Free? Free things are the most expensive! Zhou Mingrui muttered silently, planning to firmly refuse any additional services offered later.
Go on, divine that I transmigrated if you're so capable!
With that thought, Zhou Mingrui followed the woman with red and yellow greasepaint on her face, bending down to enter the low tent.
The tent was very dark. Only a little light seeped in, faintly illuminating a table covered with cards.
The woman in the pointed hat was completely unaffected. Her long black dress drifted as though floating on water as she rounded the table, sat opposite him, and lit a candle.
The dim yellow light flickered, leaving the tent half-lit and instantly lending it an air of mystery.
Zhou Mingrui sat down without betraying anything. His gaze swept over the tarot cards on the table, and he spotted familiar major arcana such as the Magician, the Emperor, the Hanged Man, and Temperance.
Could Comrade Roselle really be a "predecessor"...? I wonder if he was a fellow countryman from our great foodie empire... The corners of Zhou Mingrui's mouth twitched, and he fell into a brief daze.
Before he could finish looking at the faceup cards on the table, the woman who claimed to be "very accurate at divination" reached out, gathered all the tarot cards into a stack, and pushed them toward him.
"Shuffle and cut the cards," the circus fortune-teller said in a low, husky voice.
"I shuffle?" Zhou Mingrui asked reflexively.
The red and yellow greasepaint on the fortune-teller's face shifted as she gave a faint smile.
"Of course. Only you can divine your own fate. I am merely an interpreter."
Zhou Mingrui immediately asked warily:
"You won't charge extra for the interpretation, will you?"
As a keyboard folklorist, I've seen plenty of tricks like this!
The fortune-teller visibly froze. Only after a long while did she reply sullenly:
"It's free."
Reassured, Zhou Mingrui pushed the revolver a little deeper into his pocket, then calmly extended both hands and deftly shuffled and cut the cards.
"Done." He placed the shuffled tarot cards in the middle of the table.
The fortune-teller clasped her hands and studied the cards for a while before suddenly speaking:
"Sorry, I forgot to ask. What would you like to divine?"
Zhou Mingrui had studied tarot cards back when he was unsuccessfully pursuing his first love. Without hesitation, he said:
"The past, the present, and the future."
This was a tarot spread in which three cards were laid out in sequence, representing the past, present, and future respectively.
The fortune-teller first nodded, then curled her lips into a smile.
"Then please shuffle the cards again. Only when you know what you wish to ask can you shuffle out cards with true symbolic meaning."
You were just messing with me... Do you have to be so petty? All I did was keep stressing that it was free... The muscles in Zhou Mingrui's face twitched. Taking a deep breath, he retrieved the tarot cards and shuffled and cut them again.
"No problems this time, right?" He placed the cut deck on the table.
"None." The fortune-teller reached out, took a card from the top, and placed it to Zhou Mingrui's left. Her voice grew even lower and huskier. "This represents the past."
"This represents the present." The fortune-teller placed the second card directly in front of Zhou Mingrui.
She picked up a third card and placed it to his right.
"This represents the future."
"All right, which card would you like to see first?" Having finished, the fortune-teller raised her head and gazed intently at Zhou Mingrui with her gray-blue eyes.
"Let's see the 'present' first," Zhou Mingrui said after a little thought.
The fortune-teller slowly nodded and turned over the card directly in front of him.
The card depicted a young man in lavish clothes and a splendid headdress, carrying a staff over his shoulder with luggage hanging from its end, while a little dog tugged at him from behind. Its number was "0."
"The Fool," the fortune-teller softly read out the card's name, her gray-blue eyes fixed on Zhou Mingrui.
The Fool? Tarot's card zero? A beginning? A beginning containing every possibility? Zhou Mingrui could not even be considered a novice tarot enthusiast. He could only make a rough interpretation based on his impressions.
Just as the fortune-teller was about to speak, the tent flap was suddenly lifted. Bright sunlight flooded in, making even Zhou Mingrui, whose back was to it, instinctively narrow his eyes.
"Why are you impersonating me again! Telling fortunes is my job!" a woman's voice growled angrily. "Get back there! Remember, you're just a Beast Tamer!"
A Beast Tamer? Zhou Mingrui's eyes adjusted to the light. At the entrance stood another woman wearing a pointed hat, a black dress, and red and yellow greasepaint, only she was taller and thinner.
The woman sitting opposite him hurriedly stood up and said glumly:
"Don't mind it. I just like doing this. I have to say, sometimes my divinations and interpretations are quite accurate. Really..."
As she spoke, she lifted her skirts, rounded the side of the table, and quickly left the tent.
"Sir, would you like me to interpret your cards?" the real fortune-teller asked Zhou Mingrui with a smile.
The corners of Zhou Mingrui's mouth twitched, and he earnestly asked:
"Is it free?"
"...No," the real fortune-teller replied.
"Then never mind." Zhou Mingrui slipped his hands back into his pockets, held down the revolver and banknotes, and bent down to leave the tent.
Seriously, I actually got a Beast Tamer to read my tarot cards!
A Beast Tamer who doesn't want to be a fortune-teller isn't a good clown?
Zhou Mingrui soon put the incident behind him. At the "Lettuce and Meat" market, he spent seven pence on a pound of poorer-quality lamb, then bought tender peas, cabbage, onions, potatoes, and other items. Including the bread from earlier, he spent a total of twenty-five copper pence, or two soli and one penny.
