Grand Academician of the Three Kingdoms

The rise and fall of empires is a tale as old as time; when unity endures too long, division inevitably follows, and prolonged division begets unity. In the waning days of the Zhou, the seven kingdoms vied for supremacy until Qin emerged victorious. Yet soon after, the contest between Chu and Han ended with Liu Bang's triumph and the unification of the realm. From the Restoration under Emperor Guangwu to the time of Emperor Xian, the land fractured once more into three kingdoms...

In the second year of Jianning, in the fourth month, a fierce wind arose. Dark clouds gathered, thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed as a blue serpent descended from the heavens. Emperor Ling was greatly alarmed, murmuring ominously of ill fortune, and immediately summoned the most esteemed masters in the palace to divine the meaning of these portents.

A Daoist of youthful visage and graying temples gazed up at the heavens and performed the Circular Light Technique, seeking to glimpse the fate of the people below. The Circular Light Technique, akin to the folk art of opening the heavenly eye, reveals supernatural truths by communing with the spirit world, allowing one to divine glimpses of the future, and even to lay bare the forms of wandering spirits.

Clad in a robe of yin and yang, water and fire, the Daoist sat cross-legged. He pressed the thumb of his left hand into the web of his right, pinching the lines of the hour, while his right thumb curled beneath the left, forming the shape of a Taiji diagram and sealing the secret of time within. Before him stood a green