Hold one small, concrete question in mind.
Xiao Liu Ren answers by the moment you ask: the lunar month, day and hour of the cast walk through six palaces on the knuckles of one hand. When the question is clear, cast.
One cast per question. Re-casting the same question is asking the oracle to argue with itself.
Whether to make the call today; where the keys went; how the meeting will land. For the questions that keep you up at night — marriage, career turns, a name for a child, a date for something that matters — a three-count oracle is the wrong tool. Those deserve a full chart read by a person. The masters at Guan do it the traditional way.
Ask a real question at guan.lifeXiao Liu Ren (小六壬, "the lesser Liu Ren") is the pocket oracle of the Chinese tradition — the one soldiers, farmers and travelling merchants actually used, because it needs nothing but one hand and the calendar. Six palaces sit on the knuckles: Great Peace, Lingering, Swift Joy, Red Mouth, Small Fortune and Emptiness. You count the lunar month onto the first, the lunar day from wherever that lands, and the double-hour from there. Where the third count stops is the answer.
The method belongs to the same family of thought as the almanac on this site: a moment in time has a quality, and a question sincerely asked shares the quality of the moment it is asked in. That is why this page casts from the instant you press the button — the traditional way — rather than from a random number.