Chapter 135 - Self-Study

Marie scratched her chin as she pondered over her question.

"Hmm... Will it rain tomorrow?" Marie asked indecisively. Being forced to ask a question all of a sudden flustered her altogether, and that was the best she could come up with.

Krish didn't comment on the hollowness of the question and immediately reached in and pulled out a handful of cowrie shells. He dropped them on the table and waited for them to settle.

"No," he answered firmly after a short second.

"Wait, what?!"

"It won't rain tomorrow," Krish reiterated.

"No- I heard you the first time. I meant, how did you do that?" Marie interrogated.

"I did exactly what I told you to do. You observe the waves around you," Krish said as he jerked his arms around, "tether tokens to these waves," he said as he pointed at the cowrie shells, "then you tune them to the information you want to be divined, and observe how the tokens react," he concluded while pointing at the spread cowrie shells on the table.

Marie shook her head violently and said, "Okay, I have a TON of questions. But before that, I remember that when you did this the last time you referred to your almanacks. Why aren't you doing that now?"

"That was because the answer asked for greater specificity, and extended a bit over the short term," Krish clarified.

"So your answer that time was purely empirical?"

"More or less."

"How is that trustworthy?"

"You seem to forget that my 'dataset' is spread out over multiple years and a multitude of people spanning different locations, age groups, and social standings."

"Even still, it's still so random," Marie commented. "Haven't you thought of standardising your results?"

"Haven't had to. It works for me, why bother changing it? Anyways, enough of all the chit-chat. Move along now!"

"Move where? You still haven't explained to me how to do it," Marie pointed out.

"Hah! That's for you to figure out. Now go, go," Krish urged Marie.

"Excuse me?!" Marie exclaimed loudly. "Y-You're my Master. You're supposed to teach me!"

"Now you remember that I'm your Master?" Krish scoffed. "I've done my part in this relationship. Now it's your turn to do yours and figure out the remainder. This was exactly how my Master taught me, and how his Master taught him."

"But how am I supposed to figure it out if you haven't even gone past the surface level explanation? This is unfair!"

"Use the resources you have and your intuition," Krish suggested. "You will figure it out. Let me reiterate that, you WILL figure it out. Maybe you will do it today, maybe this week or the next, next month, next year, next decade, heck maybe even next century- well I hope it's before that, the base human life expectancy doesn't extend for that long," Krish muttered.

"WHAT?!"

"Stop shouting, will you?" Krish groaned as he massaged his ears. "I've told you that you're fated with The Heavenly Eye. That means that you will figure it out eventually. What point is there in me investing time on trivial lectures if the result can be achieved without any action?"

"That-" made sense. But Marie couldn't accept it as it ran contrary to everything she grew up believing.

"Enough," Krish declared. Without wasting another second, Krish immediately waved his hands and chanted |Displace|. Marie found herself getting suspended midair and displacing backwards right out of Krish' cottage. With an unceremonious plop, Marie was deposited outside and the door flung shut.

"Master!" Marie exclaimed.

"Master let me in!" she demanded as she pummelled the door. "What the heck?!"

Marie called out a few more times, to no avail, before giving up and leaving in a huff.

"What was that all about?" She assumed, quite appropriately, that her 'Master' would guide her with her cultivation and help her decipher the complex insights that followed, much like how Teacher Larks did with Markus. Yet the reality was far from her expectations. She sighed out loud and wallowed over the unfairness in the way the two Masters treated their Disciples.

"Should I just renounce my discipleship?" The thought flashed across Marie's mind for a split second. Seeing as how her Master wasn't so inclined to teach her, what point was there in her remaining under him? However, she couldn't firm her resolve on that matter.

"I don't have a choice here, do I?" Marie didn't believe this because of all that 'fate' mumbo-jumbo. No. She believed that she didn't have another choice because following her current path of The Heavenly Eye appeared to be the most direct one towards her goals. Maybe another option existed out there, but Marie wasn't confident that it would be so easily achieved as this one.

"So what do I do?" She quickly exited her state of dismay and focused on how to approach her current task. While she held little trust in her Master's capacity to teach, she trusted the man's firmness in passing forward the cultivation art. After all, according to him, his life was also contingent on her picking it up!

