The Card Apprentice

Chen Mu had never expected that Copper could sneak into a card firm, but when he thought about it, he was relieved. That joker had always been nimble about taking care of things, and he also knew how to talk. No matter what, although Chen Mu didn’t understand it, he still had a good deal of confidence in Copper’s strengths.

“Why are you dressed up this way?” Chen Mu asked a little puzzled, sizing up Copper top to bottom. Copper smiled mischievously and boasted shamelessly: “I am now considered to be a person of the arts, and this is the most popular style in that circle.” In a little bit, he put his head together with Chen Mu and quietly said, “I had no choice. If I didn’t dress up like this, I would feel embarrassed saying hello to anyone else.”

“How have you been lately?” Copper asked Chen Mu.

“Same as before.” Chen Mu felt that his life wasn’t any different from before.

“OK, OK, no more chatting, I have to go to the firm now. Come to my house after a while. I still have three bottles of Sapphire Cloud Running Water left.” Their meeting was brief, as was their parting.

Sapphire Cloud Running Water was kind of icy blue fruit wine, having a light taste. Chen Mu and Copper both loved it. That kind of wine was pricey, but there were some bottles left from Copper’s family, which were bought when his adoptive parents were still alive, and which had been kept until then. Copper would only bring them out when Chen Mu stopped by.

Chen Mu’s life had started to become simple again, though in his eyes, life never really changed. He kept practicing “healthy gymnastics” every day. He kept making power-cards to keep up his livelihood. His fantasy card making time was all spent on careful examination and analysis. He made fantasy cards every day to train his hand, though he really didn’t have much money to burn. But he still made considerable gains, such as the transformations from light to dark in every aspect of things, how to make the illusion of three dimensions feel more powerful, and so forth. He’d felt his way in.

It was all very smooth, with the only thing going against his expectations being the “healthy gymnastics.” Those eighteen exercises used up an entire three months, and he continued to persevere with the four or so hours of his time that he’d set aside.

But investment always has returns.

Chen Mu’s body had become supple. His legs, hand, and torso had all taken on a pliable and tough quality. He could pull off many strange positions. His kind of suppleness wasn’t like the softness of a face; more like a steel cable, with its hardness underneath. His strength was increasing by a substantial margin in the same way.

Sizing himself up in the mirror, although his naked upper body wasn’t popping with muscle, it was extremely well-proportioned. And all it took was for him to make a little eeeee to exert himself, and the hidden muscles would burst out like taught steel bowstrings, showing themselves with a twang.

That was the result of his practice during that time. His body satisfied Chen Mu quite a bit, as he had never expected that eighteen actions would have such astonishing results in sculpting his body. His own physique in the mirror made him feel that the hardship was worth it. He didn’t care about how his figure looked, since that kind of playing around wouldn’t feed him. But he was serious about his health. He could clearly feel that being able to control his power with that kind of body allowed him to be much more skilled at what he did, with the hand following the heart. That felt really clear to him when he was making power-cards; his hand was steadier, and nimbler. Among the eighteen movements, there were three which especially trained the fingers’ dexterity.

Chen Mu was thinking that after completing the “healthy gymnastics,” he would train every day.

Once he could complete the eighteen exercises easily in a single breath, he took his opportunity to enter once again into that mysterious card’s fantasy realm.

Since his thrilling exit from the fantasy world last time, Chen Mu had not activated that mysterious card again.

Pressing the activation button, Chen Mu again entered that black and vast void.

Eighteen figures were still performing those actions the same as the last time.

With a little anticipation and a little curiosity, Chen Mu took a deep breath.

His body started to move!

With a body like a snake, one after the other, the outrageous actions followed Chen Mu’s limbs and body, continuously changing. Every time he completed a movement, a figure would dim.

He had practiced the set of “healthy gymnastics” until there was no more practicing to do, so he travelled that road in the manner of the fluid ‘running cloud flowing water’ style of calligraphy; there wasn’t the slightest halting or sluggishness.

Chen Mu was full of curiosity about what might happen next.

After the eighteen figures had all dimmed, the transformation which Chen Mu had been anticipating for so long finally happened!

Two cards! There were two cards floating in front of Chen Mu’s face, one light blue, and the other tangerine orange. Each was emitting a soft radiance. They were floating in the void, without any support.

Even experiencing it for the first time, Chen Mu wasn’t at all afraid,. Full of curiosity, he tried to touch one of them. He touched the tangerine orange one. The card was shrouded in a faint aura of dim orange-colored light, gentle and warm.

A split second after Chen Mu’s finger touched the tangerine orange card, the card suddenly split into two cards. Each one of the tangerine orange cards had a serial number, by happenstance one and two.

Chen Mu’s spirits were boosted, and feeling a great deal of interest, he immediately touched the tangerine orange card having serial number one.

“One-star fantasy card making . . . ”

This tangerine orange card was a complete course of study in the making of the one-star fantasy card. There were pictures for every procedure and every particular. As the videos played out they made this dabbler card-master Chen Mu feel as though he’d gotten the most precious treasure.

One might have said that those eighteen actions were just to make him feel curious, but as far as he was concerned, that one-star fantasy card course of study was nothing other than a priceless treasure.

So lifelike! All of the details were exactly the same as the real situation. The degree of realism in each of the images that came out from the fantasy card was enough to stupefy anyone.

When he first broke away from the shocking and awesomely beautiful likenesses, his attention was immediately taken in by the fantasy “course of study” which had played out! He was thirsty and starved to the point of greedily staring at the ever-changing moving fantasy images. What could there possibly be in the whole world to draw him in that would compare with what was in front of his eyes?

For a long time, he had been painfully fumbling about all by himself. The pain of not having any guide only gave him more clarity. How could he possibly pass up that kind of opportunity?

He was even worried in case the moving fantasy image would only play once. If he were to miss anything because of some single bit of carelessness, he would surely die of regret.

The quantity of information that was contained inside the serial-number-one card far surpassed what he could have expected. Not only did it have a complete course of study on the one-star fantasy card, it also had some tricks of the trade for making a fantasy card. Those little tricks made Chen Mu wild with joy. They were enough to enable him to raise the mark on the one-star fantasy cards that he made.

This world is indeed full of love! Chen Mu murmured to himself.

Right up until Chen Mu came out from the fantasy play, he still felt as though his mind had become a little dull.

The two tangerine orange cards were both related to knowledge about one-star fantasy cards. And that light blue card in the fantasy realm was also in the category of a card-making course of study. But Chen Mu had never even heard of that kind of card. It was called a ‘token’ card.

Chen Mu didn’t think it strange; there really were too many cards that he hadn’t heard about.

He finally calmed down by evening. He was now exceedingly curious about the problem of what that card was really for.

From the healthy gymnastics in the beginning to the one-star fantasy card-making presentation, it seemed that the two aspects didn’t have any connection to one another.

An intense curiosity such as he had never had hung in Chen Mu’s mind. He wanted to figure it out. He wanted to figure out all the secrets of that card which was so full of enigmas. Or at the very least, he wanted to know what the goal of the card was.