"Money really doesn't last. Poor Benson..." Not only had Zhou Mingrui spent the two banknotes he had brought out, he had also used a penny that had originally been in his trouser pocket.
After making that casual remark, he thought no more of it and hurried home.
With the staple food ready, I can perform the luck enhancement ritual!
After the tenants on the second floor had all left, Zhou Mingrui did not rush to perform the ritual. Instead, he first translated phrases such as "Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings" into ancient Feysac and Loenese, intending to try again in the local languages the following day if the original incantation failed!
After all, he had to consider the differences between the two worlds and the need to follow local customs.
As for translating them into Hermes, the language used for ancient prayers and sacrifices, Zhou Mingrui's vocabulary was insufficient for the task.
Only after finishing all this did he take four loaves of rye bread from the paper bag. He placed one in the corner where the coal stove had originally stood, one against the inner side of the full-length mirror's base, one atop the cupboard near the junction of two walls, and one among the miscellaneous items piled to the right of the desk.
Taking a deep breath, Zhou Mingrui went to the center of the room. He first calmed himself for a few minutes, then solemnly began walking counterclockwise in a square.
As he took the first step, he chanted softly:
"Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
On the second step, he sincerely recited silently:
"Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
On the third step, Zhou Mingrui held his breath and whispered:
"God of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
On the fourth step, he exhaled stale air and silently recited with concentration:
"Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
Having returned to his starting position, Zhou Mingrui closed his eyes and waited where he stood for the result, his heart filled with anticipation, unease, hope, and apprehension.
Can I go back?
Will it work?
Will anything unexpected happen?
The darkness before his eyes was tinged with crimson from the light. Thoughts surged through Zhou Mingrui's mind, refusing to settle.
Just then, he suddenly felt as though the air around him had stopped flowing, becoming thick and strange.
Immediately afterward, whispers sounded beside his ears, sometimes soft and rapid, sometimes shrill, sometimes illusory, sometimes alluring, sometimes frenzied, and sometimes insane.
Although he could not understand what the murmurs were saying, Zhou Mingrui could not help listening and trying to distinguish them.
His head hurt again, as violently as if a steel spike had been driven into it.
Zhou Mingrui felt as though his head was about to explode, and his thoughts took on a hallucinatory quality.
He knew something was wrong and struggled to open his eyes, but he could not accomplish that simple action no matter what he did.
His entire being grew increasingly taut, liable to snap at any moment. Inexplicably, a self-mocking thought rose in Zhou Mingrui's mind:
If you don't court death, you won't die...
Just as he could no longer endure it and the string in his mind was about to snap, the noisy, overlapping murmurs of countless voices receded. His surroundings became very quiet, and the atmosphere felt rather ethereal.
It was not just the atmosphere. Zhou Mingrui felt that his body was equally ethereal.
He tried opening his eyes again. This time, it was very easy.
Pervasive gray fog met his eyes, hazy, indistinct, and boundless.
"What's going on?" Zhou Mingrui looked around in astonishment, then lowered his head and discovered that he was floating at the edge of an endless expanse of gray fog.
The gray fog flowed like water, dotted with crimson "stars." Some were large, some tiny; some lay hidden in the depths, while others floated on the surface.
Looking at the scene that resembled a holographic projection, Zhou Mingrui extended his right hand, half in confusion and half in exploration. He tried to touch a crimson "star" floating on the surface to his right, searching for a way to leave.
The instant his finger touched the star's surface, ripples suddenly surged out of his body, triggering an eruption of "crimson" like a burst of dreamlike fireworks.
Startled, Zhou Mingrui hastily withdrew his right hand, accidentally touching another patch of "crimson."
That "star" also blazed with light.
Then Zhou Mingrui felt his mind go blank and his concentration scatter.
In a luxurious villa in Queens Borough, Backlund, the capital of the Kingdom of Loen.
Audrey Hall sat before her dressing table, stroking a bronze mirror on the tabletop that bore ancient patterns and had a cracked surface.
"Magic mirror, magic mirror, awaken..."
"In the name of the Hall Family, I command you to awaken!"
She tried one wording after another, but the mirror remained unresponsive.
After more than ten minutes, she finally chose to give up. Pursing her lips aggrievedly, she muttered:
"Papa really was lying to me. He always tells me this mirror was a treasure of the Black Emperor of the ancient Solomon Empire, a Beyonder item..."
Before she finished speaking, the bronze mirror on the table suddenly burst with crimson light, enveloping her at once.
On the Sonia Sea, a three-masted sailing ship clearly behind the times was making its way through a storm.
Alger Wilson stood on the deck, his body rising and falling with the ship's pitching as he easily maintained his balance.
He wore a robe embroidered with lightning patterns and held a strangely shaped glass bottle. Inside, bubbles sometimes churned, frost sometimes gathered into snow, and wind sometimes left traces.
"All that's missing is Ghost Shark blood..." Alger whispered.
Just then, crimson erupted between the glass bottle and his palm, instantly engulfing the surroundings.
Above an expanse of grayish-white fog, Audrey Hall regained her sight and looked around in fear and bewilderment. She saw a man diagonally opposite her, his head indistinct and his figure hazy, doing much the same.
Immediately afterward, they discovered almost simultaneously that a mysterious person shrouded in grayish-white fog stood nearby.
The "mysterious person," Zhou Mingrui, was equally dumbfounded.
"Sir, where is this?"
"What do you intend to do?"
Audrey and Alger first froze and fell silent, then spoke at the same time.
PS: 1/7, one makeup chapter posted. Please send recommendation votes~