Chapter 155 Exposure

"Yes!" the crowd below shouted in unison. Many of them had come specifically because of the performer's reputation.

I swept my gaze across Tu Mu on the stage and narrowed my eyes. There was an intensely gloomy aura about this man, yet he possessed no fluctuations of magical power; he did not look like an esoteric practitioner of yin and yang.

At that moment, the assistant glanced at Tu Mu. Seeing Tu Mu nod, the assistant shouted loudly, "Now, the resurrection magic show officially begins! However, our magician needs to invite a member of the audience to come up and assist. Would you like to experience the feeling between life and death? Would you like to experience what it feels like to be brought back from the dead? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

Many young men and women, eager for a thrill, surged forward. They wanted to witness this so-called resurrection so they could brag about it to others later.

Tu Mu casually pointed a finger at a stylish woman in her early twenties.

The woman hopped up and down with excitement and ran onto the stage.

"Lie down," Tu Mu said, pointing to a low gurney.

The woman obediently lay down, feeling a mix of curiosity and nervousness.

"Don't be nervous. Just enjoy this magical moment," Tu Mu smiled.

The woman's face flushed slightly, and she thought the magician's smile was remarkably gentle.

"Now, close your eyes," Tu Mu said in a low voice, his tone carrying a strange, hypnotic magnetism that made people feel drowsy.

The woman's eyelids instantly felt as heavy as lead, and she closed them involuntarily.

At that point, Tu Mu stretched out his hands, hovering them about ten centimeters above the woman's head, and slowly stroked downward all the way to the soles of her feet.

The audience below watched without blinking. Eerie music began to play on the stage, and the entire stage, enclosed by black curtains, started to exude a bizarre and suffocating atmosphere.

Just then, using sleight of hand, Tu Mu slipped a dark red piece of jade into the woman's mouth.

"Die," Tu Mu suddenly roared, lifting his hands upward. The woman's entire body arched up along with the motion, and then fell back down.

At that very instant, the woman's head tilted to one side, her complexion turned completely ashen, all signs of life vanished, and wisps of deathly aura began to emanate from her body.

The audience below, already worked up by the music and the atmosphere, was feeling chilled to the bone. Tu Mu's sudden roar gave them all a fright.

Meanwhile, the assistant wheeled out a pulse monitor. He checked his own pulse first, then the woman's—there was no pulse whatsoever.

"To prove that we are not cheating, we will now carry this lady down so everyone can see her close up. Those who are faint of heart should stay back; we take no responsibility if you are scared to death!" the assistant shouted loudly.

Two men carried the gurney with the woman down from the stage. Several of the woman's companions rushed forward first. When they saw her pale face and purplish-blue lips, they let out piercing screams.

One of the companions touched the woman's hand and instantly jerked back as if bitten by a snake, nearly fainting from terror. The person who had been alive and well just moments ago now felt as cold and rigid as a real corpse to the touch.

"She's dead! She's really dead! Please, someone save her!" that companion wailed in a complete breakdown.

Some of the timid audience members took one look and backed away a full thirty paces. The woman's rigid state didn't need to be touched; living people simply couldn't fake that.

Some of the bolder ones drew closer to look, but they, too, felt a chill creeping up from the depths of their souls.

At that moment, two men carried the woman back onto the stage.

"You've all seen it, she really died. So now is the moment to witness a miracle, to open your eyes and see what a resurrection truly is," the assistant declared loudly.

Tu Mu stepped forward, made a show of repeating his previous motions, and then draped a black cloth over the woman.

Using spiritual perception to lock onto the scene from below, I discovered that the moment Tu Mu covered the woman with the black cloth, he fished the dark red piece of jade back out of her mouth.

The instant the dark red jade was removed, the deathly aura surrounding the woman dissipated, her heartbeat resumed, her blood began to circulate again, and she came back to life.

After waiting for a dozen seconds, Tu Mu lifted the black cloth. The woman opened her eyes, looking as if she had just awakened from a dream.

When she sat up, the audience below erupted into thunderous applause.

I half-closed my eyes and muttered to myself, "Hypnotism combined with a bizarre piece of jade, and this woman is missing one soul and two subordinate souls—they were likely devoured by that jade."

