One-Eyed Monster

Everyone covets the future, every moment, year after year.

People always want to know what they will look like in the near future, whether they will be richer or poorer than they are now.

People always feel that everything they plan should have a satisfying ending, but they can't help worrying that accidents will happen unexpectedly.

It is because people do not know what will happen tomorrow that they dread the future, always preoccupied with opportunities to covet the future.

The majority of the future is unknown; it is vast and unfathomable.

People's feelings about the future are always incredibly complex, filled with fear, anticipation, joy, helplessness...

All this stems from the unknown. Nobody knows what will happen in a few days, or even how it will relate to them. They can only vaguely sense that upcoming events will develop in various ways, and each development will bring about a unique emotional experience.

This reverence for the future has gradually brought about a group of people on this continent who help others covet the future. These people, more or less, possess skills that allow them to see the future before others do.

Those who can covet the future on the Yowein Continent are generally divided into two categories. One is the Wizards, who consider themselves wise. Through their Crystal Balls, they tell people what is about to happen. People call this method of predicting the future Divination.

Divination consumes a lot of Spirit Power and requires a Crystal Ball as a medium. Through the Crystal Ball, they glean past events and then predict the future based on these past experiences. Therefore, when Wizards covet the future, they rely merely on past experience. They predict what is about to happen based on these experiences. This type of Divination is often quite intuitive and easily accepted by people; as a result, Wizards are held in high regard.

So, when it comes to predicting the future, most people associate it with the Wizards' Crystal Balls. It seems that these Crystal Balls can see through all events, whether they are in the future or happening now. The Crystal Ball can always clearly reflect them.

People treat the Wizards' Crystal Ball as a treasure and believe that only powerful Wizards can use it.

In reality, this Crystal Ball does not possess magical powers. After all, it is just a tool, like the sword in a Swordsman's hand or the instrument in a musician's grasp. Without someone using it, it can only serve as a regular tool or an object of admiration.

When it comes to coveting the future, people have overwhelmingly chosen the Wizard's Divination. After all, it is intuitive, and the impact of seeing it with one's own eyes definitely outweighs the impact from other senses.

It is precisely this impact that makes people gradually forget another type of person on this continent who can also covet the future. For every event destined to occur, this group of people will interpret it in their unique way, requiring little effort from you. However, this type of interpretation is always cryptic and lacks strong impact, so people easily forget it, not taking these matters seriously at all.

Therefore, many people are not very clear that Scholars can also covet the future. Scholars predict the future through deduction. Unlike Wizards who use past experience to predict, Scholars use calculation. Scholars use similar Symbols to continuously compare and verify, thereby determining the probability of a situation occurring. Through various comparisons and operations on these probabilities, they deduce the various conditions indicated by the final outcome.

This calculation process by Scholars is called deduction. This method of predicting the future is not as intuitive as the Wizard's Crystal Ball, but it offers much more detail than what a Crystal Ball displays.

Some say that Scholars learn as long as they live, but in reality, Scholars calculate as long as they live.

Scholars' careers often have two extremes: one is to become a full-time Scholar, dedicating their life to endless calculations; the other is to become advisers to some Politicians, their minds constantly occupied with schemes and strategies...

Scheming and calculating, in essence, are not much different.

"Can the future really be predicted?" Estev looked at the Hunchbacked Boss and asked earnestly.

"Why can't it be predicted? Wizards rely on experience, while we rely on evidence."

"I don't understand what you're saying. I just want to know what the future holds."

"The future, hmph, the future has always been known."

"You Scholars are always like this, placating us ignorant folks with obscure words." Estev finally finished the tobacco in his pipe. He began cleaning it, all the while staring at the Hunchbacked Boss.

"For us, all this seems like a circle of Symbols, sometimes a string of numbers. These numbers and Symbols connected to form equations often reveal the Absolute Truth." The Hunchbacked Boss gave Estev a brief overview of some of the Scholars' knowledge.

"But I can't see those numbers. Our Spirit Sensing, as Soul Guardians, is different from that of you Scholars. So how could I possibly see your deduction process?" Estev was clearly skeptical of what the Hunchbacked Boss had said earlier.

What Estev most wanted to know about the future was how long he would have to hide his identity as a Soul Guardian and if he could be freed this time.

"The probability of your freedom is 60%. The chance of fleeing is less than 5%, and the probability of entering the Eternal Tranquility Realm is also less than 5%."

"Is this what you call the future? A bunch of numbers? Or probabilities?" Estev couldn't believe his own ears.

"The future is neither terrifying nor simple. The future is just a combination of events with certain probabilities. Through these probabilities, you can understand what you should do next."

"This... your deduction process is too vague. Nobody can understand it."

This… The Hunchbacked Boss realized that, given their different professions, trying to explain deductive future prediction to someone from another field was utterly foolish. Even if the other party could see those numbers, what good would it do? They would never understand what those numbers represented. They could only see the most superficial things and wouldn't care about the probabilities derived from in-depth calculations. This might also be an important reason why people prefer the Wizards' Crystal Balls. After all, it seemed for now that the Scholars' way of predicting the future was indeed somewhat complicated…

"Actually, there's no mystery to the future at all." The Hunchbacked Boss gave up explaining. To him, it seemed Estev would find deductive reasoning somewhat challenging.

"Oh? What do you mean? Isn't the future always unknown?" Estev was confused again.

"Actually, many aspects of the future are knowable. This is what we Scholars refer to as probability. Some things are certain to happen—a 100% probability—while others have a zero probability of occurring."

"I don't understand."

"For instance, in the future, you will grow old, and I won't become younger."

"This…"

"So, you see, many aspects of the future are knowable."