Dual wielding volcanoes, killing through the west

The opera troupe seemed well aware that they were just stalling for time. After performing only a few acts, the gongs and drums sounded, banners fluttered wildly on stage, and they were offstage amidst a dazzling display. The stage lights changed, and a host with a spiky, afro-like hairstyle slowly stepped forward, straightened his suit, and deliberately cleared his throat, intentionally whetting the audience's appetite.

"As for art from across the ocean... I won't comment. To be honest, like most viewers, I didn't understand it at all. But the next show is definitely something everyone has been waiting for. It's no exaggeration to say that for only $7, you can enjoy real court magic—you've already gotten an incredible deal!"

Prices in big cities are incomparable to those in small towns.

A typical show was originally priced at $5, allowing the audience to see three performances. However, since the Oriental theater troupe moved in, tickets for every show have been sold out, so the price was temporarily increased by $2, but it still didn't affect its popularity. Circuses, opera troupes, dances, snake charmers... people were tired of these old-fashioned shows and wanted to see something new and exciting that they had never seen before.

The deafening cheers from the audience showed just how much everyone was looking forward to the upcoming main event.

"Have you ever seen lightning streak across the sky, leaving a trail of afterimages? Today, on this stage, you will witness it. It's no exaggeration to say that his hands are faster than lightning! Faster than light! Faster than a bullet!"

"Oh oh oh oh—!!"

Whistles, screams, and applause blended together, creating a powerful, overwhelming sound.

"The more they exaggerate, the less real it becomes. Lightning and the speed of light are one thing..." Theon couldn't help but complain, "How could a human hand possibly be faster than a bullet?"

"It's just embellishment." Xiaomei's curiosity was piqued, and she gripped the railing of the stands with both hands, leaning out halfway to try to see more clearly. "Good stories deserve embellishment, Mr. Theon. Everyone knows magic tricks are fake, isn't the enjoyment part of being fooled?"

The host paused for a short while, and seeing that the atmosphere was about to boil over, he waved his right arm and cleared his throat.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will bring you... a court magician from across the ocean..."

He spoke with the cadence of someone introducing a boxer, drawing out the words before bursting out in a loud voice, "The Miracle Hand—!!"

……

The curtain opens.

Under the lights, a figure slowly walked out.

Zhu Kuilong's stage presence was remarkably steady; he wasn't overwhelmed by the thunderous applause, treating it as a gentle breeze, remaining composed and unfazed. His steps were measured and even, his face expressionless, requiring no extra movements. Simply by standing there, the entire stage seemed to lean towards him. This quality was somewhat similar to Evelyn's, except that the latter possessed such talent, while Zhu Kuilong had, through countless performances, integrated stage experience into his own person, creating a performance style that was almost a deconstructed formula.

It doesn't matter if we don't speak the language.

It doesn't matter if we don't understand each other's cultures.

The art of hand-drawn lottery is something that has the ability to impress audiences anytime, anywhere!

----

After a brief greeting, Zhu Kuilong took off the colorful cloud carpet draped over his shoulders, holding one corner in each hand, and the performance began.

Show it to the audience from the front.

Show the audience the opposite.

This indicates that there are no hidden mechanisms inside.

The blanket was shaken and then lifted.

A pot of vibrant white peonies was prominently displayed on the ground!

This immediately ignited the audience's interest, eliciting cheers and applause. Xiaomei stared in disbelief, rubbing her eyes. Even after a closer look, she couldn't figure out where the flower arrangement had come from. The magic tricks she had seen before were nothing more than turning playing cards from hearts to diamonds; this kind of trick, producing such a large prop out of thin air, was practically a miracle!

“It’s a robe,” Theon guessed from the side. “It can only be hidden inside the robe, tucked between his legs.”

"But... he kept his hand clutching that blanket the whole time," Xiaomei said incredulously. "If it was inside his robe, he would have had to use his hand to take it out, right?"

……

Discussions of this kind abounded among the audience.

Deciphering a magician's tricks is part of the audience's enjoyment, but Zhu Kuilong has so few props, especially since he's performing standing up without a table or chair. The size of this vase isn't something a small contraption could easily conceal. If it were a contraption, where could it be? On that blanket?

They couldn't come to a conclusion no matter how much they talked, but Zhu Kuilong let them talk as he calmly covered his right arm with the cloud blanket again.

After a brief pause, it suddenly flipped over!

Suddenly, four glass bowls of water appeared on his previously empty arm. In each bowl, two goldfish swam happily to and fro. Zhu Kuilong's right arm remained motionless as he dipped his left hand in the water and gently sprinkled it on the audience in the front row, as if sprinkling sweet dew.

