Chapter 74

The water clock pointed to the third quarter of the Zi hour when Su Yan’s finger suddenly halted on the star map of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure on the armillary sphere. At the edge of the zodiac, the Heavenly Halberd star, which should have been dim, was now glowing with an eerie indigo light. He snatched the "Kaiyuan Treatise on Astrology" from his desk and flipped rapidly to the section on the Twenty-Eight Mansions. The ink characters on the parchment seemed to dance under the candlelight: "When the Heavenly Halberd shifts, changes arise in the maritime borders, signaling the loss of merchant ships..."