The Card Apprentice

Oooh! Everything around went suddenly dark, and countless bright spots swiftly floated up. The spots were large and small, floating around.

They seemed to be in the interstellar realm. It was boundless darkness among countless brighter or dimmer stars scattered around the universe like sand in a river, or as though mutually attracting to form clump after clump of strange and fantastic galaxies. Mist-like, colorful nebulae were still more like a dream or a fantasy.

The revolving of the galaxy and the creation and destruction of the stars, along with the diffusion and gradual dissolution of the nebulae, played out in front of everyone’s eyes. It brought them to feelings of great mystery while still seeming to hold some kind of order.

“Oh my god! It’s beautiful!” screamed some of the female employees.

“Did the boss really make this? It’s simply miraculous!” murmured some of the employees absentmindedly. The observation was met with everyone’s nearly unanimous agreement. Without a doubt, it was a fine work among fine works. In people’s eyes, astronomy had always been full of mystery, and they had never seen such a realistic and magnificent interstellar image.

The first notion to take shape in their minds was how small they were among the stars.

Such lifelike interstellar imagery could never have been produced without proficiency in astronomy, no matter how good he was. Now, the already awed employees were still more awed. If you were to say what had awed them before was Chen Mu’s power, this time they were certainly awed by his learning. And, as professionals, they understood how difficult the card was to make. In all of Heaven’s Wings, there was absolutely no one who could have made it.

The stars weren’t just lifeless objects; they were moving around according to some kind of order and numbered in the tens of millions. That was in addition to the galaxies formed by the stars and the transformations of the nebulae. All of that brought the difficulty of the fantasy card to a hair-raising level.

If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they would never have believed there could be such a complex card on Earth. Oh, maybe Rosenberg or Heiner Van Sant could have made one, they thought.

Chen Mu had used his power to establish his authority, but it was a fantasy card that finally overwhelmed those low-grade card masters. The image the employees all had of Chen Mu grew immediately taller. His face, which had looked so fresh and raw to everyone, seemed to have suddenly become inscrutable. Speaking of the star images, Chen Mu really had to thank the low-grade fantasy card club for those. If he hadn’t seen them there, he wouldn’t have been able to make them.

Following that, the scene changed into the growth of plants. The luxuriant growth in the process from sprout to health infected everyone. On one side, an explanation slowly unfolded, though there was only writing since it wasn’t accompanied by a sound card. Just as everyone was entranced by the fascinating world, someone suddenly called out, “Do you mean to say we’re going to make this card?”

Once those words came out, everyone was jolted awake. Then, there was a hubbub.

“Yeah, are we supposed to make this card?”

“Impossible. I reckon that apart from the boss, no one could make it.”

“Anyhow, I can’t do it.”

* * *

Everyone had something to say, and the scene quickly turned chaotic. Bu Qiangdong got a headache once he saw what was happening. He drew in a long breath and shouted abruptly, “Everyone shut up for me!”

Everything quieted down. Bu Qiangdong’s cool face slowly scanned over everyone. They all had their mouths closed, watching him.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t want to do it? Eh? Could it be that you don’t want this work anymore?” Bu Qiangdong’s voice had a note of coercion to it, and everyone quickly shook their heads. It would be a joke to say they could find work anywhere that paid as well as Heaven’s Wings.

Seeing everyone shaking their heads, Bu Qiangdong’s expression moderated. “In truth, I think it’s difficult to make as well. But, the boss’s temper, ha, ha.” Bu Qiangdong gave a couple of cold chuckles, and some of the group cringed back, thinking back on how the young, new boss didn’t seem to have such a good temper.

Everyone fell silent.

Bu Qiangdong calmly said, “So, brothers, if you don’t want to lose this job, we’ll have to go all in.”

In the office, Wei-ah said to Chen Mu, “It looks like you have a pretty good subordinate.”

Chen Mu kept working on what was in his hands, not having raised his head. “Mmmm, he’s doing well. But, if we want to make money, I’ll have to depend on myself.” He was in the middle of making a card. For a card master, the fastest way to make money was of course to make a card. Chen Mu could make three-star cards by then, which was already at the level of a mid-grade card master. If he only needed to make a living, he would have a pretty good life as a mid-grade card master.