"May you have abundance every year." He didn't care whether people understood the pun or not, he bowed slightly, and that was how he finished performing the show.

----

……

After a brief silence, the entire audience erupted in thunderous applause that lasted for a long time.

Chapter 207: Hehe, I want to see rivers of blood!

"Wow, amazing! Really amazing!" Xiaomei clapped her hands, exclaiming from the bottom of her heart, "And water too! How did you conjure that up?"

Theon was also silenced. The vase could be explained as being hidden in the robe, but how could these four basins of water be explained? They couldn't possibly be hidden in the robe either, could they?

There were speculations, praises, and exclamations.

However, none of this could change Zhu Kuilong's expression in the slightest. He remained on stage, continuing to conjure things up.

He placed four glass bowls on the ground, then put the cloud blanket on his left arm and gave it a gentle shake. This time, four larger porcelain plates appeared on his left arm, each containing peanuts, dates, walnuts, and candy. Zhu Kuilong grabbed the candy, expressionless, and flung it down into the audience below, like a celestial maiden scattering flowers. Surprisingly, even the audience in the last row got a taste of the sweetness.

"It's real! It's real candy!"

"How did it come to be...? What kind of mechanism allows it to hold so many things on its body...?"

"A true miracle hand!"

……

Zhu Kuilong remained calm and composed. He took a step forward, grasped a corner of the cloud carpet with both hands, explained the inside and outside again, and gently draped it over his shoulders. He lifted the carpet a foot off the ground and took five or six steps forward. When he threw the cloud carpet forward, it miraculously remained suspended in the air without falling down. In the place that should have been empty, a columnar outline miraculously appeared.

Everyone stared wide-eyed, holding their breath, some in disbelief.

"Look, five sons have passed the imperial examination."

Zhu Kuilong announced the program with a blank expression, clapped his hands, grabbed the cloud carpet and threw it backward, revealing five goldfish bowls stacked together, filled with water, reaching a height of about as tall as him.

He draped the cloud blanket over himself, covering his lower body, without bending over, and simply reached into the blanket. When he emerged, he held a large glass bowl, about a foot in diameter, filled with water. Even more astonishingly, a large red carp was swimming in it, leaping out of the water and then jumping back in. The audience in the front row could even see the splashes of water from the carp.

"Pour water into a large bowl."

He twirled the cloud carpet with one finger, moving it faster and faster until the auspicious cloud patterns on it seemed to detach from the fabric and take flight. Moments later, the audience sensed something was wrong; they smelled pine resin and heard the crackling of flames.

"boom!"

As soon as the cloud blanket was removed, Zhu Kuilong had a brazier in his hand, with flames burning fiercely!

"Prosperous and thriving".

……

He could speak English, but he didn't; he spoke Chinese the whole time.

As it turns out, as long as the performance is good enough, the audience doesn't care what language you speak. The applause wasn't as loud as it started because most people's hands were already numb from clapping. The applause, interspersed with F-words expressing excitement, had pretty much run out.

Theon had initially tried to deduce something from the techniques, but after watching half of it, he had almost given up. Rather than racking his brains to figure out how these strange phenomena came about, he was more inclined to believe that this magician from the East did indeed possess some kind of magic.

"I'm tired of saying 'amazing'," Xiaomei couldn't help but exclaim. "No wonder he's a court magician; this level of magic is truly only for the emperor to see."

……

"Do not……"

"It's not like this."

Zhang Renfeng shook his head, his expression serious, but he denied it firmly, saying, "With this level of skill, they can't even get through the royal family's gates!"

“At first, he performed on the ground. He first made a name for himself on a street, and then he performed all the way up to the temples. He performed at the Confucius Temple in Nanjing, the Xuanmiao Temple in Suzhou, and the Tianqiao in Beijing, without ever getting muddy.”

"After that, he went to the wedding banquets and birthday banquets of wealthy families; then he used these as a stepping stone to enter the homes of officials, climbing up step by step. With nearly thirty years of accumulation, he finally managed to knock on that tightly closed door using ancient techniques."

"If you really want to say it, this is probably still at his level from seven years ago. This guy... his skills have become increasingly refined..."

"Um, Mr. Hongzhong?" Xiaomei hesitated for a moment, then handed over a tissue. "Wipe it off."

You're sweating a lot.

"..." Zhang Renfeng paused for a moment, as if he had just come back to his senses. He pursed his lips, hesitated, nodded slightly to her, and wiped his face haphazardly a few times.

"Speaking of which, you and this theater troupe must be from the same place, right?" Theon wasn't very cunning; he asked directly what he wanted to know. "That's normal. My brother and I also immigrated from Germany, and we occasionally run into fellow countrymen back home."

