The Card Apprentice

It suddenly came to him –’originally the work of Chernosich.’ Such powerful emanation was not something an ordinary person would be able to produce after all. With such a rare opportunity to experience the work of a great master so closely, Chen Mu couldn’t help examining it more closely. Still, it was quite obvious that being able to study the stars to such abstruse depths was naturally not something that a nobody like him could appreciate.

The instant after looking, with his eyes dazzled, Chen Mu could only give up.

The short haired girl looked very familiar with Chen Mu’s response, and chuckled without disturbing him, only opening her mouth when Chen Mu had rubbed his eyes, “Could you please show your membership card?”

“Oh.” Chen Mu hurriedly pulled out his membership card.

Glancing at it after she received it, and showing a smile on her face, “I think this must be your first time coming, would you like me to give you some introduction?”

“OK.” Chen Mu nodded, without any courtesy.

The girl leaned and extended her right hand in a gesture of welcome.

“We will both look around and give you an introduction at the same time.” The girl paused for a little while, and continued, “This is your membership card, which can contain information about you. You may choose to go to the archives section to complete the information – for example your likeness – so that no-one else can use your membership card. This is not required, and if you don’t wish to, that won’t affect your usage.”

“The purpose of this club is to fully expose the various uses of the low-grade fantasy card, enabling them to be used more broadly in our lives. To accomplish this, we have adopted a point system. The number on the top right corner of your card displays the value of your contributions, which are the points. There are many ways to earn points; for instance, the club might set up some public works projects, which won’t pay much, but you can get the appropriate points.

“For example, just now we are working together with a school to help them make instructional fantasy cards. Since this is considered to be a public works project, you wouldn’t be able to earn any money, but we have the point rewards. And naturally we provide the materials.

“There are quite a few other members of the club who are likely to issue requests for help when they run into a problem that they can’t resolve. If you can help them to resolve these issues, you can earn the points that they have put up for it. In general, the points for giving out helpful information like this are rather high, while at the same time they have a rather high level of difficulty.

“If you run into a problem that you can’t resolve for a while, you can seek help in the same way.

“Of course, there are other ways to earn points, though they aren’t seen so often, such as winning some prize for your card making, where we would give you points according to how influential the award is, in the same way.

“Over here each month we sell some comparatively rare materials or cards, which can only be purchased with points. This is the club’s way to reward your enthusiastic participation in club activities.

“Generally speaking, we hold meetings every week, in which you may choose to participate or not. You would earn a small number of points for participation. You could meet quite a few like minded card-masters, and share with them what you have learned about card making.

“And of course if you come up with something fantastic without having the funds, the club might provide some help. We have a devoted review group, and when we make sure that your plan is reasonable, and can be made operational, we would provide financial assistance in a cooperative fashion.”

While the short-haired girl kept up her torrent of introductions, Chen Mu was dumbstruck, never having come across that kind of thing.

When Chen Mu entered the big hall, he came to a stop.

There weren’t very many people in the hall, even though its area was huge and majestic like a small public square.

But what made Chen Mu stop wasn’t the broad empty hall, but rather the flashing screens in the hall, and the continuously floating illusions of captions.

When the whole great hall was divided by thousands of large and small translucent screens, that kind of sensory impact was enough to blind a person.

Seeing how transfixed Chen Mu was, the short-haired girl smiled gently, since this wasn’t her first time seeing that kind of expression. Probably only a completely crazy person like the president of the club would ever have come up with that kind of layout.

Still, she didn’t forget her duties, and kept making introductions to him, “These screens are the information portals here, where you can find information to suit your interests. Requests for help might also be scrolling along on the top. The technology used by the screens is quite advanced – bi-directional fantasy card techniques. By taking advantage of the specialized pens to the side of the screen, you can enter content on the screens, and realize two-way transmission of information.”

“The entire great hall is divided into three parts. Our position right now is in the information dissemination section.

“Aside from this, there is the display area where you can see demonstrations of the latest fantasy card products. Over thirty fantasy card game consoles are on display this time. This layout amazes people, and we’ve started pushing it toward the marketplace. I myself believe that it will quickly become popular across the Heavenly Federation.”

Her speech was full of pride.

“The other section is the trading area, where all kinds of materials are on sale; basic materials and cards can all be purchased using Oudi, but only points can be used to acquire comparatively rare and precious materials. If you have some work, you can also sell it here on consignment. This is also the only section opened to non-members.

“You can look around as you please, hang around anywhere, and if you have any questions, come and find me. I’ll always be in the hall of stellar evolution. Right now, I’ll have to excuse myself for a while.” The short-haired girl always kept a professional smile on her face.

Dumbly looking at the huge great hall with its multicolored flashing screens of all sizes, all floating in midair with their translucent illusions, Chen Mu had a little sense of not knowing where to start.

Going over in front of the nearest screen, Chen Mu watched the words scrolling by on top of the screen carefully.

“How to use low-grade fantasy cards to change people’s localized characteristics, to achieve the illusion of being in the place of your counterpart.”

Having looked around only haphazardly, Chen Mu was still attracted to that idea.

This notion was really intriguing. It wanted to use illusions on the outline of the face and some small areas to make changes, in order to achieve the result of swapping heads and faces. For example, to use shadows in the eye socket, to give them something of a sunken feel. Or by putting some fleshy illusions on the nose, to make it look more prominent. If you were to do this cleverly, you could give someone the sense of being an entirely different person.

Chen Mu was really taken aback by the notion, and that in those days there really were so many sorts of strong people.

But just then the line of thinking ran into some difficulty: how do you make the illusions stick to the face?

Because, no matter how the person who came up with this idea changed things, even the slightest movement would easily dislocate the illusion.

Looking at the time that it was put up, it was a brand-new proposal. Chen Mu thought it over, and without hesitation wrote his answer on the screen; “Fasten the meter to glasses or to a hat.”

While the words were flashing, the screen followed up by reminded him to input his membership card number. After he entered his membership card number, the answer he’d entered streamed away.