Chapter 206
Chapter 206
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Talent
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Listen well. I'm about to explain just how dangerous the things you've been up to have been."
"Hing."
I rubbed the spot on my forehead where Master had flicked me, settling obediently into my seat to listen intently to her words.
She was right—I had been doing dangerous things.
"You already know the basics of what the heavenly secrets are, so we'll skip that. Let's think simply for a moment. If anyone could read the heavenly secrets without any restrictions, what do you think would happen to the world?"
"Hm..."
To put it simply, the heavenly secrets were akin to the Akashic Records people often imagined.
They contained records of the past, present, and future. They shared that nature with the Void Record, but the difference was that the Void Record was like a library already filled with every account, while the heavenly secrets were records being written in real time.
In other words, "reading the future" meant peering into the possibilities of what was to come within the heavenly secrets I was currently part of.
The past might be fixed, but future records could always be altered.
Still, without any special intervention, predictions from the heavenly secrets' future records almost always came true with near-absolute certainty.
That was why reading the heavenly secrets wasn't something recommended for ordinary people.
In truth, it was normal for people to live without knowing their own futures, and obsessing over them often led to ruining the present in the process.
But if just anyone could read those heavenly secrets...
"Countless leakages of heavenly secrets would occur, tangling up the records until future accounts essentially lost all meaning. They'd be twisted by the very people who read them anyway."
"Exactly. You understand well. Now, what happens if that keeps going?"
"The accuracy of predictions for future records would drop steadily, but the future soon becomes the present, and then the past, so instability in the heavenly secrets themselves would rise until they eventually collapsed..."
"You might have gone a bit far, but you're not wrong. As you said, it would bring massive chaos to the heavenly secrets themselves."
Ah, had I gone overboard?
It had been a while since a topic came up that I knew about, so I'd gotten a little excited.
"In any case, to prevent that from happening, the heavenly secrets have a manager..."
"The Celestial Deity?"
"Yes, that's one name for her. She's essentially the supreme god overseeing everything in this world."
"I knew that much."
The one who had "kidnapped" me from the Holy Maiden's clutches(?)—the very starting point of all this, in a way.
If I had to pick the person I'd bickered with the most in this world, it would hands-down be her.
...Though she wasn't exactly a person—she was a god.
"Then think about it. If you were in charge of managing the heavenly secrets, would you make them easy to read or difficult?"
"...I'd make them difficult."
"You probably think you struggled a lot to gain the ability to read them, but you were ridiculously faster than normal people. Do you remember how long it took you?"
"...About a month from when I first started, I think."
"The level you reached in a single month is one that others need at least ten years of secluded mountain training to achieve."
"What?"
It took that long?
"I didn't see a need to mention it until now, but your speed was abnormally fast."
"...Does that mean I'm a genius?"
"It's not entirely about talent, but if we look at the literal meaning of 'genius,' then yes. It's a gift from the heavens, after all."
"..."
This caught me off guard a little.
Master was always nagging at me, but she'd never outright said I had talent before.
I didn't have anyone else to compare myself to besides her anyway.
If I had to pick someone, maybe Yeo So-cheon, but considering she was the Celestial Deity's Holy Maiden, she wasn't a fair benchmark.
"The manager of the heavenly secrets doesn't grant reading privileges to just anyone. That 'minimum ten years' I mentioned is barely the threshold of 'this much sincerity might be worth showing.' If you don't catch her eye, no amount of effort—even a lifetime—will let you read them."
"...For example?"
"Someone likely to blab about the heavenly secrets to worldly folk. Someone out to fill their own pockets with it. Anyone with ulterior motives. The manager wouldn't open the door for people like that."
-Startled-
Uh-oh.
This was hitting way too close to home.
-Sweat dripping-
"Uh... um..."
"Of course, she can revoke privileges at any time at her discretion. Even if you somehow gained them, misuse them unjustly and you'd lose them in an instant."
There went the hopeful thought I'd been nursing.
I'd figured once I had the privileges, I could do whatever after that, but nope.
"...So how am I still fine?"
