After transmigrating to Chaoge, the capital of the Shang dynasty, Chen Ping’an becomes an apprentice in the Black Bird Bureau, tasked with burning turtle shells.
Turtle-shell divination? Materials science. Interpreting heaven’s will? Data analysis. In the cracks of the shells, he sees stress curves. The diviners see divine portents.
The chief diviner schemes to make him perform a public divination, so he burns a textbook-perfect auspicious pattern. When King Zhou asks how he did it, he replies, “I simply calculated it, Your Majesty.”
That very night, he becomes the intelligence chief directly under King Zhou. He puts the Black Bird Bureau’s classified files, reports from the Dongyi front, and the diviners’ error rates into Excel spreadsheets.
The Calamity of Investiture descends, and immortals pour into the mortal realm. Jiang Ziya’s God-Striking Whip sweeps across the battlefield, while Yang Jian’s illusions make three thousand brothers-in-arms slaughter one another. He practices the overlooked art of “Turtle-Breath Qi Observation,” recording the fate of every mortal caught between the immortals’ battles.
At last, on the Investiture Platform, Jiang Ziya reads out the names. Chen Ping’an unfolds a bloodstained silk scroll and asks the question that will echo through the ages before the assembled immortals: “In the Investiture War, over 274,000 mortals died, while only 132 immortals perished. Are mortal lives not part of the Heavenly Dao?”
