บท 643: Jade Beauty

ความคิดของผู้สร้าง

Udeze

Tai Yi (太 一 or 太 乙, these two terms are used interchangeably in Chinese text) means something like Ultimate Unity, an important concept in early Taoism. On the other hand, means as the Great One or the Great Monad. Tai Yi is considered the highest of the Three Arts in general, and one form of this arts was used to predict the macroscopic events like wars or the meaning of supernovae in the past.

Qi Men (奇门); I chose to translate it as Strange Doors and is represented by the Occult Sect (written in the same Chinese characters with the Strange Doors in this novel). The Qimen Dunjia is an ancient form of divination based on astronomical observations, including the doctrines of Yin Yang, Five Elements, Eight Trigrams, Ten Heavenly Stems, Twelve Earthly Branches, and Twenty-Four Solar Terms. The application of this art may be applied to business, crime-solving, marriages, and matchmaking, medical divination, Feng Shui, military affairs, finding missing people, travel, and personal fortune divination.

六壬 (Liu Ren); I chose to translate it as Divination Lineage due to the reason for the sake of translation in this novel only (LOL). Explained it shortly as a form of Chinese calendrical astrology, the six Ren itself indicate the life cycle of phenomena, during which an event—object may appear, rise to maturity, and then decline and disappear.

These three are collectively the Three Arts or Three Styles (三式: San Shi), as the highest form of Chinese metaphysics arts. Shortly put, Taiyi, Qimen, and Liu Ren, in a very short explanation (not perfect, of course), are divination methods to deduce the Heavenly, Earthly, and Human elements. It’s so detailed and very long, and thus quite difficult to be fully explained in English, so please bear with that short explanation, LOL.

Anyways, the clue here (in regards to translating terms in the story) is not in the name, though, but it’s the sense, and the sense depends on the context. Which is why sometimes translating them to English feels kinda awkward, and sometimes some meanings will be lost too.