From the initial health exercises to 1-Star Magic Card making tutorial… these two don’t seem to have any relationship.

Never had a stronger curiosity lingered in Chen Mu mind. He wanted to know and understand this mysterious card’s secrets. At least, shouldn’t he figure out what the ultimate goal of this card is?

With the tutorial cards’ guidance, Chen Mu made rapid progress in his Magic Card creation skills. The tutorial cards’ knowledge was a huge eye-opener. Aside from exercising and producing energy cards, he spent the rest of the time immersed in the magical illusion of the mysterious card.

The remaining portion of time was spent on observing everything around him. The tutorial’s card knowledge is all theoretical, improvement also requires practical experience. Observation is the first step. The so-called realistic illusion, if the image was not understood, how can you imitate it? So to do this, large amounts of detailed observation is needed.

This sort of experience is necessary for the production of low-level Magic Cards.

This also created serious side-effects, ex: when eating bread, he would stare dazed at the bread in his hands for 6-7 minutes. By the time he regained consciousness, his stomach would be starving on the verge of cramping.

As soon as he carefully observes something, he will quickly fall into a sluggish state, the so-called “being enraptured”. Whenever this happens, his reaction speed will be extremely slow, as if being isolated from his surroundings.

Once as he was visiting Lei Zi, the two of them chatting and enjoying their “Flowing Clouds like Water”, Chen Mu suddenly paused in his drinking and became mute. Lei Zi called out to him for a long time without response, only seeing Chen Mu staring at the cup in his hands, as if daydreaming. Thinking something had happened to Chen Mu, Lei Zi’s little face was scared bloodless.

Card Creation is an extremely expensive profession. This special money-burning characteristic of this progression is because learning to create a card requires a lot of practice. Chen Mu did not have much money on hand, so he could not afford to waste money like those rich disciples. Thus, he had to spend more time on observation and preparation to reduce wasteful consumption when creating magic cards. Aside from touching the blue card image that first time, Chen Mu never again viewed the so-called “resource card” production tutorial. No joke, the current knowledge available is enough for him to digest a long time.

Not biting off more than one can chew; Chen Mu has always been very self-controlled.

Chen Mu cherished and valued every opportunity to create an actual Magic Card. He would go over the blueprint dozens of times beforehand, scrutinizing every single detail. Only once he’s confident everything is in order and his mental state optimal, will he proceed. Such careful preparations, other people would not think he was only creating a mere one or two star Magic Card.

But evidently, Chen Mu’s method proves effective. Now the Magic Cards he produced have quite realistic images. But he is not satisfied. Every time he remembers that terrifying level of realism produced by the mystical card’s illusion, the pride in his heart immediately vanishes.

A one to two star Magic Card’s illusion could not be compared to a high level Magic Card – this he knows. The difference isn’t in lighting and colours, but rather in detailed likeness and substance. This kind of ability is out of his control for now.

But since he can’t work on that aspect, all his efforts are then focused on pursuing realism.

He intends to create a Magic Card Billboard for Uncle Hua.

Thinking of Uncle Hua, Chen Mu’s heart felt heavy. Uncle Wah’s body was visibly getting worse with increasingly powerful coughs and his colour looking worse by the day. During this time, Chen Mu had been visiting Uncle Hua’s little shop regularly, frequently staying to help spruce up the shop and to chat. Chen Mu has always been clumsy with his words though, so most of the time was Uncle Hua talking and Chen Mu listening.

Chen Mu has always wanted to give Uncle Hua a Magic Card Billboard, a perfect and flawless billboard. However, he hasn’t started making one because he felt his strength was not enough. This is also one of the reasons behind his rapid progress during this past period.

But his improvement during this time let him feel it was time – plus, there was the lingering concern about Uncle Hua’s body. So he was determined. Another important reason is that some time ago, his Magic Card animation skills finally made a breakthrough. This difficult problem had troubled him for a long time.

An animated Magic Card’s blueprint only had one extra design compared to a static Magic Card’s structure. However, every Card Creator knows the difficulty of making an animated Magic Card is much higher than making a static one. This can be seen in the prices – an animated Magic Card Billboard is more than three times the price of a static Magic Card equivalent.

How to make the image animated, smoothly and naturally, is a difficult problem for novices.

For example, when making a Magic Card waterfall animation, many first-timers’ product will make the animation look like uncooked silvery vermicelli. To be truly realistic, many details are needed: the ripples and folds of the flowing water, the many splashes of water spraying into the sky, the heavy mists hanging in the air, etc etc. Only experienced Card Creators are able to properly convey all of this. In fact, many high-level Card Creators are not as good as low-level Card Creators that specialize in Magic Card animation creation.

In the field of Cards, there is a well known phrase – details determine the results.

This is an effort-based craft, there’s no way to fake it.

But Chen Mu has always been patient. This had a large relationship with his childhood experiences of being homeless. If a homeless child did not have enough patience, getting food wasn’t easy. And someone like him, a homeless “expert” who survived during that long life of wandering… his patience is truly outrageous.

He will not feel bored during observation (even long-term surveillance).

His rapid progress even surprised himself a little. For the first time ever, he even wondered if he was a bit talented in Card Creation.

The soaring eagle and the bounding rabbit; the flowing wind and running waters; high noon and setting sun… All the Magic Card animations he created were abnormally vivid.

Yet, the best animations he made were not these, but rather the scenes of busy crowds of pedestrians and wandering cats and dogs at night. These childhood scenes had been seared into his memory so even without thinking too hard, he could produce these scenes. This can be said to be one of his a.s.sets.

Today, he intends to make Uncle Hua’s Magic Card Billboard. However, as he has never made one before, Chen Mu intends to go for a stroll and see what other people’s Magic Card Billboard looks like.