Chapter 031: Difficult to Decipher

When Mike’s excited voice called Li Lekang to tell him that, thanks to the hype, the video’s views were about to break thirty million, Daniel Cooper, the core member of the “Revealing the Trick” team, was also preparing to get to work.

Cooper had once been a magician himself, but because coming up with new ideas was so mentally exhausting and standing out from the crowd was nearly impossible, he switched tracks and set his sights on exposing magic tricks.

He felt he was like the Masked Magician of old—gaining fame and fortune by revealing the secrets behind magic on television, surpassing peers who were still struggling at the bottom.

In the end, performing magic was less lucrative than exposing it.

It was a stroke of luck that he encountered the age of the internet, where self-media allowed them to rake in profits by the fistful.

This time, Cooper had gotten his hands on two of Li Lekang’s magic videos.

To fellow performers, unraveling a magic trick isn’t difficult—many of the techniques and routines are already committed to memory. They just need to reverse-engineer it, eliminating possibilities one by one.

Cooper sat down at his computer and started playing the first video, watching Li Lekang’s performance on the talent show all the way through. Even as a seasoned exposer, he found himself admiring the cleverness of the act.

“While everyone’s focusing on the possibility of a mechanism under the stage, maybe it’s time to look the other way—perhaps the sky above is where the real trick is hidden.”

“The talent show’s stage lighting is quite dark. With the most advanced invisible thread hanging from above, it would be easy enough to hoist him up without being noticed. I’ll need to watch it a few more times.”

Invisible thread is a magician’s essential tool. The earliest and simplest versions were made from nylon stockings! The thread was strong and flexible enough to lift cards or fruit and, being drawn out so thin, it was nearly impossible to spot even up close.

With technological advances, custom invisible-thread props have become even more robust.

With this theory in mind, Cooper replayed the key moments of the video again and again.

He thought the trick must be overhead. But Li Lekang’s second levitation seemed to contradict this—he’d taken off his jacket, which was the perfect prop for concealing mechanisms, and was left with just a T-shirt and shorts.

If there were transparent threads, a frame-by-frame analysis should reveal some trace of them against the background, but none could be found. In fact, the third levitation, which looked more exaggerated to a layperson, actually seemed easier to explain with a wire rig.

“How did he do the second levitation?”

“Could it really be something with the stage floor?”

Suppose his arms were hiding something, with a prop connected to his clothes and running down to his pants, but that would definitely affect his movements—even if he could walk, it wouldn’t be so fluid… Strange!

Cooper scrutinized each frame but found few clues, feeling the challenge mounting.

His earlier confidence had faded. What looked like a simple trick, on closer inspection, was anything but. The act was skillful, cunning, and broke with many traditional methods.

Cooper continued to analyze Li Lekang’s second levitation, frame by frame.

Yet the more he watched, the more perplexed he became. It looked like one thing, but there was no solid proof. A half-baked explanation would never convince viewers. Cooper watched the video over and over but couldn’t piece together any coherent theory, so he reluctantly closed the first video and moved on to the second, hoping for inspiration.

This video showed Li Lekang performing at the music center, producing a cup from an envelope—a trick many magicians had done, reliant on sleight of hand, with the table or clothing likely serving as props.

But it was the issue of the wine’s volume that stumped him.

Like the audience at the scene, Cooper relied on his past experience to hypothesize:

“Assume all the cups are normal. If he’s hiding a container on his person, he could fill the 500ml cup, which would explain being able to fill the smaller cup from it.”

“So it’s the same principle with the medium cup filling the large one. But then, how does the large cup fill the small one? The volume difference is huge. Is it an optical illusion or is he palming something away? But that would break the assumption that the cups are normal!”

“If the cups aren’t normal, how does the large cup exactly fill two medium cups? Mathematically, 500 milliliters adds up, but I need to think this through!”

“And this last beheading trick—if I compare the lengths of the clothing before and after, and the body’s lines on the computer, I should be able to spot where he hid his head… Wait? There’s no change?”

“How can that be? The data doesn’t lie. I must have missed something!”

Cooper stared at the screen, scratching his head.

He had hit a tough problem.

On the surface, the magician’s performance seemed to have cracks, but attempting to unmask it revealed layer upon layer of doubt. Every time you thought you had proof, something else toppled your reasoning.

Unlike audience members who, when confounded, joked about real magic being involved, Cooper, as a professional, scoffed at the idea—there’s no such thing as magic, it’s all misdirection!

Every magic trick has a flaw. It’s only a matter of how long it takes to uncover. Some tricks go years without being solved, and when the answer finally comes, it’s often just a matter of shifting perspective.

“Think! Think harder!”

Cooper kept watching the video. Li Lekang’s performance flowed like water, his movements smooth and natural. While there were moments that hinted at trickery, none were strong enough to serve as the critical evidence he needed.

That was the most maddening part. You sense you’re onto something, but the clues aren’t enough to crack the case. You think you’re close, but there’s still a thick wall between you and the truth.

He watched from day into night. When his team’s assistant arrived, they were startled to find Cooper, eyes bloodshot, still glued to the screen. “What’s wrong? Have you been watching all day?”

Cooper snapped out of it, his head splitting. “It’s a challenge! This guy’s tricks are so precise, I think I’ll have to try them out myself to understand how they work.”

“It’s gotten that bad?” The assistant was astonished. He knew Cooper’s background—decades of performing magic, and after his innovations ran dry, he took up exposing tricks, rarely stumped by anything, not even the masters.

But never before had he seen Cooper so persistently overturn his own theories, only to build another that was soon erased in doubt.

For three days straight, Cooper wrestled with Li Lekang’s magic.

The more he pondered, the more problems cropped up. He tried to replicate the effects himself, but could only manage a pale imitation—not nearly enough to serve as a basis for exposure.

The more he watched Li Lekang’s videos, the greater his confusion and the harder his confidence was hit.

Li Lekang left you with an increasing sense of mysticism the more you watched.

By now, Cooper was beginning to doubt himself: Perhaps I really can’t crack this secret. This guy’s performance is flawless. This time, you’re going to have to let the audience down.

Pressure drove him to keep staring at the videos, but perhaps because he’d been thinking too hard, working late night after night, when he finally stood up, his vision went black, his legs gave out, and with a thud, he collapsed to the floor.