I See the Signs: Someone's in the Hexagram

[Not recommended for readers who aren’t interested in traditional Chinese culture]

[Please don’t assume this is about you. Believe in science.]

He was a materialist test-taker who trusted data and logic above all else.

But on the night of his twentieth birthday, he cast his first divination, following his grandfather’s dying wish. The result was Water over Lake, Hexagram 47: Oppression.

The hexagram said: “Reunion conceals danger. If you encounter water, you will lose money.”

He dismissed it as survivorship bias.

The gate to a courtyard on an old street in the county town opened by itself.

Inside lived a strange old man: Mr. Qi.

He forbade vague fortune-telling and wouldn’t let him cast empty hexagrams. First, he had to learn to observe: which way the wind blew, how leaves fell, and why a door creaked.

Everything in the world is an omen; hexagrams are everywhere.

Li Zhiji treated Plum Blossom Numerology as a verifiable ancient algorithm. By interpreting each hexagram, he worked backward to uncover the truth and avoid misfortune while seeking good fortune.

But the more he divined, the more he realized that the one trapped by Water over Lake, Hexagram 47, might never have been anyone else.

Casting a hexagram isn’t hard. Breaking out of the predicament is.