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Tang Muzhou smiled faintly, turned around, and leisurely browsed the Black Market.

"Boss, do you have any character cards worth collecting? I'd like to buy them at a high price," Tang Muzhou asked politely.

Passing several stalls selling large combat cards, Tang Muzhou specifically chose the small stalls selling collectible cards to inquire at. After asking more than a dozen in a row, he found nothing. That was until he came to a very cute girl.

Hearing his question, the girl smiled and said, "I have two, but I don't want to sell them."

Tang Muzhou said gently, "I'm very interested in character cards. Could you take out the cards you've collected and let me have a look?"

"Uh... all right." Perhaps because his attitude was too gentle, the girl ultimately took out the two character cards.

—Sure enough, they were Lin Daiyu.

Tang Muzhou toyed with the card in his hand and said, "I really like this card's art style. Five hundred gold coins each. Would you sell them to me?"

"This card is very pretty. I bought it for collection in the first place, so I don't want to sell it."

"One thousand gold coins."

"..." She had bought it for fifty and could sell it for a thousand, a twentyfold increase. Overjoyed at making such a huge profit, the girl immediately handed the cards over. "All right, I'll sell them to you!"

"Thank you." Tang Muzhou put away the cards and asked with feigned curiosity, "Do you remember the name of the person who sold you this card?"

"Of course. It was quite a friendly name, Fat Uncle."

—Fat Uncle? No wonder the logo was called "Yueban." Could he really be a fat uncle?

Tang Muzhou put away the cards, bade the girl farewell, then turned and arrived at Red Candle's stall. He sent her a private message: "I bought two Daiyu Cards. They were being kept by a girl as collectibles. I also found out the creator's name: Fat Uncle."

"..." Red Candle froze where she stood. She had spent the entire afternoon searching for information about the card creator without finding anything, yet as soon as Tang God made a move, he had even found the creator's name. As expected of someone who had risen from the Black Market!

Tang Muzhou continued through private voice chat, "Send Fat Uncle an email as soon as possible. Tell him that we want to purchase Daiyu Cards in bulk. Also, have someone closely watch the Auction House. If he makes new cards, he may put them up for auction."

"Okay... Tang God, aren't you going to sleep yet?"

"I'll play a few Arena matches before bed."

Tang Muzhou was prone to getting sleepy in the afternoon, but at night he was especially alert. Red Candle did not try to persuade him and hurried off to send the email.

***

At that moment, Xie Mingzhe was lying in bed, sleeping soundly.

He had a wonderful dream. He dreamed that he had created a batch of top-tier character cards and become the most popular card maker in Star Card World. He took his cards to the Auction House and sold them for astronomical prices, while countless people surrounded him and screamed excitedly. The cries at the auction were deafening. At first, he could not make them out, but gradually, he heard them clearly—

Fat God! Fat God! Fat God, Fat God, Fat God!

"..." Xie Mingzhe woke up in fright.

Touching his skinny body, he somewhat regretted choosing the name "Fat Uncle." If he became famous in the future, would people really chase after him and call him "Fat God," just like in his dream?

Fortunately, there had been wonderful scenes in the dream too, such as his cards becoming immensely popular.

He would work hard toward that goal.

There were already three hundred thousand in his account. To him, the small salary from power-leveling was nothing. He could completely quit and make his fortune by selling cards. But Xie Mingzhe did not want to do that. Not only had Chen helped him when he was at his most difficult point, but since he had signed the power-leveling contract, he should keep his promise. At the very least, he would stick with the contract through this month and wait until the girl who had taken leave to get married returned.

It happened to be Saturday, so everyone logged in together. Chen directly formed a party and pulled them to Venus to run dungeons. That morning, they repeatedly cleared dungeons on the five Resource Planets of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. After this dungeon run, Xie Mingzhe had broadened his horizons considerably, and the settings for the five elemental creatures gave him plenty of inspiration.

After the day's work ended, Xie Mingzhe immediately logged off to avoid getting a headache—he needed to balance work and rest and give himself some time to think properly.

He opened his battered laptop and logged into the official website for "Star Card Storm."

The official website was extravagantly designed. The moment he entered, it felt as though he had stepped into a realistic cosmic starfield. He found the "Announcements" section and entered it—recently, it was filled with announcements related to the Professional League, the new season, and various events, densely packed across an entire page.

He flipped back several pages and, sure enough, found a bolded news item titled "Star Card Storm Annual Update Announcement."

The news had been posted on July 25, only a week ago.

Xie Mingzhe rapidly skimmed through the announcement and caught the key information concerning Instant Death skills.

First, the skill database had added "Instant-Death Judgment," but the requirements for creating Instant-Death-Type Cards were extremely strict—the card art and skill settings had to be consistent, the card could only have a single Instant Death skill, it could only target one specific minor category of cards, and its own defense had to be very low. While instantly killing others, it could also be killed quickly itself.

Second, only one Instant-Death Card could be brought into the Arena, where it could be used as a tactical card to catch opponents off guard. Players could not bring more than one.

Xie Mingzhe finally understood completely why his Lin Daiyu card only had fifteen points of defense.

Because Lin Daiyu's skill was too powerful, her defense had to be extremely weak.

Wu Song was the same. Because he had Instant-Death Judgment, attributes such as attack and defense were only third-rate.

When Xie Mingzhe had created the cards, his mental energy had been intensely focused on the scenes of "burying" flowers and "fighting" a tiger. The two cards happened to perfectly match the official database's settings, which was why Instant-Death Judgment had appeared by chance.

After figuring this out, Xie Mingzhe continued searching for information about the Professional League.

Pang Yu had previously said that Judgment was one of the League's "Six Giants." He wanted to understand Judgment's true strength.

Because there had been too many professional card players in recent years, clubs of all sizes had sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Among them, Fenghua Club, Judgment Card Alliance, City of Evernight, Frostfall City, Pantheon, and Ghost Prison were the six clubs established the longest and possessing the greatest strength. They were the "Six Giants" Pang Yu had mentioned, and they had a considerable number of fans. These six clubs had cultivated countless outstanding players and all had the support of major financial conglomerates behind them. They were first-tier clubs in the Professional League. There were far too many second-tier and third-tier clubs to count.