Chapter 114: Scepticism

A/N: It will make more sense if this chapter is read between Chapter 106 and Chapter 107.

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After the chance encounter with great master Krish Nara, Marie's mind automatically drifted away from her earlier preoccupation with Kano's safety. Fortunately, or unfortunately, another issue had ingrained itself into her consciousness rather doggedly.

"What did he mean by that?" She muttered out loud. "Evaluate the why... Pssht!" She scoffed.

"I ain't falling for that old trick!" Of course, she wouldn't. Marie had seen it one too many times before: creating a false sense of urgency and mystery to cater to the human's natural penchant for curiosity. Marie was certain that this was just another tactic to fool the uninformed masses. "A common huckster's ruse!"

Yet regardless of her awareness of this fact, Marie was still, after all, just a human.

"No! It would be wrong to write it off without investigation," Marie said in trying to convince herself. Although logic dictated otherwise, her heart held a faint hope that it might actually be true.

"If I could peer into the future..." She would no longer have to wallow in doubt and despair.

Soothsayers weren't rare in this world. Marie had seen and met many of them before during her travels. She didn't know how many of them were legitimate, but that didn't matter. Because all of them had one thing in common and that was uncertainty. They would all preach that the future was never static and was always changing. Human actions and behaviours could influence the way events played out, and could potentially make a prediction invalid.

A "cop-out", is what Marie considered them.

Yet great master Nara was different. He didn't embellish his words with a spurious addendum essentially leaving him with a backdoor. No. The man was certain, there was no wavering in his declaration.

According to great master Nara, the future was set in stone. There was no changing it regardless of human intervention. It would have discouraged Marie if not for the man's penultimate addition which sort of contradicted him.

"He said that it was possible to change the future..." But to do that, she would have to become his disciple.

Marie refused to preoccupy herself with such uncertainties until she first verified if the man was legitimate. To do that, she had to employ what she had learned from Teacher Larks. She needed to use the scientific method.

As part of the process, Marie needed to collect data from a sufficiently diverse and apt sample. For this, she didn't have to look far.

Marie strolled around the Twilight Village in search of subjects to interview. She didn't want to come across as intrusive and nosy, so she decided to target the people she was acquainted with first.

"Good morning Auntie Roe, Sister Colyn!" Marie greeted as she walked past the fence of a quaint thatched house near the periphery of the village. At the porch of the house, sat a pair of mother-in-law and daughter, working industriously in sifting grains.

"Marie! How are you?" The elderly woman beamed back. The younger woman sitting next to her leaned forward to stand, but was immediately impeded by her mother-in-law's gentle grasp, "Colyn, you sit! Don't exert yourself unnecessarily."

Sister Colyn smiled bitterly and said, "But mother, it's only walking up to the gate..."

"Nonsense! One can never be too cautious when pregnant," Auntie Roe reprimanded, her gaze hovering lovingly over her daughter-in-laws blatantly evident and unusually large abdomen.

The elderly woman didn't entertain the conversation any further and walked over to let Marie in. "What brings you here today, Marie?" She asked as she opened the gates.

"Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to talk to Sister Colyn, that's all. I can come over another time if you are busy," Marie hinted.

"No, no. You two girls can talk. I need to make sure that lunch is prepared," Auntie Roe commented and walked into the house. Marie didn't dawdle further and sat next to Sister Colyn.

"How are you feeling nowadays, Sister Colyn?" Marie asked with concern evident in her face. "It looks... painfully large, doesn't it?"

Sister Colyn giggled and responded excitedly, "The village midwife believes that it might be twins. So it isn't unusual."

"You seem pretty elated on that prospect. Aren't you scared?" Marie probed hesitantly.

"Scared? About what?"

"Well... I've heard that birthing twins can get..." Marie wavered in her tone and gestured the end of her sentence instead.

Sister Colyn laughed wholeheartedly and said, "I'm not worried, no. Great master Nara predicted that the birth will be safe, and the children will be born healthy."

"And you believe him?" Marie retorted.

Sister Colyn frowned slightly and chided Marie, "Don't be so disrespectful, Marie. Great master Nara is an exceptional man. He rightly predicted when I would become pregnant, and the fact that it would be twins. Why wouldn't I believe it when he said that the birthing would be safe?"

"He could easily have just inspected you..." Marie muttered.

"What was that?" Sister Colyn clarified.

"Is that really enough reason to believe someone so wholeheartedly?"

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"My worries are trivial, Marie. What reason would he have to deceive me? Besides, he didn't ask for payment or reimbursement. I don't see anything compelling me against trusting great master Nara."

"There is that as well..." Marie muttered under her breath again. Ever since his arrival in this village, great master Nara had asked nary a soul for a single coin for his predictions. The only thing the man ever requested was assistance in building him a home.

Marie conversed with Sister Colyn for a few more minutes before leaving towards her next target. Marie knew most of the people in the village personally, so her bout of collecting data wasn't hindered one bit. Every person she met that interacted with great master Nara had only good things to gush about him. Marie slowly felt herself getting brainwashed by the repetitive drones of praises and adorations.

The survey did offer her certain insights into Krish Nara as a person and about his powers. First, the man was always objective and detached. He offered the predictions in their raw form, without filter and embellishments. Some of the people Marie talked to threw in a few grumbles in between about how they felt that the man was a little rude or incisive. If the man were lying, he wouldn't adopt such a persona. Personally, Marie admired that about him. If the truth was unavoidable, it was unnecessary to garnish it with irrelevant details.

