The Card Apprentice

Five hundred years before, when the originator of card theory, Rosenberg, first proposed his card theory, he also succeeded in making the first card. From that point forward, all sorts of cards proliferated across five-hundred-plus years of development. Before then, primitive card prototypes would show up in great quantities among all kinds of religions. They were considered to have a kind of unnatural power. To that day, some religions still maintained quite a few card masters and card artisans of a very high skill level. While their insights might have surpassed those of the Rosenberg era, what they passed on remains more mysterious and secretive than enlightening.

In the same sense, Rosenberg’s stratospheric breakthrough was to destroy the mysterious aura which surrounded the card system. He systematically studied and explicated the card’s structure, and moreover invented several cards. For example, the standard design of today’s power-card was first proposed by Rosenberg. He utterly destroyed the mysterious aura enshrouding the physical card. The study of cards also then became a new academic subject.

About three hundred years ago, there was a card master named Heiner Van Sant, who took card development into a new golden age. The year that Heiner Van Sant was born was coincidentally two hundred years after Rosenberg had officially proposed his card theory. It was as though those two greatest card masters across some five hundred years were echoing one another.

The period when Heiner Van Sant was alive was a period when heroes emerged. During that hundred-year period, countless cards were invented by genius card masters. Heiner Van Sant was equally famous with Rosenberg as a great card master. As many as ninety-seven sorts of cards were invented under his direction. It was during that time that so many great card masters emerged who later became famous, such as Luo Qie, Chemosich, and others.

After so many years of development, contemporary card study had long since become quite different from that of five hundred years before. The entire discipline had become more painstaking, with many branches, and with research going into much more depth.

After the Mohadi domain normalized relations with the The House of a Hundred Depths, the card theory of the Heavenly Federation was promulgated to these two domains. They were both remarkable peoples for the speed of their assimilation, but because of the unique qualities of each realm, the theory developed according to the unique theoretical adaptations of each realm. Thus, the card-theory ecology was enriched and enlarged, leading to ever more new cards. It was such a brilliant and glorious period; a period when countless individuals were urged forward in their profound striving.

Following that continual development of the card theory system, and the appearance of all sorts of strange cards, it became more and more difficult to distinguish among the card types. There was still no authoritative way to classify them.

Still, if one wanted to know what a particular card did, the simplest and most direct way would be to use it.

Using cards required some apparatus, and as it happens such devices were also invented by Rosenberg and perfected by Heiner Van Sant. While the current apparatus was being made more and more elaborate, and there were more and more supplementary functions such as the flashlight on Chen Mu’s apparatus, the fundamentals hadn’t changed in the slightest.

From the outside, the apparatus is a rectangular box with three encircling bands, which could be fastened to the arm. There was a card slot on the top, for making use of the cards. At minimum, each device had two card slots. The higher the grade of the card apparatus, the more slots there would be. Among the two slots, one was for the basic power-card, while the other slot would be for whatever the user wanted to use it for. Which is to say that the apparatus was a device to use a power-card together with a different card, with the power-card energizing the other card, thus realizing its intended use.

Naturally, Chen Mu’s apparatus was unlikely to be any sort of high-grade product, since two-hundred-some Oudi wouldn’t buy that. Given that sort of utilitarian-grade apparatus, Chen Mu had used very few among the vast array of goods.

Without any hesitation, Chen Mu slid the card into the slot of his apparatus and pulled out an unused power-card to slide into the bottom slot. Taking a deep breath, Chen Mu immediately pressed the power button on the face of the apparatus.

“Crap!”

A row of characters quickly appeared to Chen Mu on a translucent screen.

“This power-card does not comply with the specifications. Please use a three-star or higher power-card.”

A three-star power card! Or even higher! The stunned Chen Mu had already determined that the card was a thoroughly high-grade card. In general, the higher the grade of the card, the higher the grade of the required power-card, with the power-consumption rate also increasing. Chen Mu already had that much common sense.

But Chen Mu had some hardship. He didn’t have a three-star power-card on hand, and if he wanted to know what sort of card this really was he would have to go buy one. But the price of a three-star power-card was definitely not a small figure.

The capacity of a one-star power-card was a hundred power units. A two-star power-card was a thousand power units, while the capacity of a three-star power-card went up to ten thousand power units.

The suggested retail price of a one-star power-card was 110 Oudi, which was about 1 Oudi per power unit. The price of a two-star card was 1250 Oudi, or about 1.25 Oudi per power unit. The price of a three-star power-card went up to 15,000 Oudi, which averaged out to 1.5 Oudi per power unit.

