Free? Free things are the most expensive! Zhou Mingrui muttered to himself, planning to firmly refuse whatever additional services might come along later.
If you have the ability, you can divine whether I'm a time traveler!
Thinking of this, Zhou Mingrui followed the woman with the red and yellow face paint, bending down and entering the low tent.
The tent was extremely dark, with only a little light seeping in, faintly illuminating a table filled with playing cards.
The woman wearing a pointed hat remained unaffected, her black dress flowing over the table like water, sitting opposite and lighting a candle.
The dim flickering light made the tent seem both bright and dim, adding a touch of mystery.
Zhou Mingrui sat motionless, his gaze sweeping over the tarot cards on the table, noticing familiar cards such as "The Magician", "The Emperor", "The Man Hanged", and "The Temperance".
"Comrade Rosel is really a 'senior'... I wonder if he's a fellow from my gluttonous empire..." Zhou Mingrui's lips twitched slightly, feeling a moment of daze.
Before he could finish looking at the opened cards on the table, the woman claiming to be a "diviner with extraordinary abilities" reached out and gathered all the tarot cards together, folding them into a pile and pushing it in front of him.
"Please shuffle the cards and cut them." This circus diviner said in a low, hoarse voice.
"I'll do it." Zhou Mingrui subconsciously asked in response.
The diviner's face with the red and yellow paint wriggled, revealing a faint smile.
"Of course, only you can divine one's fate. I'm just a reader."
Zhou Mingrui immediately asked warily:
"Is there no extra charge for interpretation?"
As a keyboard folklorist, I've seen such tricks before!
The diviner seemed to be stunned for a moment, then muttered gloomily:
"Free."
Zhou Mingrui's heart eased, he stuffed another round of left-handed pistol into his pocket, and then calmly extended his hands, skillfully shuffling and cutting the cards.
"Done." He placed the shuffled tarot cards in the center of the table.
The diviner clasped his hands, carefully studied the cards for a while, and suddenly spoke:
"Sorry, I forgot to ask, what do you want to divine?"
When Zhou Mingrui had failed in his pursuit of a past love, he had also studied tarot cards. Without hesitation, he replied:
"Past, present, and future."
This is a type of divination card formation in tarot cards, with three cards arranged in sequence, symbolizing the past, present, and future respectively.
The diviner nodded first, then lifted his mouth corner, revealing a smile:
"Then please shuffle the cards again, and clearly understand what you want to ask before shuffling to get the truly symbolic cards."
You were just playing with me... Are you so stingy? It's just that I've always emphasized it's free... Zhou Mingrui's facial muscles twitched, he took a deep breath, took back the tarot cards, and shuffled and cut them again.
"Is this okay now?" He placed the cut cards on the table.
"No." The diviner extended his finger from the top and placed a card on the left side of Zhou Mingrui's hand, his voice becoming even lower and hoarser, "This card symbolizes the past."
"The card here symbolizes the present." The diviner placed the second card in front of Zhou Mingrui. ,
She picked up the third card and placed it to the right of Zhou Mingrui's hand:
"This one symbolizes the future."
"Now, which card do you want to see first?" After all this, the diviner raised her head and looked deeply into Zhou Mingrui's eyes with her gray-blue eyes.
"Let's look at 'Now' first," Zhou Mingrui thought for a moment and said.
The diviner nodded slowly and turned over the card in front of her.
This card depicted a young man wearing ornate clothes, wearing a brilliant headdress, carrying a cane on his shoulder, with luggage hanging from the top of the cane, and a dog pulling him behind him. The number was "0".
"Stump." The diviner softly recited the card and fixed her gray-blue eyes on Zhou Mingrui.
Stump? The zero card in Tarot? Start? Including all possible beginnings? Zhou Mingrui was not even a beginner in Tarot, and could only make a rough interpretation based on his impression.
Just as the diviner was about to speak, the tent's fabric door was suddenly pulled open, and strong sunlight flooded in, blinding Zhou Mingrui who was facing away from it and instinctively narrowing his eyes.
"Why are you pretending to be me again! It's my job to do divination for people!" A female voice shouted angrily, "Go back! You should remember, you are just a trainer of animals!"
Trainer of animals? Zhou Mingrui adapted to the light and saw a woman with a pointed hat, wearing a black dress, and applying red and yellow greasepaint at the door, only taller and thinner than him.
The woman sitting in front of him hurriedly stood up and said unhappily:
"Don't mind it. I just like this. I have to admit, sometimes my divination and interpretation are quite accurate, really..."
She continued speaking while lifting her skirt, walking around the table from the side and leaving the tent quickly.
"Sir, do you need me to interpret for you?" The real diviner looked at Zhou Mingrui and asked with a smile.
Zhou Mingrui moved the corner of his mouth and sincerely asked:
"Free?" "... "No." The true seer replied.
"Well, then. Forget it." Zhou Mingrui put his hands back into his pocket, held the revolver and the banknotes, and bent over to exit the tent.
What a ridiculous thing! They hired a trainer for animals to do Tarot divination!
Isn't it better to be a trainer rather than a fortune teller?
Zhou Mingrui quickly forgot about this incident and spent 7 pence at the "Lettuce and Meat" market to buy 1 pound of not-so-good lamb meat, as well as fresh peas, cabbage, onions, potatoes, etc. Adding the previous bread, it cost him a total of 25 copper pence, which is 2 sous and 1 penny.
"Money really doesn't last long, poor Benson..." Zhou Mingrui not only lost the two banknotes he had taken out, but also took an extra penny from his original pocket.
