Chapter 348: Seven Difficulties!

Late at night.

In London, thousands of miles away from the United States, inside the office of the Pinkeman Magic Club, the smoke from a pipe had yet to dissipate.

Pinkman sat behind his desk, which was piled high with magic props.

On the computer screen in front of him, a clip of Chu Chen's performance at the Metropolitan Opera House played on a loop.

He had already watched it over a dozen times, and the tobacco in his pipe had been replaced batch after batch.

The coffee cup was emptied and filled, filled and emptied.

After the video finished playing again, he dragged the mouse to rewind the progress bar to the frame where Chu Chen stood on stage with his hands in his trouser pockets.

Pause. Zoom in.

Pinkman watched for a long time.

But he still couldn't find any flaws.

He had racked his brains, yet he still couldn't figure out how Chu Chen had managed to secretly transfer the tens of billions in balance from Brian's account right under everyone's noses!

"Hoo!"

After taking a deep breath from his pipe, he simply closed the video, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

He remembered being on the stage of the London Grand Theatre, using that one-to-one replica "Time-Space Shuttle" to decode Chu Chen's Las Vegas magic trick for the Expert Group.

He had been very confident at the time, confident to the point of being smug.

He had solved that magic trick, performed the same effect in front of the Expert Group, and then broken down the principles for them in excruciating detail.

But now, he was baffled once again.

He had gone through every possibility in his mind, yet he still hadn't discovered anything!

Meanwhile!

The Art of Crime livestream room!

The lights in the studio were dimmed a bit more than usual.

"Alright, dear viewers, welcome back. This is a special live broadcast of 'The Art of Crime'." Ma Fanshu's voice was steady and professional, but her speaking speed was a bit faster than usual, like someone struggling to keep their umbrella steady in a storm. "Today, we witnessed a performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House—I don't know how to define it. Some say it's magic, some say it's financial crime, and others say it's a trial."

She paused, shifting her gaze from the camera to the guest seats beside her.

"Teacher Liu."

The camera cut over.

Liu Qian sat in the guest seat, wearing a dark gray casual suit.

His hair was a bit messy, as if he had just run his hands through it, without using any hair gel.

"Today, regarding this performance Chu Chen did at the Metropolitan Opera House, from a magician's perspective, what is your take?"

Liu Qian's fingers twitched.

But he didn't respond.

"Teacher Liu?" Ma Fanshu called out again.

Liu Qian raised his head and looked at the camera.

As a magician, Liu Qian always carried a just-right sense of relaxation in front of the camera—the corners of his mouth slightly raised, his gaze clear, like someone holding the answer who was waiting for others to finish their questions.

But at this moment, that sense of relaxation in his eyes was gone.

"This performance is, truly... too stunning..."

Liu Qian spoke, his voice lower than usual: "I don't know how he did it."

"In his previous magic tricks, his Magic Sleight of Hand was very advanced, but it all stayed within the logical framework of magic. What is the logical framework of magic? It is 'the audience thinks A happened, but in reality, B happened.' The audience thinks the vault was emptied remotely, but in reality, the money in the vault might have been moved beforehand. The audience thinks the artifact disappeared before their eyes, but in reality, the artifact had already left the museum days ago. Every magic trick has a 'B,' a truth hidden beneath the stage, invisible to the audience, yet objectively existing."

He picked up a prop coin from the table in front of him, spun it between his fingers, and put it back down.

"But this time, I really cannot find his 'B'."

Ma Fanshu listened quietly.

"In my understanding, wanting to accomplish this is truly too difficult..."

Liu Qian raised his head and looked at the host.

"There are many core technical difficulties in this magic trick. The first difficulty: he needed to know the balance of Brian's bank card. The balance accurate to the single digit! In the United States, bank account balances are personal privacy; obtaining them without authorization is illegal. He couldn't have gotten it through normal channels. But he made that number public on stage. Fifteen billion. He must have known this in advance, so, the question arises—how did he get this data?"

"The second difficulty: he needed to deposit two hundred thousand into Monica's bank card. This two hundred thousand had to be an electronic transfer within the banking system. This means he had to pass through the bank's risk control system. Any transfer over ten thousand dollars would be flagged by the bank's anti-money laundering system. Two hundred thousand, twenty times the limit. The system would flag it, and humans would review it. But he did it, without a doubt."

"The third difficulty: he needed to complete these two transactions in the exact same second—Brian's account decreasing, Monica's account increasing. Because if they weren't simultaneous, the bank's reconciliation system would detect an imbalance. The reconciliation system runs every second, and any imbalance would trigger an alarm. He had to make these two transactions complete within the same timestamp, accurate to the millisecond."

"The fourth difficulty: there were thousands of people at the scene, each doing different things. Some were taking photos, some were recording videos, some were uploading to social media. Everyone's phone was connected to the internet, and everyone's camera was pointed at the stage. It was impossible for Chu Chen to install any equipment, set up any mechanisms, or perform any physical operations in front of these people. All his actions were under the lens."

"The fifth difficulty: the bank's risk control system doesn't just watch single transactions. It watches the transaction patterns of the entire network. If one person's account suddenly drops by two hundred thousand while another person's account suddenly increases by two hundred thousand, the system would immediately link these two transactions, tag them as 'suspicious,' and automatically freeze them. Chu Chen didn't just have to complete the transfer; he had to make the system not sound an alarm. This means his method had to be a 'legal transaction' recognized by the banking system. Not a brute-force hack, not a system intrusion, but making the bank itself believe that this money should be transferred this way."

"The sixth difficulty: after the transfer was completed, he disappeared in front of everyone. Surveillance footage, the livestream feed, thousands of phones at the scene—not a single one captured how he left."

"These six difficulties are all indispensable."

Ma Fanshu finally spoke.

Her voice was very soft: "Teacher Liu, didn't you just say seven?"

Liu Qian looked at her.

After two seconds of silence, he continued: "The seventh difficulty. He used Brian's own money."

Ma Fanshu didn't understand.

Her brows furrowed slightly.

Liu Qian placed the coin on the table, stood it up, and flicked it with his finger. The coin spun on the table, emitting a faint humming sound. He stared at the spinning coin until it fell, then raised his head.

"Brian's money is stored in the bank. The bank's money is not cash in a vault; it is a string of numbers in a database. The ownership of that string of numbers belongs to the owner. What Chu Chen needed to do to transfer the ownership of this string of numbers to Monica's name was not physical transport, but—modifying the database."

"Modifying the bank's database without triggering any alarms, without leaving any traces. Making the banking system itself believe that this transaction was legal..."

By the time Liu Qian said this, the barrage in the livestream room was no longer just text!

【When Liu Qian said there were six difficulties, I was still confused. When he said the seventh, I got goosebumps.】

This line of text stayed on the screen for less than 0.1 seconds before it was washed away, but at least several hundred thousand people saw it.

"That time in Paris, he stole an illusion. That time in London, he stole a replica. But tonight, he is stealing the real thing. Real gold and silver. Taken truly and realistically from one person's account and placed into another person's account. No illusions, no misdirection, everything is real!"