The Card Apprentice

Chen Mu’s perception drew in the card ink flowing down to the nib of the pen. That induced a wonderful alliance between the two the instant the ink made contact with the card blank. The fine oscillations of his perception were continually changing, causing the correspondence between the card blank and the ink to keep producing rich transformations.

The continuous, fine, high-frequency oscillations of his perception made high demands on the card master. The flow of perception in such a state was stunning. Perfectly keeping up the oscillations of his perception could reduce the wear and tear on it to the greatest extent possible. Wear and tear was a problem every high-level card master had to face.

The higher the level of the card, the more complex the skills it would involve. The demands on perception would also be higher.

If there were other high-level card artisans with him just then, they would certainly be astonished to find that the card wasn’t more than a four-star card. It involved a lot of skills that exceeded a four-star card. Those fine and rich perceptual oscillations implied the classic high-level skills used to make a five-star card.

Ru Qiu was an astonishing talent, but she was still too young in the end; such high-level skills were a bit too challenging for her. However, that didn’t stop her from understanding what was implied by those skills. That four-star card actually contained a lot of high-level skills! She was curious about what sort of magic that card would have when it was done.

When it came to Chen Mu, he didn’t think there was anything worth paying attention to with those skills. His delving into the Van Sant System of card making knowledge could be traced back to his teaching himself how to make one-star power cards. He truly did lack some essential understanding of the Van Sant System.

Ever since he got the mysterious card, the vast knowledge it contained had taken up all of his attention. Just delving into that bit of knowledge had nearly used up all the energy he had, leaving him none to learn the Van Sant System with. Up until then, it seemed he hadn’t encountered any issue that couldn’t be resolved by the mysterious card.

He had already gotten used to applying his knowledge of Token Theory to solve problems, with pretty good results. The mysterious card only presented theoretical knowledge, however, and practical operations would always be more difficult than theory.

Those fine oscillations, so full of changes, gave Chen Mu a lot of trouble. If he were the least bit careless, and if the slightest error occurred with the oscillation, the card would be declared a failure. The thousands of oscillations last time all had orderly transformations, which Chen Mu had already memorized. Even so, there was still a rather high probability of error. Maintaining all of his concentration on those thousands of oscillations was certainly an extremely difficult challenge.

That wasn’t the only trouble. It required the consumption of a lot of perception to make the ink meld with the card blank. The wear and tear on his perception in the state of oscillation was far faster than for any other state. The demands on perception were extremely high for a card master to control it and to constrain the oscillations to within the smallest range possible.

Chen Mu’s new perceptual composition had given him an entirely new experience. Although he made incessant mistakes, the easy feeling he had while making the cards did give him a strange joy. He knew he was only making so many mistakes because he wasn’t familiar enough with his new perception yet. Once he became more familiar with it, his success rate would undoubtedly go up.

Sure enough, after going through more than ten days of familiarizing himself with his new perception, Chen Mu’s rate of success did surge. It had reached more than 50 percent. That kind of success rate would be rather excellent for any card master. Every card master had one kind of card he had truly mastered. For example, some were good at high-level battle fantasy cards, and some were good at high-level auxiliary fantasy cards. In the realm of what they had mastered, their success rate would be a lot higher than for other cards. But to achieve a success rate of more than 50 percent for any kind of card would be enough for a card master to claim to have mastered it.

Still, Chen Mu was clearly not satisfied by that result. He was already used to a success rate of higher than 80 percent, so how could he tolerate a rate of 50 percent? In his eyes, a success rate of 50 percent was considered failure.

As Chen Mu became more and more facile, Ru Qiu’s work load became bigger and bigger. By that time, Chen Mu’s card making speed was so fast that he needed a lot of ink every day. Ru Qiu had been rather proud and arrogant, though there was no way she could compare with Chen Mu in card making. But if she couldn’t even keep up with the ink making, that wasn’t something she could accept. She wanted to prove to Chen Mu how much she was worth! So, she lived every day as though she were a laborer, her pretty white face always smoking with gloom and looking unbearably awful.

Seeing such a girl as Ru Qiu so exploited and oppressed, even someone like Xi Ping—who would squeeze out all the value from another person—couldn’t stand to see it.

“Why don’t you get Little Qiu some assistants, Boss?” Xi Ping asked Chen Mu probingly. “You can see how tired she is every day. If she goes on like that, I’m afraid she’ll wear herself out!” He knew Chen Mu’s card making involved a lot of secrets, so he wouldn’t dare to press any wild ideas.

“Oh.” After Xi Ping said that, Chen Mu also realized Ru Qiu had certainly been working very hard for a while. The reason he hadn’t realized it before was because he was measuring Ru Qiu by his own standards. That degree of exhaustion was perfectly normal for him. Whether it was card making or actual combat practice, he would often be even more tired.

But Ru Qiu wasn’t more than a girl, and he then remembered the occasional strong expression she had worn those last few days. It looked like she was just as stubborn as he was. Chen Mu couldn’t help but size her up in his mind.

After thinking it over, Chen Mu said to Xi Ping, “I’ll take care of it. Let’s make a trip to Chilei.”

Walking out of the lab, Chen Mu was abruptly stunned by the frenzied scene in the ravine. Shuttle cars were streaming by incessantly, constantly loading and unloading like it was a busy harbor. The construction in the ravine had never stopped, and it wasn’t just the Valley Nest alone anymore. Large-scale buildings were rising out of excavations, turning the snow silkworm ravine into a small fortress.

Being infected by all the bustle in the ravine, Chen Mu’s mood became a lot more relaxed. Going along the way, Chen Mu found that quite a few of the shuttle cars would give way or give a signal of greeting when they encountered his fleet. With a little thought, Chen Mu understood what was going on. It looked like the Snow Silkworm Card Artisan Firm’s position in the Pascal District had already been firmed up.

