Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night.
The number of topics born from the second round of evaluation was practically endless.
An E-rank trainee had received an S-rank rating. The ever-elusive No. 1 had finally made an appearance. Either one of those alone would have been enough to keep everyone talking through the night.
Before the assembly in the broadcasting hall came to an end, the system announced that, for the next three days, lavish dinners would be served in the dining hall on the second floor of the dormitory, the one with the panoramic view. All trainees were allowed to attend, regardless of rank.
Although their physiological needs had been eliminated after becoming thriller trainees, whose mouth would not water at the sight of a feast? And considering the desolate environment they were trapped in, where no one knew when death would come for them, everyone was more than willing to indulge in a little revelry to relieve their stress.
After the assembly ended, almost all the trainees swarmed downstairs toward the dining hall.
The white-haired young man glanced at the crowd bustling down the staircase, then silently chose to take the stairs upward instead.
In a sense, he had already obtained an admission ticket into the upper three ranks. Although he had not leapt straight to the throne the way people had speculated, Zong Jiu was the only newcomer who had broken through into the trainees’ upper three ranks. Right now, he was the hottest topic among all the newcomers.
The C-rank trainee dormitory was located on the fourth floor.
As far as the eye could see, rows of clean, orderly rooms lined both sides of the corridor. The floor was covered in thick crimson carpeting, lush green plants stood at intervals along the hallway, and the pale yellow overhead lights cast a warm glow over everything.
If he ignored what kind of place this really was, then at first glance, he might have thought he had walked onto the guest-room floor of some luxury hotel.
The treatment received by the upper three ranks was entirely different from that of the lower three. E-rankers slept eight to a room, D-rankers slept four to a room, while C-rankers were given single rooms—and standard hotel-style single rooms at that.
Following the serial number on his badge, Zong Jiu arrived at the corresponding door. Just as he was about to open it, hurried footsteps sounded from behind him.
He calmly dodged to the side.
The man behind him failed to stop in time and slammed hard into the wall.
“Fuck—”
The C-rank veteran had missed his strike. Just as he was about to turn back, an elbow suddenly forced him to stagger several steps before he fell to the ground.
“You…”
The white-haired young man stood there in silence, looking down at him from above.
Beneath the shadow of his bangs, his pale pink eyes looked extraordinarily sharp, like shards of thin ice.
With just one glance, the trainee on the floor stiffened from head to toe.
“Don’t provoke me if you don’t want to die.”
His gaze carried a clear warning as it swept over the C-ranks standing at both ends of the corridor. Then, without looking back, he walked into his room.
Bang—
The loud slam echoed down the long corridor.
Only after several seconds did the veteran finally come back to his senses.
“Fucking hell. This newbie is really damn arrogant.”
“Wasn’t all he did just get an S-rank rating? With the airs he’s putting on, you’d think he’d already turned into a phoenix.”
“I know, right? Someone really ought to beat some color into him.”
Despite saying so, none of the C-ranks wanted to be the one to step forward first.
Zong Jiu swiped his room card and opened the door.
C-rank dormitory rooms were not too large, but they were still standard single rooms in an ordinary hotel.
On the plus side, it was a single room, which protected the trainees’ privacy and gave them at least a little space to be alone.
He did not take the provocations of the C-rank trainees outside seriously.
In the infinite loop, all veterans with some ability were C-rank or above. This rank looked very impressive in the eyes of newcomers, but among veterans, it was merely the bottom rung.
Not only did they have a serious herd mentality, their actual strength was nothing worth mentioning. They were full of schemes and calculations, yet all of it was only to put on the pretense that they were not easy prey. People like that would never dare to be the first to step forward. Zong Jiu had no time to waste on them.
What mattered more right now was—
The white-haired young man reached into the system space and took out a deck of cards.
The cards were deep gold, with a God’s Eye pattern embossed on the back in dark-gold lines. Their borders were complex, entwined with obscure occult symbols, and fine gold powder shimmered faintly within them, glowing with a strange allure even in the dark.
Zong Jiu spread them out in an arc across the bed.
There were twenty-two cards in total.
Although this was also a deck of cards, it was not the poker deck Zong Jiu was most familiar with as a top card magician.
A poker deck had fifty-four cards. Zi pai had eighty-one. None of the niche card games from 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: “…”
Amazing.
He had been pleased for quite a while because he had touched a deck of cards inside the iron box, only to discover that it was not a deck of playing cards at all.
It was a tarot deck.
But he was a magician, not a fortune-teller!!!
“How is this thing even supposed to work… System, does it have any special use?”
[Prop Ability: Divination]
Do I need you to tell me that?
Zong Jiu was speechless. “Other S-rank props all have special abilities, but my S-rank prop can only be used for divination?”
Evidently, Zong Jiu’s question was outside the scope of the system’s 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.]
Oh, now that sounded more like it.
Zong Jiu took out the Tarot Guide with its solid black cover, sat down on the bed, and seriously turned to the first page.