"That's what's puzzled me too. Normally, someone acting like you would've had their privileges stripped immediately, with a few lightning bolts crashing down from above for good measure."
"..."
"I say it's a puzzle, but there's really only one conclusion. The manager's been turning a blind eye to you."
"...What?"
The Celestial Deity was overlooking me?
That cranky woman?
"...Master, I think you're misunderstanding something. My relationship with that woman is terrible."
"Is it? That's odd. If it were truly bad, you'd either be dead from heavenly punishment by now or at least stripped of your reading privileges long ago."
...When I thought about it, that did make sense.
"Alright, let's say you're right—that your relationship with her is poor, but some reason lets you keep reading anyway. Even then, there are still parts that don't add up."
"...More?"
"The heavenly secrets aren't something you can read that frequently in short bursts."
Master's expression grew deadly serious.
"You said you ran a fortune-telling shop. How many customers did you get a day?"
"Uh... at least three on slow days, up to over ten on busy ones."
"And you read the heavenly secrets for every single one of them?"
"...Yeah?"
"That's the biggest problem. I have no idea how you haven't gone mad yet."
Master's subsequent explanation went like this.
Reading the heavenly secrets so indiscriminately causes confusion between your own memories and the influx of foreign records, which can drive you insane.
Cases like mine—reading them frequently—were anomalies.
Even cultivators who could read them only did so rarely, at truly critical moments, with long intervals in between.
"...Then what about all those fortune-tellers in the secular world? Don't they read the heavenly secrets too...?"
"You're the abnormal one for flipping through the heavenly secrets just to tell a simple fortune. For basic fortunes or luck readings, birth charts or stargazing suffice. You're like using a jewel-encrusted blade to kill a chicken."
"...Uh."
Was that how it was?
Was I really the weird one?
"Then why didn't you teach me..."
"Want to finish that sentence?"
"...Sorry."
Hm.
This one was on me.
I'd bolted out of the mountains on my own before she could even teach me properly.
"Plus, every time you read the heavenly secrets for all those people, you nudged the future a little each time... The manager must've loved that. Some brat she doesn't even like treating her domain like his personal living room—she'd have to watch so you didn't get hurt, tidy up the secrets after every visit. What a dream for someone whose job is far from leisurely."
...Yeah, when laid out like that, it sounded like a hassle.
Did that mean the Celestial Deity had been covering for me all this time?
I'd thought it was an ability I'd earned through my own hard work, but if whether I could even see the heavenly secrets was up to her, then my efforts hadn't meant much.
In fact, there hadn't been any grand catalyst for me learning to read them.
Master had just brought me along, figured she'd teach me something, and started with this instead of riskier spells—lightly, on a whim.
Most of the spells she knew weren't ones I could even learn anyway.
I'd also been curious what would happen if someone from another world tried reading this one's heavenly secrets.
'...Is she feeling guilty or something?'
Maybe she was letting me read them freely out of guilt for dragging me to another world.
Honestly, that was the only possibility I could think of.
It was a stretch for her personality—"Really?"—but nothing else fit.
Otherwise, why tolerate me messing with her records, increasing her workload?
"..."
Something felt off.
I'd seen her as this selfish goddess who dumped me in another world and washed her hands of it, but who'd have thought she was quietly giving me gifts like this?
I'd resented how the Holy Maiden gave me a status window while this goddess gave nothing but grief, but that was starting to feel a bit unfair.
The ability to read heavenly secrets had been just as useful as the status window, no doubt.
Protecting my mind from the strain made sense in hindsight.
I'd been fine normally, but reading the Heavenly Demon's secrets had suddenly messed with my head—probably for that reason.
If her protection had limits, and the Heavenly Demon was too strong, exceeding them and failing to shield me completely...
'...Am I overthinking this?'
No matter how powerful the Heavenly Demon was, would it affect her against the Celestial Deity?
I needed to mull this over more.
...Talk about a goddess and her Holy Maiden being cut from the same cloth.
If that was the case, she should've said something sooner. Gods and humans alike sucked at expressing themselves properly.