Fu Xuan gazed up at the sky as if she could see the Jade Gate from where she stood.
In reality, she couldn't see it at all—not unless she borrowed the power of her Matrix of Prescience or the Divination Commission's grand array to perceive things beyond her normal sight.
The Fu Xuan of the past had believed she could use the blessings granted to her by an Aeon to pierce the veil of future fate.
But the Stellaron Hunters had been one step ahead, and Noldrei had exposed the part of her destiny that had been deliberately obscured from her observations.
As a result, Fu Xuan's reliance on her Matrix of Prescience and the Divination Commission's array had plummeted.
But people always find something to place their trust and emotions in—whether it's an object… or a person.
Fu Xuan didn't know when the Astral Express would return next.
Although Elysia and Senti were staying behind to help her adapt to the new order in the Alchemy Commission, her understanding of Noldrei was superficial at best.
One could even say… she didn't understand him at all.
All she knew was that he was some kind of Emperor on another planet and even had a massive harem.
Though perhaps that 'harem' was just her own personal interpretation.
"Boss? Boss? Hey, Boss? What are you doing?"
When Qingque returned, she found her boss completely ignoring the grand array, just staring blankly in the direction of the Starskiff Sea. Who knew what was going on in that head of hers.
Fu Xuan batted away the hand Qingque was waving in front of her face. "Don't you have other work to do?"
Qingque gave an awkward laugh. "I'm all done! There's only so much work a boss can have. The diviners' skills and abilities can be cross-checked and supplemented by working in small teams, so I've already handled everything I needed to. On the other hand, Master Diviner, shouldn't you be at the Alchemy Commission?"
"It's quite a walk from the Divination Commission to the Central Starskiff Haven, Master Diviner. Are you here to use the array to calculate something?"
Fu Xuan paused for a moment, then glanced at the perpetually running Great Divination Array of the Commission.
The thing was like a computer, always on standby, ready to perform a divination at a moment's notice.
But now that it was fixed, it wasn't guaranteed to divine the result she wanted.
It was missing a key piece of information: her own influence on events.
Just like trying to judge good fortune from bad, it was easy for huge discrepancies to arise during divination.
Fu Xuan knew that because this piece was missing, she theoretically had to find a way to supply it. Otherwise, she would never be able to divine the fate of anyone with whom she had a close relationship.
"Divine what…?"
'Can I even divine accurately now? And even if I can, do I dare to act on it?'
Fu Xuan analyzed her own state of mind, but her thoughts were still a mess. Whenever she recalled what Noldrei had said to her, her heart found it difficult to be calm.
"There's nothing to divine. Qingque, you should get back to your own work."
'But I already finished my work,' Qingque thought.
Fu Xuan's words left Qingque feeling a bit exasperated. What else was she supposed to do now that she was done? It wasn't like she could start divining major future events for the Xianzhou; she knew she didn't have the clearance for that.
Fu Xuan's distracted attitude was starting to worry Qingque. She felt as if her Master Diviner had been put under some kind of curse or possessed by a Heliobus.
"Master Diviner, that person… he's already gone, you know."
"Huh? He's gone? Oh… he's gone."
Fu Xuan finally snapped back to reality. When she thought about the way Noldrei could manipulate the future of events through his personal methods alone, she felt the stark gap between them.
She couldn't help but wonder what Noldrei was doing now that he was gone. Even while working, she would involuntarily think, 'If Noldrei were doing this, could he have pushed it forward more effectively? Would he have seen more, in greater detail?'
Fu Xuan constantly found herself making these comparisons at work, and the more she compared, the more she understood the power of the dialectical philosophy of life that Noldrei had explained to Dan Shu.
A person's actions always generate a force, and in turn, they also generate a counterforce.
That existing counterforce, like the fate from legends, seemed to constantly linger around a person.
Fu Xuan couldn't help but ask, "Qingque, when you were temporarily in charge of the Divination Commission's paperwork, did you have any particular insights?"
"Huh? P-Particular insights?"
Qingque hadn't expected the Master Diviner to snap out of her daze and ask a question like that.
She scratched her head, then propped her chin on her hand and thought seriously. "I wouldn't say insights, but the work experience itself was pretty novel."
"It felt like some kind of diminishing force being passed down. For example, I'd draft a document and try to get everyone to work according to it. At first, I thought all I had to do was my part, and the rest would depend on everyone else's individual efforts."
"But that's not how it worked at all. As an order was executed, it would gradually get watered down and lose its effectiveness. It even showed a kind of tiered reduction as it was passed down. By the time the document reached the person at the very bottom, it wasn't the same document anymore."
Qingque explained her feelings about managing the Commission's work. "At first, I thought everyone was doing it on purpose to make things difficult for me because I was young," she lamented. "But after I looked into it, I realized that wasn't the case. And you can't solve this problem just by relying on the Commission's rules, because the rules themselves are subject to the same diminishing effect."
"Oh? So how did you handle it?" Fu Xuan was surprised that Qingque had actually developed such a profound insight.
For the past century, Fu Xuan's control over the Commission had been absolute, as if it were an extension of her own hand. When she made decisions, she could draw upon her own understanding to create documents and rules that perfectly fit the need.
But Qingque didn't have such a deep foundation. She had to rely on her own ingenuity to maintain stable control over the entire Commission.
Qingque puffed out her chest with pride. "If I started by putting myself in the Master Diviner's shoes, that's the result I'd get. But what if I approached it from the opposite direction? I stopped seeing the Divination Commission as a single, functioning organization, or even as one of the Xianzhou's organs of power."
"Sometimes, you just need to flip your perspective. The Divination Commission doesn't exist for the Xianzhou; rather, the diviners need an organization as a tool to demonstrate their own value."
"Once you see it that way, the internal operational logic of the Divination Commission completely reverses."
"I decentralized the Master Diviner's executive authority. Then, I let the various diviners, scribes, strategists, and so on exercise their own authority in reverse, working their way up to the Master Diviner."
"That way, everyone started acting on their own initiative. All I had to do was ensure their actions were effective and judge whether the outcomes were good or bad."
"In the old Divination Commission, Master Diviner, you were the eyes of the entire Commission, the eyes of the Luofu. But after I flipped it, it's different. The Master Diviner only needs to bear the responsibility of being the eyes—the eyes that watch over the Commission itself."
"Instead of looking outward, you look inward. And in the end, you just have to guide the people of the Divination Commission to look outward for you."