Chapter 5: The Ritual

Chapter Five
The Ritual

Free?

The most expensive things in the world are the ones that cost nothing!

Zhou Mingrui muttered silently to himself, resolving that no matter what additional services she tried to sell afterward, he would firmly refuse.

If you are so capable, then divine that I am a transmigrator.

With that thought, he followed the red-and-yellow-painted woman, bent down, and entered the low tent.

The inside of the tent was very dark. Only a little light seeped in, faintly illuminating a table covered with cards.

The woman in the pointed hat seemed unaffected. Her black dress drifted like something floating over water as she moved around the table, sat opposite him, and lit a candle.

Dim yellow flame swayed. Light and darkness wavered inside the tent, and a hint of mystery appeared at once.

Zhou Mingrui sat without showing much reaction. His gaze swept over the tarot cards on the table, and he discovered several Major Arcana he recognized: The Magician, The Emperor, The Hanged Man, Temperance, and others.

“Could Comrade Roselle really be a predecessor… I wonder whether he came from my great foodie empire…”

The corners of Zhou Mingrui’s mouth shifted slightly, and he fell into a brief daze.

Before he had time to finish looking over the face-up cards on the table, the woman who claimed her divinations were very effective reached out and gathered all the tarot cards into a pile. She pushed the stack in front of him.

“You shuffle and cut,” the circus diviner said in a low, husky voice.

“I shuffle?” Zhou Mingrui asked instinctively.

The red and yellow greasepaint on the diviner’s face shifted as she gave a faint smile.

“Of course. Each person can divine only his own fate. I am merely the interpreter.”

Zhou Mingrui immediately asked with suspicion, “The interpretation does not cost extra, does it?”

As a keyboard folklorist, I have seen plenty of tricks like this!

The diviner was visibly stunned. Only after a while did she reply in a muffled voice, “It is free.”

Zhou Mingrui relaxed. He pushed the revolver a little deeper into his pocket, then calmly extended both hands and shuffled and cut the deck with practiced motions.

“There.” He placed the shuffled cards in the center of the table.

The diviner clasped her hands and studied the deck seriously for a while. Then she suddenly spoke.

“Excuse me. I forgot to ask—what do you wish to divine?”

Back when he had been pursuing his unsuccessful first love, Zhou Mingrui had once studied tarot cards. Without hesitation, he said, “The past, the present, and the future.”

This was a spread used in tarot divination. Three cards were laid out in order, symbolizing the past, the present, and the future.

The diviner nodded first, then lifted the corners of her mouth and smiled.

“In that case, please shuffle again. Only by knowing what you wish to ask can the cards you draw have true symbolic meaning.”

You were messing with me just now…

Do you have to be so petty? All I did was emphasize that it had to be free…

The muscles of Zhou Mingrui’s face twitched. He drew a deep breath, took the deck back, and shuffled and cut it again.

“No problems this time, right?” He placed the cut deck on the table.

“None.” The diviner reached out, took the top card, and placed it to Zhou Mingrui’s left. Her voice became even lower and huskier. “This card represents the past.”

“This card represents the present.” She placed the second card directly in front of Zhou Mingrui.

Then she took the third card and set it to his right.

“This card represents the future.”

“Good. Which card would you like to see first?” Having done all this, the diviner raised her head and looked deeply at Zhou Mingrui with her grayish-blue eyes.

“The present first,” Zhou Mingrui said after a moment’s thought.

The diviner nodded slowly and turned over the card lying before him.

It depicted a young man in splendid clothing and a brilliant headpiece. A staff rested over his shoulder, with a bundle hanging from its end, and behind him a small dog tugged at him. The number on the card was 0.

“The Fool,” the diviner read softly, her grayish-blue eyes fixed on Zhou Mingrui.

The Fool? Tarot’s number zero? A beginning? A beginning containing all possibilities?

Zhou Mingrui could not even be called a novice tarot enthusiast. He could only rely on his impressions to form a rough interpretation.

Just as the diviner was about to speak, the cloth door of the tent was abruptly lifted. Strong sunlight poured in, forcing even Zhou Mingrui, whose back was to the entrance, to narrow his eyes on instinct.

“Why are you pretending to be me again? Divining for people is my job!” an angry female voice growled. “Go back! You have to remember—you are only an animal trainer!”

Animal trainer?

After adjusting to the light, Zhou Mingrui saw a woman at the entrance wearing the same pointed hat, black dress, and red-and-yellow face paint. She was taller and thinner.

The woman seated before him hurriedly stood, looking rather dispirited.

“Do not mind me. I only like doing this. I must say, sometimes my divinations and interpretations are quite accurate. Truly…”

As she spoke, she lifted her skirt, circled around the side of the table, and quickly left the tent.

The real diviner looked at Zhou Mingrui with a smile.

“Sir, would you like me to interpret the cards for you?”

Zhou Mingrui’s lips moved. With sincere honesty, he asked, “Is it free?”

“…No,” the real diviner answered.

“Then forget it.”

Zhou Mingrui put his hand back into his pocket, pressed down on the revolver and the banknotes, bent over, and stepped out of the tent.

Honestly. They actually found an animal trainer to do tarot readings.

An animal trainer who does not want to be a diviner is not a good clown?

Zhou Mingrui quickly tossed the incident to the back of his mind. At the Lettuce and Meat Market, he spent seven pence on one pound of rather ordinary lamb. He also bought tender peas, cabbage, onions, potatoes, and other things. Including the bread from earlier, he had spent twenty-five copper pence in total: two soli and one penny.

“Money really does not last. Poor Benson…”

Not only had Zhou Mingrui used up the two notes he had brought with him, he had also spent one of the pennies that had originally been in his trouser pocket.

He sighed casually, did not dwell on it, and hurried back home.

