novelraw Chapter 85 Sleight of Hand
Chapter 85 Sleight of Hand
Jiang Ran did not flinch. He met the Killer’s razor-sharp gaze head-on.
The plot had still advanced to this step.
He had held similar conversations—under countless variations—with the Killer before.
“Obviously.”
Jiang Ran spoke softly.
“This isn’t some secret that’s hard to notice.”
The Killer said nothing more.
He crouched down and began removing the magazines from the prison guard’s body.
“Your sudden appearance is just like the Magician’s sleight of hand in the legends.”
“So… are you here to save the Magician?”From far down the corridor, the roar of the crowd swelled louder and louder. The slogans grew increasingly synchronized—everyone was waiting for the beheading of the Magician, the execution of the world’s number one criminal.
“Do you want to know?”
Jiang Ran smiled faintly.
“If you want the answer, then trade it for the secret you’re carrying. I’m very interested in your story too.”
Of course Jiang Ran wasn’t going to answer honestly.
The Killer always turned into a riddle-maker at critical questions. The moment the conversation deepened, he would deliver his classic line—
“When we succeed in breaking out of prison and escape, I’ll tell you.”
If you want to sell promises.
Then let’s sell them to each other.
The Killer pulled a gun from the back waist of the prison guard’s corpse and tossed it to Jiang Ran.
“Know how to use it?”
“No.” Jiang Ran shook his head.
The Killer stepped forward and flicked off the safety.
“Take it anyway. After all… the only one who can use a gun now is you.”
Jiang Ran turned his head and looked at the ground, a river of blood flowing across it.
One prison guard, three police dogs, and the bodies of Sang Biao and Hothead lay there in absolute stillness.
Hard to judge.
If not for Sang Biao and Hothead drawing the fire, this operation probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.
After several loops, the current situation could be called the closest they had ever come to a successful escape.
“Not good!”
When the Killer flipped the prison guard’s body onto its back, his expression changed. He pointed at a flashing red light on the guard’s chest.
“We overlooked it. They’ve installed alarm devices in their chests. They never had this equipment before—this was installed today!”
Damn…
Damn…
From somewhere—or perhaps from all directions—the rapid whir of drones closing in filled the air.
“Go!”
The Killer shoved Jiang Ran forward, then turned around, bracing himself with the gun.
“You’re the only one wearing plain clothes. We’re all in prison uniforms… Go. At the end of the corridor is the door to the execution ground.”
“Once you’re there, you can blend into the crowd. With thousands watching, the guards won’t be able to find you.”
The drone sounds drew nearer.
“What about you—”
Jiang Ran looked at the Killer—cryptic, yes, but always protecting him—and then at the elderly Professor Zhang Yang, whose legs were weak with age.
“Go!”
The Killer shoved him again.
“[You’ll… come back again, right?]”
Jiang Ran looked at him.
During his second time traveling to the future world of 2045, just before dying, the Killer had asked the same question.
Back then, he had asked whether Jiang Ran could come back one more time.
The Killer had shown an astonishingly high level of acceptance regarding time travel. His guesses had been eerily accurate.
Jiang Ran was nearly certain the Killer knew a great deal about time travel and temporal speculation—he just had never managed to extract those secrets.
Seeing Jiang Ran fall silent, the Killer suddenly smiled with relief. His expression became calm, resolute, ready to face death.
“Go.”
In his eyes, Jiang Ran’s silence was equivalent to agreement.
“Next time, take us further.”
With that—
He tightened his grip on the gun and aimed at the drone turning the corner.
Bang! Bang!
Perfect hits. The drone crashed.
At this point, Jiang Ran could no longer hesitate. He turned and ran.
Either way, death awaited.
Better to push forward a little more. Explore a little further. Gather more information.
Gunshots echoed behind him, then quickly faded into silence.
Most likely, the Killer and Professor Zhang Yang had both fallen.
Only him remained.
Then he would run forward as far as he could!
He sprinted.
As the buzzing of drones grew closer and closer, he finally reached the end of the corridor. A white double iron door blocked his path. Jiang Ran pressed down the handle and shoved it open—
“Kill! Kill! Kill! Magician! Kill! Kill! Kill! Magician!”
“Enemy of humanity! Enemy of humanity! Enemy of humanity!”
“Behead him! Behead him! Behead him! Behead him! Behead him!”
Outside the door—
A sea of people. Deafening noise.
Facing the long-absent sunlight, Jiang Ran raised his hand to shield his eyes and squeezed into the crowd.
Men and women. Young and old.
The execution ground was packed beyond counting. There was barely space to stand.
Even after blending into the crowd, Jiang Ran couldn’t control his direction. He was pushed along helplessly, carried like driftwood in a current.
Behind him, a large foreign man kept shoving forward, shouting in a language Jiang Ran couldn’t understand, fists raised, voice full of fury. Jiang Ran glanced back.
The man’s eyes were filled with tears. His face twisted with rage. Teeth clenched. His gaze locked on the execution platform ahead, brimming with hatred.
Looking around, it was clear there were countless people like him. Slogans and cries overlapped—everyone seemed desperate to see the Magician’s head fall at once.
Hatred.
Hatred.
Hatred.
As far as the eye could see, people across the world loathed the Magician to their very bones.
Jiang Ran had never experienced such a massive scene before. He was genuinely shaken.
He truly could not imagine—
What had the Magician—Qin Feng—done to provoke such universal fury?
Finally—
Thanks to the brute force of the foreign man behind him, Jiang Ran was shoved to within several dozen meters of the execution platform. Standing on tiptoe, he could finally see over the crowd—
A prisoner in a prison uniform knelt at the center of the raised platform, tightly bound.
A burlap hood covered his head.
Behind him stood a burly executioner, gripping a massive ghost-head blade, arm muscles nearly bursting.
