The Card Apprentice

“The ten fiery dragon cards you left on consignment have been sold out. From 800,000 Oudi overall, minus 80,000 Oudi, leaves 720,000 Oudi. Please check your account.”

The message that had popped up on his apparatus made Chen Mu immediately happy. Just as he was saying he had no money on hand, the money came, which would make anybody happy. He couldn’t help but feel that it really was a big city with the cards selling so quickly. Somehow, all ten of the three-star cards at 80,000 apiece had sold out in a day’s time. What amazing speed.

Chen Mu wondered if all the mid-grade card masters around there were rich as he remembered again when he was making one-star power cards. Now he was making more in a day than it used to take him a year to make. Knowledge really was money; Chen Mu finally understood the saying more deeply.

Eight hundred thousand plus looked like a lot of money, but to set up a card making lab, it was a pitifully small amount. Never mind the rest; just a set of mid-grade materials and equipment wouldn’t be less than 1 million, and high-grade analytical instruments could approach 10 million each.

Chen Mu never expected to be able to use such luxury items; he was only hoping he could have a card making lab that wouldn’t be considered too shabby. He was quite satisfied with the one he now had. Just then, he only hoped his life could be a little more peaceful. It had been a long time since he’d entered into the mysterious card.

Chen Mu’s feelings about the mysterious card were rather complicated. It had changed his life, some for the good and some for the bad, but his inquisitiveness about the card hadn’t been extinguished. He wanted to find out who had really made the card that had had such an impact on his life.

As the day gradually went dark, and he was watching the colorful fantasy card advertisements through the floor-to-ceiling window, Chen Mu’s thoughts took flight. He felt a slight, nameless chill in his heart, and without knowing why, he was spellbound watching those constantly changing fantasy card images.

“Start the training.” Wei-ah’s voice interrupted Chen Mu’s thoughts.

Chen Mu returned to his senses smiling and put all the irrelevant thoughts to the back of his mind. Wei-ah was standing in front of the piece of equipment he’d designed, looking right at Chen Mu.

“How do I begin?” Chen Mu asked, steadying his nerves. He was the one who’d taken the initiative to ask Wei-ah for physical training. That battle a few nights before had led him to understand that if he didn’t have the strength to protect himself, then no matter where he was, it would be difficult to guarantee his existence.

He didn’t quite understand why his previous life was gone forever.

At times like that, he looked like the 17- or 18-year-old youth that he was.

“Since what you want is physical training,” Wei-ah said without expression, “you’ll only need some comparatively simple exercises.”

The request Chen Mu had made to Wei-ah was to improve the quality of every aspect of his body. He didn’t want to learn to wrestle since the material he had to learn was already too much. He didn’t feel his time just then was well-distributed, so how would he have the time to learn an entirely new system? He understood very clearly the simple principle of not biting off more than he could chew.

But, Chen Mu felt more than ever that physical training was something he required. Seeing those three card artisans that day—especially the bar-browed man—had made a deep impression on him. His movements were agile and quick, and his reactions were fast. For a card artisan to be able to fight in midair placed great demands on the body.

There was still another reason that had prompted Chen Mu to make his decision; he wanted to train his perception. Though he didn’t know how other people trained their perception, the only method Chen Mu knew was extreme and made huge demands on his body. Chen Mu had never slacked off on his perceptual training, though his improvements had become very slow. Still, Chen Mu could feel improvement.

He needed to plan for the next phase of study since the demands on his body for the perceptual training he was then doing had gotten rather steep. Although he didn’t know what would come next, he guessed its demands would be still higher. Moreover, Chen Mu was rather worried about the green thread the demonic woman had placed in his body. He’d never forgotten about it, even though he’d only had that one seizure. The green thread had never disappeared. He could very clearly sense its existence whenever he entered the state of breath control.  ( Updated by AllNovel)

He still wasn’t clear about what the green thread actually did, but the pain of that one seizure was etched in his memory. He would need a strong body to resist the green thread until he could find some way to resolve it. He didn’t even know if it would do any good, but it was the only way he could think of.

It was just for that reason Chen Mu had finally figured out how to divide out a chunk of time from his already packed schedule to advance his physical training.

Coincidentally, right in front of him was a professional in physical training. Chen Mu even believed there was probably no one in the entire world who would compare with Wei-ah’s authority in that regard. He had seen the power of Wei-ah’s body with his own eyes. Before then, he had never imagined the human body could achieve such strength. He sometimes wondered if such a body were really human.