Now that he had the staple food, he could perform the luck-changing ritual.

…

After the tenants on the second floor had all left one after another, Zhou Mingrui did not immediately begin the ritual. First, he translated the phrases “Blessings from the Immortal Lord of Heaven and Earth” and the rest into ancient Feysac and Loenese. If the original incantation failed to work, he intended to try again the next day in the local language.

After all, the two worlds were different. One had to respect local customs.

As for translating the lines into Hermes, the ancient language used for prayers and sacrifices, Zhou Mingrui lacked sufficient vocabulary and could not complete it.

Only after finishing this did he draw four pieces of rye bread from the paper bag. One he placed in the corner where the coal stove had originally sat. One he set inside the base of the full-length mirror. One went on top of the cabinet, near the meeting point of the two walls. The last he placed among the miscellaneous objects piled to the right of the desk.

Taking a deep breath, Zhou Mingrui walked to the center of the room. He first calmed himself for several minutes. Then he stepped forward solemnly, tracing a square counterclockwise.

With the first step, he recited in a low voice:

“Blessings from the Immortal Lord of Heaven and Earth.”

With the second step, he silently said with sincerity:

“Blessings from the Heavenly Lord of Heaven and Earth.”

With the third step, holding his breath and concentrating, Zhou Mingrui murmured:

“Blessings from the Supreme Lord of Heaven and Earth.”

With the fourth step, he exhaled stale air and recited with all his heart:

“Blessings from the Venerable Lord of Heaven and Earth.”

After completing the square and returning to his place, Zhou Mingrui closed his eyes and waited for the result. In his heart were expectation, unease, hope, and fear.

Can I go back?

Will it work?

Could some accident happen instead?

The darkness behind his eyelids was stained with the deep red brought by the light. Thoughts crowded and surged in Zhou Mingrui’s mind, impossible to still.

At that moment, he suddenly felt that the air around him had stopped flowing. It became thick, viscous, and strange.

Immediately afterward, whispers sounded by his ears.

At times they were fine and dense. At times sharp. At times illusory, enticing, frenzied, mad.

Though he could not understand what the murmurs were saying, Zhou Mingrui could not help but listen, could not help trying to distinguish them.

His head began to hurt again, violently, as if an iron spike had been driven into it.

Zhou Mingrui felt as though his skull were about to burst. His thoughts took on a hallucinatory hue.

He knew something was wrong. He struggled with all his might to open his eyes, but he could not complete even that simple action.

His entire being grew more and more taut, as if it might snap at any moment. For no reason, Zhou Mingrui found a self-mocking thought rising in his mind:

If you do not court death, you will not die…

He could bear it no longer. Just as the string in his mind was about to break, the countless overlapping whispers withdrew. The surroundings became very quiet, and the atmosphere grew strangely weightless.

Not only the atmosphere. Zhou Mingrui felt that his body, too, had become weightless.

He tried opening his eyes again.

This time, it was easy.

A gray fog filled his vision, hazy, indistinct, boundless.

“What is this?”

Zhou Mingrui looked around in astonishment. Then he lowered his head and discovered that he was floating at the edge of a limitless gray mist.

The gray fog flowed like water. Within it were dotted deep crimson “stars.” Some were large, some tiny. Some hid in the depths, while others floated near the surface.

Staring at the scene, which resembled a holographic image, Zhou Mingrui stretched out his right hand in a mixture of confusion and exploration. He attempted to touch one of the crimson “stars” floating near the surface on his right, hoping to find a way out.

The moment his fingers touched the surface of that star, ripples suddenly surged from his body. They struck the “crimson,” causing it to burst into brilliance like a dreamlike firework.

Zhou Mingrui jumped in fright. He withdrew his right hand in a panic and accidentally brushed against another “crimson” star.

And so, that star also blazed with light.

And so, Zhou Mingrui felt his head grow hollow and his spirit scatter.

…

Backlund, capital of the Loen Kingdom. Queen’s Borough.

Inside a luxurious villa, Audrey Hall sat before her dressing table, stroking an ancient-patterned bronze mirror whose surface was cracked.

“Magic mirror, magic mirror, wake up quickly…”

“In the name of the Hall family, I command you to awaken!”

…

She changed her wording again and again, but the mirror gave no response.

After more than ten minutes, she finally chose to give up. Pouting with grievance, she muttered softly, “Father was deceiving me after all. Every time, he tells me this mirror was a treasure of the Black Emperor of the ancient Solomon Empire, an extraordinary item…”

Before her words had fully fallen, the bronze mirror on the table suddenly erupted with deep crimson light, enveloping her in an instant.

…

On the Sonia Sea, a three-masted sailing ship plainly behind the times cut through a storm.

Alger Wilson stood on the deck, his body rising and falling with the ship’s violent motion while he effortlessly maintained his balance.

He wore a robe embroidered with patterns of lightning and held in his hands a strangely shaped glass bottle. Inside it, bubbles sometimes rolled; frost sometimes gathered into snow; at times, the traces of wind scraped across the glass.

“I still lack the blood of a ghost shark…”

Alger murmured.

Just then, deep crimson burst forth between the glass bottle and his palm, drowning the world around him in an instant.

…

Above the gray-white fog, Audrey Hall’s vision returned. Terrified and bewildered, she looked left and right, only to see that a man opposite her, his head blurred and his figure indistinct, was making much the same movements.

Immediately afterward, the two of them almost simultaneously noticed that not far away stood a mysterious figure shrouded from head to toe in gray-white mist.

That “mysterious figure,” Zhou Mingrui, was equally dumbfounded.

“Your Excellency, where is this?”

“What do you intend to do?”

Audrey and Alger were first stunned into silence. Then, almost at the same moment, they spoke.