In front of the prisoner stood a formally dressed official reading into a microphone.
But the roars below were too loud. Jiang Ran couldn’t hear a word.
Soon, it was finished.
The official put away the script, turned—
And ripped off the hood.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
“Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Magician! Magician! Magician!”
The Magician’s true face was revealed, and the execution ground exploded into unprecedented chaos. Hands shot into the air. The scene was completely out of control.
Who?
Who was it?
From this distance, with arms flailing everywhere, Jiang Ran couldn’t see the prisoner’s face at all. The more he tried to push forward, the more he was shoved backward by the crowd.
The Magician—who was he?
Was it really Qin Feng?
Was it really… the Qin Feng he knew?
Jiang Ran desperately wanted the answer.
But against a tide of humanity, he was nothing more than a leaf.
The shouting grew louder. Countless voices howled like ghosts.
All Jiang Ran could see was the executioner raising the ghost-head blade high.
Higher.
Sunlight scattered across the blade’s tip, dazzling brilliance swallowing heaven and earth.
Then—
It swung down.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
…Wait?
Why did the temporal shift reaction come now?
Without warning—
Dizziness. The world spinning.
His five senses vanished as he fell into darkness.
Two seconds later—
He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.
The Film Camera Club window. The transformer distribution box. The phone in his hand mid-call. Chi Xiaoguo peeking her head in curiously.
“Senior! How did the experiment go this time? Any progress?”
Jiang Ran hung up, circled back, and returned to the Film Camera Club.
After chatting briefly with Chi Xiaoguo, he sent her off to the cafeteria, then to class.
Today was the same.
Unlike him, who had effectively burned his bridges, Chi Xiaoguo had barely managed to get into Donghai University as the last-ranked admit. She had to study properly.
As for Jiang Ran—it wasn’t exactly self-destruction.
More like smashing the pot and sinking the boats.
He had completely stopped attending junior-college classes.
No lectures. No homework. No quizzes. No answering school calls.
He had bet everything on Goldbach’s Conjecture.
Bet everything on a recommendation letter to enter Donghai University.
If he failed to enroll at Donghai University, he would lose nearly every opportunity.
Compared to that—
The diploma from Donghai International Trade Vocational College was meaningless.
So be it.
Right now, there were too many important matters. He had no time to worry about junior college.
After Chi Xiaoguo left—
Jiang Ran dragged over the small blackboard and sat down, organizing his thoughts.
This trip to the year 2045 had yielded one major gain.
Several key mathematics books Professor Zhang Yang had emphasized.
Relying on memory, Jiang Ran wrote the book titles onto the blackboard and took a photo with his phone.
Whether buying them online or borrowing from the library, he needed to get them as soon as possible and study them thoroughly.
Professor Zhang Yang had said—
Beyond advanced mathematics, the theories in those works formed the foundation for understanding the proof methods of Goldbach’s Conjecture.
A mathematical tower cannot stand without foundations.
To grasp high-level derivations, one must first solidify the base.
Second—
Besides that major gain, there was an unexpected one.
This return to 2025 had been peculiar.
No death. No gunshot. No physical injury.
Yet without warning, dizziness had struck, and he had been forcibly returned.
Previously, every return to 2025 had been triggered by death.
That made sense.
But this time—why?
Why was he pulled back even though he hadn’t died?
“…No.”
He frowned slightly.
There was a coincidence.
The moment he experienced the spinning temporal reaction was precisely the moment the Magician’s head fell.
Yes.
Although he hadn’t seen the exact instant of the beheading, it had been at the exact moment the ghost-head blade swung down that he felt the temporal shift.
“This…”
Jiang Ran scratched his head.
“Could it be…”
“[It’s not only my own death that forcibly snaps me back to 2025… the death of the Magician, Qin Feng, also triggers it?]”
It made no sense.
The one beheaded was the Magician.
The one who died was the Magician.
What did that have to do with him?
“…Wait.”
He blinked.
Slowly rising from his chair—
He suddenly remembered what the Killer had once said to him:
“On this exact day, two hours before the Magician is publicly beheaded, someone who can perform sleight of hand like the Magician suddenly appears.”
“On this exact day, you appear in the prison where the Magician is to be executed—and you even lead us in an escape attempt.”
“So if I’m not mistaken… Jiang Ran, you traveled across time at this precise moment to save the Magician, didn’t you?”
“Or—there’s another possibility…”
Back then—
The Killer had extended his pale index finger like a blade of judgment and pointed it at Jiang Ran’s forehead.
“You… are the Magician!”
The more Jiang Ran examined that sentence, the colder he felt.
He suddenly realized—
Every description of the Magician had been vague.
There was no direct evidence proving the Magician was Qin Feng.
If “Magician” was a false codename—
Then was it possible that “Qin Feng” was also a false codename?
If someone claimed to be Qin Feng—or disguised themselves as Qin Feng—then claimed to be the Magician…
Wouldn’t that form a perfect loop of deception?
And the person most capable of doing that—
Jiang Ran closed his eyes.
The chaotic threads in his mind gradually aligned.
Fragments connected.
Sleight of hand. The Magician. Making someone appear out of thin air.
Qin Feng. Fire. Disappearance from the world.
Ferris wheel. Big eyes. Time travel.
Sudden appearance. Loops. Nineteen-year-old face.
Death. Beheading. Dizziness.
Gradually—
A terrifying possibility took shape.
He slowly opened his eyes.
He looked at the round plastic mirror hanging beside the bookshelf.
He looked at the young man in the reflection, slowly turning his head to stare back at him.
“Could it be…”
“The Magician… is me?”
At the same time—
The young man in the mirror’s lips moved.
Through nonexistent space, he looked at Jiang Ran and spoke:
“I am the Magician.”