At that moment, the assistant shouted loudly, "Wasn't that wonderful? Would you like to see it again?"

"Yes!" the audience below responded enthusiastically.

As Tu Mu prepared to select another volunteer, I walked straight up onto the stage and smiled. "To prove you didn't hire plants for this, let me give it a try. If you can genuinely prove this magic is real, I'll give you one million."

With that, I tossed a prepared bag onto the floor. The bag split open, revealing stack after stack of brand-new currency, and the audience below began to scream in excitement.

The rest of the magic troupe started breathing heavily, their eyes turning red as they stared fixedly at the bag of money on the ground.

That was one million!

The troupe leader, Lao Li, rushed directly onto the stage and accepted the challenge on Tu Mu's behalf. Are you kidding? One million! Besides, whoever came up here definitely wasn't a plant; this huge fortune was just too easy to claim.

Tu Mu stared at me, a sense of unease welling up in his heart, though he had no idea where the discomfort originated.

At that moment, I simply lay down. Amidst the jeering and cheering of the troupe leader and the audience, Tu Mu took a deep breath to steady his emotions and began to hypnotize me.

This level of hypnosis had zero effect on me, but I deliberately controlled my aura, feigning that the hypnosis had succeeded.

The main event began. Tu Mu resorted to his old trick, using sleight of hand to disguise the act of slipping the dark red jade into my mouth.

However, the moment he tried to put it in, I neatly intercepted and pocketed the dark red jade.

After Tu Mu went through his routine performance, he looked at me and was shocked to discover that not the slightest change had occurred in my body.

Thus, he repeated the motions all over again, but his heart pounded violently, and an ominous premonition fermented within him.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes and stared at Tu Mu with a half-smile.

Tu Mu's hair stood on end, and he suddenly bolted for the backstage like a madman.

"Turns out it's just a deceptive trick, and they talked it up so big. Let's smash their setup!" After a brief silence, someone in the crowd angrily shouted.

Immediately, a mob swarmed forward, smashing everything in sight.

Some even tried to snatch the one million I had just taken out. The troupe leader fought desperately to protect it, but the bag ripped wide open, and the currency flew out—only to transform into sheets of funeral joss paper.

Meanwhile, Tu Mu leaped into a cargo truck, floored the accelerator, and began to flee.

As the truck sped and accelerated onto a desolate, deserted road, all four tires simultaneously blew out. The truck instantly lost control and crashed into a massive tree.

Tu Mu slammed a fist hard against the steering wheel, shoved the door open, and leaped out. He froze in his tracks, staring fixedly at me as I stood blocking his path with my arms crossed.

Suddenly, a surge of malicious desperation seized him. With a low roar, he pulled a dagger from his waist and lunged at me.

Right at that moment, a sharp glint flashed in my eyes. Tu Mu felt as though an invisible mountain was crushing down upon him. With a cry of agony, his knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground, his entire body plastered against the earth, completely unable to move.

I walked over to him, squatted down, and holding the dark red piece of jade before his eyes, asked, "What is this thing?"

Tu Mu stared at the dark red jade, a look of frenzied yearning flashing in his eyes as he struggled to snatch the stone back.

Yet, pinned down by my suppression, apart from emitting beast-like growls from the back of his throat, he was utterly paralyzed.

At that moment, I walked to the rear of the cargo truck and opened the container. Immediately, rows of eerily lifelike corpse props laid out on racks came into view.

I stared at the corpse props. Although I sensed no strange fluctuations of magical energy coming from them, I had a lingering, instinctive feeling that something was wrong.

I jumped into the truck bed, reached out a finger, and poked one of the corpse props. My expression changed instantly.

"They're real," I frowned.

Yet, why was there not a single trace of a deathly aura?

I leaped down from the truck bed, approached the magician, and raised a hand, striking him with a beam of black light.

In a split second, Tu Mu's soul was forcefully ripped out of his physical body, and I immediately subjected him to soul-searching techniques.

The reason I bypassed mercy and struck to kill was that I knew this magician was far from a normal human being; he possessed all the traits of a deeply twisted and psychologically abnormal individual. Extracting the truth from such a person through mere interrogation would be no easy task.

Therefore, I chose to directly extract and refine his soul, gleaning fragments of his memories so I could roughly piece together the truth of the matter.