This was why the usage of the one-star card was so widespread. After all, the poor were still the most numerous people in that world.

He had generally lived frugally for those three years. Working day and night entirely for his sustenance, he had made just 80,000 Oudi in total. He was extremely hesitant to think that he could pull out 15,000 Oudi going forward. Having experienced the life of a street punk since he was small, he gave money more weight than most people, since he knew that it was the most basic thing in life.

He hesitated for quite a while, ultimately overcoming his urge by his reason. Chen Mu decided to give it some time. He didn’t throw out the two pieces of film that had been stuck over the cards either but saved them instead.

His days resumed their normal serenity again, except that he had acquired a new habit: He couldn’t resist fidgeting with the card. Every time he examined that card, he would become immersed in its complex and meticulous composition.

But life went on, and he wasn’t accomplishing nothing during that time. He successfully incorporated the circular compression pattern from that differently-composed one-star power-card into his own composition. That enabled him to reduce his costs to produce a one-star power-card by another 2 Oudi, which is to say that his daily take was increased by 50 Oudi.

You could say that the composition of the one-star power-cards he was making by then had already moved quite a bit away from the standard composition, though that would be hard to tell without careful examination. But who would be likely to examine so closely any one-star power-card that they had just bought?

He pulled out the audit-ticket that Uncle Shu had given him last time. According to its date, the class was that day.

The training was being held in a large building to the side of Eastern Wei Academy. Chen Mu had originally thought that there wouldn’t be many people in attendance. He hadn’t expected the clamor that he found upon entering the classroom. It was all young men and women seated inside. When young people are together, they naturally form-up in groups, laughing and cursing happily, several to a group, having so awfully much fun.

Chen Mu casually sat down in a seat by the windows. Living so many years as a street punk had given Chen Mu good insight about peoples’ appearances. Glancing over the room, it was plain to him that those people had fairly ordinary family backgrounds. If a family had money, why would they send their children to that kind of low-grade training? Eastern Wei Academy would be the place to send them.

Looking out the window, there was only a wall to separate them from the Eastern Wei Academy. From his vantage, the Eastern Wei Academy playing fields were clearly visible. With neat and clean uniforms, and brimming with smug grins of urbane greeting, the manner for the scholars at Eastern Wei Academy was to be heads-up and bright-eyed.

Chen Mu experienced a few moments of unaccounted discomfort, feeling a kind of bitterness slowly building up. Pulling his gaze back, Chen Mu sat blankly for a while, and then, getting his spirit back, he couldn’t help laughing.

What had become of him? Three years earlier, he probably wouldn’t have dreamed that he could live as he was. What could he be dissatisfied with now? He scolded himself inwardly that he should be content with what he had and that he was extremely lucky.

Getting past this, Chen Mu once again let his gaze fall toward Eastern Wei Academy, still having some admiration as he did so, though he was then unusually placid.

Just at that moment, the instructor walked into the classroom, and the classroom directly quieted down.

The instructor was a twenty-something young man named Gu Ming. He was of average looks, but with an extraordinarily mobile mouth. He opened with a harangue about how he was a directly-related disciple of Professor Gu Ziling from Eastern Wei Academy, and how he had a cooperative relationship with Eastern Wei Academy, and how when everyone had completed their studies and the time came to look for work, that would be a trivial matter, and so forth. It wasn’t taken as boastful cheerleading, but directly brightened the attention paid by the gang of students below him.

Chen Mu nevertheless listened with furrowed brow. From his life as a street punk, what he had come to understand about the ways of the world was far more sophisticated than those young men and women. From his point of view, the instructor seemed more like a charlatan than a card master.

This bout of boasting wasted half the morning.

The other half of the morning caused Chen Mu to lose all hope. That Gu Ming’s delivery was completely rote recitation. Chen Mu had been teaching himself all along for three years. He’d looked over no fewer than a hundred or so foundational works. He knew a few of them inside and out to the extent that he knew that what Gu Ming was reciting back was volume four of the work edited by Wang Jing, and used by all the academies: A Survey of the Theoretical Foundations of Card Theory.

He’d gone through that one no fewer than ten times, but because he was lacking too much in his fundamentals, there were quite a few spots where the meaning wasn’t so clear to him.

So, he pulled himself together right away and paid attention to the lecture.