"Yeah, what''s all this talk about divisions and separations? Sounds like a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo to me."


    Jenna was just as lost as everyone else when Sophie started her cryptic exnation.


    Seeing their puzzled faces, Sophie picked up a stone from a nearby bush and started sketching eight symbols on the ground.


    As she drew, she exined, "Three solid lines, three broken lines."


    On the ground appeared two opposing symbols: one with three unbroken lines and the other with three broken lines.


    "These solid lines represent the active force, and the broken lines represent the passive force," Sophie borated.


    She continued, "A hollow center surrounded by activity, and a full center surrounded by passivity."


    Sophie then added two more symbols: one with a passive line in the middle bordered by active lines, and another with an active line in the middle bordered by passive lines. "Whoa, isn''t this from the I Ching hexagrams?" Adler remarked, clearly impressed.


    Angelo and Sandy exchanged bewildered nces.


    "What hexagrams?" they wondered aloud.


    "Thunder looking up, Mountain covering the bowl, Lake with a missing top, Wind broken at the bottom," Sophie continued, drawing the final four symbols.


    Colby quickly grasped the meaning behind these hexagrams and chuckled, "Well, that makes sense,ing from the Russell family."


    The Russell family was known as one of the four great families, rich in poetry and strategic minds, and had a notable reputation even a century ago.


    Sophie gazed at the symbols she


    had drawn on the ground and said, "When I was a kid, I had to learn everything music, chess, painting, literature wouldn''t say I mastered the ssics, but I got the basics, especially the tricky I Ching. vaguely remember my dad often talking about it. He even had a special room with maps of mountain ranges hanging


    everywhere." N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Adler was taken aback. "No wonder my dad used topare me to you back then. You really were a genius."


    "Not a genius, just that the Russell family has a ton of books, even more from my grandfather''s era," Sophie replied. "But once I moved in with my Uncle Perry, my studies started to fall behind." Jenna couldn''t hold back, "Falling behind? You got your master''s degree at seventeen."


    Sandy was equally shocked, "Seriously? You can get a master''s at seventeen?"


    "Anyway, back on track, these ancient hexagrams are split into two types: pre-heaven and post-heaven, and their differences are pretty significant," Sophie exined.


    "The pre-heaven hexagrams, said to


    be created by Fuxi, align with heaven, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain, andke. The story goes that Fuxi observed the sky''s patterns and the earth''sws, which led him to draw the pre-heaven. hexagrams representing the cycle of life, Later, King Wen of Zhou developed the post-heaven hexagrams while in prison,


    expanding them to sixty-four. This indirectly led to the discovery of the changing seasons, and the twenty-four sr terms we know today were figured out by ancient folks bit by bit. The post-heaven hexagrams, however, are a whole different ballgame."


    "How so?"


    "The pre-heaven hexagrams take a big-picture view of the rise and fall of everything, like looking at Earth from space, whereas the post-heaven


    hexagrams focus on Earth itsel


    Sophie said. "The post-heaven hexagrams are often used in feng shui and predicting human destiny. I have a feeling I''ve seen this terrain somewhere before."


    Sandy and Angelo looked at each other, almost in sync, and said, "We don''t get it. Not at all."