"You really do bully the weak and fear the strong!"
Noldrei remarked on Fu Xuan's attitude.
Fu Xuan could only manage a few tough words in front of him. Her confidence was solely propped up by her background as the Master Diviner of the Luofu Xianzhou.
Or maybe, a little more than that? Her Matrix of Prescience, a 'blessing' from the Aeon of Erudition.
Beyond that, in Noldrei's eyes, Fu Xuan was just a child.
"You're the one who bullies the weak and fears the strong! I just don't want to rashly change the existing structure of the Divination Commission. Besides, this is Qingque's achievement. I can't just steal the credit from my own subordinate, can I?"
Fu Xuan took a big slurp of the taro boba in her hands.
Noldrei didn't quite understand her fondness for such a counter-mainstream beverage, so he had opted for an Immortal's Delight.
"Really? The emergence of every tool is accompanied by a new set of organizational relationships. Just as the existence of a diviner who knows cause and effect will inevitably lead to a special organization of diviners who use their art to arrange work."
"Do you really dare to create such an organization? You don't, do you?"
Noldrei didn't even have to think about it. He knew full well that Fu Xuan lacked the courage. She was a true believer in fatalism.
Only those who believe in the existence of 'heaven' would think of defying it to change their fate. Fatalism and anti-fatalism were but two sides of the same coin, two parts of a single operating system.
Fu Xuan would never admit to that label, of course, but she had involuntarily exposed this weakness in her letters and academic exchanges with others.
(For details, see "Letter from Fu Xuan to Scholar Yierguba.")
Fu Xuan had grown accustomed to his mockery. She said calmly, "I didn't ask you here just to get on my nerves."
Noldrei scoffed. "You just didn't know who else to talk to, so you had to find an outsider like me."
Fu Xuan frowned. "Can you please speak to me properly? I really do have something to ask you."
'You dragged me out of my house when I was perfectly fine, and you expect me to be nice to you?'
Noldrei thought Fu Xuan was joking.
"Go ahead. The sooner you finish, the sooner I can go clock in at the Alchemy Commission."
Seeing his attitude, Fu Xuan realized he didn't care about the Alchemy Commission at all, let alone the so-called Disciples of Sanctus Medicus.
This guy, it seemed, wasn't the least bit worried about his own safety.
'If he doesn't care about himself, why should I bother worrying for him?'
Fu Xuan decided to stop worrying about Noldrei's safety and turned to the problem at hand.
"Ahem, I have a question. There's something that has always confused me, and that is: can fate truly be changed?"
Fu Xuan's question was a rather big one. Noldrei couldn't easily answer it on the spot.
But could he answer it?
As luck would have it, he actually could.
"Well, that depends on why you believe there's such a thing as fate. Let's discuss a more fundamental question first."
Noldrei thought carefully about the current state of the universe, and the first thing that came to mind was the material limitation of Imaginary Energy.
"Let's assume the Aeon of Destruction wants to destroy the entire universe. The question is, as a part of the universe's rules, can he destroy the very source from which he was born?"
Fu Xuan's brow furrowed. She imagined the possibility of the Aeon of Destruction destroying the universe in her mind.
Destruction. If it could truly destroy fate, then in theory, it should be able to attack its own existence at any point in time.
But if Destruction were to attack the universe that gave birth to it, wouldn't that mean Destruction itself would be destroyed? In that case, the universe wouldn't be destroyed after all.
It seemed to be a paradox, unless 'Destruction' wasn't the true destruction of the universe.
"It... probably can't, right?" Based on her own understanding of fate, Fu Xuan didn't believe the Aeon of Destruction could destroy the universe.
Since it couldn't be done, that meant Destruction itself wasn't pure enough to be on par with the universe. Destruction was merely one aspect manifested in the universe's motion.
"Very good. My dear Master Diviner can think after all. Now let's reverse the argument. Let's assume the universe is truly destroyed. Can the motion of fate within the universe lead to the universe's destruction?"
Fu Xuan considered this scenario as well. With a little deduction, she found the problem.
If the universe was destroyed, then fate wouldn't have existed in the first place, so there would naturally be no fate leading to the universe's destruction. But without that process of motion, how could the universe be destroyed? Yet, if one thought that way, then fate would inevitably lead to destruction.
In that case, wouldn't the existence of the universe become meaningless?
Fu Xuan's forehead was beginning to throb. She wracked her brains but couldn't see through the paradox.
"This is a contradiction within the material universe. We are all part of the universe's motion. Assuming the universe's final outcome truly has a direction of motion, whether it's a so-called chaotic system or a river system, they all ultimately lead to that result."
"Master Diviner, what do you think that fate is?"
"Information!" Fu Xuan answered without hesitation. "It's the amount of information! Whether it's chaos or a river, they are all forms of the movement of information that we see!"
Noldrei nodded, then asked, "Then what is the essence of your Matrix of Prescience?"
Fu Xuan's eyes lit up. "It's a tool for acquiring information! And it's an inherently fragmented information acquisition tool! I can only capture relative fragments of fate. Even if I can deduce the troubles I'll encounter on a path, I can't deduce how I will handle those troubles when I meet them."
"In other words, no matter how the Matrix of Prescience divines, it's impossible for it to capture which 'choice' of mine led to this 'fateful outcome'!"
"Some existence is deliberately obscuring this information that I should be able to obtain! So, no matter how much I increase the computational power of the jade abacus, as long as I don't know the impact of my choices on fate, I will never be able to glimpse the full picture of destiny!"
Noldrei wasn't surprised by the existence of such a thing at all.
Not only was he not surprised, he even knew what people with this kind of power would do.
Such people would definitely try to shape the world into their own preferred image. They would use so-called 'fate' as a tool to create the world they desire.
This behavior was fundamentally no different from humans discovering that fire could be used to create a world of cooked food and warmth.
The problem with Fu Xuan's divinations wasn't the divinations themselves, but that her 'eyes' were being obscured by some unknown power when she observed.
Her Matrix of Prescience not only didn't help her, it was even deliberately guiding her away from thinking in this direction.
It was like the options and branching endings in a gal game.
Fu Xuan could see the branching story endings by unpacking the game's files, but she didn't know which options led to which branch.
Therefore, her choices would involuntarily lean toward the 'story' she had seen.
Noldrei looked at the joyful, leaping expression on Fu Xuan's face, feeling that this girl was both cute and pitiful.
'So what if you can see the impact your choices will have on the future?'
'There will still be ways for people to cut off your thoughts.'
'It's not like the same future hasn't happened before.'
'There are no eternal tools in this world.'
'Fate, naturally, is the same.'