The Card Apprentice

The financial capital within reach that they could squander was pitifully small, and so they had to wrack their brains. Their card play couldn’t be very long, but it had to draw people in, which as far as Copper was concerned was a rather difficult challenge. He wrote and he wrote, and he revised and he revised.

Although he hadn’t started the work of card making, Chen Mu hadn’t let up either, as he was already making all kinds of changes to the design in his head. Although the card play wouldn’t be complex, increasing its expressive power was still a knotty problem. Their biggest problem was that they didn’t have any spare money handy for him to experiment.

Which is to say that Chen Mu needed to reduce the frequency of failed attempts, to reduce the costs of production. His interest in reducing costs very clearly far surpassed what of any of those who had knowledge about high-level cards would be eager for. For those two poor wretches, the costs of production were life.

Copper’s script was finally finished just on the day that the Star Academy exchange delegation arrived at Eastern Wei Academy. So, when all the people of Eastern Shang-Wei City were emptying its streets to take a look at the majestic Star Academy from among the six great academies, Chen Mu and Copper were shut up in the room discussing the script.

The two had opened up a rather animated discussion.

Chen Mu wanted Copper to tell him in detail what results he hoped to achieve point by point, such as the lighting angles, the background, the clothing, the characters’ expressions at such and such a time, among many examples.

The more Chen Mu asked, the more concrete he became, and the more detailed, getting into things that Copper had overlooked, and which he brought up. Copper had never engaged in that kind of battle, which made him fret no end. But he also knew that for Chen Mu to economize, he must be detailed and complete.

Across two weeks, the two were in discussion the whole time. Where the original script had just a few thin pages of screenplay, they had piled on a thick pad of rough drafts. It was full of the written results of the two discussing for two weeks.

The two of them had bloodshot eyes, while their spirits still seemed pretty good.

After two weeks of discussion, Chen Mu had the entire story cooked into his core. Not only that, but he had nearly every scene – and every detail in every scene – already clear in his mind.

What they needed just then was not to get right to work, but to get some rest.

The two of them slept through two days and two nights.

The two soundly sleeping people didn’t know that while they were shut-in discussing, the exchange delegation from Star Academy had already moved in to Eastern Wei Academy. Star Academy’s exchange activity, which granted inconceivable prestige, got the attention of the entire Heavenly Federation. And what had originally been confined to the exchange activities between Star Academy and the Eastern Wei Academy, had already become a grand occasion for all Eastern Shang-Wei City.

Wang Ze was the student representative from the Star Academy. He was very thin and tall, having a long face with somewhat sunken eyes, which were extremely penetrating. He was a third-year student from the external academy of the Star Academy. At Star Academy, if a student from the external academy hadn’t gained entry to the inner academy, they could graduate in four years. Although Wang Ze, who was to become a card artisan, had strengths which tended toward the ordinary, he was worldly and well-informed on the human/machine interface, so the school appointed him to be the student representative that time.

You could see that Star Academy was placing a lot of importance on the exchange activity. Apart from forth-year students who were preparing for their graduation exams, there were all sorts of other third-year students, among whom were quite a few aces.

The responsible student on the Eastern Wei Academy side was Zuo Tingyi.

“Has fellow-student Wang gotten used to being here?” Seeing Wang Ze, Zuo Tingyi politely asked how he was doing. Theirs was a basically student-organized exchange delegation, expecting to be there for two months. The two schools didn’t make any hard demands on the students, who could pretty much do as they pleased.

Wang Ze really appreciated his urbane junior colleague from Eastern Wei Academy. Wang Ze came from a distinguished family, and so he had a good feeling about the style which Zuo Tingyi exuded. “May I trouble my junior colleague? Your distinguished school’s consideration in looking after us so meticulously makes me afraid that when we return to our school we will no longer be at home.”

“My fellow student is too generous. Oh, there will be several students from your honorable school who will participate in the field work organized by the third year “F” section. Given that, I’m afraid we won’t have enough supervising teachers.” Zuo Tingyi said a little bit hesitantly.

The Heavenly Federation had five large flourishing districts, twenty-two ordinary residential districts, plus the capital, making twenty-eight altogether. Those twenty-eight districts didn’t share a border among them, and nearly every district was independent of the others. Using the Eastern Reaches District in which Eastern Shang-Wei City was situated as an example, beyond it was all unbroken forest, which was the most ancient and wild area. That was the realm of other kinds of life, which were in control of it. They were powerful, deadly dangerous, and extremely populous. In the history of the establishment of the Heavenly Federation, the opening up of each district was established on the blood of uncounted ancestors.

Outside the Heavenly Federation was all wilderness, which included a dense ancient forest, a dry Gobi desert, and ranks of cloud-piercing mountains. But what would it be like if you were to go through the wilderness, enter the forests, cross the deserts, or climb the mountains, walking ever outward? No one knows, since every year there might be countless explorers who go out, but so far no one had returned.

There were really too many dangers in the open country. There were countless varieties of huge and strong creatures – pets of nature – that even the very top card artisans of all mankind couldn’t contend with.

But the open country was also a treasure-trove, with rich produce and those precious fur pelts from the wild beasts, which were all sufficient to cause greedy mankind to rush in headlong regardless of danger. Practically all the materials needed to make the high-grade cards which were so incomparably precious in peoples’ eyes, came from the dangerous open country. They came from the bodies of powerful and huge creatures caught there.

And then there was the discovery of the transit windows and the ash stratum which caused all of the Heavenly Federation to go into a period of mad exploration. It was in the year 2910 that mankind discovered the first transit window in the open country, and soon thereafter the related ash stratum was discovered. The transit window was the entrance to the road which connects to other regions. The ash stratum was then the underground passage which connected two transit windows. It was said that there was a world dripping with ash in the ash stratum, which was how it got its name. Immediately thereafter the first new realm was discovered, which was the current Mohadi Realm. The one who discovered it – Yang Sen – was successful, and gained honor and wealth.

The Heavenly Federation publicized the exploration activities and allowed private exploration. After searching out a new realm, the private explorer could achieve a lot of rights, such as being able to earn a stake in tax revenue when two parties entered into commercial trade. Or the discoverer could achieve trade priority and other similar sorts of priority, although the priorities couldn’t develop so far as the transfer or selling of ownership. When the policies went into effect, several consortiums invested in expeditionary teams, like mushrooms popping up after the rain. And ever since then, card artisans followed on the development of card theory, leading to more and more martial power manifesting itself, with talent showing up in other martial careers as well, making it the number one profession. And then society’s need for more card artisans stimulated still more rapid development of card theory.

The outer reaches had become the heaven for numberless risk takers, while in the same way becoming the hell for numberless other risk takers who were buried there.