The magician in the city

Chapter 682 The Gift of Our Ancestors (72)

As soon as Du Zhengyi stepped through the door of the fortune tellers, the dozen or so fortune tellers behind the door immediately fell silent, and a dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at him.

Du Zhengyi had a feeling that he was like a rough farmer walking into a chicken coop, where these clever, dull chickens quietly awaited their fate. The scene was somewhat comical, as if if he really took one chicken away, the others would just continue pecking at insects.

The fortune teller's hall was poorly lit, with rows of fluorescent workbenches arranged in a regular pattern, each equipped with its own visualization device. Du Zheng looked towards the far end of the room, where there was a corridor, and further corridors with even more cubicles. He looked at the screens on their workbenches; countless symbols were scrolling by, and he couldn't keep up at all.

On one wall of the hall stood a huge shelf, each grid containing a crystal. He initially thought it was a decoration unique to sorcerers, but he quickly sensed the energy within the crystals; numerous spells were busily flowing between them. He couldn't decipher the spells, but he could sense some patterns between them. After a few seconds, he confirmed that the crystals were arranged in parallel arrays.

He moved slowly between the mathematicians and their workbenches, observing everyone's faces, their auras, and their magical characteristics. He bent down and randomly placed his hand on a crystal on a workbench. The mathematician near that workbench twitched, almost jumping up. But the mathematician restrained himself, merely frowning slightly in disgust.

There's nothing wrong with their minds; they're just better at controlling their emotions and instinctive reactions than the experimental mages.

Du Zhengyi stood up and continued walking inside, traversing the entire hall. The Lonely Mountain Contract offered no further guidance; perhaps the crisis had passed, or perhaps the suspect was no longer connected to this place. Just then, the doors to the cubicles deep in the corridor opened, and several more high-level diviners emerged. They came out on their own and gathered before the Lonely Mountain guards. No one bothered to exchange words with Du Zhengyi; they all knew who he was and why he was there. Du Zhengyi was like the most authoritative executioner in the magical world, through whom Hades chose the guilty.

Du Zhengyi's gaze swept over their calm faces as he slowly walked past them, stopping in front of the two female fortune tellers. The younger fortune teller seemed to have only recently joined the company; she lacked both age and experience. The moment Du Zhengyi stopped, she trembled, and the glass of black tea in her hand fell to the ground.

Du Zheng bent down and caught the red teacup. The blood-red liquid could not conceal the image of a human bomber engraved on the bottom of the transparent glass.

Her gaze followed Du Zhengyi's and fell on the bomber. Startled, she anxiously began to explain, "I...I'm not a Lotus Eater who betrayed the Mage!"

She noticed the young man's deep gaze fixed on her face, and her trembling intensified. "It's not that I'm a Lotus Burner, that's not what I meant... I... I'm neither a Lotus Eater nor a Lotus Burner, I'm just... just a mage..."

"Take your cups," Du Zhengyi said.

Another female fortune teller nearby used a levitation spell to save her from the predicament, and the teacup floated from Du Zhengyi's hand to the table next to her. Du Zhengyi looked at her, and she smiled at him.

Du Zheng looked at her for a while, then said thoughtfully, "I need you to come with me."

Several panicked gazes were cast in their direction. Someone took a step toward them, then abruptly stopped.

“Alright,” the female fortune teller said, a little nervous, but she didn’t say anything more. Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, as if seeing off a death row inmate, she calmly followed Du Zhengyi out.

Du Zhengyi led her to a stop in the hall and politely gestured to her. She returned a smile, reached out and took Du Zhengyi's arm, and the two disappeared into the fortune teller's underground palace.

In the nearly empty coffee shop, Du Zhengyi and the female fortune teller sat on high stools on either side of a small round table. The female fortune teller looked around; the workbench was not far away, with a La Marzocco coffee machine on it that looked like it had just been used, the air still filled with the rich aroma of coffee. There were more comfortable seats nearby, the black leather sofas looked quite nice.

She lowered her head, curiously examining the wooden plate on the round table. On the plate were a pine cone and a handful of acorns. She picked up a peculiar one from the acorns—a hazelnut that looked remarkably like an acorn. "How embarrassing," Du Zhengyi said, looking at the hazelnut in her hand. "A mistake made in haste."

“So… this is your sandbox? Your torture chamber and temporary prison,” she said gently.

What she said wasn't entirely wrong; this place could generate the appearance Du Zhengyi wanted each time he entered. He set it up as the coffee shop he'd recently visited, recreating the scene. But the last time he was at the coffee shop, he'd thought that the decorative acorns looked too much like the hazelnuts Roach often ate—were they related? He hadn't expected that thought to linger in his mind.

The guards of Lonely Mountain shouldn't think like this... so far off track. They wouldn't reveal too much of their personal information. Leaking too much personal information, at the very least, would severely damage their prestige. Although the female fortune teller looked quite young, it wasn't hard to tell from her eyes that she was already middle-aged, at least Du Zhengyi's generation older, which was already a disadvantageous situation. However, based on Du Zhengyi's experience, he should have been able to handle this kind of situation, but this interrogation inexplicably damaged his momentum from the very beginning.

"Is there anything you want to say to me?" the female fortune teller asked.

Her expression was still unusually gentle. Du Zhengyi looked at her and realized that she was serious about asking the question.

She was a sorcerer taken from a crime scene by the guards of Lonely Mountain; she was even a diviner, not one of those ordinary sorcerers who knew nothing. She shouldn't have pretended to be confused; pretending to be confused was not a wise move for a diviner of extraordinary wisdom.

Du Zhengyi countered her question, "You should know why I chose you. I'd rather you give me a reason."

The female fortune teller stared at him for a while, her pupils shifting slightly. Du Zhengyi knew that she was also collecting data from him, although her method of data collection might not be magical.

She thought about it seriously for a while, as if she was correcting her thinking and verifying her results.

“I think… the reason might be because…” She looked tentatively into Du Zhengyi’s eyes and said with a hint of uncertainty, “It might be because… because I am Luo Qi’s aunt, you know him, and you found some familiar shadows in my face.”

Du Zheng was stunned, then quickly understood the whole story. He had never felt so humiliated in his life. He was wrong; he had sensed the weakening of the strong bindings of Lonely Mountain long ago, but he thought that strange feeling on her was still guided by the Lonely Mountain contract... Now that it had been pointed out, he realized that the curious look in her eyes was so similar to Luo Qi's.

"You are...you are Master Chu Jin?" he stammered.

"Yes," Chu Jin nodded, "but I am indeed a suspect."

Oh, she's so understanding, much better than Luo Qi, she even gave him a way out. Du Zhengyi sat awkwardly on the bar stool, wishing he had chosen the sofa instead, so he could at least bend his back a little.

“But I think… it’s not necessarily because of the magic of Lonely Mountain that you chose me. It’s possible that it’s just because I look familiar,” Chu Jin added. “I’m not saying this to make excuses. If you have any questions, I will cooperate with the investigation.”

"Just a few minor questions," Du Zhengyi said, forcing himself to remain calm, and then proceeded to ask a few more. Chu Jin answered fluently, making it almost impossible for Du Zhengyi to concentrate. He was really something; he immediately identified Luo Qi's aunt.