From that day on, Lei Zi was busy writing the script for the second installment of The Legend of the Mecha Master Card Film, finally giving Chen Mu some time to rest.
Of the twelve cards, he had completed three, leaving nine-including one Planning Card. Sure enough, the more he used his skills, the more proficient he became. Although his Perception had not increased noticeably, his ability to use it was now on an entirely different level.
Chen Mu completed the remaining eight One-Star Illusion Cards smoothly, without spending too much time on them.
Now only the final card remained: a dedicated Planning Card.
There was no denying that Planning Cards were extraordinary. They could only be used together with other cards; on their own, they had no value whatsoever. They were like a person's brain, playing the most essential role, yet serving little purpose when taken out by themselves.
This was Chen Mu's first attempt at making a dedicated Planning Card. Only when he actually began did he understand just how profound a discipline "planning" was. He had already found the previous eleven One-Star Illusion Cards exceedingly complex, but when faced with this Planning Card's structure, he realized the two were not on the same level at all. Of course, this had something to do with his greater familiarity with Illusion Cards and relative unfamiliarity with Planning Cards.
Throughout the process, Chen Mu entered the Mysterious Card no fewer than twenty times to study the fundamentals of Planning Cards again.
Whenever he encountered a problem he could not solve, his only option was to enter the Mysterious Card and search for the relevant information. For some problems, he could barely even find an answer, so he had to drag out anything that looked similar or potentially relevant and pore over it all.
Chen Mu felt as though he were fighting a war, with one fortress after another before him that he needed to breach. At first, whenever he encountered an unsolvable problem, he was so distressed that he nearly scratched his scalp raw. Later, he learned to calm himself and try breaking through from different angles, patient and unhurried.
After twenty days and nights of relentless deliberation and calculation, Chen Mu finally completed the Planning Card.
Before him, a pure black card lay quietly on the table. Its entire surface was dark and lusterless, as though it had been given a frosted finish. This was the effect of soaking it in matte liquid. The expensive liquid had cost Chen Mu a full hundred thousand Odi, and was generally used only to make intermediate cards rated three stars or above.
Against the dull black surface, glossy black structural patterns shimmered with a mesmerizing light. The patterns were perfectly even and, held before his eyes, smooth enough to reflect his face.
The moment he finished the Planning Card, Chen Mu fell utterly in love with it. An artist's eye and appreciation for a work of art were always rather different from an ordinary person's, and the same held true for a Card Crafter's fondness for a card's surface.
Holding the twelve cards, Chen Mu entered the illusion within the Mysterious Card.
An interface displaying twelve Illusion Cards appeared before Chen Mu. The twelve cards floated in front of him, each one dim and dull.
Chen Mu placed the twelve cards into the positions of those dim cards in sequence. Every time he put one in place, its dim counterpart suddenly burst into light. It then brightened and began rotating slowly before him.
Chen Mu knew these bright cards were no longer illusory images, but the real cards he had just inserted.
He could not help marveling once again at the wonders of the Mysterious Card. The illusions it projected seemed both real and unreal, yet by now he could no longer distinguish whether the illusions around him were real or false.
Chen Mu was a little nervous. It seemed his guess had been right, but what would happen next...
As the last of the twelve cards fell into place, Chen Mu's heart suddenly leaped into his throat.
There was no dazzling light, no astonishing fanfare. Everything happened swiftly and soundlessly. In the blink of an eye, Chen Mu seemed to have entered another world.
Immense pressure closed in on him from every direction, almost suffocating him. Suddenly, a slow but powerful force swept over him. He immediately lost his footing and staggered several steps forward, as though someone had given him a shove.
This was...
Staring blankly at the sight before him, Chen Mu was stunned.
Water! He was actually underwater! Countless Arrowfish swam around him, treating him as though he were thin air. They moved with graceful ease, sometimes surging past in shoals, sometimes scattering like crumbling clumps of snow.
But these Arrowfish... weren't they a little too ugly? Chen Mu could not help inwardly wiping away a cold sweat. He had focused so much on their parameters that he had put little effort into their appearance. As a result, every Arrowfish was hideous, each as flat as a shuttle, with a triangular head, a triangular body, triangular fins, and a triangular tail...
These Arrowfish looked exactly as though they had been assembled from triangles of different sizes. For someone who made Card Films to produce Arrowfish like these, Chen Mu could not help feeling deeply ashamed.
"Welcome to the Simple Water World!"
Chen Mu had not heard that aged voice in a long time. He knew he had succeeded! He had successfully entered the next stage of the Mysterious Card.
A water world-so it was a water world! Looking at his crystal-clear surroundings, which exerted a faint pressure on him at every moment despite their transparency, Chen Mu finally understood. Only now did he realize what those Illusion Cards with their strange parameters were for.
What a fairy-tale world! Aquatic plants drifted slowly through the water like strands of hair, shoals of Arrowfish frolicked playfully, underwater rocks took on all manner of bizarre shapes, and enormous milky-white clams rested upon them...
Even though he knew it was an illusion, Chen Mu could not help being moved by the world he had created.
After briefly losing himself in wonder, Chen Mu regained his composure. He knew perfectly well that the creator of the Mysterious Card could not have been so idle as to make an underwater environment just for its own sake. He also remembered very clearly what that aged voice had said: "Welcome to the Simple Water World." That phrase, "Simple Water World," gave him something to ponder. Since there was a Simple Water World, did that mean there was a corresponding complex water world?
There was no way to know yet, but Chen Mu believed none of this would be so simple. By now, his admiration for the creator of the Mysterious Card was so great that he could have prostrated himself in worship. In his eyes, those skills, honed to almost supernatural perfection, were like unreachable stars-so mysterious, so captivating.
Looking around, Chen Mu searched for a way forward. He was intensely curious. What would it be this time? A new Body-Strengthening Exercise? Or a new method of making cards?
Just then, the enormous milky-white clam on a rock slowly opened, revealing a narrow gap from which a beam of light shone out. The beam condensed into a point of light before Chen Mu, then spread outward little by little, transforming into a screen of light.
(End of chapter)