The Card Apprentice

Chapter 81: Profiteer

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Walking along the road, Chen Mu was only thinking about making money. He’d been at it half the day, tearing out his hair as he went over and over the possibilities without coming up with any scheme. It was clearly not what he was good at.

Did he really have to cut off his experimenting? Chen Mu gave a strong sigh of regret, thinking that if Copper were there with his quick mind, things would be better. Finding a new way to make money wouldn’t have been any trouble.

Just at that time, Ya Ya was having a big headache, since her shuttle car had broken down. She was dressed in a lively colored tee-shirt, with very short cut-off jeans. Her two long white legs were enough to stop a person’s breath. She was very tall, with an exquisite face, and had long been the object of countless peoples’ longing. Just then she was leaning helplessly on her new Silver Star shuttle car. Sweet car with a beautiful woman, turning the heads of everyone who went by.

Ya Ya’s eyes suddenly brightened as she saw someone.

Chen Mu was strolling in her direction.

“Yao Ke, Yao Ke!” Ya Ya was immediately waving her two hands, as she jumped up and shouted.

Chen Mu lifted his head, having had his thoughts cut off, and saw Ya Ya desperately waving after him. After taking a quick look, he intended to keep going. The relationship between him and Ya Ya couldn’t be considered very friendly. Quite the opposite, since it seemed there were some little offenses caught up in it.

Seeing that Chen Mu wasn’t going to pay any attention as he passed by, Ya Ya quickly ran in front of him.

Her move was exactly the same as the last time, spreading out her legs and extending her arms, blocking Chen Mu from moving ahead.

“What’s up?” Chen Mu’s accosting her was also strangely identical to the last time.

“My shuttle car is broken. Can you help me fix it?” Ya Ya put on a begging face, “Otherwise I won’t be able to get to class.”

This had to be some sort of put-on, since she really didn’t care if she went to class or not. Her family wealth was such that there was no need for her to do any hard work related to card making, and so she really didn’t have her mind in school.

Ever since she’d incurred Chen Mu’s enmity the last time, she’d felt some regret. And Chen Mu’s fiery decisiveness had left a deep impression on her. She’d also realized that Chen Mu was the most diligent and hard-working person in the class section, which was in strong contrast to that parvenu she’d seen at first.

It felt curious to find such a quiet hard-working person among a gang of trash which made ‘eating, drinking and being merry’ their life goal. She’d been looking for a chance to talk with Chen Mu, but he would disappear as soon as class was out, and he hardly spoke at school.

She’d gotten her opportunity that day. Inwardly delighted, she deepened her begging pout.

Ya Ya was quite tall, somewhat taller than Chen Mu. When they stood together, he immediately became like the cow-sh*t under fresh flowers, setting off Ya Ya’s charms. And her snow-white legs up against Chen Mu’s sickly yellow skin really exuded deadly temptation.

Shuttle car? Chen Mu glanced at Ya Ya’s Silver Star, while remembering how Copper had always wanted to buy a shuttle car.

“I don’t know how to repair it.” Chen Mu responded very honestly. Never mind a high-end car like the Silver Star, he could count on his fingers how many time he’d ridden in a public shuttle bus.

“Help me to take a look at it. I really don’t know what to do!” Ya Ya’s wide eyes made her look like she was about to cry. She didn’t care if Chen Mu knew how to fix cars. She only wanted to take advantage of the chance to tighten the relationship between the two of them. She was really curious about him.

“If I break it, I’m not going to make good on it.” Chen Mu had thought about it and opened his mouth to speak.

Ya Ya’s face transformed like bright sun after the rain, and the tears and distress that had just filled her eyes flew off into thin air of an instant. She hurriedly nodded her head, “No problem, no problem!”

The failure rate of shuttle cars had always been a problem, which was why those with some power generally preferred to learn how to directly manipulate the jet-stream card. The core technology of the shuttle car was the jet-stream card. The shuttle car used it to generate a powerful jet-stream for propulsive force, and then with its aerodynamic design, it could fly.

But there were still too many unsatisfactory aspects which remained for it to be a mature means of transportation. It hadn’t yet gotten solid because of the quality of the basic materials which made the core jet stream card. It gave off a powerful jet stream, which is to say that its propulsive force was very powerful. Despite a lot of protective measures having already been implemented, it was still very easy for its core jet stream card to be damaged or destroyed when used for that sort of powerful propulsion.

Chen Mu agreed for a very simple reason. He’d gotten a rare opportunity to understand the shuttle car more deeply, and it wouldn’t matter if he broke it.

Previously, when he’d been together with Copper, Chen Mu had always been experimenting with making all sorts of low grade cards, and he’d taken apart quite a few household appliances like heating pots and fresh food cabinets, with which he had surprisingly little trouble.

The Silver Star shuttle car sold for upwards of 3,500,000 Oudi on the market and was an out and out high-end car. But since his counterpart had said that it didn’t matter if he broke it, Chen Mu boldly started to take it apart with no great concern.