“Have Mobley and his team left?” Chen Mu suddenly thought of the news Xi Ping had reported a few days before.

Xi Ping nodded. “They left four days ago. After our large surge in production, the first batch of goods they needed has already been delivered. They were in a hurry to get back just when the recent battles were winding down. They departed back to Thousand Lakes. But they specifically established an office in Chilei. Would you like to take a look at it?”

Chen Mu shook his head after thinking it over. “Not today. We have some recruiting to do first.”

When Chen Mu and Xi Ping arrived at the card artisan service center that time, they enjoyed completely different treatment. The one who received them was Lee Carville, the one in charge of the center.

Lee Carville’s face was all smiles as he came personally down the stairs to receive them. “We are honored by your presence, Mr. Chen. Welcome, welcome!”

Xi Ping had already become quite familiar with all the leading figures in the Pascal District by then. He introduced him to Chen Mu, smiling. “This is the head of the card artisan service center, Lee Carville. With Mr. Carville’s help, it looks like we’ll certainly get whatever we want today!”

“How are you?” Chen Mu motioned to Lee Carville.

Lee Carville then said flatteringly, “You are so kind. Manager Xi is so far above me. Come, come; we’ll go in. After you, Mr. Chen!”

As Chen Mu watched the ever-respectful Lee Carville, there were still other important personnel from the card artisan service center who didn’t dare to come forward, which gave Chen Mu some complicated feelings. He never thought he would get such treatment.

Chen Mu went right to the point as they entered the VIP lounge. “We came hoping to recruit a few card making personnel.”

Lee Carville had been expecting to have some polite conversation with Chen Mu, but he was good at reading what other people were thinking. He immediately realized Chen Mu was a person who didn’t like to waste words on polite talk. He rushed to say, “No problem. Although we are mainly focused on card artisans here, there are 5,000 registered card masters.”

He then gave Chen Mu some introduction. “On the screen in front of you is information about those card masters: their names, their field of expertise, and the level of each skill. You need only lightly press open their names to be able to examine their materials and resumes.

There was a table placed in front of Chen Mu, and ten centimeters above the table floated a translucent screen. There were quite a few names on the screen, and Chen Mu casually opened one of them.

Lu Ming. High-level card master. Perception in the middle of the fifth level. Materials preparation: high-level. Certified as a master of five-star materials. Card ink preparation: high-level. Certified as a five-star compounding master. Drafting skills: high-level.

Chen Mu regretted not bringing Ru Qiu along; he had no understanding of those strange terms. Pointing to the screen, he asked Lee Carville, “What is a five-star materials master? What is a five-star compounding master?”

Lee Carville was taken aback, never having imagined Chen Mu would ask such a simple question about common knowledge. If he didn’t even understand that, how could he recruit a card master? Bosses these days are all laymen who just like to push people around.

While Lee Carville was silently criticizing him in his head, nothing of that showed up on his face. He professionally explained, “The skills of a card master are primarily identified in three parts. One is the processing of materials, another is skill in compounding, and there is a part about drafting skill. Each of these has different standards of appraisal. For each person, those three parts must be identified. For example, that Lu Ming you’re looking at is high-level at materials processing, high-level at ink preparation, and high-level at drafting. So long as all three are high-level, he could be promoted as a high-level card master.”

Lee Carville continued explaining. “If different card masters were all high-level at the same skills, how could you make a judgment about their skill levels? That would need to involve the job title. To be able to have a certain job title would clarify their attainment in that regard. For example, Lu Ming is clearly a card master who is proficient at processing materials and preparing card ink. With no title, his drafting skills are his weakness. A card master like that would be suited to take an assistant’s position.”

It was all suddenly clear to Chen Mu, and he was immediately interested to open a few names. But he then came across quite a few weird job titles, like some kind of subtle fantasy card master, a baking master, a wash master, a grinding master…

After asking Lee Carville, he found out the so-called baking master referred to card masters who had mastered the preparation of materials in a furnace. The washing master was a card master who was proficient in extraction, or the separation of liquids and that sort of skill. The grind master was a little alternative. They were demanding about how finely materials could be ground.

Seeing how fascinated Chen Mu looked, Xi Ping’s expression became a little strange. What kind of person was the boss in his mind? He was the world-famous creator of the numbered series of cards. He couldn’t be described as just a genius youth anymore. He was that rare, young, grand-master-level card master who had made history in the federation!

How could that kind of card master not even understand any of those matters of common knowledge? Could the boss not be pleased with Lee Carville and be playing a trick on him? Xi Ping couldn’t come up with anything no matter how hard he thought about it. However, he tactfully didn’t say anything and just acted as though he hadn’t heard, staying on the sidelines.

“Mmmm, I’ve made my picks. These few.” Chen Mu finally declared his selection complete.

Lee Carville rushed to take a look, but his expression turned a little strange when he saw the people Chen Mu had picked. He couldn’t help but politely remind Chen Mu, “I’m afraid those card masters couldn’t take on any big jobs, Mr. Chen. None of them have any job titles related to drafting. Although they would be inexpensive to employ, if you want them to make cards, you would be wasting a lot of material for little return.”

Hearing Lee Carville’s warning, Chen Mu was rather surprised, and his gaze toward Lee Carville immediately became a lot nicer. He smiled and firmly said, “I know, but they are what I need.”

Seeing how certain Chen Mu was, Lee Carville discreetly refrained from saying anything more, and he took care of contacting the card masters.

Just as Lee Carville had said, those card masters had been muddling along unsatisfactorily, so when they got the news, they immediately came charging over to the card artisan service center.