A childhood spent wandering the streets had left Chen Mu somewhat malnourished. Once his life improved, his body began to grow stronger. Although he did not look particularly muscular, he was actually in excellent physical condition and rarely fell ill.
But when Chen Mu tried one of the movements, he found it extraordinarily strenuous. It demanded considerable lower-body strength, which was not his strong suit. After a few repetitions, his legs turned as weak and limp as mud. Chen Mu did not know whether he had truly performed the movements, but the aching weakness in his legs was unmistakable.
Chen Mu tried all eighteen movements. He could manage only three. He also discovered that whenever he performed a movement correctly, the corresponding Puppet immediately dimmed. If his movement did not exactly match the Puppet's demonstration, it remained unchanged.
Apart from that, nothing around him changed, no matter what Chen Mu tried.
Worn out by his efforts, Chen Mu had exhausted his strength. His biggest problem now was not how to complete the eighteen movements, but how to escape this illusion.
An empty void surrounded him. Aside from the eighteen Puppets, there were no other markers of any kind. Could the answer lie in these eighteen Puppets?
Chen Mu quickly rejected that idea. All eighteen Puppets were illusions. Or did he have to complete all eighteen movements? He smiled bitterly. If that was really the case, he was in serious trouble! He would need a great deal of practice before he could successfully perform all eighteen movements-not something he could do right now. Break the illusion? That was not even worth considering. An illusion this sophisticated was utterly beyond his ability to break.
Then where was the key to leaving this illusion? Recalling the various stories about advanced Illusion Cards, Chen Mu felt cold sweat slowly bead on his forehead.
If he could not find that key, only two possible outcomes awaited him. Either the Energy Card powering this Illusion Card would run dry and the illusion would dissolve on its own, or he would die of thirst or hunger before its energy ran out.
A bead of sweat slid down the bridge of his nose, then dripped from its tip into the endless dark void below.
Although Chen Mu had never encountered this kind of danger, he did not lose his head. This was not the first time his life had been threatened. During his childhood on the streets, hunger and cold had been accompanied by many other dangers. Stray dogs could easily prove fatal to homeless children. There were also vicious human traffickers, to whom homeless children were equally tempting chunks of meat.
Yet no danger had ever left Chen Mu feeling so helpless. To him, this Illusion Card represented the pinnacle of illusion-card craftsmanship, an unreachable height. For a half-trained Card Crafter who had only just learned to make one-star Illusion Cards, it was something he could only look up at, never surpass. The sense of danger came not merely from outside, but welled up from the deepest recesses of his heart.
Chen Mu forced himself to calm down. He believed that this card could not have been created to trap its user inside an illusion until they died. If that were its purpose, the place should have been filled with all manner of lethal attacks, rather than being as peaceful as it was now. The only explanation was that he had not found the key to leaving the illusion.
He had never received formal training as a Card Crafter, so trying to solve this problem with what he had learned was clearly unrealistic. After pondering for a long while, Chen Mu decided on a crude method: elimination. He would rule things out one by one. There were not many things inside the illusion anyway.
But he had already touched almost everything in the illusion! None of it had reacted. Where else could the answer be?
The void, the Puppets, himself!
A flash of inspiration struck Chen Mu. Right, he had been overlooking one possibility all along-himself! Apart from the void and the eighteen Puppets, he was here too!
Chen Mu looked down at his wrist and froze. His Wrist Device was plainly visible! Almost instinctively, he pressed its activation button.
Whoosh. The scene before his eyes changed, and Chen Mu was back in his familiar room.
His legs gave out, and Chen Mu dropped onto the floor, finally breathing a full sigh of relief. So tired! He could not be bothered to move even a finger.
Trying those eighteen movements had used up nearly all his strength, and afterward, his nerves had been stretched taut. Both his body and his mind had undergone a severe trial.
Utterly exhausted, Chen Mu fell asleep right there on the floor.
Hunger woke Chen Mu yet again! Being woken by hunger felt absolutely awful. He hated the sensation, probably a shadow left by his years on the streets.
He was not picky about food, so long as it filled his stomach. When he opened the Fresh Food Cabinet, a blast of cold air hit his face. At its core was a Cooling Card that kept the food fresh. The cabinet was inexpensive, but it consumed a considerable amount of energy each month.
Cards such as the Cooling Card in the Fresh Food Cabinet and the Heating Card in the Heat Cooker were not advanced, merely one- or two-star cards, yet they had become indispensable parts of people's lives. They could all be mass-produced industrially, which lowered their cost even further.
The applications of low-level cards reached into every aspect of ordinary people's lives. Two masters held undisputed standing in the world of cards: Rosenberg and Hainer Vincent. Master Rosenberg had first proposed card theory and created the first Energy Card and Illusion Card in human history. Hainer Vincent had not only developed Rosenberg's Illusion Cards to unprecedented heights, but had also created many other kinds of cards with styles radically different from Rosenberg's.
Both masters had climbed to the highest peak of the card world.
Yet there was another equally outstanding figure in this world. In a different way, he shone with incomparable brilliance and was hailed as the master who had come closest to those two grandmasters!
That man was Luo Qi! His status as an advanced Card Crafter seemed so unremarkable beside the outstanding Card Crafters of history. Yet this very Card Crafter had sparked an unprecedented revolution in the world of cards. He had devoted his entire life to finding ways to connect cards with ordinary people's lives. Because of him, many cards that had once been far beyond their reach became part of their everyday lives.
Fresh Food Cabinets, Heat Cookers, Shuttlecraft...
He always came up with extraordinarily ingenious ideas, drawing tremendous value from those unassuming one- and two-star cards and turning people's lives upside down in the process. This also greatly improved the lives of many low-level Card Crafters who had struggled to make ends meet. It brought him immense wealth as well. He was equally astute in business, and his fortune grew like a rolling snowball. In just a few decades, he became the richest man in the entire Tianyou Federation at the time. Even now, the Luo Qi Lineage remained one of the federation's few foremost wealthy families.
Luo Qi was a controversial figure. Traditional Card Crafters regarded him as the very model of someone neglecting his proper work. Hainer Vincent had mockingly called him "a fellow reeking of copper coins from head to toe." But in many people's eyes, he was a genius through and through-an unconventional genius. That was certainly how Chen Mu saw him.
Not everyone could break with convention.
Chewing on hard bread, Chen Mu sat down at the table and turned his gaze back to the mysterious card. It remained as much of an enigma as ever. He had not found a single answer he sought. He had originally thought that once he had a Three-Star Energy Card, the truth about what kind of card this was would emerge like a stone revealed by receding water. Yet in the end, he was still none the wiser.
The lifelike illusion within the card had severed every connection between him and his surroundings, as though it were another world. Having nearly left him unable to find a way out, it still filled him with an overwhelming sense of awe.
So illusions could reach this level!
Thinking again of his own Illusion Cards, Chen Mu felt even more discouraged. But that feeling lasted only a few seconds. He believed that even today, only a handful of people could create an Illusion Card like this. What followed was tremendous encouragement. Illusion Cards, the Tianyou Federation's most traditional cards, truly were formidable!
Chewing his hard bread unconsciously, Chen Mu could think of nothing but those eighteen distinct movements. They were definitely not methods of attack. Chen Mu was no Card Adept, but fighting had been an everyday occurrence during his years on the streets, and he was an old hand at it. He could tell at a glance that none of the eighteen movements had any offensive purpose.
No matter how he looked at them, the movements seemed rather like Body-Strengthening Exercise or something of the sort.
A passage was missing from the middle, so I've added it back in! Sorry!
(End of chapter)