The Card Apprentice

Star Academy abruptly announced that it was going to conduct student exchange activities with Eastern Wei Academy. In small Eastern Shang-Wei City, that was very big news.

And who was the Star Academy? Well, it was one of the great academies, with a much longer history than the Great Hall of the Comprehensive Federation Academy, which currently had the best reputation. Its founder, Heiner Van Sant, stood shoulder to shoulder with the father of card theory.

Every bit of the Star Academy’s former glory was dug up, so that in short while, it was as though the Star Academy had become the pride of all the inhabitants of Eastern Shang-Wei City.

Eastern Wei Academy was also lifted by this tide. Each one of the students was now walking tall, in lively spirits.

Everyone was talking about why Star Academy had come to Eastern Wei Academy. It was not so long before that ordinary people could only gaze up toward the Star Academy, and suddenly it was coming to Eastern Wei Academy! Many of the residents of Eastern Shang-Wei City scoffed on first hearing teh news, bluntly calling it fake news.

The environment of Eastern Shang-Wei City seemed to become clean and orderly overnight. No trash and no vagrants were to be seen on the streets anymore. Workers were everywhere painting the walls, with orders coming down from the mayor, personally.

The number of visitors to Eastern Wei Academy surged. Lots of people were extremely curious about whatever it was that made the Star Academy so fond of this obscure school. Within a week after Star Academy made this announcement, the amount of correspondence Eastern Wei Academy was receiving from other schools about student exchanges increased a hundred-fold.

Of course, Chen Mu didn’t know any of that, since he hadn’t been out of the house for quite a while. But even if he did know, he probably wouldn’t think it had anything to do with him.

Training every day, as always.

He didn’t know why he was that way himself, and he didn’t want to know. He only knew that he didn’t want to stop. While he was undergoing this somewhat masochistic training and studying, he was making quite rapid progress.

Chen Mu felt that it was like he was dreaming. It was a dream that was both very long and very short, and when he woke up after a while he felt like a stranger to himself.

He felt full of strength all over. He could now easily pick up heavy things with one hand, which had previously required two hands. Apart from that, his perception had become a lot sharper. Bursting with strength, his supple tough nature was rising all around. By comparison, his muscles hadn’t grown much at all.

What he found inconceivable was that his body was already supple enough that he could practically bend in any way at will, which made him think of the acrobats in an acrobatic troupe. They were so flexible that they could slowly change direction in a narrow tube, and those were all twelve or thirteen-year-old girls. Girls by nature are much more remarkable than boys in their flexibility, and that was the age at which their bodies were the supplest.

What about him? Already sixteen years old, and he was a man.

Of course, in Chen Mu’s eyes, there was no difference between a boy and a man, or at the very least it had been that way for him.

Although Chen Mu was making startling progress with this training, he still felt a little dispirited, as before. This progress didn’t provide him any pleasant surprises. The way he was now, it seemed that he had lost any curiosity toward anything, except for that mysterious card.

He was still only practicing and studying blindly, mechanically, habitually. But his brain had already started to resume pondering. He wasn’t reflecting on anything like the meaning of life. As far as he was concerned, that was too remote. But the death of Uncle Hua affected him a lot, and sometimes a deep sigh of regret would involuntarily slip out, although he would quickly put these thoughts – which he considered superfluous moodiness – out of his mind.

Dead people have already died, and the living want to live on, as always.

Living is practical, and he wasn’t used to mixing in those so-called ‘meaning of life reflections’ as part of it. What he was thinking about now was the most basic of problems; living.

For Chen Mu, the death of Uncle Hua wasn’t only about someone who cared about him having departed from him forever, it also meant that from then on he would have to find a new buyer for the one-star power cards that he made. That was a big problem – a very big problem – and if it didn’t get resolved then as far he was concerned everything was illusion, and nothing was real. He had better resolve the problem quickly.

Just then Copper showed up.

As soon as Copper came in, he went directly onto Chen Mu’s bed, his mouth incessantly grumbling. “Ah, very comfortable, it all tires me out. Blockhead, this hard bed of yours seems to have become comfortable.”

Chen Mu didn’t understand him. He got up to pour a glass of water for him, “What brings you here today?”

“I missed you.” Copper was talking irrelevant nonsense. He shortly put on a look of suffering, and then mindlessly let slip a huge sigh. “Life is really f**king difficult these days.”

As soon as he heard this, Chen Mu knew that this knucklehead almost certainly suffered some grievance – or had worked way too hard – and had come there to get it off his mind. Chen Mu was clear about what he needed to do, which was to do nothing, and calmly listen.

After a while, Copper suddenly sat up, his face expressing hatred of the whole world, “Blockhead, what do you think? These f**king ways of the world. I work myself to death, wasting so much of my strength, and that devil quietly, without so much as a word, blocks my credit. Ha! What sort of a general manager is he, all dressed up and posturing like that?”

After Copper gave his enraged account, Chen Mu finally understood the whole story:

When Copper was young, he was always ready to work hard. Getting into this card show firm, he very quickly familiarized himself with its internal networks. On top of his native intelligence, from studying at school for a few years he had started to attempt to write some scripts himself. But those ambitious activities of his were discovered by the general manager. The general manager heaped praise, and then after praising him for a bit, made some promise on the spot that if he was able to produce a good script, he would promote him to official screenwriter.

Having hopes, Copper poured out his pains day and night, using up his heart’s blood, and finally writing a script that he felt satisfied with. When he gave it to the general manager to look over, the general manager was very pleasantly surprised, and immediately brought out the clapper-board on the spot, and began to produce according to that script.

Seeing that his heart’s blood was being taken seriously, Copper was happier than anyone, and looked forward to the card show’s release more than anyone. But what he hadn’t thought of was that waiting until after the card show was finished, and moreover had entered the marketplace . . . He only then found out to his surprise that the general director’s name showed up as the card show’s screenwriter. It was as though he had been hit by lightning on the spot, and for the rest of the day he hadn’t recovered.

When he furiously went looking for the general manager, the general manager tossed him 50,000 Oudi with a cold smile, and didn’t say a thing about promoting him to be the official screenwriter. And moreover, he let it be known that if he said anything stupid outside, he would be driven out of the company.

What made Copper both proud and depressed was that this card show had leapt to popularity, and had already become the sales leader. And that general director had become a hot personality in the card show world thanks to that card show. It seems that all of Copper’s rage and strength had been sucked out of him after he finished telling the story, and he fell back onto the bed, despondent. Chen Mu listened calmly, making no expression, though in reality, whether it was him or Copper, he had seen many many more unjust matters than that. Except that Copper had thrown too much of his heart’s blood into his script, which was why he was so stirred up. But reasonably, he and Chen Mu had never considered that there was any real justice in the world.

“How is your card study going?” Copper asked Chen Mu dispiritedly, after a long time.