The Card Apprentice

Chen Mu nodded with understanding, since no-one knew as clearly as he did what Copper had been dreaming about since he was little.

“Why don’t we both go?” Copper asked tentatively.

Chen Mu shook his head, “I plan to stay home, since there are many things I still haven’t cleared up.”

There was nothing Copper could do with a fanatic like Chen Mu, except to say disdainfully, “Boring old Blockhead!”

With Copper out of the way, Chen Mu didn’t have to produce card plays, but could focus completely on researching what was in that mysterious card.

At the same time, among the women at Eastern Wei Academy, “Chance Encounter” was surging ever more intensely. No matter who had the card play, there would immediately be countless others coming to borrow it, and without even giving it back to the original owner, they would immediately lend it out to another friend.

“Chance Encounter” touched countless peoples’ hearts among both male and female owners, while countless women were brought to tears by the twists and turns of the story.

Just as “Close Encounter” had become the product most in demand at Eastern Wei Academy, the female scholars discovered to their shock that they could no longer buy it. And the card-selling shops were even more frantic with such profits in front of their eyes, and yet no sign of that young fellow wearing the two large hoop earrings. The shopkeepers were lit up with their eagerness, without being able to do a thing about it.

If they really couldn’t buy it, those female students might as well embark on the twisting path of saving the nation!

There was no lack of card aces at Eastern Wei Academy, who were already being begged by many of the female students to help them to copy “Chance Encounter.” In a school which was a place where spring hormones were surging, words from beautiful women were more effective than what a teacher might say. Those card aces normally so cut off from social interaction, were too excited to control themselves and wanted to cry out their bursting feelings to the heavens, ‘Our time has finally arrived!’

A few female students were more than willing to offer up their genuine card play copies.

At that time, piracy was definitely a highly technical activity, and they could only make guesses from the design on the card. But very quickly each of the Eastern Wei Academy card aces were stunned, one by one. Judging from the designs on the cards, they would be considered only one-star fantasy cards. Given that among the Eastern Academy card aces were some who had gone so far as to be able to make three-star fantasy cards, it would be reasonable to assume that there wouldn’t be any trouble with such a low-level card.

But the strange thing was that although by the look of the designs on them, the cards weren’t very complicated, they would fail each time they tried to make one. Once or twice is one thing, but going up as high as seventy or eighty tries like that would really try someone’s patience.

Strange, very strange!

The young card masters were looking at one another in utter despair. Could it be that the first time the beautiful girls sought their help, they would end up failing?

The student leader of the card making department said through clenched teeth, “Brothers, let’s get on this! If we’re not able to do this, how can we call ourselves men!” In front of him pair after pair of eyes shot through with red were unwilling to give up, and couldn’t restrain themselves from lustily screaming through hoarse throats.

All the eyes on campus were focused on that, since they couldn’t afford to have lost whoever it was. The best students from every section from every class-year in the card making department organized themselves, and were all united in mounting the most concerted battle in the history of Eastern Wei Academy.

The East Wind Blows, and the Battle Drums Beat, but they couldn’t break the “Chance Encounter” and they couldn’t make the beauties blush.

The most powerful lineup of students, using the standard research models and taking advantage of Eastern Wei Academy’s most advanced instruments, conducted a thorough analysis to crack “Chance Encounter.”

Of course, Chen Mu didn’t know that the card play that he had made had made such a disturbance at Eastern Wei Academy. It would never have occurred to him that people would actually want to devote so much valuable time and energy to such an uninteresting matter.

For those few days, he was entirely immersed in his studies. Having ample money on hand gave him the conditions to practice some card making, and just then he was learning how to make two-star power cards. Two-star power cards had the capacity to store 1,000 Oudi of power, with the cost of production only about 800 Oudi, while their price was 1,200 Oudi. Chen Mu had only then discovered that the higher the quality of the card, the more profit he could make from it.

The knowledge about the token cards in that mysterious card was neither voluminous nor too complicated, and so there was nothing to stop him from studying it fanatically.

Because he practiced more often during that time, Chen Mu penetrated quickly into card making such that he was no longer the same person that he had been a few months previous. Apart from the study of card making, his body was also a lot better than before. He persevered in practicing those exercise gymnastics, and the results were striking. Gone was any trace of the skinny and weak look of former days.

Only if he took his clothes off his well-proportioned body would you see the muscles showing up and disappearing. He could easily pick up three times as much weight as he used to with his hands. But what was the most inconceivable to him was the extent to which he had become more limber and lithe.

It surpassed his understanding how he could accomplish that when he should already have been beyond the age of peak flexibility.

In the whole set of eighteen actions among those exercise gymnastics, the ones he liked best were the movements to train his hands; especially the fingers, since the flexibility of his fingers was the most important for card making.

Chen Mu was extremely satisfied with his life just then. With no need to worry about money any time soon, having things to learn, and materials to practice card making with, and with his body getting better and better, what could he have to be dissatisfied about?

Making two-star power cards wasn’t any problem at all. Since he’d originally assumed that he would have to practice a few times, he never imagined that he could succeed on the first try.

* * *

On the campus Hong Tao ran into Zuo Tingyi and Wang Ze. He nodded at Wang Ze and wished him good day, and then his eyes fell again on Zuo Tingyi and he couldn’t help himself from laughingly asking him, “Aren’t you participating in that crackathon?” Crackathons had become huge at Eastern Wei Academy, and were lately the hottest topic on campus. Since what Zuo Tingyi studied was card making, Hong Tao asked him about it, though the tone of ridicule was stepped up a few notches.

Showing no emotion, Zuo Tingyi said, “I’m very busy.”

He really was very busy, since his biggest job at the time was being responsible for the connection with Star Academy, which also meant that a lot of his time those days was basically devoted to Wang Ze. Of course, he was also so notorious that no one came to him.

Off to one side, Wang Ze laughed lightly, “I’ve heard about this crackathon too. I wonder what kind of progress they’ve made.” Unfortunately, the exchange was made up completely of card artisans, otherwise classmates from the card making department would certainly be participating, since what better way could there be to bridge the gap between them and the Eastern Wei Academy students?