Wei-ah was quite refreshing. Once Chen Mu had brought up his request, he responded without another word being said. All of the equipment in the training space had been made according to Wei-ah’s instruction.

In front of him was one of the pieces of exercise equipment. It was a huge pool, two meters tall and 15 meters long, whose outer shell was made of high-strength fiberglass. The water in the pool was filled to Chen Mu’s chin. The water was flowing, and what Chen Mu had to do was to bear a load going back and forth repeatedly from one end to the other.

The speed of the water was controllable, and the load could be increased as well. Such drilling could increase strength, energy, and endurance.

He was carrying a 12-kilogram weight on his back which made Chen Mu look like a turtle. Watching the water flow below him, Chen Mu swallowed hard and turned his head. “Are you sure this is useful?”

Without raising his eyelids, Wei-ah said, “I did it when I was 10.”

His face red, Chen Mu took in a deep breath and jumped into the pool.

The water splashed all over, and Chen Mu was a little unstable on his feet. He then suddenly lost his balance, taking in a few mouthfuls of water. After struggling for a while, he was finally able to precariously stand. The water was flowing very fast, and if he were the least bit careless, he would be pushed off balance. Wiping the water off his face, Chen Mu started to walk ahead against the strong current.

Until then, he had always felt he had a lot of experience in the water. He had soaked in the simple water world for a long time. In order to get the method of making the tailless shuttle card, he had struggled for a long time against the water grass on the bottom, which was as strong as steel cables. That had all enabled him to realize a lot of skills for exerting force in the water.

But, he had just then discovered the situation in real water was clearly rather different from the simple water world. In a swift current, the situation was even more complicated. He actually spent an entire 20 minutes for those very short 12 meters before he could struggle to the end. And, that was only because he understood something about how to exert power in the water. If he had been an ordinary person in such swiftly flowing water, never mind making progress—he wouldn’t have even been able to stand.

Without any expression, Wei-ah turned to leave, dropping the phrase, “Your job for today is to go back and forth 20 times.”

* * *

Butchie arrived at the shop where she had bought the fiery dragon card last time.

“Hello, and how may I serve you?” the card salesgirl asked very politely.

“Hello. I’d like to ask if you know the card master who made this card.” Butchie took out the fiery dragon card she’d bought for Paxy a couple of days before.

The card salesgirl took the card and laughed. “We sell nearly 50 fiery dragon cards here every day, Miss, from many different sources,” the card salesgirl patiently explained after sensing Butchie’s outstanding temperament.

Not being able to avoid being a little disappointed, Butchie suddenly thought of something. “Right. I bought it from your automatic consignment machine. Young miss, can you think about it with me? It’s very important to me!” Butchie begged as she looked anxiously at the card salesgirl. It was lethal for an older sister with a mature temperament to suddenly display such a look.

The card salesgirl immediately softened as she hastily said, “I’ll look into it for you.”

Butchie immediately piled on the smiles. “That’s so nice of you, miss! Thank you!” The card salesgirl gave a faint smile and activated the apparatus on her wrist, pressing on the communications card.

Butchie walked over to the automatic consignment vending machine to take a look. The pile of fiery dragon cards was already sold out. She was startled. When she’d bought it that day, there were still at least seven or eight left, and those had now been sold off. Could it be because they were so cheap? Or, was it that there were people like her who had discovered the peculiarities of that fiery dragon card and cleaned them right out?

After she finished looking at the cards in the vending machine, she was disappointed that she hadn’t found any other cards marked with a “C.”

Just then, the card salesgirl finished her inquiry. Butchie rushed forward, though the card salesgirl was shaking her head apologetically.

Butchie was crestfallen, though she quickly devised another strategy. “Miss, could you help me with something while you’re working here?”

The salesgirl was full of good feelings toward Butchie with her mature temperament, and she said with a wide smile, “Of course. It won’t be a problem if it’s something I can do.”

Butchie asked for some paper and a pen, where she wrote down her communications card number and handed it to the card salesgirl. “This is my communications card number. If you see anyone selling cards marked with this kind of ‘C,’ would you be able to help me get the card master’s address? Or, please directly connect him with me. I would be eternally grateful!”

The card salesgirl readily took the number and said, “Very well.”

Coming out from the card shop, Butchie felt lost. She hadn’t thought she would come up so empty after running into such an outstanding card master that time.

Ai, first go and do your proper work! Butchie pulled herself together and rose up into the sky to fly off toward the northwest corner of Pomelo.