The Legend of Tokyo Taoist

Chapter 53: Supernatural Department (3)

Before Inuyama Heita went home, he stopped by Lingkong Office. Anyway, his home was not far from here, so it was on the way. There were no adults at home, and he didn't have to work recently, so it was okay to go home late. When Inuyama Heita went in, Qian Xiaoyi was sitting in the boss chair, staring at the laptop screen on the table, concentrating on something. When he saw Inuyama Heita come in, he asked casually, "Why didn't you go home directly? Did you find any information?"

Inuyama Heita asked directly, "Um, about Suzuki-san helping the agency to attract a client, did you know about that, Brother Otoko?"

"Ah~ That, she just sent me a text message." Qian Xiaoyi exclaimed: "It's amazing, in just one day, she has found a victim...client. The efficiency is so high that I was caught off guard."

Inuyama Heita said with his eyes half closed: "You just wanted to say I was taken advantage of, right?"

Qian Xiaoyi shook his head and said, "Don't worry about those details. This girl is too efficient. It bothers me a little. So now I'm looking up information and making up for it, so as to avoid saying something wrong during divination and losing the client. That would be bad."

Inuyama Heita stood next to Qian Xiaoyi curiously and glanced at the computer screen. Although the other party used Chinese search, he could still understand the attached pictures. This guy was actually looking at information related to Tarot cards.

"I thought you were looking up local urban legends..." Inuyama Heita said in surprise, "Why would you look up information on tarot divination, brother? Don't Taoist priests do that... fortune-telling?"

"Fortune-telling? I can do that." Qian Xiaoyi stretched out his hand and casually placed three large coins on the table like a magic trick. Inuyama Heita took a closer look and found that they seemed to be old copper coins, which should be tools used for fortune-telling.

So Inuyama Heita asked, "Wouldn't it be better to use this?"

Qian Xiaoyi sighed and said, "Life is not easy. This is Tokyo, a big city. The customer introduced by Miss Suzuki may be a high school girl. What if she thinks that fortune-telling is an old-fashioned way of divination? So I also need to keep up with the trend and adopt the methods that young people prefer. Not only that, I also bought this book and I'm reading it recently." After saying that, he took out a book from under the table.

"Astrology..." Inuyama Heita silently read out the name of the book in Chinese characters. It was a Chinese book, but he still knew these three words. Inuyama Heita asked: "Can it be done in such a short time?"

"Tarot cards are much simpler than you might think." Qian Xiaoyi pointed at the copper coins on the table and said, "The way to play is very similar to the simplest hexagram in fortune-telling. Both look at the hexagrams given by the divination props to infer the state of the person being told. How to interpret the hexagrams depends entirely on the fortune-teller's mouth. It's no problem to fool ordinary people. As for astrology... it's more difficult to get started than Tarot cards. You need to have a certain understanding of astronomy and observe the stars. So I plan to use simpler constellations to fool little girls. The problem is Mercury retrograde."

"So it's all a scam?" Inuyama Heita was helpless. "From my point of view, it is true, but my sect hasn't studied divination too deeply, so it's hard to say." Qian Xiaoyi said indifferently: "Anyway, my master and I don't believe in divination. Our inheritance is all about how to catch ghosts. Other things are just extras, just enough to be used."

Inuyama Heita asked, "Isn't there a real fortune teller? The kind that can predict the future?"

Qian Xiaoyi smiled and said, "At least the so-called masters I know all rely on superb rhetoric and strong observation skills to achieve the so-called 'divine prediction'. Oh, yes, perhaps they also need to have the ability to collect and analyze intelligence. Unless they get accurate intelligence, the divination results given by the divination master are often a very broad and vague description, leaving it to the person being divined to identify themselves. Once something happens, they will fill in the elements of that event themselves, and finally praise it for being so accurate. However, before that event happens, no one will know that the divination result refers to that event, and nothing can be changed at all. We call this situation 'pointing to what you hit'."

"Doesn't this mean that divination is completely useless?" asked Inuyama Heita.

"You can't say that." Qian Xiaoyi smiled and said, "It is still very useful, and sometimes it can really turn a bad situation into a good one. I seem to have told you before that the clergy in ancient times would also work as psychologists, and the role of divination is the same. A good fortune teller will infer the other party's current situation from the other party's reaction when analyzing the hexagram and the continuous conversation. After slowly inducing the other party to believe what he said, he will give his own life advice to the other party and combine it with his divination results to form a conclusion. If this advice is really useful and provides some help, then even if only two or three people out of ten benefit, this fortune teller will be passed down as a god. After all, for the rest of the people, because the divination results are too vague, they can almost certainly identify with the people they are in, which is the so-called Barnum effect. So even if the divination results are not helpful, those people will not say that the other party's calculations are inaccurate, but just hindsight, which is useless."

Inuyama Heita was shocked: "So this is the truth about divination?" In the past, when he watched various movies and TV shows, the impression given to him by those fortune tellers were all mysterious people who were weird but very accurate in their predictions, so he inexplicably felt a sense of awe.

Qian Xiaoyi specifically warned: "You can't say these things outside. We are just chatting to give you some experience to prevent you from being cheated. You know, some fortune tellers really believe in what they have learned. If my colleagues or customers outside know that I said these things, I will not be able to survive."

"Yeah, of course." Inuyama Heita nodded, and then he suddenly said: "Oh, by the way, I'm not here to talk to you about these things. I'm here to ask, if Kawasaki-senpai comes to the office, should I come with him, or avoid showing up here? Or, Brother O, do you need me to act as a sting?"

Qian Xiaoyi said, "We don't need you or Miss Suzuki to act as a stand-in. Just watch my performance. You can also come with that sucker and pretend that you don't know me. This way, if someone sees us together in the future, you can use it as an excuse to say that we met this time."

"learn!"

(End of this chapter)