As one of the Tianyou Federation's Six Great Academies, Star Academy had a long history, and its founder was none other than the renowned Hainer Vincent. Because of this, although Star Academy had declined over the years, it had never fallen out of the ranks of the Six Great Academies. It had, however, slipped to last place.
Star Academy's decline was directly tied to its institutional structure.
Star Academy was divided into an inner academy and an outer academy. At a set time each year, the school selected students with outstanding grades and talent from the outer academy to study in the inner academy. The inner academy was Star Academy's true heart. Everyone who emerged from it, whether a card maker or a Card Adept, had left a bold mark on history.
But not only were the requirements for entering Star Academy's inner academy extremely strict, getting out was just as difficult. For ten full years, no one had managed to emerge from it. This was the chief reason for Star Academy's decline in recent years. Among the other five of the Six Great Academies, even Bitter Solitude Temple, with its scant few students, invariably produced one or two dazzling talents every two or three years, to say nothing of Federation Comprehensive University, whose fortunes blazed like the midday sun.
Star Academy alone had gone ten full years without anyone emerging from its inner academy.
Over the years, Star Academy had relied on its outer academy students to keep up appearances, barely managing to hold on through its embarrassing predicament.
Even so, this showed that Star Academy's outer academy students were still stronger than students from ordinary schools. That was why Zuo Tingyi had made his remark, leaving his friend, who normally had his nose high in the air, thoroughly abashed.
The Illusion Card Advertisement signboard he was making for Uncle Hua was finally finished that day, seven days after Chen Mu's visit to Gold Street.
Chen Mu was quite pleased with the finished product.
The card body, made from specially tanned Thousand-Cloud Tree bark, was a translucent white. Across its surface, half the size of a palm, dusky blue-green structural patterns formed an elegant, intricate design. Chen Mu's penmanship had developed considerable finesse, his lines flowing smoothly and freely.
A dusky blue-green orchid stood as tall as a person, with emerald leaves, a slender, graceful stem, and delicate white flowers tinged with creamy ivory, swaying gently. Every ten seconds, its blossoms sprayed flecks of colored light. The flecks shifted like mist, shimmering with color as they gradually transformed into the glowing words "Uncle Hua's General Store."
Only at night would this dusky blue-green orchid reveal its full splendor.
Over those five days, besides the dusky blue-green orchid Illusion Card Advertisement, Chen Mu had also made another illusion card.
He had modeled it on the magnificent Illusion Card Advertisement he had seen that day at the Twin Ring Card Shop. But the gulf between Chen Mu's skills and those of its creator was far too great. He still could not reproduce an Illusion Card Advertisement that complex.
Chen Mu's illusion card imitated only one part of it. In the images projected by that card, the fire dragon circling the stern man in black had caught his interest.
Brilliant and searing, it embodied might and power. This was the Three-Star Illusion Card known as the Flame Dragon Card, an intermediate combat card. The fire dragon was simulated entirely from energy. Under a Card Adept's control, it could not only radiate astonishing heat but also explode. Agile and powerful, it was a favorite among many combat Card Adepts.
The illusion card Chen Mu had reproduced was related to the Flame Dragon Card, but it was only a One-Star Illusion Card. In other words, it was not a true Flame Dragon Card, but a Flame Dragon Illusion Card. It could project an extraordinarily lifelike illusion of a Crimson Flame Dragon, but that illusion consisted only of light and had no destructive power.
Still, there was no denying that the Flame Dragon illusion projected by Chen Mu's card was astonishingly lifelike!
The vivid Flame Dragon had a body formed from layer upon layer of surging flames, hovering between reality and illusion. Once released, it wheeled and soared through the sky, scattering showers of deep crimson sparks now and then, as though poised to pick someone out and devour them. Its presence was utterly terrifying.
The advertisement at the Twin Ring Card Shop had left an extremely deep impression on Chen Mu. Before that, he had never imagined illusions could be so complex. This Flame Dragon Illusion Card was the product of a moment of impulse.
But the experience had also made him realize just how vast the distance was between his own skills and those of the card maker who had created the Twin Ring Card Shop's advertisement.
Taking the advertising illusion card for Uncle Hua with him, Chen Mu felt his spirits lift a little. In his uneventful life, there were very few things he wanted to accomplish, and this was one of them. Now, at last, it was finished. Imagining Uncle Hua's delighted surprise when he saw the advertisement projected by this card filled Chen Mu with anticipation.
He jogged almost the whole way to Uncle Hua's general store.
The tightly shut doors made Chen Mu's heart lurch, and an ominous premonition suddenly rose within him.
He hurried over to the neighboring shops, found a shopkeeper, and asked anxiously, "Hello, why hasn't Uncle Hua next door opened today?"
"Who knows? He hasn't been here for days!" The shopkeeper glanced up at Chen Mu and answered offhandedly.
Chen Mu returned home, utterly lost. After that, he visited Uncle Hua's general store almost every day, only to leave disappointed each time. Once Uncle Hua's store had closed, it never opened again.
He also tried asking the neighboring shopkeepers where Uncle Hua lived, but not one of them knew.
Chen Mu knew that Uncle Hua might finally have reached the end of the road. In truth, he had already had a faint premonition of this when Uncle Hua kept coughing.
It left him steeped in sorrow for a considerable time.
Several years of stable living had made death feel somewhat unfamiliar to him.
Uncle Hua's death shook Chen Mu profoundly, though he could not explain exactly what kind of shock it was. But he practiced desperately, working on the Body-Strengthening Exercise he had learned from that mysterious illusion card and on making illusion cards. This time, his practice took on an entirely different character from before.
He trained day and night, forgetting time altogether. Every day, he pushed himself to the point of being dead on his feet, yet still he would not stop. His punishing training had a touch of self-torment to it; he refused to allow himself even a moment of leisure. He was afraid-afraid of thinking about Uncle Hua, afraid of thinking about certain things from the past.
He had to keep himself busy!
Except to buy daily necessities, he never left home. Every day, he practiced the Body-Strengthening Exercise incessantly and kept working on making illusion cards. He began exploring knowledge related to planning cards. But it was only an initial exposure. Even though he was studying just the basics, the complexity of planning cards still made the work a tremendous struggle.
To him, this was an entirely new field, one he had never imagined before.
While Chen Mu was immersed in this grueling training, something momentous happened in Dongshang Guard City.
(End of chapter)