The Daily Life Of A Cyberpunk Magician

At the same time, due to the special nature of this magic, to make the audience believe it’s a real resurrection, it inevitably needs to be improvised, or at least appear to be, otherwise it looks too staged.

To the point where he would feel too embarrassed to continue the performance, especially with street magic – if there’s no audience to build the atmosphere...

That would be too shocking.

The hypnotic techniques of a fox can put someone into a temporary death-like state, but a staged death is not really death. On close inspection, there’s still the risk of exposure.

Being exposed on the spot would be utterly absurd.

Or say, use twins, kill one and keep the other, then swap them using the Big Transformation technique.

That would be the simplest method, but it broke the law and was also unethical.

He was not Zhang San, of course, he couldn’t do something illegal and immoral.

So...

Jiang Shu searched his mind for magic related to resurrection. His brain housed a repository of magical examples, thanks in large part to his research on various magics in the past.

He could only think of two related magics in a short time.

One was a stage magic, the Headless Revival.

But this magic’s effect was less resurrection and more so a disassembly of a living person.

Fit a guillotine on stage, then put the masked magician on it, the blade drops, and the head falls off.

And the magic assistant could place the masked head on a table, which would even open its eyes animatedly upon hearing the audience’s call.

This was a simple mechanical magic, and the reason the magician wore a mask on stage was mostly to accomplish a switch at a certain moment, using two people to perform the magic for that effect.

Of course, the magician hadn’t been beheaded, but if one wanted to pursue the ultimate magical experience, it wasn’t impossible either.

The second magic would have to mention a legendary figure in the magical world, a great magician from a century ago, Max Marini.

In the movie ”The Prestige,” there’s a magician who carries a fish tank with him for magic, but this Marini managed to carry a block of ice the size of a head with him, producing the ice block from a Magic Hat at the end of the magic performance to reach the magical climax.

In an era without refrigerators, no one knew how he hid a sizable block of ice on his person, nor how long he had carried it with him.

Every outing required him to bring along an ice block; this was the preparation for magic, as well as a sacrifice.

And once at a dinner party, perhaps in a rush, he brought neither playing cards nor an ice block, but knowing someone would ask him to perform magic, he resurrected a chicken that was served on the dining table right there and then.

After resurrection, the bare chicken simply ran away in front of everyone.

This simply utilized a characteristic of birds—held upside down and pressed for a while, they enter a ”deathlike stupor.”

And that poor chicken was stripped completely.

Feathers, that is.

He then sprinkled it with various seasonings and secretly instructed the waiter to bring it forth, only to awaken it in public, thus completing the effect of the Resurrection Magic.

It was almost completely improvised magic, and Marini had only visited the kitchen before the dinner party.

And such magic had been used in ancient times in Jiang Shu’s homeland as well, having a specific name called ”Fixed Chicken.”

That was a fairly famous folk witchcraft.

Not just birds, some animals also enter this ”deathlike stupor,” such as sharks.

Of course, under current conditions it didn’t seem to be of much use.

Surely he can’t just master the resurrection of poultry in derivative terms?

Does he have to rush to a poultry slaughterhouse for a Dead Spirit Resurrection Night, then march against Tang with thousands of chickens, ducks, and geese?

Jiang Shu imagined that scene for a moment, standing above a million lives, raising the banner of rebellion on behalf of the birds and beasts...

It wasn’t impossible, and actually quite stylish.

But it definitely wouldn’t be very useful is the thing, those animals could only defeat humans with a virus, and that had but a slim chance.

These two magics could only serve as references, the specifics still required careful thought from him.

Not only did he need to contemplate the secrets within the magic, but also how to carve out a street performance space that Tang wouldn’t disturb.