"I should break down the instructions into smaller modules." Marie resorted to the standard techniques taught by Teacher Larks when it came to tackling any difficult problem into smaller, bite-size chunks and addressing them individually.

"Observing the waves of fate around me..." Marie muttered lightly. What were these so-called 'waves of fate'? Were they similar to regular waves of energy that prevailed naturally such as electromagnetic waves, sound waves, and so on? "What does it mean to 'observe' them?"

Marie pondered whether the verb 'observe' here meant to do so using her traditional vision, or did it allude to her other human senses. "Maybe it might even correspond to mana sense?" In fact, she remembered that her Master also used the phrase "become conscious of-" which implied something more than the standard observation.

Nonetheless, this little brainstorming session did little to reduce the scope of the problem, rather it exacerbated it further. Shaking her head, Marie decided to move to the next chunk. "What does it mean to 'tether tokens'?"

This phrase proposed two keywords: 'tether' and 'tokens'. The latter most probably referred to some sort of a tool, utensil, or resource that could be manipulated as a means to divine the future. For instance, her Master tended to revert to using those cowrie shells. She also saw a bundle of sticks, dice, and many such trinkets within her Master's satchel that supported this theory.

The word 'tether' suggested that she had to, in some way, interface the 'waves of fate' mentioned earlier with these 'tokens'. How was she supposed to do that? 

"On top of that, I have to 'attune' them to a question?" How was she supposed to do that?!

"This is a wild goose chase!" Marie exclaimed in defeat while grabbing her hair in distress.

"Wait a minute!" But then something struck her. Seeing as how her Master felt it appropriate to introduce this new topic to her, she could safely assume that she was well-equipped for it. "Maybe I already know everything I need to get behind this?"

It was a valid hypothesis. Her Master couldn't expect her to be able to comprehend something by herself if he hadn't provided her with the required tools for it. Maybe pieces were missing, but they shouldn't be beyond her capacity for self-study. This line of reasoning offered some solace to Marie's agitated thoughts.

"All things considered, where do I begin?" In all honesty, the whole endeavour felt so abstract that she feared she would never succeed, even though her Master offered his assurance. It was out of her wheelhouse; her entire life Marie only worked with absolutes, finites, and tangibles. Everything could be quantified and precisely measured and evaluated. There was no room for subjectivity, nor was there room for unsurety. Only now did she realise that the path she was walking down ran antithetically to her nature. Although on paper, The Heavenly Eye seemed to work with absolute truths and certainties, it was based on an abstract thought process that lacked proper scientific method, as Teacher Larks would put it.

Marie racked her brain trying to work out an entry point. She paced mindlessly as her mind became occupied with the problem. A whole hour passed swiftly, yet Marie made no progress towards solving her current crisis. Right as she gave up, her floundering thoughts froze in place and she became aware of her surroundings.

"W-What? How did I get here?" She exclaimed in a whispered voice. In her preoccupied stupor, Marie had effortlessly made her way out of the village, over the steps, into the orphanage, and arrived right in front of a door leading to one particular room. Although much of the orphanage had changed due to the recent renovations, the path leading to this particular room remained constant. She didn't know what drew her to this room, maybe it was a total coincidence or maybe her subconscious body had led her here at her time of struggle.

If that was true, then why was it subconscious? What urged her psyche to come here? Marie felt a conflict of emotions mentally as her mind diverted from her earlier preoccupation. 'Is it because... I feel compelled to depend on him?' She thought.

Marie bit her lips as she hesitated. She wanted to take action, but at the same time, she was consciously holder herself back. It was the classic conflict between the id and ego.

While Marie was teetering on the boundary between two decisions, a voice called out to her from the other side of the door.

"You're making me feel all anxious standing outside like that. If there's a problem, just come in! The door's open," Teacher Larks said encouragingly.

The call was enough to push Marie over the edge. As the firm yet soothing voice washed over her, the stuffy feeling inside her dissipated, and the stress circling her mind fizzled out.. With a hopeful smile, Marie pushed open the door and walked in.