The Magician

Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night.

The number of topics that had emerged from the second round of evaluation was inexhaustible.

Between an E-rank trainee receiving an S-rank rating and the ever-elusive No. 1 finally making his appearance, any one of these could easily be the talk of the night.

Before the assembly at the broadcasting hall came to a close, the system announced that there would be three successive days of lavish dinners provided at a dining hall with a panoramic view on the second floor of the dormitories, to which all trainees would be admitted regardless of rank.

Although physiological needs had been eliminated after becoming a thriller trainee, whose mouth wouldn't water in the face of a feast? Also considering that they were in a desolate environment where they didn't know when death would come, they were more than willing to indulge in revelry to relieve their stress.

After the assembly, almost all the trainees crowded downstairs towards the dining hall.

The white-haired young man glanced at the crowd of people bustling down the stairs, and wordlessly chose to take the stairs up.

He had, in a sense, got hold of an admission ticket to the upper three ranks. Although he hadn't soared to a throne like what people had speculated, Zong Jiu was only the newcomer who had broken through the upper three ranks of trainees. And now, he was the hottest topic amongst all the newcomers.

The C-rank trainee dormitory was located on the fourth floor.

As far as the eye could see, rows after rows of clean and tidy rooms lined up on both sides of the wall. The floors were heavily carpeted with crimson, lush green plants were placed every few steps down the corridor, and a warm hue was cast down from the pale yellow light above.

If he disregarded what kind of place this really was, at first glance, he might have thought that he had entered the guest room floor of some fancy hotel.

The upper three ranks were treated very differently from the lower three ranks.

E-rankers slept in rooms of eight, D-rankers slept in rooms of four, C-rankers slept in single rooms, and it was even the standard type of single room in a hotel.

Following the serial number on his badge, Zong Jiu went to the corresponding room door. As he was about to open the door, he heard footsteps coming from behind him in a hurry.

He dodged to the side nonchalantly, and the man behind him didn't stop in time, hitting the wall hard.

"Fuck—"

The C-rank veteran missed his shot. As he was about to turn back, all of a sudden someone's elbow forced him to stagger a few steps and fall to the ground.

"You…"

The white-haired young man stood silently, looking down at him condescendingly.

His pale pink eyes looked incredibly sharp under the shadow of his fringe, like thinly shattered ice.

With just one glance, the whole body of the trainee on the ground stiffened.

"Don't provoke me if you don't want to die."

His eyes carried a warning, scanning the C-ranks standing on either end of the corridor before walking into his room without turning his head back.

"Bang—"

The loud slam echoed down the long corridor.

Only after a few seconds did the veteran come back to his senses.

"Fucking hell, this newbie is damn arrogant."

"Wasn't all he did was get an S-rank rating? With the airs he's putting on, you'd think that he had become a phoenix."

"I know right. Someone should beat some colour into him."

Despite saying this, none of the C-ranks wanted to be the one to take the lead.

After closing the door, Zong Jiu promptly threw himself onto the bed.

Similar to the corridor outside, the room wasn't too big inside, just like a standard room in an ordinary hotel.

On the plus side, it was a single room, which could safeguard the trainees' privacy and give them a little room to be alone.

He didn't take the provocations of those C-rank trainees outside seriously.

All the veterans in the infinite loop had a rank of C or above, for the more capable. This rank was very impressive in the eyes of newcomers, but it was the bottom rung for veterans.

Not only did they have a serious herd mentality, but also their strength wasn't much to speak of. They even plotted all sorts of schemes in their minds to put up a pretense that they weren't just pushovers. These people, furthermore, wouldn't dare to step up to take the lead. Zong Jiu didn't have the time to deal with them.

What was more important now was—

The white-haired young man reached into the system space and took out a deck of cards.

The cards were deep golden, with a God's eye pattern embossed in dark gold on the back. Its borders were complicated with obscure occult symbols entwining them, complicated with shimmering, fine gold powder inside which glowed alluringly even in darkness.

Zong Jiu spread them in an arc across the bed.

A total of twenty two cards.

Although this was also a deck of cards, it wasn't the poker cards that Zong Jiu was most familiar with as a leading card magician.

A poker deck had fifty four cards, and zi pai had eighty one cards; none of the other niche card games around the world matched this number.

The system plainly revealed the true nature of these twenty two cards to Zong Jiu.

[S-rank prop: Rider-Waite Tarot Major Arcana Deck]

Zong Jiu, "…"

Fancy that. He was pleased for a good while because he touched a deck of cards in the iron box, but it turned out not to be a deck of playing cards. Instead, it was a tarot deck.

But he was a magician, not a fortune teller!!!

"How even is this thing meant to work… System, does it have any special use?"

[Prop Ability: Divination]

Do I need you to tell me this??

Zong Jiu was speechless. "Other S-rank props have special abilities, but my S-rank prop can only be used for divination?"

Evidently, Zong Jiu's question wasn't within the system's scope of authority to answer. The room fell silent again.

After a while, the system's cold voice rang out in the air.

[This S-rank prop comes with a copy of the Tarot Guide, which has been placed in the trainee's system backpack. Please check it.]

Oho, that sounds about right.

Zong Jiu took out the solid black cover of the Tarot Guide, sat on the bed, and seriously flipped open to the first page.

