Daoist Apprentice Card

After his inner rage reached its peak, Zhang Zhi instead became extraordinarily calm.

He could not let anger rule his emotions. Unable to escape from here, no matter how furious he was, it would only be helpless rage.

After confirming that no one was in the room, he endured the intense pain wracking his body and sank his consciousness into his Sea of Consciousness.

Looking at the several hundred cards in his Sea of Consciousness, he thought, Lei Aigou and that man would never have imagined that aside from the seven cards he had deliberately left outside as a precaution, he had refined every other card.

After all, no one in this world had ever been able to Refine Cards before Opening a Small World.

His Mental Power had mutated when he transmigrated into this world!

This was his Golden Finger.

After examining the cards, he looked toward the other side of his Sea of Consciousness.

A vortex emitting a gentle White Light floated there. That vortex was the World Seed the school had distributed to everyone today.

As long as he sent Mental Power into it, he could activate the World Seed and begin Opening a Small World.

Lei Aigou and his accomplice had rushed over to restrain him today precisely to prevent him from activating the World Seed and starting to Refine Cards.

Looking at the World Seed, Zhang Zhi stirred his thoughts, and Mental Power slowly surged toward it. The next moment, a boom rang out in his Sea of Consciousness, accompanied by a flash of white light.

Within that white light was the World Embryo.

Seeing the World Embryo take shape, Zhang Zhi let out a breath of relief.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness he could activate the World Seed.

He had once suspected that he might be unable to activate the World Seed.

When he awakened his Mental Power at the age of six, he discovered that he could Refine Cards!

Yet in this world, people could only begin refining cards with their Mental Power after Opening a Small World Prototype.

Refining cards in advance had once made him doubt whether he could activate the World Seed and Open a Small World.

Now that he had discovered he could Open a Small World, the heart he had kept suspended finally settled.

He had finally grasped that sliver of hope.

Suppressing the excitement in his heart, he considered which Cultivation Path he should take.

He would definitely choose the human path. Orcs, undead, and the like had long since been ruled out.

The school provided the cards required for several World Paths, but the card combinations for those paths were the most basic kind and simply did not suit him.

The purpose of the Primary Education Academy was to lay foundations, so it only taught basic knowledge. Only after entering Secondary Education would the school teach students how to choose cards according to their own Small Worlds.

His gaze swept across the hundreds of cards in his Sea of Consciousness. Among them, only a handful were White Cards, while the vast majority were Gray Cards.

He had previously planned out several Cultivation Paths, but for some of them, he had never managed to collect the crucial cards.

After pondering for a moment, he decided to integrate cards into his Small World according to the path he had the greatest confidence in.

The information he had acquired from Earth in his previous life gave him details that many people in this world failed to notice, such as a Small World's ecosystem!

If a Small World possessed a complete ecosystem as soon as it was opened, its growth rate would certainly far surpass that of a Small World without one.

The next moment, a large number of Gray Cards surged toward the white light at the center of his Sea of Consciousness.

As Gray Cards slowly merged into the white light one by one, vast stretches of land gradually took shape.

The first batch consisted of Resource Cards he had collected over the years, including sixteen Land Cards, five Water Resource Cards, three Copper Mine Cards, five Iron Mine Cards, and two Coal Mine Cards.

Among those Gray Cards, the Iron Mine Cards were the most expensive, each worth roughly half a White Card.

The card combination the school provided for the Human World Path was the simplest possible: merely two Land Cards, one Water Resource Card, one wheat, corn, or Rice Card, and one Human Card.

Copper Mine Cards and Iron Mine Cards would not appear at all.

The school's purpose was to let more people open worlds. Everything else could be gradually filled in after a Small World had been opened.

That was also knowledge taught only at Secondary Education School.

But such a path did not suit Zhang Zhi at all.

He still had many Resource Cards, but he intended to obediently follow Teacher's instructions and open his Small World first. If he still had strength left afterward, he would continue improving it.

A stretch of land slowly formed within the white light.

The World Embryo had taken only two hours and fifteen minutes to "digest" those thirty-one Gray Cards, averaging just five minutes per card.

Ordinary people, on the other hand, needed around ten minutes to integrate a single Gray Card into a Small World.

His card integration speed was nearly twice that of others.

Countless thoughts flashed through Zhang Zhi's mind, but he still slowly controlled the second batch of cards as they flew toward the white light.

This batch consisted entirely of Creature Cards: seven Forest Cards, three Grassland Cards, one Wild Boar Card, two Wild Sheep Cards, three Fish Cards, and two cards he had gone to great lengths to obtain—one Wild Ox Card and one Wild Horse Card.

These eighteen cards took a little longer than the previous batch, averaging seven minutes each.

As the second batch of cards merged in, the originally lifeless land within the Small World Prototype gradually turned lush green, while the several yellow lines running across the land turned blue.

Feeling that his Mental Power was still abundant, Zhang Zhi had completely calmed down.

The ecosystem of his Small World had now been initially established.

At this point, the Small World could be considered initially opened. Even if he cut off the Mental Power supply to the World Embryo now, the resulting Small World would still pass the school's assessment, though its score would be extremely low.

And such a world would not resolve his current predicament at all.

Next came the third batch of cards.

This batch consisted of White Cards, though there were only two of them.

They were two Human Cards.

Each Human Card contained between one hundred and one hundred twenty people, including men, women, the elderly, and children.

Naturally, these humans were not humans from the Main World, but humans from various Small Worlds or certain secret realms.

These two Human Cards took nearly seventy minutes in total, making Zhang Zhi wonder whether his world possessed an "acceleration" effect.

In the precautions for opening worlds that the teachers had emphasized to students every day recently, they mentioned that integrating a White Card into a Small World started at one hour, with some even taking more than ten hours.

Yet his two cards together had taken only seventy minutes.

As the two Human Cards merged in, the White Light at the center of his Sea of Consciousness suddenly became much more dazzling.

Zhang Zhi understood that this was not merely because White Cards had been integrated, but also because Human Cards had been integrated.

With the third batch of White Cards integrated, a ripple finally stirred Zhang Zhi's previously calm heart.

With this batch of humans integrated, his Small World now had a certain number of people. With their help, he should be able to escape his predicament when the time came.

The only uncertainty was that he did not know how strong the Realm Lord leading them was.

The man who had restrained him probably had not expected that he could open a world. The humans he had left behind, summoned from his own Small World, should mostly be Gray Rank, though there might be a few White Rank ones.

Zhang Zhi suspected that this Realm Lord's Small World might not even have advanced into a Medium World yet. Its inhabitants were mostly Gray Rank, or ordinary-rank humans, perhaps with a small number of White Rank creatures.

Otherwise, he would not have risked being hunted down by Yizhou Elementary School merely to scheme against Zhang Zhi for over a hundred Gray Cards.

After the third batch of Human Cards merged in, a White Card slowly floated out, but it stopped before the White Light.

It was a white Character Card: "Daoist Apprentice Card."