Secondly, the man always avoided the path of changing the future. His solutions and advice often revolved around softening the blow or dealing with the problem head-on. That was also Marie's way of thinking. But compared to her, who prepared for the most probable scenarios, great master Nara knew exactly what would take place and offered measures tailored to that in particular. Yet this brought up the question worth a million gold coins: 'Since he so readily exposed that it was possible to change the future, why isn't he doing so?' Marie thought to herself.

Marie's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a loud crash to her right. Her gaze darted in that direction, and she saw a middle-aged woman hunched over on the ground and carefully collecting the spilt contents - freshly washed laundry - of her overturned basket.

"Auntie Lane!" Marie called out and rushed over to help the crouched woman.

"Marie! Thank you so much," The woman smiled back.

Marie joined the woman by getting on her knees and scrambling around to collect the clothes that had been strewn away in different directions.

Auntie Lane sighed out loud and commented, "I just washed them too..."

"What happen-" Marie was just about to finish the question, but her eyes locked on the woman's right hand. "Your thumb! What happened to your thumb?" Marie bellowed in surprise.

The woman glanced at her four-fingered right hand and simply shrugged, "This isn't new. It's been like this for three, four weeks now."

"What do you mean? How did this happen?"

"I had to give it up, you see," the woman clarified with a straight face.

"Give it up? For what?"

The woman leaned forward and answered with a morose tone, "For my and my child's life."

"What child?" Marie blurted out thoughtlessly. She immediately regretted her decision and slapped her lips as a sign of apology. This was because everyone in the village knew about the struggles of the Lane husband and wife. The two were well into their thirties and lived a love-filled life. The husband worked as a driver for a profitable merchant's caravan and raked in a lot of money. They had a wonderful house in the village, better than most others. Yet the villagers were never envious of the couple. This was because, for all they had, they were lacking in one thing that they yearned for desperately. A child.

With their means, the two managed to consult a few physicians and determined that while neither of them was infertile, Auntie Lane's womb was problematic in that she was susceptible to miscarriages at the slightest of disturbances. Uncle Lane adored his wife deeply, and although he sorely wished to hold a son or daughter in his arms, the love for his wife superseded his animalistic urge to propagate his bloodline, which Marie felt admirable. And many wives in the village shared her opinion. The man had even separated from his family in a local town because they so feverously urged him to divorce and remarry.

So it was surprising when Autie Lane uttered those words. Marie almost thought that the woman had finally lost her mind due to her depression. But, instead of a heartbroken sulk, Auntie Lane's face blossomed into a smile filled with hope and love as she answered, "Great master Nara predicted that I will finally birth a healthy boy! He said I would conceive within this month."

Marie furrowed her brows and muttered, "So that's why Uncle Lane has been so vibrant every day."

Auntie Lane's aged face turned a crimson shade filled with the shyness of youth upon hearing that. She coughed out loud to dispel her embarrassment and got back to pick up her clothes with a lowered head.

"But that doesn't answer my question: What happened to your thumb?"

Auntie Lane answered without diverting her attention: "Great master Nara predicted that I will birth a healthy boy. But he also predicted that I would face complications during his birth, and would die in the process." 

Nearing the end, her tone had turned grim. After a short pause, she continued, "Maybe I'm selfish. But I refuse to bring a child into this world at the cost of my life. I also want to hold my boy in my hands, kiss him, cuddle him, play with him, watch him as he gets married and has his own children. Is it too much to ask for both? But great master Nara said that it would be possible for me to live AND safely give birth to my boy... for a cost."

Marie's mouth sprang agape at that revelation. This was the first time she had heard of great master Nara attempting to change the future from his predictions!

"So he took your thumb to change the future?" Marie barked, only to receive the woman's innocent nod.

"And you believed him?" She added.

"I did. And I don't regret anything. You must understand Marie, there was hope. I was finally going to get what my husband and I so desperately wanted. I would have chopped off my hand, let alone my thumb! Heck, even my husband was prepared to sacrifice his thumb right away. But the great master stopped him. He said that because it was my life, I had to be the one to give up something to balance the scales," Auntie Lane explained.

"Your life for a thumb? That doesn't seem right," Marie murmured.

"I asked him the same question. Great master said that the thumb was to influence a change. A shift in the flow of fate. Ultimately, the dominoes would fall in my favour, is what he said. Besides, it didn't hurt at all! I didn't have to chop it or anything. Just a second, was all it took."

Marie conversed with Auntie Lane for a while longer, until all the clothes were securely folded back into the basket. As she watched the woman's figure walk away, while clumsily grasping at the basket placed securely over her head with her thumbless right hand, Marie contemplated on everything she had learned today.

'That's it! It is possible to change the future, but there is a cost to facilitate this!' Marie concluded. That made a lot of sense. But Marie didn't delude herself into thinking that she could crack the code just by discerning these facts. The cultivation art, The Heavenly Eye, definitely housed many secrets that expounded on this process - it wasn't as straightforward as just cutting off a thumb or two randomly.

However, Marie realised that if she wanted to learn this, she had to take the unpredictable step of entering great master Nara's discipleship.

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