But, if he wanted to conduct research as well, the amount of money he could make as a mid-grade card master was limited. That was why so many card masters would join some sort of group as a way to be able to access better funding, which would enable them to get further along down the road.

The biggest reason Chen Mu liked to research was the mysterious card, which was so packed with riddles. But, it would be unacceptable to lose his freedom to do research.

Everything in the Heaven’s Wings warehouse was low-level materials, but that wasn’t a big issue for Chen Mu. Although the price of high-level cards was high, they also consumed a lot of perception and had higher production costs. And, they weren’t in such demand on the market. For someone like Chen Mu, who had relied on making one-star power cards to make his living, he wasn’t going to complain about the profit margins. What could be more meager than the profit margins for one-star power cards?

Chen Mu wasn’t really too concerned about how Bu Qiangdong and the rest proceeded. He was more used to setting his own goals according to his own habits.

Chen Mu and Wei-ah arrived back at the shop from last time, though this time he’d brought some cards. Since the materials on hand were quite ordinary, Chen Mu had no way to make any sort of excellent cards. He could only make an ordinary card, such as the fiery dragon card.

Speaking of the fiery dragon card, it was probably the most frequently sold card on the market. Of course, the fundamental reason was its low price of 100,000 Oudi each. It was really quite cheap compared with other three-star cards, which frequently cost 100,000 Oudi to as much as 1 million Oudi. Although its power wasn’t great, it was adequate, and it was comparable to other high-priced three-star cards. It was also the nearly compulsory entry-level three-star card for card artisans.

But, there were hardly any aces who would use that kind of extremely popular card. The reason was similarly simple. The fiery dragon card had very high energy consumption, while its power was limited. In addition, it wasn’t very controllable. For aces, any of those factors could prove fatal.

High energy consumption would mean that upon engaging in a lengthy battle, you would have to remain passive right away. There’s no need to say any more about power, but ace card artisans demanded a high level of controllability. During the period when remote card artisans were burgeoning, being able to maintain precise attacks was a problem all card artisans needed to face.

Therefore, regardless of how popular the fiery dragon card was in the world of card artisans, no well-known card artisan had ever been seen using it.

The fiery dragon card Chen Mu made included some advances. He had used the token composition for one crucial part, which had decreased its power consumption by 15 percent. The most important advancement was changing the internal composition of the energy body emitted by the card. To put it another way, it was really an entirely new card. Although the energy body emitted looked very similar to the ordinary fiery dragon, the fiery dragons formed by the two had entirely different internal compositions.

In the lower right corner of each card, Chen Mu had etched the letter “C.”

Chen Mu made ten fiery dragon cards in a single breath, setting the price at 80,000 Oudi apiece. When the card salesgirl saw that what Chen Mu was selling on consignment was only a fiery dragon card, her expression went cold. Chen Mu didn’t make anything of it as he placed them into the automatic consignment apparatus and entered the number of his new money card. Once the cards were sold and the merchant’s fee deducted, the remaining money would be automatically imported to his money card. Chen Mu and Wei-ah departed after they finished.

They still had a lot to do, such as buying some daily necessities. Chen Mu thought of himself as different from Wei-ah—who wasn’t really human—while he remained in the category of ordinary human.

Still, the only thing that surprised Chen Mu was that Wei-ah had been so interested in the many kinds of programs shown on the big screens in the commercial district. Chen Mu simply bought an apparatus for Wei-ah when he noticed that, as well as some fantasy cards to watch.

About 30 miles outside Pomelo, there was a small tourist town called Dongxing. Dongxing didn’t have much of a name for itself among the small villages around Pomelo, but it did have seven or eight hot springs and was rather nearby. So, quite a few people would pass their holidays there.

There were many old-style wooden houses in Dongxing, which were often rented by their owners to tourists who wanted to stay for a while.

A young woman dressed in purple stood in front of a house and knocked on the door. Her head of light purple hair was tied in a small pony tail, and she wore a similarly light purple jacket, inside of which she had on a skin-tight, black knit sweater. She was about one and seven-tenths meters tall with a slender body that would draw the gazes of passersby. She had a sharp chin beneath her large sunglasses, though the thing that drew the most attention was the pack on her back, which was nearly as tall as she was.