Free? The most expensive things are free! Zhou Mingrui muttered silently to himself, planning to firmly refuse any additional services, no matter what they were.
If you're so good, divine that I'm a transmigrator!
With that thought, Zhou Mingrui followed the woman whose face was painted with red and yellow greasepaint, bending down to enter the low tent.
Inside, it was very dark, with only a sliver of light seeping in, vaguely illuminating a table covered with tarot cards.
The woman in the pointed hat was completely unaffected. Her long black skirt drifted like it was floating on water as she circled the table, sat down across from him, and lit a candle.
The dim, flickering flame cast the tent in shifting shades of light and shadow, instantly lending it an air of mystery.
Zhou Mingrui sat down calmly, his gaze sweeping over the tarot cards on the table. He noticed several major arcana he recognized — "The Magician," "Emperor," "The Hanged Man," and "Temperance."
"Could Comrade Roselle really be a 'predecessor'...? I wonder if he's a fellow citizen of my great food-loving empire..." The corner of Zhou Mingrui's mouth twitched, and he felt a brief moment of reverie.
Before he had finished examining all the face-up cards on the table, the fortune teller — who claimed her divinations were "highly accurate" — had already reached out, gathered all the tarot cards together, stacked them into a pile, and pushed them in front of him.
"You shuffle and cut the cards." The circus fortune teller's voice was low and hoarse.
"I shuffle?" Zhou Mingrui asked reflexively.
The red and yellow greasepaint on the fortune teller's face shifted as she revealed a faint smile.
"Of course. Only a person can divine their own destiny. I'm merely an interpreter."
Zhou Mingrui immediately grew wary and shot back:
"Interpretation isn't an extra charge, is it?"
As an armchair folklorist, I've seen plenty of tricks like this!
The fortune teller visibly froze for a moment before finally mumbling in a sullen voice:
"It's free."
Zhou Mingrui relaxed, stuffed the revolver a bit deeper into his pocket, then calmly extended both hands and deftly shuffled and cut the cards.
"Done." He placed the shuffled tarot deck in the center of the table.
The fortune teller clasped her hands together, studied the cards intently for a moment, then suddenly spoke up:
"Apologies, I forgot to ask — what do you want to divine?"
Back when he had been pursuing his unrequited first love, Zhou Mingrui had actually studied tarot, so he answered without hesitation:
"The past, the present, and the future."
This was a tarot spread — three cards laid out in sequence, symbolizing the past, the present, and the future.
The fortune-teller nodded first, then curled her lips upward into a smile:
"Then please shuffle the cards once more. Only when you understand what you wish to ask will you draw cards that truly hold symbolic meaning."
So you were messing with me just now… Do you have to be this petty? Was it really because I kept emphasizing it was free? The muscles on Zhou Mingrui's face twitched. He took a deep breath, took back the tarot deck, and reshuffled and cut the cards.
"This time there's no more problems, right?" He placed the cut deck on the table.
"None." The fortune-teller reached out with a finger, picked up a card from the top, and placed it on Zhou Mingrui's left side, her voice growing lower and hoarser. "This one symbolizes the past."
"This one symbolizes the present." She placed the second card directly in front of Zhou Mingrui.
She picked up the third card and set it on his right side:
"This one symbolizes the future."
"Alright, which card would you like to see first?" Having finished, the fortune-teller raised her head, her gray-blue eyes gazing deeply into Zhou Mingrui's.
"Let's see 'the present' first." Zhou Mingrui thought for a moment and said.
The fortune-teller nodded slowly and flipped over the card in the center.
The card depicted a young man dressed in ornate clothing, wearing a flamboyant headdress, with a staff slung over his shoulder bearing luggage at its tip, and a small dog tugging from behind. The number was "0."
"The Fool." The fortune-teller read the card's name softly, her gray-blue eyes fixed on Zhou Mingrui.
The Fool? The zero card of the tarot? The beginning? A beginning that contains all possibilities? Zhou Mingrui couldn't even qualify as a novice tarot enthusiast; he could only rely on his general impression to make a rough interpretation on his own.
Just as the fortune-teller was about to speak, the tent's fabric door was suddenly thrown open, and intense sunlight flooded in, so blinding that Zhou Mingrui, who had his back to the entrance, instinctively squinted.
"Why are you pretending to be me again! Telling fortunes is my job!" a female voice snarled in fury. "Get back in there! Remember — you are nothing but a beast tamer!"
A beast tamer? Zhou Mingrui's eyes adjusted to the light, and he saw a woman standing at the entrance, also wearing a pointed hat and a black dress with red and yellow paint on her face — only she was taller and thinner.
The woman sitting across from him hastily stood up and said dejectedly:
"Don't mind it. I just enjoy this, that's all. I have to say, sometimes my readings and interpretations are really quite accurate, honestly…"
As she spoke, she lifted her hem, circled around the table from the side, and quickly left the tent.
"Sir, would you like me to do your reading?" The real fortune-teller looked at Zhou Mingrui and asked with a smile.
Twitching the corner of his mouth, Zhou Mingrui asked earnestly in return:
"Is it free?"
"…No," the real fortune-teller replied.
"Never mind." Zhou Mingrui shoved his hand back into his pocket, pressing against the revolver and the banknotes, then bent down to exit the tent.
Unbelievable — he'd gone and found a beast tamer to do a tarot reading!
Isn't a beast tamer who doesn't want to be a diviner just a bad clown?
Zhou Mingrui quickly put the whole affair out of his mind. At the "Lettuce and Meat" market, he spent seven pence on a pound of not-so-good lamb, then bought tender peas, cabbage, onions, potatoes, and other items. With the bread from earlier, it all came to twenty-five copper pence — two soli and one pence.
"Money really doesn't last, poor Benson…" Zhou Mingrui had not only lost the two banknotes he'd brought out, but also parted with the lone pence that had been sitting in his trouser pocket.
He tossed off the remark without much thought, then hurried back home without lingering on it.
With staple food in hand, he could finally perform the ritual of changing his luck!
…………
Once the tenants on the second floor had all left, Zhou Mingrui didn't rush to begin the ritual. Instead, he first translated "Blessed Venerable of the Mysterious Yellow" and the other phrases into Ancient Fosac and Loen, planning that if the original incantation failed to take effect, he would try again the next day using the local language!
After all, he had to account for the differences between two worlds — when in Rome, do as the Romans do.