The Card Apprentice

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The "Chance Encounter" cracking group had expanded from its original fifteen members to thirty, with a lot of upper classmen from the card making departing joining the fun. But so far, the work of cracking hadn't made any progress. No one had ever thought that a one-star fantasy card could so thoroughly stymie nearly all the aces in the group from the Eastern Wei Academy card making department. Some among them had even already gone through the mid-grade card master certification.

Still, not every student from the card making department was likely to buy those so-called 'beautiful woman' chits. And some of those scholars were among the most capable types, but after all in this world, there are those who avoid even the most basic oil and salt.

At Eastern Wei Academy, one would often hear someone scoffing at that so called cracking group.

Zuo Tingyi was carefully examining the fantasy card in front of him. He had gotten the set from his younger sister two weeks ago, and for these two weeks, he had spent all of his spare time on the card play. He too was very curious about why it couldn't be cracked.

In any case, reality can be singularly ruthless, and until then he hadn't had even the slightest hint of any breakthrough. That was quite a blow to him, since as compared to the other students, he had always had the very best education. There were an astounding number of card masters under his family's influence, some of whom were far more accomplished than the so-called professors at Eastern Wei Academy. Under their influence, his accomplishment was far beyond that among any of his age peers.

The thing was, that given his status and family background, he had never had to pass any real-world tests.

Zuo Tingyi had a haughty temperament, which would easily get stirred up whenever he faced a setback.

And the card play set in front of him obviously met all those conditions.

Being so unexpectedly at his wits end for so long facing a set of one-star fantasy cards made him feel extremely unhappy. Clearly, one very important reason for that was that he didn't want to use any instruments to analyze it because his sister so utterly treasured the card-play set. His family had a card lab for his exclusive use, which was provided with considerably more advanced equipment than the school card-making lab. But using those instruments to analyze a card could easily damage it.

Even so, he had realized that if he didn't use any instruments, then he would never be able to penetrate the mysteries within.

The differences from normal cards in those cards' composition didn't go beyond five percent, and he believed that what distinguished the card play set was contained within that five percent.

The image of an innocent little girl floated into his mind, and his eyes shone with a wisp of tenderness. But Zuo Tingyi stifled a bitter smile, since he was afraid that his little sister would just have to play with herself for a little while.

And so his look very quickly became resolute, and his expression resumed its icy cool. He picked up the card play on the desk and walked smartly into his own lab.

Zuo Tingyi's card making lab was probably over two hundred seventy square meters, and inside was every sort of precision instrument. There was usually no-one other than himself near there, especially not his little sister, and they never set foot in the lab.

He opened the fantasy card analytical apparatus, which was used exclusively to analyze fantasy cards, even though it was generally only used to analyze high-grade fantasy cards. Before that time, the lowest level card analyzed by it was a three-star fantasy card. That would be its first time to analyze a one-star fantasy card; moreover, it was probably the first time that type of equipment had ever been used to analyze such a low-level card.

Zuo Tingyi wasn't taking the card play lightly because of its extremely low level; on the contrary, he had to say that his attitude was the most rigorous it had ever been. It was the embodiment of extraordinary power for a one-star fantasy card to employ a composition that he didn't understand.

Sitting properly at the console, Zuo Tingyi opened the fantasy card analytical apparatus, which was about as tall as a person. At its core was a very high-grade specialized probe card. That sort of probe card went as high as five-stars on the scale, plus the very specialized nature of the probe which was very different from the ordinary probe cards. That was also why that piece of fantasy card analytical apparatus was so very expensive.

In all of the Heavenly Federation, there were only three firms who could manufacture fantasy card analytical apparatus like that, and all required a special order before you could make the purchase.

One after the other, red lights flashed, showing that the analyzer was in the process of probing through every bit of the composition of the fantasy card, piece by piece without stopping.

The results of the analysis would be displayed on the attached fantasy card monitor.

All sorts of metrics were dancing endlessly on the screen in front of Zuo Tingyi. He was concentrating all his attention on those data flying by on it, whose meaning was baked into Zuo Tingyi's brain. From what he was seeing then, nothing out of the ordinary had appeared.

When the pulsing of the data started to slow down, Zuo Tingyi's heart beat became a little more urgent. From his experience, he knew that the analytical apparatus was about to probe into some structures that he didn't understand.

He didn't dare to blink, being afraid to miss some little detail. He felt his mouth going dry, and then quickly responded with some unmentionable phrases of self-mockery. It would be laughable to feel so nervous because of a one-star fantasy card. He powered down his ever more quickly beating heart, slowed his breathing, and stared at the screen.

Drip, drip, drip, and then suddenly an ear-piercing alarm went off.

Not good. Zuo Tingyi's expression changed as he went over in front of the analytical apparatus.

He was already too late. Right in front of him, coming from the fantasy card that had been put into the apparatus, were swirls of blue smoke. The fantasy card had obviously been destroyed, with its composition having undergone unrecoverable damage.

He suddenly smelled an utterly different sort of burning smell. Turning around, he saw a kind of white smoke billowing out from a crack in the analytical apparatus.

Zuo Tingyi's face immediately darkened.

* * *

Looking at the pile of material in front of him, Chen Mu felt an involuntary rush of satisfaction. Could he not be satisfied? He'd spent the entire 500,000 Oudi to acquire those materials, throwing in all of the profits from the card play. He had returned once more to his normal penniless state.

Among the material was a diminutively small portion which was all material he had never dared to think about before. The price for this small measure of material would simply leave people speechless from what he knew, accounting for at least over 400,000 of the 500,000.

Chen Mu had his doubts that he could complete the twelve cards, given their degree of difficulty. But he had thrown himself into it with no turning back, and he knew that if he could resolve all of the issues involved in making the twelve cards, he would go way up the ladder of card making ability.