He casually said this and didn't think about it anymore, hurriedly returning home.
With the staple food, the ritual of fortune-telling could be carried out!
...
When the tenants on the second floor had all left, Zhou Mingrui didn't rush to perform the ritual immediately. Instead, he first translated the words "Fusheng Xuanhuang Xianzun" and others into Gufusak and Ruan languages, planning to try again in the local language the next day if the original incantation didn't work!
After all, he had to consider the differences between the two realms and the principle of adapting to the local customs.
As for translating it into the Hermes language, which was specifically used for ancient prayers and sacrifices, Zhou Mingrui found it difficult due to his insufficient vocabulary.
After completing all these tasks, he took out four black wheat breads from the paper bag. One was placed in the corner where the coal stove used to be, one was at the bottom inner side of the mirror, one was on the top of the cabinet near where the two walls met, and one was in the area where he piled up miscellaneous items on the right side of the desk.
Taking a deep breath, Zhou Mingrui came to the center of the room, calmed down for a few minutes, and then stepped forward solemnly, moving counterclockwise in a square pattern.
The first step, he whispered softly:
"Fusheng Xuanhuang Xianzun."
The second step, he sincerely murmured:
"Fusheng Xuanhuang Tianshen."
The third step, Zhou Mingrui held his breath and whispered:
"Fusheng Xuanhuang Shangdi."
The fourth step, he let out his stale breath and silently murmured:
"Fusheng Xuanhuang Tianshen."
After completing the return to the original position, Zhou Mingrui closed his eyes and waited in place, expecting the result, with anticipation, unease, hope, and fear in his heart.
Can I go back?
Will it work?
Will there be any unexpected situations?
The darkness before him was tinted with the deep red brought by the light. Thoughts swirled in Zhou Mingrui's mind, unable to calm down.
Just then, he suddenly felt as if the air around him had stopped flowing, becoming thick and strange.
Immediately after, his ears heard whispers that were sometimes soft, sometimes sharp, sometimes illusory, sometimes alluring, sometimes manic, and sometimes crazy.
Even though he couldn't understand what these murmurs were saying, Zhou Mingrui couldn't help listening and distinguishing them.
His head hurt again, severely enough to feel like a steel drill had been driven into it.
Zhou Mingrui felt as if his head was about to burst.
His thoughts were tinged with hallucinations.
He knew something was wrong. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't complete this simple action.
The whole person became increasingly tense, ready to snap at any moment. Zhou Mingrui couldn't help but have a self-mocking thought:
"Don't be reckless, you won't die..."
He couldn't bear it any longer. When the string in his mind was about to break, the noisy and overlapping murmurs faded away, and the surrounding area became very quiet, with a rather ethereal atmosphere.
Not only the atmosphere, but Zhou Mingrui felt that his body was also similarly ethereal.
He tried to open his eyes again. This time, it was very easy.
The thick gray fog entered his eyes, blurry, indistinct, and boundless.
"What's going on?" Zhou Mingrui was stunned and looked around, then lowered his head and found himself floating at the edge of an infinite gray fog.
The fog flowed like water, dotted with deep red "stars", some large, some small, some hidden deep inside, some floating on the surface.
Looking at this holographic-like scene, Zhou Mingrui, half confused and half exploring, extended his right hand to try to touch a deep red "star" floating on the surface on the right, hoping to find a way to leave.
When his fingers just touched the surface of that star, suddenly water ripples emerged from his body, igniting the "deep red", like a dreamy flame.
Zhou Mingrui was startled. His right hand hurriedly withdrew, accidentally touching another "deep red".
So, this "star" also began to shine brightly.
Then, Zhou Mingrui felt his head empty and his spirit dispirited. ...
In the capital city of the Kingdom of Ruan, Becland, in the Queen's District, inside a luxurious villa.
Audrey Hall was sitting at the dressing table, stroking the ancient copper mirror with intricate patterns and a cracked surface.
"Mirror, mirror, wake up quickly..."
"I command you to wake up, in the name of the Hall family!" ...
She tried various excuses, but the mirror remained unresponsive.
After about ten minutes, she finally gave up, pinching her lips in frustration and murmuring softly:
"Father is indeed deceiving me. Every time he tells me that this mirror is a precious treasure of the dark emperor of the ancient Solomon Empire and an extraordinary item..."
Before she could finish her words, the copper mirror placed on the table suddenly emitted a deep red glow, enveloping her in an instant. ...
On the sea of Sunia, a three-masted sailing ship, clearly out of step with the times, was battling through the storm.
Alger Wilson stood on the deck, his body swaying with the waves, effortlessly maintaining his balance.
He wore a long robe embroidered with lightning patterns, holding a strangely shaped glass bottle in his hand. Inside, bubbles would sometimes bubble up, sometimes frost would gather into snow, and sometimes wind would leave traces.
"There's still the blood of the ghost shark... " Alger murmured.
Just then, a deep red burst erupted between the glass bottle and his palm, instantly engulfing everything around. ...
Above a greyish-white mist, Audrey Hall regained her sight and looked around in confusion and terror, seeing the man on the opposite side, whose head was blurry and his figure indistinct, doing the same thing.
Immediately after that, they almost simultaneously noticed that there was also a mysterious person standing not far away, surrounded by the same greyish-white mist.
"Unknown person" Zhou Mingrui was equally stunned.
"Sir, where are we?"
"What do you want to do?"
Audrey and Alger were momentarily stunned, fell into silence, and then simultaneously spoke.