The Card Apprentice

Star Academy was one of the six great academies of the Heavenly Federation, having a long history. Its founder, Heiner Van Sant, was a huge name. This was the reason that it had never dropped from the ranks of the six great academies, although in recent years, Star Academy had fallen and was by then at the very bottom of the list.

Star Academy’s decline was directly related to its organizational structure.

It had ‘internal academy’ and ‘external academy’ divisions. Each year at a set time, the school selected a few whose achievements and talents were both outstanding, to enter the internal academy to study. And so, the internal academy was the most central place. Among everyone who had been able to graduate from the Internal Star Academy – no matter whether as a card master or as a card artisan – not a single one hadn’t become some personage who had left behind a multilayered historical trail.

Not only were the requirements to enter the Star Academy internal academy exceedingly rigorous, getting out was also not easy. It had already been a full ten years that no-one had been able to graduate from the Star Academy internal academy, which was the most important reason that Star Academy had declined. And from the other five academies among the six great academies – not to mention from the great hall of the Comprehensive Federation Academy, which was like the sun in the heavens – one or two shockingly talented, absolutely stunning personages were sure to appear after spending two or three years in those sparsely populated temples of suffering and isolation for students.

Only the Star Academy hadn’t had one person able to walk out from the internal academy for a whole ten years.

The situation at Star Academy for those few years has been to depend on those outer academy students to prop it up; struggling just to barely sustain themselves while facing that awkward phase.

But it was evident that Star Academy still considered the students from its outer academy to be stronger than students from ordinary schools. This was as Zuo Tingyi had said, even while he was being incessantly mocked by his good friend, who had set his own sights over the top as well.

* * *

It had been seven days already since the day when Chen Mu went to Golden Street, and the fantasy card billboard that he had been making for Uncle Hua was finally finished.

Chen Mu was quite pleased with the finished product.

A translucent white color appeared on the card, coming from the specially tanned bark of a thousand towering trees. On half of the palm-sized card, a subtle remote purple composition took shape from an elegant and complex design. The confident resolve in Chen Mu’s pen strokes was already quite mature, making his lines fluent and smooth.

A remote purple orchid as tall as a man, blue-green leaves, slender and tall flower stems, soft milky white flowers faintly swaying. Every ten seconds, the orchid blossom would spray out some colorful scattered light, which would boil like a mist in brilliant flowing colors, gradually taking the form of four glowing words: “Uncle Hua’s General Store”

The remote-purple-orchid would only reveal its brilliance at night, which was the only time it would bloom.

Apart from this remote purple orchid fantasy card billboard, Chen Mu also made another fantasy card within five days’ time.

That card was made to imitate that incredibly brilliant fantasy card advertisement that he had seen that day at the Two-Hoop card-store. Although since Chen Mu’s capability fell so far short from that of the maker of that card, he didn’t have any way at that time to imitate such a complex fantasy card advertisement.

Chen Mu only imitated one part from it in his fantasy card. Among the images emitted from that fantasy card, the fiery dragon was what aroused Chen Mu’s interest as it circled that grave and stern man in black.

Gorgeous and blazing, representing strength and power, if it were a three-star fiery dragon fantasy card, it would rank among the mid-grade battle cards. Under the manipulation of a card artisan, not only would it be able to radiate astonishing heat, it would also have explosive properties, and be both nimble and mighty. That was what so many card artisans who were into battles loved the most. He totally had the ability to make an imitation of the fiery dragon.

This fantasy card that Chen Mu made in imitation was related to such a fiery dragon card, but his was only a one-star card. To put it another way, this wasn’t a real fiery dragon card, but rather a fiery dragon illusion-card. The card could emit an extremely life-like illusion of a scarlet-flame dragon, but this illusion was made up of nothing more than rays of light, having no destructive power whatsoever.

But one must say that the illusion of the fiery dragon emitted by the fantasy card that he had made was incredibly life-like.

The both real and fantastic seeming body of the lifelike fiery dragon, took the form of layer upon layer of seething and churning flames. Once it was emitted, it would wheel and dance in the sky with shocking drive, constantly shedding deep red fiery sparks, and seeming to choose whom to bite.

That advertisement from the Two-Hoop card store had really made an impression on Chen Mu. Before then, he had never imagined that illusions could be so surprisingly complex. His flaming dragon fantasy card was the result of Chen Mu’s momentary impulse.

Still, this matter cleared up for him how very far away he still was from the level of the card master who made the advertisement for the Two-Hoop card shop.

Carrying the advertising fantasy card he had made for Uncle Hua, Chen Mu’s mood improved a little. There were only a very few things that he wanted to accomplish in his very ordinary life, and that was one of them. Today he had finally finished it, and the pleasantly surprised expression of Uncle Hua appeared in his mind, as he would look upon seeing the advertising illusion emitted by card. He was full of anticipation.

He was practically running to Uncle Hua’s general store.

The securely closed entrance made Chen Mu’s heart thump. An unformed premonition arose in him.

He ran at once to a nearby shop to look for a shopkeeper: “Hello, why hasn’t your neighbor Uncle Hua opened his shop?”

“Who knows, it’s already been quite a few days that he hasn’t come!” The shopkeeper raised his head and shot a quick glance at Chen Mu, giving him a cursory response.

Chen Mu was dispirited and beside himself when he went back home. Afterward, he would make a trip to Uncle Hua’s general store nearly every day, and each time he would return hopeless. Once the doors had been closed on Uncle Hua’s shop, they never opened again.

He also tried going around to all the shopkeepers in the area to inquire about where Uncle Hua lived, but not a single shopkeeper knew.

Chen Mu knew that Uncle Hua could have taken the final step in his life. And of course, when Uncle Hua was coughing incessantly, he already had a vague premonition.

That brought him down into a melancholy mood for much of the time.

Several years of peaceful life had made him something of a stranger to death.

The passing away of Uncle Hua had a huge impact on Chen Mu, and he himself could not say clearly what kind of impact it was. But he exercised as though his life depended on it, running through those ‘healthy gymnastics’ that he had learned from that mysterious fantasy card. Now, the situation was entirely different from when he went through the exercises before.

He trained every day and every night, entirely forgetting the time. Every day, he would keep going until he was tired to the verge of death, and yet he wouldn’t stop, pushing himself to suffer like some tyrannical coach, not wanting to give himself the slightest break. He was afraid; afraid that he would think of Uncle Hua, afraid that he would think about these earlier matters.

He wanted to keep himself busy!

Apart from shopping for daily essentials, he never left the house. He practiced the exercise gymnastics each day without stopping. And he ceaselessly practiced making fantasy cards. He also began to get some sense of what the token cards were about. But it was still only a sense, and always only basic. But the token cards’ complexity made him feel exhausted.

This was all new to him; he had never even imagined this realm.

While Chen Mu was training so arduously, something big happened in Eastern Shang-Wei City.