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As soon as the lights came on, the three of them heard a sharp, piercing screech beside their ears. Sisi immediately shrank back in fright. Senior Brother Qi reached out to shield her and said, "Go to the corner and turn off the game sound effects. Just handle the lighting. Fat Uncle and I will fight."

Sisi nodded and quickly retreated to the corner, keeping the Firefly Card activated as a streetlamp.

Senior Brother Qi turned to Xie Mingzhe and said, "This Dark Cave is a great place to farm monsters. The little monsters automatically gather when they see light. Their attack power is high, but their defense is very weak. We'll pull a large group and wipe them out in one go."

Xie Mingzhe nodded. Following veterans really was nice—they knew such efficient places to farm monsters.

An hour later, everyone had reached level 15, and they had gathered all the materials needed for card evolution.

Senior Brother Qi said, "I'm going to eat. We'll level up together again after dinner."

Xie Mingzhe nodded. "Got it."

Only then did Sisi cheer up. "Fat Uncle, see you tonight!"

Xie Mingzhe waved goodbye to the two of them. "See you."

After the two left, Xie Mingzhe returned to his personal space, took out the paper he had just bought on the black market, and tried making a card himself.

He placed the Nebula Paper on the card workstation. The system prompted, "Would you like to create a card?"

Xie Mingzhe selected yes.

The system said, "Please focus your mental energy and import the card image from your spiritual world into the Nebula Paper..."

Xie Mingzhe began to imagine—and he made a startling discovery. Once his mental energy connected to the Nebula Paper, whatever he thought of would appear on the paper.

He had instinctively thought of the time before his rebirth, when he drank with his roommates on Earth. Since the image in his mind was rather chaotic, the scene appearing on the Nebula Paper was equally messy. Only the outline of a beer bottle was especially clear.

Xie Mingzhe froze for a moment, then immediately stopped imagining.

The system said, "Card creation failed. The Nebula Paper has been shattered. Would you like to restart?"

Xie Mingzhe chose no.

He had wasted a sheet of Nebula Paper. He needed to calm down and think it through; he could not keep trying so rashly.

Only then did he realize that making cards was actually quite difficult.

The human brain possessed an extremely rich imagination. It was difficult to focus on imagining only one thing. Even when drawing, while concentrating solely on the character one wanted to draw, outside factors would always interfere. Especially when encountering a bottleneck, one's thoughts could go completely astray, leaving the mind in chaos.

And in Star Card Storm, the cards one created could not contain chaotic imagery.

Thinking of the cluster of pure white, jade-like tuberose flowers at the auction, Xie Mingzhe suddenly felt some admiration for the man named Tang Muzhou.

That Tang God had actually been able to create such lifelike flower cards as Tuberose, as well as plant cards as incredibly complex as the Millennium Sacred Tree—a gigantic tree that blocked out the sky and sun, every branch and every leaf drawn with mental energy, without the slightest mistake. His mental energy had to be over 300, right?

Even with 300 mental energy, Xie Mingzhe found card creation somewhat strenuous...

Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath and tried to focus on the kind of card he wanted to make.

For plants, there were experts like Tang Muzhou, so there probably was not much room for him to stand out. As for animals, this world already had all kinds of pet cards, such as nine-tailed foxes and long-eared rabbits. Pet designers had used their rich imaginations to create countless pet cards. When he had researched information at the hospital, he had even found all sorts of realistic Persian cats, teddy dogs, giant pandas, and so on. Lions and tigers were probably everywhere already, and he could not think of anything new.

Characters...

Right, characters! Senior Brother Qi had said that character cards were judged by their facial features, and the officials prohibited importing people from the real world. But what if he drew a character in a manga style? Wouldn't that make it one of a kind?

He had not learned to draw for nothing. Drawing manga-style characters would not be difficult for him.

Having found a direction, Xie Mingzhe excitedly clenched his fists.

What character should he draw?

A scene suddenly flashed through his mind.

A slender woman sat by a river, scattering petals into the water one by one. She coughed softly, her face covered in tear streaks.

—Daiyu Burying Flowers.

It was from the night before his rebirth. When he left his dormitory, he had seen one of his artsy roommates rewatching the 1987 version of Dream of the Red Chamber. He had jokingly asked, "Lin Meimei is crying so sadly. How does that make you feel? Do you feel like crying too?" His roommate had laughed and cursed, "Get lost! My girlfriend sent it to me and told me to revisit a classic." Xie Mingzhe had glanced at the computer screen and sighed. "Lin Daiyu from this version still has the most elegant temperament."

That scene had been filmed with such exquisite beauty that it was deeply etched into Xie Mingzhe's mind. Lin Meimei's tear-filled eyes and pitiful appearance were especially heartbreaking. Even a shut-in like Xie Mingzhe felt a pang in his heart when he saw her cry.

That was why he remembered it.

With perfect clarity.

Xie Mingzhe's eyes lit up—what if he turned this scene into a card? He wondered whether the Star Card World had a Daiyu Burying Flowers card.

With that thought, Xie Mingzhe immediately activated the Card Creation System.

He placed the Nebula Paper on the workstation, closed his eyes, and carefully depicted that scene in his mind...

Green trees, fresh flowers, a beautiful woman sitting by the pond, and the tears covering her face.

The more he imagined it, the clearer it became. The more he imagined it, the more detailed and complete it became.

Once he had focused his mental energy and fully rendered the scene in his mind, the system prompt sounded beside his ear. "Congratulations. Card creation complete. Please place the card in the card slot at the upper left, connect to the Star Card Database, and submit your card for review."

Xie Mingzhe immediately followed the prompt and inserted the card.

—Creating the card was only the first step. Whether it could pass review was the true key.

Perhaps because there were too many cards in the database, the review took a little longer this time.