The Real Golden Finger?

Seeing that he had refined his first White Card in just over ten minutes, Zhang Zhi was somewhat surprised himself.

But after thinking it over, he realized that this timing was perfectly normal.

Under normal circumstances, it took an ordinary Realm Lord around an hour to refine a White Card.

But that was before Opening a Small World.

After all Realm Lords opened a Small World, their Mental Power would continue to grow, and this growth period would last for roughly a year.

During that year or so, their Mental Power Value would increase to more than ten times its original amount.

The speed of Refine Cards was closely tied to one's Mental Power Value. The higher the value, the faster the refining speed.

On top of that, Zhang Zhi's Mental Power, his Golden Finger, was already faster and more efficient at refining cards than anyone else's.

Therefore, as a Realm Lord who had just finished Opening a Small World, he needed only a little over ten minutes to refine a card.

After marveling at his refining speed, he began looking forward to how quickly his card slot could "digest" cards as well.

Normally, the White Card Slot possessed by the Master of the World of a Micro Small World needed twenty to twenty-four hours to integrate a White Card into the Small World.

The time required to integrate a card into a Small World depended not only on the Realm Lord's Mental Power, but also on the compatibility between the card and the world, as well as how complete the Small World's internal laws were.

A Thought Moved, and his Mental Power wrapped around the White Resource Card and drifted toward the World Bead.

When his Mental Power touched the card, he noticed something was wrong. His Mental Power seemed to be decreasing?

Then he realized that the White Card was actually absorbing his Mental Power!

This discovery gave Zhang Zhi a fright, and he immediately severed the connection between his Mental Power and the White Card.

What was going on?

The card was absorbing Mental Power!

After crossing into this Multiverse and spending so many years here, he had learned quite a bit about Realm Lords and cards. Yet he had never heard of a card absorbing Mental Power!

Looking at the White Card in his Sea of Consciousness, he tried touching it with his Mental Power again. Sure enough, the Mental Power that came into contact with the card decreased slightly.

Was there something wrong with the card? Had someone tampered with it?

That shouldn't be possible. If Night Shadow had that kind of ability, how could Zhang Zhi have killed him so easily?

Was there something strange about the Shadow Gang? Did someone stand behind them?

Or was the problem with himself?

After pondering for a long while, with countless possibilities flashing through his mind, Zhang Zhi shifted his attention to another area of his Sea of Consciousness. Ten Gray Cards remained there from when he had opened his Small World.

A Thought Moved, and his Mental Power swept toward one of the Gray Cards.

The next instant, he clearly felt that the Gray Card was absorbing his Mental Power as well!

Once he realized that even the Gray Cards originally in his Sea of Consciousness were absorbing Mental Power, he finally relaxed.

Good, good. It wasn't a problem with the cards. The problem was with his Mental Power.

It seemed that after becoming the Master of the World, his Mental Power had undergone some inexplicable change?

After giving it some thought, he allowed the Gray Card to continue absorbing his Mental Power, wanting to see what changes would occur after it did so.

A while later, Zhang Zhi stared at the White Card in his Sea of Consciousness and fell into deep thought!

That gray Peach Grove Card had become a white Immortal Peach Grove Card.

His Mental Power could actually make cards advance in rank!!!

Was this the true Golden Finger?

That made sense. Only Mental Power with such a special ability deserved the title of Golden Finger.

But what brought Zhang Zhi both joy and worry was that, for a Master of the World, Mental Power was never enough!

The same was true for him.

For that Gray Card to advance into a White Card just now, it had absorbed around three points of his Mental Power.

If he wanted to convert White Cards into Green Cards, it would require at least thirty points of Mental Power.

Before Opening a Small World, his Mental Power Value had been thirty-two. Including natural recovery, he could output at most around thirty-five points of Mental Power per day.

That amount of Mental Power was enough to convert roughly twelve Gray Cards into White Cards.

After Opening a Small World, his Mental Power would undergo explosive growth and would certainly exceed four hundred in the future.

With that much Mental Power, he would surely be able to convert enough Green Cards in the future.

But there was a problem with that: it might delay the development of his Small World.

For the Small World path he had chosen, when a Small World had only just been opened, it was best to project himself into it every day, guide the humans within it, and promptly eliminate all kinds of problems inside the Small World.

Maintaining a projection inside the Small World required a massive amount of World Power.

Likewise, the various factions in the Main World did not cultivate Realm Lords out of charity. Conflicts between the various races of this Multiverse had never ceased.

From the initial stages, the various factions deliberately cultivated the war readiness of Masters of the World, which also consumed vast amounts of World Power.

Without going through countless battles, how could one develop war readiness?

So many thoughts crowded his head that it felt as though it were about to burst. Zhang Zhi rubbed his temples. What a headache!

For him, two paths lay before him: genius, or the Stealth Path.

The genius route naturally meant displaying how powerful his Small World was from the very beginning, thereby obtaining large amounts of resource subsidies. Under such circumstances, he might not gather resources any slower than by using his Mental Power to advance Gray Cards into Green Cards.

The drawback was that he who wore the crown must bear its weight. A genius had too much to endure, with no shortage of open and hidden attacks. One careless mistake could cost him his life.

The second option was the Stealth Path. He could lie low and quietly improve his strength by advancing cards with Mental Power. This approach was relatively safer.

The downside was that he would be unable to access many high-end cards, which might slow his development.

Take the Tier 1 Spirit Vein Card, for example. It was a core card for the Immortal Cultivation Path of a Medium Small World, yet ordinary Masters of the World found it difficult to access even during Secondary Education or Higher Education.

If his Small World broke through into a Medium World and possessed a Spirit Vein Card, a large number of Extraordinary Cultivators would surely emerge within it. But without a Spirit Vein Card, even someone with Heavenly Talent like Fang Yun might not necessarily enter the Transcendent Realm.

After all, it was not merely a matter of talent, but of a Small World's Cultivation Resources. A Small World could not obtain Cultivation Resources from the outside, so its development was extraordinarily slow.

A Medium Small World that had only just advanced, relying solely on itself, might gain only one additional Transcendent Realm slot every ten or even twenty years.

And that was only at the Medium Small World stage.

Most core cards in this world were tightly controlled by the major factions. If he did not display his strength, it would be fundamentally impossible for him to obtain those core cards.