The system actually had a conscience. It had very thoughtfully made the booklet that came with the cards easy for a tarot novice like him to understand, complete with colorful illustrations and explanatory text.
Only after Zong Jiu had read the Tarot Guide from beginning to end and touched the cards again did he have no choice but to admit that—
These twenty-two Major Arcana cards did not possess any combat ability. Their only use was divination.
However, as an S-rank prop, it would have been far too weak if it had only possessed the ordinary divination ability that all tarot cards had. Regarding this, the system’s explanation was that every divination performed with this deck of cards had the ability to glimpse into the future.
“Glimpse into the future?!”
Now Zong Jiu’s spirits lifted.
Glimpsing into the future meant gaining one more clue when there were none. In a sense, although the Major Arcana deck had no combat ability, it certainly deserved the title of an S-rank prop.
“Can the scope of the divination be set at my own discretion?”
The system did not reply. Instead, it pulled up a cooldown bar for him.
It showed that Zong Jiu could perform three divinations. After those three divinations were used, he would have to wait for the cooldown to reset before he could draw cards again.
Zong Jiu said, “Never mind. There doesn’t seem to be anything I want to know right now. I won’t test it for the time being.”
“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 him a friendly reminder—
[Current account balance of the trainee: 2,000 points.]
“Why be so strict with the scope? What if I don’t need them restored immediately, and only need my hands to return to their peak state for a short period of time?”
[It can be done, but the number of survival points required is extremely high. It is not recommended that trainees choose this option.]
“Doesn’t matter.”
Zong Jiu shrugged and moved his slightly stiff fingers. “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. “Then three days it is.”
In fact, Zong Jiu could also choose to gamble first and earn five hundred points, then heal his hands outright.
But three days was exactly how long Las Vegas would remain open.
If he chose to use 2,500 points to heal his hands immediately, he would only recover to the level of an ordinary person.
But there were no shortcuts when it came to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by a magician. Everything came from training day after day, year after year, since childhood. For example, when Zong Jiu had first begun learning magic, he had even trained himself to control the blinking of his eyes, and he had slept every night with cards in his hands to build muscle memory.
What could such training bring?
For example, when Zong Jiu performed, he could scatter an entire deck of cards directly into the air and, from the rain of fluttering cards, pluck out whichever card the audience named.
And the audience would never know whether what they had witnessed was a feat of agility or a magic trick.
During those three days, as long as Zong Jiu’s hands could be restored to the level they had been at when he was a virtuoso magician, he could let everyone learn exactly what happened when a card magician was allowed into a casino.
Even if a card magician sat right in front of you with ten cameras aimed at him, you still would not be able to catch the traces of his tricks, even if the footage were slowed down and replayed frame by frame.
One had to understand that, back in Zong Jiu’s original world, Las Vegas—the gambling city—had come this close to putting up a sign that read: “Magician Zong Jiu and Dogs Are Forbidden From Entering.”
And now that he had the rare opportunity to transmigrate into a novel, Zong Jiu’s reputation had not yet fallen to such a state. He could gamble as many rounds as possible, then make a dash for it once he had won enough.
A gambling dog would never admit defeat.
He did not want to proceed steadily and safely.
He wanted to go big.
Zong Jiu watched the points in his system balance empty out.
The next moment, a stream of heat suddenly surged from his fingertips. Miraculously, it flowed through the tendons and veins that had long since gone necrotic over the years, following the blue veins beneath his skin and seeping into his capillaries. The sensation was so comfortable that he could not help letting out a deep sigh.
The heat lasted for almost half a minute before gradually fading.
[2,000 points have been paid. The 3-day countdown begins.]
The young man’s hands trembled unconsciously.
He picked up the deck of tarot cards lying on the bed.
The deep-gold cards danced between his fingers, each one lightly caught between his fingertips, only to fly into the air the next second. They spun and fell, and every card was effortlessly caught in Zong Jiu’s palm.
No matter which card it was, as long as Zong Jiu thought of it, his fingers would brush gently across the surface of the cards in a split second, and he could draw it out directly even with his eyes closed.
His hands were trembling.
His hands moved faster and faster.
The curve of his lips grew wider and wider.
Along with him, the cards seemed to tremble as well, as if anticipating the emperor’s brief return.
It was an indescribable, incomparable card-shuffling technique.
As the cards slid across his palm, Zong Jiu naturally mapped the entire deck into three-dimensional space inside his mind. From that moment on, no matter how the cards were shuffled, as long as they passed through his hands, he could pinpoint the exact location of any card.
Zong Jiu tossed the cards into the air and suddenly closed his eyes, casually snatching one from among them.
Smiling, the young man slowly turned the card over.
A man dressed in a long robe stood before an altar, upon which many ritual objects had been placed.
A symbol of boundless power hovered above the man’s head. In his hand, a double-ended wand pointed simultaneously toward 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 was back.