The Card Apprentice

Starting on that day, Copper was busy with the second installment of the “Legend of Master Shi” card play, which finally gave Chen Mu a little break.

He had finished three of the twelve cards, leaving nine cards, among which was the token card. Still, the more he used the token card, the more proficient he had gotten with it. By that time, although his perception hadn’t gotten obviously better, based on his deployment of it you couldn’t say it had stood still.

Chen Mu didn’t use up too much time to smoothly complete the remaining eight one-star fantasy cards.

And now there was only that one dedicated token card remaining.

It had to be said that the token card was a very magical card. The token card can only be used together with other cards, since it had absolutely no value on its own. In that regard, it was like a person’s brain, which plays a central role, but doesn’t have any use all by itself.

That was Chen Mu’s first attempt at making a dedicated token card. It was only on the point of starting to make it that he realized that “token” was a very deep field of study. The preceding eleven one-star fantasy cards had already seemed quite complicated to him, but when he was facing the composition of the token card, he finally realized that the two were on totally different levels. That naturally had something to do with his familiarity with fantasy cards and the strangeness of the token card, with which he’d had no prior connection.

When he was in the process of completing them all, he had entered into the mysterious card no fewer than twenty times to refresh his study of token cards.

Whenever he ran into an issue that he couldn’t resolve, he would simply enter into the mysterious card to look for related content. Still, there were some matters about which he didn’t even find any answers, but as long as there was related information, there was still the possibility to extract some little refinement from it by wracking his brain.

Chen Mu felt like he was entering a battlefield, and in front of him were fortresses that he had to breach one by one. Once he started, he would be tearing out his hair each time that he ran into a question he couldn’t resolve. Later, he calmed down; so long as he kept patiently trying from all different directions to breach the fortresses, there was no rush.

After twenty days on end of calibrating and recalibrating, Chen Mu finally completed that token card.

If front of him, there was a pure black card laying peacefully on the desk. The whole card face was lacquered matt black, seeming to have gone through a sand blasting, which was the result of being dipped into the matt-wash. That kind of extremely expensive liquid used up fully 100,000 Oudi of Chen Mu’s money, and was normally only used in making cards that were three-star grade and above.

On the pure black card, a slick bright black composition flashed an intoxicating glow. The compositions were very level, and would show reflections if put in front of the eye.

Once he’d finished the token card, Chen Mu fell in love with it. Just as an artist’s appreciation of an art work and its beauty is not the same as that of ordinary people, so is the love of a card maker for the look of his cards.

Holding the twelve cards in his hand, Chen Mu entered into the fantasy realm of that mysterious card.

The outlines of the twelve fantasy cards appeared before Chen Mu’s eyes, floating in front of him, each one dark and flat.

Chen Mu arranged the twelve cards in order in the dark grey card-stand in front of him. Whenever he put up a card, the dark grey cards would suddenly blossom with light, immediately turning their dark grey into a flash, and slowly rotating in front of Chen Mu.

Chen Mu knew that the bright cards were no longer simulations, but were the real cards that he had just brought in.

That made him marvel still more at the mysterious card, which emitted illusions that were like the real becoming illusory, until he couldn’t tell any longer what was real and what was illusion.

Chen Mu was a little nervous. He saw that his conjecture was not wrong, but what would come after . . .

After he’d placed all twelve cards, Chen Mu’s heart jumped up into his throat.

There was no dazzling light, no alarming crescendo, while everything happened so quickly, so silently. In a twinkle, Chen Mu seemed to have entered a different world.

A great force closed in on him from all directions, making him feel as though he were suffocating. A slow but forceful pressure suddenly developed until he couldn’t stand it, then feeling as though he’d been shoved, he jerked forward and staggered a few paces.

This is . . .

Innocently looking ahead, Chen Mu was stunned.

Water! He was actually in water! Beside him all sorts of swordfish were swimming back and forth, seeming to be in midair. They were slow and graceful, sometimes whizzing into a crowd, sometimes scattering like a field of snow.

But those swordfish were a little too ugly! Chen Mu was inwardly overtaken by a cold sweat. He’d been paying too much attention to the parameters of the swordfish, and didn’t apply any skill to their appearance. That caused the swordfish to be very ugly, all as flat as shuttles, with triangular heads, triangular bodies, triangular fins, triangular tails . . .

Those swordfish were very much all assembled from all different sizes of triangles. Chen Mu felt unaccountably ashamed to have made such a swordfish illusion.

“Welcome to the simple water world!”

It had already been a long time since Chen Mu had heard that hoarse old voice. He now knew that he had succeeded! He had succeeded in penetrating another layer deeper into that mysterious card.

Water world! All along it was a water world! Looking at the constantly lightly pressurized and not fully transparent environment all around him sparkling like crystal, Chen Mu finally realized what was going on. He finally understood the use of those parameters in that strange fantasy card.

It was really like a fairy tale world! Weeds were swaying back and forth like hair, while the school of swordfish was frolicking, and bizarrely formed reefs were on the bottom, with a milky white giant clam reposing on top of them.

Even though it was an illusion, Chen Mu couldn’t help being moved by what he had created.

He reveled in it for a while, and then Chen Mu came back to his senses. It was very clear to him that the person who created the mysterious card had certainly not made the water world out of boredom. Moreover, he remembered very clearly what that old voice had said, “Welcome to the simple water world.” This construction of ‘simple water world’ couldn’t help but make him want to improve upon it. Since there was a simple water world, shouldn’t there also be a complex one?

What was in front of him wasn’t entirely clear, but Chen Mu knew that not everything would be as easy as that. He was already bowing down and worshiping the maker of the card. In his eyes, such supreme artistry was like a rank of stars he could never reach, so mysterious, and so enchanting.

Chen Mu looked for openings all around him. He was extremely curious about what would be next. Another exercise gymnastics? A new way to make cards?

Just then, the milky white giant clam slowly opened up, revealing a fine seam. A beam of light shot out from inside. It condensed into a bright spot in front of Chen Mu, and then immediately scattered in every direction, turning into a bright screen.