The Daily Life Of A Cyberpunk Magician

Chapter 46 - 47 The Disappearing Magician
Chapter 46: Chapter 47 The Disappearing MagicianKirie was bewildered. Jiang Shu’s magic, such silence, everything deepened her own doubts.

Was this magic?

Magic isn’t just based on process and psychological tricks, is it?

Could something like this silent act, this magical thing, also be called magic?

How am I supposed to figure this out?

She felt some despair, tears welling up in her eyes, her lips involuntarily pouting.

This isn’t a fair game!

But Jiang Shu on the stage didn’t care about Kirie’s feelings. He had done a mentalism trick that involved a process last time, so this time he planned to perform a collection of card techniques.

Don’t blame him for being heartless—it was purely because the T2-level technicians were too tempting.

Swish—

If Kirie could figure this out, if she could replicate it, he, Jiang Shu, would eat the magic table on the spot!

Jiang Shu glanced at the spinning top on the table, his face seemingly saying ”time’s up,” as if to imply that everything up to now was just a small interlude while waiting for the top to stop.

Then he gathered up the sixteen three of hearts and tucked them into the pocket of his coat.

But it seemed that the coat pocket was too small, and after several attempts to stuff them in, Jiang Shu spread out the cards and showed them a shaking motion with both hands.

The next time he displayed them, the cards had shrunk to half their size, and he successfully placed them in his coat pocket.

Having done so, Jiang Shu walked over to the magic table and opened a card in the direction of the spinning top’s point—it was a nine of hearts.

He formed a straight line by laying out the cards around the nine of hearts, then nudged the first one and all the cards unfolded like a wave, revealing a whole deck of nine of hearts.

Once again the audience erupted with exclamations of surprise; their memories were not short. They remembered that just a moment ago, the same deck had been shown with mixed suits and ranks—when had they all become nine of hearts?

But Jiang Shu didn’t give them a chance to ponder. He opened a wooden box sitting at the corner of the table and put the deck of cards inside.

”Tap tap”—he knocked on the wooden box with his knuckles as though casting a spell.

Jiang Shu opened the wooden box again, and this time, the black deck inside had turned red, and there was also a ribbon.

He took out the ribbon, looked at it with a puzzled expression for a while but noticed nothing out of the ordinary, so he placed it vertically in the center of the magic table.

Immediately after, Jiang Shu took out two card frames from the wooden box, one red, one blue, with no notable difference. Holding one in each hand, he looked at them, but suddenly, the frames disappeared from his hands and reappeared neatly at the left and right sides of the magic table, with the ribbon acting as the dividing line.

A look of genuine surprise crossed his face. He touched the frames to check for anything out of place but found nothing, then took out the red deck of cards and inspected them face-up for a while, also finding nothing amiss.

Jiang Shu began to deal the cards, placing one on the left side and one on the right, all face-up, dealing four or five cards on each side, holding the rest in his hand.

After dealing the cards, he stared blankly at the red card frame for two seconds, then turned over the cards on the left side, revealing the red backs, everything as expected, logical. Then, he turned his attention to the right side.

As Jiang Shu flipped them, the backs of the right-side cards astonishingly turned blue!

The ribbon was the clear boundary between red and blue.

He was somewhat astonished, so he dealt the cards again, and even more astounding was that each time a card landed on the right side, its back turned blue, as if the silk ribbon possessed a unique ability to turn everything on the right blue.

Suddenly, it seemed there was a mistake in dealing the cards, and a poker card flew over the Magic Table. Jiang Shu quickly leaned forward, his whole body pressing onto the Magic Table as he reached out to grab it, but he failed to catch it. When he sat up straight again, the black suit he was wearing had shockingly become half red and half blue.

With the silk ribbon as the boundary line, red on the left, blue on the right.

Below the stage, thunderous applause erupted once more.

Next, Jiang Shu experimented multiple times with this boundary line.

For example, a card with a red back was flipped over, face-up, and then slid underneath the silk ribbon. When flipped back, the card’s back had become blue, and by repeating the action, it turned red again.

For instance, a red card was slowly moved across the silk ribbon, and the part on the right side of the ribbon turned red bit by bit as he pushed it along. When he lifted the ribbon and picked up the card, to his amazement, he found the card had become half red, half blue.

He played with it tirelessly like a child who had discovered a mysterious treasure, while in the audience, the atmosphere ignited again and again, the magical ribbon bringing too much shock to the spectators.

Eventually, Jiang Shu seemed to think of something fun and swiftly moved all the red cards to the right, turning them all blue, then dismantled the red card frame on the left and replaced it with a hundred dollar paper money from Lonely City.

He took a coin from his pocket and placed it on the right side of the ribbon, his face filled with anticipation.

Then, with one hand he lifted the silk ribbon, and with the other, he pushed the poker cards on the left swiftly to the right, turning them all into coins. Holding the coins, he was triumphant.

However, glancing at his watch, his expression suddenly became anxious, as on the big screen the time also appeared. The performance had already lasted for fifty-seven minutes, with only the last three minutes left.

On the big screen, a three-minute countdown appeared, seconds ticking away.

Jiang Shu looked at the big screen, hurriedly clearing the table with a belated realization. But, when he tried to dismantle the blue card frame on the right, something went wrong. He pushed too hard and ended up crashing onto the table. When he stood up again, his half red, half blue suit had changed back to black.

He packed up the Wooden Box, then took down the silk ribbon, looking around. He tied one end to the Magic Table and the other end to the leg of a tall chair, the ribbon hovering about half a meter above the ground.

Jiang Shu then took out the three of hearts from his jacket pocket and placed it beneath the silk ribbon, and then, he stood behind the ribbon, leaping high.

It was as if time froze at that second, above the silk line was Jiang Shu jumping up, and below the silk line was the three of hearts.

Above and below the silk line, the cards and the man were clearly separated.

As Jiang Shu came down, his entire figure scattered in the moment he passed through the silk line, turning into hundreds of three of hearts poker cards fluttering to the ground.

The stage returned to calm, and the figure of Jiang Shu was no longer seen.

”What!”

”The Magician vanished himself?”

At that moment, every single audience member stood up in shock, even the most composed spectators couldn’t believe their eyes. They looked at the pile of three of hearts poker cards on the stage, disbelief simultaneously appearing on their faces.

The performance had ended, yet the spectators were reluctant to leave, many of them circulating around the stage, searching for the Magician, but to no avail.

It was not until the theater’s director, Sister Mei, stepped in that the audience was dispersed and gradually left the theater. From their expressions, it was not difficult to infer that today’s magic performance was destined to become legendary.

The theater gradually quieted down, and two security guards came on stage to lift the Magic Table onto a cart, preparing to take it to the Magic House on the fourth floor.

”Hey, do you feel like this table has gotten much heavier?” one security guard asked.

”Indeed, feels like it’s gained over a hundred pounds, no idea what they put inside.” The other security guard replied, his face full of confusion.