The Good Teacher

"Now that we have covered most of the required basics, leaving the rest for you to pick up from Guy, it is time that we look towards beginning your cultivation journey with The Heavenly Eye," Krish started.

Marie nodded earnestly and scooted closer to Krish who was sitting cross-legged on his bed. In the past two months, after she entered Krish's discipleship, Marie was guided through a series of techniques ranging from breathing exercises, movement exercises, mana control exercises, mana sensing exercises- basically all the core techniques a mage is taught, short of meditation exercises because, according to her Master, "The Yoga your Teacher Larks is preaching is infinitely better than any meditation exercise I have come across." That confession did bring about a smile to Marie's face, in that she felt proud for some reason. Marie didn't know this yet, but she felt the same when a child felt when someone praised their parent.

Anyways, after slogging through the basics, she had finally reached the point where she could take the first steps towards becoming a proper cultivator of The Heavenly Eye.

"A word of caution before we continue: Unlike most other cultivation paths in this world, The Heavenly Eye is the most dangerous, because it tampers with one of the most fundamental concepts of the world. Fate."

Krish paused to let the statement settle before continuing, "Well, fate as a concept is most important to sentient beings like us who worry about things beyond just survival. With any other mundane animal, understanding fate is irrelevant for they only care about where their next meal will come from and where they can safely lay their heads and sleep. However, humans and other advanced species care about more than just eating, sleeping- living in general. We care about how certain decisions will affect us down the line. We care about what will happen to us if we go down our current trajectory. We care about how we affect others around us. For humans, life is never a static bubble, it keeps expanding and encompassing everything that falls within our perception both spatially and temporally."

"To that point: a mage can grow to become prescient about what is around them at a given point in time, thanks to their mana sense. And, to a degree, they can also become prescient about what will become in the immediate future given current trends. But that is where the certainty ends - what lies beyond that temporal horizon is as murky as milk. Except when observed through The Heavenly Eye. The Heavenly Eye sees all and knows all things prescribed in one's fate."

At this point, Marie raised her hands earnestly.

"Yes?"

"When you said that 'The Heavenly Eye sees all and knows all', how do you observe everything that CAN and WILL happen. As in, how do you process all that information."

"That's the fascinating, or from another perspective morbid, aspect of fate. Fate is an uninterruptable and immutable sequence. What is set to happen, will happen, lest someone outside of fate's machinations interferes. No one is unbound from the shackles of fate. While other cultivation paths that deal with divination tinker with this sequence, they can only gain a glimpse of where this sequence will lead. However, The Heavenly Eye exists outside this sequence and can thus gaze at the sequence in its entirety!"

"That means you are unbound from the shackle of fate," Marie said in a tone that implied she was correcting something.

"Right... What's your point?"

"You said 'No one' is unbound from fate, but clearly you are. Your statement was incorrect," she clarified.

"It's a figure of speech," Krish sighed. "Don't read into things so deeply, okay?"

"Well, you ARE the teacher. You should teach better..." Marie muttered under her breath.

Krish coughed audibly to mask his Disciple's sheepish comments and carried on. "As you so RIGHTLY corrected, those practising The Heavenly Eye are unbound from fate. We can choose to live outside of it. But this freedom comes at great cost."

He pulled up his loose trousers to reveal his emaciated leg, "To tamper with fate's immutable sequence requires a sacrifice. That is only fair, after all. The universe is anything but unjust when it comes to this. When you mess with fate to save something you love, something else that you hold equally dearly will be taken away from you."

Marie understood Krish's hints and a sense of foreboding dawned upon her. She realised that the path she was about to step on was more precarious than she had expected it to be.

"C-Can't you heal your leg? You're a mage, after all, there have to be potions or healing arts to fix this, right?"

"Naive child! Do you think that I haven't tried? The universe does not compromise. Each debt will be collected in a timely fashion. And this is the main point I want to drill into you today. After stepping down this path, there will be no turning back. There WAS no turning back from the very beginning. The world chose you, how else do you think I can teach you the intricacies of this cultivation method. Anyone without an affinity to The Heavenly Eye will have to face the weight of the entire universe, should they learn and/or teach the method to those not attuned to it. On a side note, it would be impossible to teach others anyway since there are barriers to learning that a regular mage cannot overcome. HOWEVER, should you forcefully puncture that barrier and inculcate the cultivation to them through |Soul Imprint| or something similar, be prepared to face the entire weight of the universe!"