The system actually had a conscience. It had very considerately made the booklet that came with the cards easy to understand for a newbie to the tarot like him, supplemented with colourful illustrations and text.

Only after Zong Jiu read the Tarot Guide from cover to cover and touched the cards once more did he have to admit that—

These twenty two Major Arcana cards didn't possess any combat ability; their only use was divination.

However, as an S-rank prop, it would be too weak if it only had the divination ability that all Tarot cards had. To this, the explanation given by the system was that all divinations performed by this deck of cards had the ability to take a glimpse into the future.

"Glimpse into the future?!"

Now, Zong Jiu was in better spirits.

Taking a glimpse into the future meant one more clue in the absence of a clue. In a sense, although the Major Arcana deck didn't have any combat ability, it certainly deserved the title of an S-rank prop.

"Can the scope of this divination be set at my own discretion?"

The system didn't reply. Instead, it pulled out a cooldown bar for him.

It showed that Zong Jiu could divine three times, and after these three divinations, he had to wait for the cooldown to reset before he could draw the cards again.

Zong Jiu, "Nevermind, there doesn't seem to be anything I want to know for now. I won't test it first then."

"By the way, system. If I want to heal my hands, how many survival points do I need?"

[2,500 points.]

"And how many survival points would it take to strengthen my hands and restore them to an extremely nimble state?"

[It takes 5,000 survival points to strengthen them once.]

The system even gave a friendly reminder—

[Current account balance of the trainee: 2,000 points.]

"Why be so uptight with the scope? What if I don't need it to be restored straightaway, but only need to get my hand back to peak level for a short span of time?"

[It can be done, but the number of survival points required is extremely high. It isn't recommended for trainees to choose this option.]

"Doesn't matter."

Zong Jiu shrugged and moved his slightly stiff fingers. "Just three days will be enough."

[2,000 points can be exchanged for 7 days of normal restoration, or 3 days of enhanced restoration.]

The white-haired young man pondered for a moment. "Three days it is, then."

Actually, Zong Jiu could also choose to go gambling first and earn five hundred points to heal his hands straightaway.

But three days was exactly how long Las Vegas would stay open.

If he chose to use 2,500 points to heal his hands straightaway, he could only recover to the level of a normal person.

But there were no shortcuts when it came to the tricks performed by a magician's hands. It all came from day in, day out of training since childhood. For example, when Zong Jiu had just begun practising magic, he also trained to control the blinking of his eyes, and held cards to sleep every night in order to train his muscle memory.

What could such exercises bring?

For example, when Zong Jiu performed, he could scatter a deck of cards straight into the air, and out of the flurry of cards, pick out any of the cards named by the audience.

And the audience would be left in the dark if this was a show of agility, or a magic trick.

In those three days, as long as Zong Jiu's hands could be restored to the level it was back when he was a virtuosic magician, he could let everyone learn what are the consequences of letting a card magician into a casino.

Even if a card magician sat in front of you with ten cameras facing him, you'd never be able to catch traces of his tricks, even should the footage be slowed down and replayed.

One had to understand that back in Zong Jiu's world, Las Vegas, the gambling city, was this close to putting up a sign that read 'Magician Zong Jiu and Dogs Are Forbidden From Premises'.

And since he had the rare opportunity of transmigrating into a novel, Zong Jiu's reputation had yet to fall to such a state; he could gamble however many rounds he could, and make a dash for it when he earnt it all. A gambling dog would never admit defeat.

He didn't want to go slow and steady; he wanted to go big.

Zong Jiu watched as the points in his system balance emptied out.

The next moment, a hot stream of heat suddenly surged from his fingertips, miraculously flowing through those tendons and veins that had long been necrotic for too many years, following the blue veins and seeping into his capillaries. The sensation was so comfortable that he couldn't help but sigh deeply.

The heat lasted for almost half a minute before gradually subsiding.

[2,000 points have been paid. The 3-day countdown begins.]

The young man's hands unconsciously trembled.

He picked up the deck of tarot cards that lay on the bed.

The deep golden faces of the cards danced between his fingertips, each lightly held between his fingertips, flying in the air the next second. Spinning and falling, every card was easily caught by Zong Jiu in his palm.

Any one card, as long as Zong Jiu thought about it, his fingers would gently brush across the card's surface in a split second, and he could directly draw it straight out even with his eyes closed.

His hands were trembling. His hands moved even faster, and the corners of his lips curved even wider.

And with it, the cards also seemed to tremble, as if in anticipation of the emperor's brief return.

It was an indescribable, incomparable skill in card shuffling.

As the cards slid past his palm, Zong Jiu naturally projected the deck in a three-dimensional space in his mind. In the time that followed, no matter how the cards were shuffled, as long as they passed through his hand, he could pinpoint exactly where any of the cards were located.

Zong Jiu flung the cards into the air and suddenly closed his eyes, casually grabbing one from among them.

As the young man smiled, he slowly turned the card over.

A man clad in a long robe was standing in front of an altar, on which many ritualistic objects lay.

A symbol of boundless power hovered above the man's head, and in his hand a double-ended magic wand pointed to the sky and the earth.

He who possessed infinite power; he who was omnipotent.

The first trump card of the Major Arcana, the Magician.

He is back.