and slower until the light and shadow froze, condensing into a fragment shimmering with blue light.
Harvey said with excitement, "Success! This is fate!"
This fragment seemed like a small sliver scooped straight from the river of time, looping the exact same scene over and over again.
A blurry silhouette appeared in the sewers, cradling a glowing divine artifact. A torrent of immense power descended from the heavens, piercing through the surface of the earth and pouring into the figure. A godhead began to coalesce, and the phantom forms of countless deities materialized. Amid their blessings and curses, a mortal ascended to godhood.
It was a remarkably detailed vision. Aside from the ascending figure's blurry face and the unreadable attributes of the godhead, every other detail was vividly real, as if it were truly destined to happen.
Harvey was just about to disperse his mana and dispel the ritual when Anbaixiu said, "Don't relax. That is a false fate."
"A false fate?" Harvey asked in astonishment.
Anbaixiu explained, "Indeed. Those lunatics in the City of Alchemy concocted a false fate, misleading every living being capable of divination. Earlier, I encountered a group of druids and a hag in the sewers. All of them had been lured there by this prophecy.
"Divination is merely peeking at a corner of destiny. You can't expect every peeping tom to see the exact same scene through the same peephole—unless someone fabricated it intentionally."
Harvey never imagined such a thing was possible. To forge a false future and deceive every diviner alive? What kind of magic was this? It had to have transcended the realm of legends!
"Then what should we do now?" Harvey asked. He couldn't even distinguish a true prophecy from a false one, let alone uncover the hidden truth.
"Use your power! The power of the School of Divination!" Anbaixiu said. "Don't tell me you haven't prepared anything over the past few days. Whether to break out of prison or to kill me, you must have prepared several futures, haven't you?"
Harvey suddenly felt terribly embarrassed. It turned out every little move he made had been right under Anbaixiu's watchful eye.
Preparing futures—it sounded rather esoteric, and in truth, it was.
Mages of the School of Divination could materialize fate through meditation, giving it form, such as that of a twenty-sided die.
Before the future arrived, they could cast this die and lock in the roll.
Then, they could use the rolled value to swap the outcomes of the future. A high-rolling die could replace an unfortunate future, turning it into a blessing, while a low-rolling die could replace a fortunate future, twisting it into misfortune. Even more absurdly, the Dice of Fate didn't just swap one's own future—it could replace someone else's as well.
Earlier, when Anbaixiu encountered the hag in the sewers, he had used precisely this technique to replace the outcome of her random teleportation, forcing her to always teleport nearby so she could never escape.
Such was the prowess of the School of Divination: altering outcomes, just like a god.
No one could say for certain whether swapping a future counted as altering fate, or if the act of swapping was itself predestined.
Anbaixiu had tested this many times, only to lose his way without ever finding an answer.
And now, Anbaixiu wanted Harvey to use his own dice to swap this future.
If this was a false prophecy, it could be smashed to pieces with the Dice of Fate.
Harvey took a deep breath and began gathering his power.
One by one, dice radiating starlight materialized and began circling around him. This was the physical manifestation of his divinatory power.
Seeing this, Anbaixiu was far from pleased, thinking sourly to himself, *Tsk, only five dice... In my plan, it would take at least seven to reliably shatter this false fate.*
Harvey had no idea that Anbaixiu's opinion of him had just dropped. Entirely focused, he controlled his Dice of Fate, attempting to use their power to alter the prophetic fragment before him.
One die flew out and sank into the fragment, causing nothing more than gentle ripples.
The scene in the fragment remained unchanged. The indistinct figure still ascended to godhood, as though nothing had happened.
Seeing this, Harvey steeled his heart and hurled all four remaining Dice of Fate at it.
This time, the false fragment of prophecy finally shifted. A dense web of cracks spread across it before it completely blew apart.
Anbaixiu sighed. Dozens of Dice of Fate manifested around him, blasting the shattered futures into even smaller pieces until the entire laboratory was bathed in a shower of light.
After scattering, the endless specks of light recondensed into seven tiny crystals, each reflecting a different future.
Anbaixiu let out another sigh. In the end, he had to take action himself.
Having already abandoned the path of divination, every time he used the powers of the School of Divination, it became even harder for him to step onto a new path, leaving him forever a second-rate legend.
Still, since he had already cast it, there was no point dwelling on regrets. Anbaixiu hurried to inspect these new futures.
In the first fragment, Anbaixiu saw a small mountain of gold. Millions of gold coins had appeared right inside his laboratory.
Great, wonderful! Heaven willed it, and he deserved to strike it rich!
But what did that have to do with the sewers?
In the second fragment, an eerie beauty appeared. She carried a noble bearing, yet her skin was as pale as paper. She was cradling Anbaixiu's skull... only the skull.
The thing Anbaixiu feared most had appeared.
If an advantageous future was the will of heaven, then for an unfavorable one, was he supposed to claim that his fate was in his own hands, not heaven's?
Chapter 48