The pungent smell of disinfectant stung his nose.
Leon opened his eyes.
What met his gaze was not the sterile white ceiling of a hospital, but the familiar, mold-stained wall of the library staff breakroom.
A kindly elderly librarian was waving smelling salts under his nose.
Seeing him wake up, she finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank goodness, child.
You gave me quite a scare.”
Leon pushed himself up.
His back felt icy cold, his clothes completely soaked in sweat.
His limbs were so weak and unresponsive, it felt as though he had been thoroughly drained of everything inside him.
Of course, he remembered.
That gamble of a divination had squeezed every last drop of spirituality out of his body.
He hadn’t walked to the library at all; he had dragged his broken body there purely through sheer willpower.
His only thought had been that the message must be delivered.
The moment his trembling fingers typed the final letter and clicked send, the string stretched to its limit finally snapped.
Once his mental resolve gave way, his body’s backlash surged up to swallow him.
It had nothing to do with sending the email itself.
It was simply because, having finally accomplished what he set out to do, he could no longer keep up his strength.
He politely declined the librarian’s offer to call an ambulance.
After sitting in the breakroom for about fifteen minutes, he dragged his heavy steps out into the chilly New York night.
The aftereffects of spiritually overexerting himself were far more excruciating than he had anticipated.
With every step, it felt as though a needle was being stirred deep inside his brain.
Stumbling into an empty alleyway, the world suddenly spun.
His surroundings warped and melted away!
Boom!
When he regained his senses, he found himself sitting in a high-backed chair.
Before him lay an ancient long table mottled with bronze rust.
All around was a boundless gray-white fog.
A massive, archaic, indescribable palace stood quietly above the thick mist, looking as though it had existed since the dawn of creation.
“Sefirah Castle…”
The name didn’t come from a memory; it bubbled up naturally from the depths of his heart.
Unlike the last time, his mind was perfectly clear.
He could feel the aura here—both majestic and dead silent.
He could see the twenty-two high-backed chairs in the distance, each representing a different pathway, and feel the terrifying majesty that loomed high above reality.
What about himself?
He felt like a bird returning to its nest—both fearful and intimately familiar, as if this was where he truly belonged.
In the instant he lost himself in thought, a rush of information surged out from the bronze table, carving itself directly into his brain!
It consisted of neither words nor pictures, but a pure, instinctual “knowledge.”
—How to mobilize one’s spirituality to raise an invisible wall around oneself, isolating malicious gazes and mental corruption.
[Wall of Spirituality]!
—How to turn symbols or emblems made of Beyonder materials or precious metals into small items that bring luck, cleanse evil, soothe minds, or even inflict damage through prayer to a deity.
[Charms]!
Before he could fully digest this, the palace before him receded like the tide and vanished.
Leon shuddered, finding himself back in the freezing, dark alleyway.
He was soaked in sweat, gasping heavily.
Everything that had just happened felt like a dream.
But the two distinct sets of knowledge in his mind proved that it was all real.
It was a gift from Mr.
Fool—the first reward bestowed upon him by the great existence above the gray mist after he completed his death-defying “prophecy.”
…
Malibu, Stark’s oceanfront villa.
In the subterranean workshop, Tony Stark paced back and forth, looking highly irritated.
His expensive, handmade leather shoes clicked sharply against the floor.
“Jarvis, report.”
“Sir, the sender of the email has been located,” the AI butler’s steady electronic voice announced.
“The IP address points to public terminal number three at the Queens Public Library.
Security footage has been retrieved.”
Tony stopped in his tracks, somewhat surprised.
“That simple?”
“Yes, sir.
The other party did not employ any encryption or stealth measures.”
A massive holographic screen lit up in front of Tony, displaying a young East Asian face—Leon Hall.
On the surveillance footage, the young man collapsed onto the keyboard immediately after clicking send.
Tony’s brow furrowed.
This wasn’t what he had expected.
There was no hacker’s provocation, nor was there a schemer showing off his skills.
This looked more like…
a high-stakes gamble with everything on the line.
“Who is he?”
“Conducting a background check…
Complete.”
Jarvis’s voice actually carried a very human touch of confusion.
“Sir, I have discovered an…
anomaly.”
On the screen, data scrolled rapidly.
“For the past two weeks, this young man, Leon Hall, has been running a fortune-telling stall under the Brooklyn Bridge, charging one dollar per session.”
Jarvis reported, displaying cases one by one on the screen.
“I analyzed all divination cases involving him that could be found on social networks, from eyewitness accounts, or through scattered security footage.”
“Case One: Divining a lost pet cat for a woman.
Predicted it would appear in a cardboard box in her garage three hours later.
Result: Exactly as predicted.”
“Case Two: Divining a meal for a homeless man.
Predicted he would find an unopened pizza in a street-corner dumpster.
Result: Exactly as predicted.”
“Case Three: Divining the opening trend of a stock for a financial worker.
Predicted it would drop by 1.2% within three minutes of the opening bell.
Result: Actual drop of 1.18%.”
The irritation on Tony’s face faded.
He simply stared at the screen, looking at those trivial yet flawlessly accurate divination results.
“Jarvis,” Tony said, a note of disbelief creeping into his voice, “what are the final statistics?”
“Out of thirty-one verifiable short-term divination cases, thirty-one were accurate.”
Jarvis delivered the most absurd conclusion in the flattest tone possible.
“An accuracy rate of one hundred percent.”
“Statistically speaking…
this is an impossible miracle.”
The workshop fell silent again, a quietness that made one’s heart skip a beat.
Tony Stark slowly stepped up to the screen, extending his hand to trace a finger through the air over Leon’s expressionless face.
A street swindler?
A charlatan with god-tier luck?
Or…
A living “bug” walking the earth?
One hundred percent…
The number was like a needle, sinking deep into Tony Stark’s brain, which was usually packed with science and data.
His face lit up.
It wasn’t mockery; it was an almost maniacal excitement—the kind only felt by a hunter who had spotted the ultimate prey.
…
Two days later.
Having spent all the money he had earned from fortune-telling, Leon rented a dusty, near-bankrupt antique shop on a secluded street in Queens.
He cleared out all the unsellable junk inside, leaving only a table and two chairs in the center.
Then, with a feeling akin to pilgrimage, he took a clean wooden board and painted three characters by hand: [Divination Parlor].
The moment he hung up the sign, he drew upon his newly recovered spirituality to quietly establish a [Wall of Spirituality] around the shop, following the knowledge in his mind.
A magician never performs unprepared.
The bait had been cast, and the fish had bitten.
Now, he needed a quiet, undisturbed stage of his own to welcome his most important audience member.
He closed the shop door and sat in a chair, eyes shut, waiting in complete silence.
After an indeterminate amount of time, *ding-ling*—the old wind chime at the entrance rang out.
A man wearing an ordinary jacket, a baseball cap, and sunglasses pushed the door open, quickly sweeping his gaze across the empty shop.
He took off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of eyes recognized the world over, currently reflecting a mix of arrogance and curiosity.
Tony Stark.
“A one-hundred-percent accuracy rate,” he said, his voice not loud but carrying immense pressure.
“A very impressive party trick.”
“I came here today because I wanted to see with my own eyes exactly how this magic trick is performed.”
Leon, who had kept his eyes closed this entire time, slowly opened them.
Not a single trace of surprise showed on his face.
He simply gestured for Tony to take a seat, as though this scene had been scripted long ago.
“Welcome, Mr.
Stark.”
“I have been expecting you.”