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At the auction.

The Tuberose card finally sold for 660,000, equivalent to roughly 66,000 yuan in real currency. What a 666 deal.

After watching the spectacle, Xie Mingzhe left the Auction House with his two companions.

Summer sunlight spilled over him. The realistic effects let him feel the gentle warmth even in the game—the temperature around him was perfect, and the weather was lovely, yet his mood was particularly awful.

Rich people could casually spend tens of thousands on a card, while he was worrying about living expenses.

The gap between rich and poor existed in every world. Xie Mingzhe did not resent the wealthy; if they had money, that was their own ability. He had been born an orphan and could only rely on himself. His starting point had been far lower than others'.

But he was unwilling to accept it.

He was unwilling to be a poor boy even after being reborn.

In his previous life on Earth, he had relied on scholarships to finish college. He had planned to find a decent job after graduation and live out his life steadily. Back then, he had been perfectly content with that stable life.

But things were different now.

Technology in this world was highly advanced, yet people were desperately starved for spiritual entertainment. That was why holographic games like Star Card Storm had become popular across the globe. Many players treated the game as emotional sustenance, so naturally countless people were willing to throw money into it.

The auction just now made that clear. A pet card with little combat power, the Nine-Tailed Fox, had sold for 8,000 gold coins simply because it looked adorable. A powerful battle card, Tuberose, had actually sold for 660,000 game coins—a sky-high price of 66,000 in real currency!!

If that card had been his, it would have been more than enough to cover four years of college tuition and living expenses!

Xie Mingzhe was deeply shaken.

He had never played card games before. Besides, there were as many cards in Star Card Storm as grains of sand, so he had assumed cards would be cheap—just a few bucks each to buy, collect, and slowly raise. Now that he saw original cards selling for thousands or tens of thousands at the drop of a hat, Xie Mingzhe's worldview had been completely overturned.

Maybe he could make a few original cards and sell them too? Failure would not matter, but what if he succeeded? He did not need to sell them for tens of thousands. Even if he made one card worth a few hundred yuan, that would be enough for him to live comfortably for several days!

With that thought, Xie Mingzhe immediately grabbed Senior Brother Qi and humbly asked, "You kept mentioning 'original cards' earlier. Are there any special requirements if players want to make original cards?"

As an experienced player, Senior Brother Qi patiently explained, "Original cards in this game rely on the player's mental strength and talent."

Xie Mingzhe nodded rapidly. "Oh, oh. Could you explain in detail?"

Senior Brother Qi simply led Xie Mingzhe to a quiet pavilion nearby and sat down. Sisi, curious as well, followed them over to listen to the "veteran player's lesson."

"Mental strength, put simply, is your brain's ability to withstand external stimulation. It can be measured at a hospital. Ordinary people score around 200. Anyone above 260 can take on the most mentally demanding, difficult jobs in any field, or compete in professional holographic gaming leagues."

"..." Xie Mingzhe froze. What had his mental strength been again? When he had first awakened in the hospital, Doctor Qin had asked a robot to test him. It seemed to have been 300—right, the robot had placed electrodes against his temples, and after the test, it had reported 300!

That meant his mental strength was fairly high, at least well above the average of 200. Xie Mingzhe felt a little pleased and continued asking humbly, "Do you need mental strength to create original cards in the game too?"

"Yes." Senior Brother Qi explained in detail, "What a card contains and what skills it has all depend on your mental strength to create them. For example, if you want to make a plant card, the card you create must be detailed. You need to specify what the plant's flowers look like, how its roots and stem grow, what shape its leaves are, how its skills are described, and how its stats are allocated—the more specific and refined your creation is, the better the resulting card's quality will be."

Xie Mingzhe paused—wasn't that just like drawing?

There were two ways to draw. One was to look at a real scene and put what your eyes saw onto paper. The second was to imagine something from nothing.

For instance, if you wanted to paint a plant, you first had to sketch out its appearance in your mind. Once the image took shape, you put brush to paper and drew the plant from your imagination. A good artist could make what they painted extraordinarily lifelike, even enough to pass for the real thing.

This was not difficult for Xie Mingzhe. In his previous life, he had been a science student, but the Xie Mingzhe of this world had been admitted to the Imperial Capital University School of Fine Arts.

He could draw, he could imagine, and he had mental strength of 300. All the hardware requirements were met; only the software remained.

Xie Mingzhe excitedly rubbed his hands together and asked, "So once you imagine the card's contents in detail, you use mental strength in the game to draw them onto special card paper and turn them into a card. Is that it?"

Senior Brother Qi shook his head. "That's only the first step. The more important step is card review. The game has an extremely strict copyright protection system. Your card must pass the official card database's review before it can be used in the game world."

"Copyright protection? What does that mean?" Xie Mingzhe scratched his head in confusion.

"Take the Nine-Tailed Fox Card from today's auction as an example. It has already passed the database review, so that card's copyright belongs to its original creator. Others cannot copy it. You can't imitate it and make an Eight-Tailed Fox or Seven-Tailed Fox card, nor can you change its head and make a Nine-Tailed Cat card."

Sisi nodded as if she understood. "So that means you can't modify cards from the card library. You can only make new cards that haven't appeared in the library yet, right?"

Senior Brother Qi nodded. "Mm. Cards that already exist in the database cannot be passed off as original cards after simple modifications, and the skills of existing cards cannot be copied directly either. You must make new cards and design new skills to pass the system's review. If it's a character card, the officials have a special requirement as well: you can't directly import the facial features of real people from the real world. You must create the character yourself."

Xie Mingzhe suddenly understood.

The official rule was indeed impressive. It prevented a whole crowd of people from following trends and copying cards. This protected players' creativity to the greatest extent, ensuring that a new idea would not be copied by someone else the very next day. And prohibiting character cards from importing real-world people also prevented players from maliciously uglifying real people in the game and giving them bizarre skills. For example, turning a classmate into a card and assigning them a "farting" skill—that would be bad.