The Daily Life Of A Cyberpunk Magician
Chapter 197 - 156: Ruojie’s Whereabouts and... New Magic

Chapter 197: Chapter 156: Ruojie’s Whereabouts and... New Magic

Master Su had closed up shop.

He was urged to pack up and leave by a man who had been knocking on his head all the way.

This scene was also witnessed by some passersby on King Charles III Street, who easily recognized the recently famous Jiang Shu.

At first, it was just pointing and whispering, then came requests for autographs, all of which were quite normal and expected by Jiang Shu.

It wasn’t until a woman took off her top and asked him to stamp it that he realized something was amiss, noticing the crowd that was slowly gathering and the eager folks around.

So, Jiang Shu quickly escaped with Su Xiaoou, as the people in Zone F were simply too easy to incite with enthusiasm; he really couldn’t cope.

After the two had left, the story grew more and more mysterious.

It started with the magician’s young apprentice, who ran away from home in a fit of anger, wanting to support herself on her own abilities.

The process involved the apprentice using a series of mystical techniques to bring good fortune to ordinary people through divination, helping them to attract good luck and avoid misfortune, while she herself absorbed bad luck.

Naturally, the outcome was that she was taken back to her master after revealing heavenly secrets.

Ridiculous.

—

Inside the Magic House.

The curtains were tightly drawn, and the light poured down from above the heads of the master and his apprentice.

The two sat on opposite ends of the desk, one on the left and the other on the right.

Jiang Shu looked at her with a steady gaze, "How much money did you make in one day?"

Su Xiaoou didn’t speak, merely pulling a roll of banknotes from the recess in her forearm and counting them carefully.

Then, she looked up at Jiang Shu, found him still staring at her, and fumbled more coins from her messy pockets to continue counting.

"One thousand three hundred and forty," Su Xiaoou finally answered.

Jiang Shu nodded without comment and said calmly, "How did you earn it? Explain it in detail."

"At first... I just set up a game like this with a ball," Su Xiaoou lowered her head, placing her hands on the table with fingers intertwined, and began to confess her "criminal process."

"Who taught you?" Jiang Shu narrowed his eyes slightly; such things were not within the creative scope of the people of Lonely City. There was no such thing in the history of Lonely City.

Su Xiaoou could make such a contraption either because she was a transmigrator or...

He looked toward the four spirits of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, who were enjoying the drama unfolding.

"I just... saw Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta playing a ball game before, and I thought it was fun, so I wanted to make something similar to play with," Su Xiaoou continued, "But it was too hard and turned into this thing."

"Okay, and then?" Jiang Shu glanced at the four spirits, who were raising their heads with an air of defiance.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta: Weren’t we just playing 3D pinball for a while?

"Then I tried it out, and I found that it was very easy to hit the hundred mark, making it easy to lose," Su Xiaoou, seeing that Jiang Shu seemed not to be angry, grew bolder, "So I made some small mechanisms, placed a few micro-protrusions on the table surface, and activated them by stepping on a device under the table. But I noticed that this might be spotted by a prosthetic eye, so I modified it again, placing the protrusions at the corners of the table, using the tilt of the table to move the ball. In this way, before playing, I would distract them while adjusting the table."

"And then?" Jiang Shu had no particular reaction.

"Then, I realized some things, like those who come in small groups, it’s best to let one win big, one lose big, and one lose a little, as this might improve the chances of having return customers. But this still wasn’t sufficient to make money, so I thought of tarot cards," Su Xiaoou brought out a set of tarot cards, casually performing a few shuffling techniques, "I picked up some tarot card rhetoric on the fly, along with card controlling techniques, then just made up some nonsense based on their expressions, using divination to easily bamboozle them."

Jiang Shu nodded; this was also what he had observed.

All in all, Su Xiaoou’s approach nicely integrated the gambler’s psyche, magic principles, and some cold reading techniques. She had quickly gained the trust of the bystanders by her manipulation of the dialogue and gradually set up small traps.

However, the fact that Su Xiaoou was not greedy was also why these people were easily hooked.

Who would have thought that her real motive behind all these tricky operations was actually for each person’s forty to fifty dollars?

Most people would consider this forty or fifty dollars as a "divination fee." After Su Xiaoou uttered some vague divination lines, those who were hooked would naturally project their own meanings onto them, and those who sensed something amiss wouldn’t expose it, after all, the money was actually for playing the ball game.

"Hiss—" Jiang Shu pondered for a while, Su Xiaoou’s operations might not be termed as scamming money, but they were clearly not up to his standards.

So he still kept a stern face, "Take this money and donate it. From now, not tomorrow, you are not allowed to use these deceptive contraptions to make money."

"Huh?" Su Xiaoou, while putting away the money, voiced her confusion, "But didn’t you say that magic is about deceiving people?"

"Yes, but magic is meant to entertain, while scams are meant to take money; these two have different purposes," Jiang Shu shook his head.

"But everyone who finished the divination was happy," Su Xiaoou retorted.

"A magician tells the audience it’s fake, but a scam artist doesn’t," Jiang Shu took the cards from in front of her, flipped them over, a finely-made set of tarot cards that certainly weren’t something Su Xiaoou could make herself.