A beauty with a sweet car, you knew she was highly privileged on sight, while Chen Mu looked just like a mechanic crawling all over it. There were all sorts of small tools in the trunk, which helped Chen Mu quite a bit.

When the car had been completely dismantled, he was just pulling the jet-stream card from inside the car.

There were quite a few differences between that jet-stream card’s specifications and those of ordinary cards. It was as thick as a finger and felt like a square plate in your hand.

It was a three-star jet stream card, but it had undergone a certain degree of modification compared with an ordinary jet-stream card. The tweaks made its jet stream more concentrated, while dampening its handling quite a bit.

The problem was visible on the card’s face, where the composition had been damaged.

The card only needed to be repaired or swapped out with a new one for the shuttle car to restored to flight.

Chen Mu was confident that all the problems came back to the card.

“This jet stream card has been damaged. I can restore it, but you’ll have to pay.” Chen Mu was looking placidly at Ya Ya.

Compensation? Ya Ya wondered if she’d heard wrongly, since it was the first time she’d ever run into someone asking for pay to help her.

“I only have 30,000 Oudi on me.” She answered somewhat dubiously, still not having completely reacted.

“Then it’s 30,000 Oudi.”

“Oh.” Ya Ya nodded blankly.

For Chen Mu, a three-star jet stream card had a pretty complicated composition, and card restoration required high ability. But that day he was able very easily to restore that three-star jet stream card, not knowing if it was because of the money incentive that he was so inspired. He didn’t restore it to its original composition but made some slight modifications.

Having restored the card, Chen Mu put the shuttle car back together. Ya Ya switched it on, half believing and half doubting, not imagining that it would have actually been fixed.

“For you.” Ya Ya very readily handed over 30,000 Oudi, although Chen Mu’s way of asking for money made her a little uncomfortable. In a somewhat bad mood, Ya Ya started up the shuttle car, and sped off with a strut, without any goodbye to Chen Mu. She still had some of her original interest in him, but the way he asked for compensation had made a big hit on her impression.

Not paying any attention to Ya Ya, getting 30,000 Oudi made Chen Mu very happy. Although it wasn’t very much, for him 30,000 would somewhat resolve his economic crisis. He had never considered the act of asking for money to be improper. As far as he knew, it was nothing out of the ordinary, or anything to question.

What had really made him happy wasn’t those 30,000 Oudi, but it was that the matter had given him an entirely new way forward.

Ya Ya felt more and more uncomfortable after getting back to school. The guy’s character was really messed up to be asking for compensation to help a fellow classmate! She would never have been able to appreciate such a person before. So, when she watched Chen Mu enter the classroom, especially with that gem studded woman’s style apparatus, she thought about that 30,000 Oudi again, and her feeling of disdain was heightened a bit.

It wasn’t about being poor, but to be so calculating with money was really too profiteering!

What made her even more indignant was that Chen Mu didn’t even look at her as he was walking into the room, as though the morning’s affair had never even happened.

As far as Chen Mu was concerned, the matter had already been wrapped up, and time was too precious to waste.

Concentrating on the professor’s lecture, his eyes flitted from time to time as though he were thinking about something. Those few months had been important for him. His knowledge and the structure of his knowledge had become gradually systematic, and the principles set forth in that mysterious card allowed him to approach the knowledge that he did have from a comparatively higher perspective.

Without his being aware of it, his understanding of card making had undergone an earth shattering transformation. And amid concentrating on his studies, Chen Mu hadn’t even realized any of it.

Ya Ya was looking at Chen Mu with a little panic and didn’t know why. Yao Ke’s face was full of concentration, giving out a charm that was hard to describe. It was as though she felt some kind of power from his body, some kind of elevating positive force.

That was in such powerful contrast with the profiteering man from that morning.

“Is the little girl mooning?” Sister Phoenix poked her playfully from the side.

Ya Ya looked at her superciliously, “What sort of rubbish is that? Could this old lady be mooning over that parvenu?” Her supercilious look had ended a million kinds of amorous feelings, crossing out the souls of nearly all of those male students who had been secretly paying attention to her.

Sister Phoenix chuckled, “You’ve obviously been watching someone all morning.”

“I’m just curious. I don’t quite get this guy.” Ya Ya explained about the morning’s affair in a low voice.

When Ya Ya had finished, she found Sister Phoenix giving her a strange look. Being a little puzzled, she asked “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Sister Phoenix said in a whisper, “Don’t play with fire. It’s fine to fool around with boys, but don’t ever let them touch your feelings, or else . . .”

“You’re really strange today, Sister Phoenix!”

The two of them started back up playing and joking, and the topic quickly drifted off to someplace else.

Once class was over, Sister Phoenix stole Ya Ya’s shuttle car key, dropping a word, “Hey, let me use your car today.” Before the sound died, she’d disappeared.