Krish leaned forward and highlighted with a forceful and firm tone, "A mage practising The Heavenly Eye has everything to lose. After looking into fate's sequence with The Eye, if you take any steps to alter it, you will suffer. I will say it now, and I will say it again in the future, knowing too much is a curse in and of itself. I firmly advise you to never, EVER, take action upon your visions unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary."

"How do I know if something falls under that category?"

"As long as I am alive, I want you to defer to me," Krish answered. "I will guide you on navigating through this precarious maze. I hope that at the time of my passing, IF that time does ever come, that you remain intact and fully functional."

"You know, what you've revealed to me has got me thinking. If let's say, you didn't find someone to pass down your cultivation method to and you passed away. What happens then? Does The Heavenly Eye just cease to exist?"

Krish smiled appreciatively and replied, "Your question is quite valid given that at any given time, there can only be two practitioners of The Heavenly Eye. Don't ask me why, I don't know the reason either it's just the way it has been. However, there was a period a few generations before my Master's in which there was no record of The Heavenly Eye's practitioners."

"What happened then? Without someone to pass on the teaching, how did the art persist?"

Krish reached towards his bedside and pulled at his satchel. He reached into it and retrieved a plethora of items from within. He placed a single, unassuming cowrie shell in front of Marie. He then followed it up with a slender palm length stick from a stack of many. Next, he placed a small marble ball, and so on and on until the table in front of Marie was filled with a myriad of unrelated trinkets.

"Here, hold this," Krish said as he handed the cowrie shell to Marie. With a sceptical frown, Marie grasped the item. Right as her fingers coiled around the shell, a small influx of information flooded into her brain.

"T-This!"

"Now this," Krish handed the stick next. Marie hesitantly grasped this new item and immediately received the same sensation as before.

"W-What are these?"

Krish revealed a devious smug and said, "Inheritance artefacts!"

Marie's eyes widened in shock as the pile of trash in front of her immediately morphed into a mountain of endless riches.

"Don't eye them like that!" Krish immediately reprimanded as he noticed the growing greed in her gaze.

"These artefacts are the remnants of the ancestral practitioners of The Heavenly Eye," Krish clarified. "This is how The Heavenly Eye is preserved over the generation. You might have felt a sensation when you grasped the artefacts, correct?"

Without waiting to receive Marie's nod, Krish continued, "For a short period, there were no practitioners of The Heavenly Eye. But, after the period ended, my Grandmaster's Grandmaster stumbled upon the artefacts left by the previous practitioners. Through it, they were able to revive the art. So, to answer your earlier question, if I had perished before finding a Disciple someone down the line would find this sack filled with all the artefacts and carry on the art."

"So The Heavenly Eye will always persist?"

"It has to."

"I have another question, when you said that you and I are outside of fate's sequence, does it mean that we cannot predict our own futures?"

"That is partly true. Due to the uncertain nature of our existence, we cannot predict our own fate beyond a certain point. The immediate future and a bit beyond is visible, but no more. There is a way to overcome this, and that is by firmly adhering to fate's preset sequence - by not relying on The Heavenly Eye too much."

Marie nodded in contemplation for a while as she digested all the information her Master had dumped on her. To an extent, she had an idea of the crux of the cultivation method through her own investigation, but it helped solidify a few of her assumptions and iron out some of her misconceptions after hearing it directly from her Master.

"With all this said, we cannot deny that The Heavenly Eye is in its heart a cultivation method based on divination. There are uncountable divination based cultivation arts, sects, and schools in this world. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses, but The Heavenly Eye reigns supreme in its efficacy!" Krish declared with a shameless grin. "And that is where our journey will begin: Divination."

Marie pulled herself into a tight cross-legged posture and straightened her back, in preparation for Krish's lecture. "Divination can be classified based on the time frame and context over which they are applied. To run we must first learn to crawl, hence what we will cover first is short-term or contextually immediate divination. To achieve this using The Heavenly Eye, we need to first become perceptive of the waves of fate around us."

"Waves?"

"Just like the wind that blows imperceptibly, the waves of fate constantly flow through us, around us, and against us. Before awakening The Heavenly Eye, we need to become conscious about how these minute waves vary, ebb and flow. We need to then tether tokens to these waves and tune them to the information being divined, and observe how these tokens are affected to derive the answer."

Marie looked at Krish with an incredulous gaze. She coughed before asking, "Can you show me an example?"

Krish nodded before bringing out the rest of his cowrie shells. "Ask!"