"Did things get very unpleasant when you went abroad?"

"..."

Zhang Renfeng fell silent for a moment. In Xiaomei's memory, his eyebrows had never been so furrowed. Even when he was in Scarface Village, facing the siege of the Thunder Gang, he always faced it with a smile, as if he were playing a tense and exciting game.

It seems that this is not something that can be easily dismissed as either "pleasant" or "unpleasant."

----

"Fake--!!"

Suddenly, an angry roar erupted from the audience, and a tall man abruptly stood up, shouting sharply. He staggered, nearly falling, barely managing to grab the back of the chair in front of him. Despite being drunk, the man still managed to steady himself with his somewhat comical stiff-brimmed top hat.

With the performance interrupted, people's attention naturally turned to the spectator who jumped.

The newcomer seemed to be someone of some renown, and soon someone recognized him.

"Ah, it's 'David in the Black Hat'! The magician who performed here before."

"Why is he here?"

"Speaking of which, ever since this Eastern magician took over the show, David's performances have become much less frequent, and the audience is sparse..."

"So that's how it is, it's a challenge between magicians."

"Hehe, great! I want to see rivers of blood!"

……

Bloodthirsty spectators who enjoy watching entertainment have existed since the construction of the Roman Colosseum, and there is certainly no shortage of them nowadays.

In this barbaric era where guns are drawn at the slightest provocation, a duel between two magicians is clearly more entertaining than simple magic tricks. The crowd watched with immense anticipation on the stage, eager to see how this mysterious magician from the East would respond to his challenge.

Zhu Kuilong stood still, looking down at him as if he were a bag of garbage.

……

"Friends, you've been fooled! You've been completely and utterly deceived!" David didn't mince words. In front of everyone, he took a big gulp of his drink and shouted, "This isn't magic... not at all! Magic can't do something like this. What this man is performing is nothing but clumsy illusions; it's not real magic!"

"Hey, you damn yellow-skinned bastard, dare to challenge me?"

"...When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Zhu Kuilong's voice was calm. When he was working, he had encountered people of all sizes who came to cause trouble. There must have been at least eight or ten thousand of them. He had his own way of dealing with these kinds of problems. "You decide."

“Ha, easy!” David suddenly pulled a gleaming flintlock pistol from his belt and raised it high, like a triumphant pirate captain.

Upon seeing this, the audience members around them exclaimed in surprise, saying that the most exciting part was about to begin.

"Catching a bullet with my hand is my best magic trick. We each fire a shot at the other, and neither of us can dodge or flinch. It's a matter of life and death! The one who lies down is the loser!"

Seeing that he had actually taken the bait, David sneered, "Don't let people say I'm bullying a foreigner... You go first, use this gun to shoot me."

----

"That idiot..." Zhang Renfeng watched the farce from afar, sighed, and seemed to have already foreseen the ending.

……

"No need," Zhu Kuilong said casually on stage. "You go first."

Chapter 208: Of all martial arts techniques, none are invincible except speed.

"what?"

David was stunned for a moment, and couldn't even hide the smile on his face.

This is his signature skill. Among many boring magic tricks, such as playing cards and pull rings, catching bullets is the magic trick that can win him the most applause.

The reason is simple: the magic trick of catching bullets is prone to accidents. If it fails, the magician may actually be hit by the bullet and die. And bloodthirsty audiences love this kind of thing.

The principle is very simple. The structure of this flintlock gun is very primitive. It requires pushing gunpowder into the barrel, pulling the bolt, and then loading the bullet.

When handed to Zhu Kuilong, David would, as in his usual performances, only load the gunpowder, not the bullet. This way, when he pulled the trigger, only a gunshot would be heard, and all the audience would know that the gun had fired. He would then take the opportunity to hold the pre-prepared bullet in his hand and show it to the audience, indicating that he had received the bullet.

Now, things are much simpler—he just needs to load the bullet in and fire at him.

"..."

As David reached out and touched the bullet, he hesitated. Old-fashioned flintlock bullets were becoming increasingly rare on the market.

This one is for demonstration purposes and has been used for many years. Whether it can still be fired smoothly is unknown. Moreover, if it is used here, it cannot be bought in San Quintak for the time being. It would be necessary to go to the more distant Aspen Town and find a weapons merchant named "Theon" to make a custom one.

Baiyang Town is far away in New Elizabeth. It's really inconvenient to make such a long trip just for a bullet. Besides... after taking down this yellow-skinned bastard, his reputation will definitely soar, and he'll have to perform non-stop. How could he possibly have the time for this?