DECEMBER 25, 2015 ~ BLACKPOND

Merry Christmas everybody! Here’s my Christmas gift for you all! 3 chapter today, then I’ll be hibernating until mid-January? Have a good holiday!

Hearing Zuo TingYi light call, Jia ZiLing was startled awake, grudgingly opening his heavy eyelids, straightened his appearances, and his hair wasn’t in a mess, then with a cough, opened his mouth and asked: “TingYi, what happened?”

Zuo TingYi turned a deaf ear at the question, both eyes gaze dazedly at the card in his hand.

Jia ZiLing slightly frowns, increasing the volume of his voice, somewhat annoyed say: “TingYi, what happened?!”

Only then Zuo TingYi reacted, quickly turn his body: “Teacher, this piece of card is somewhat strange.”

“Strange? What’s strange?” Jia ZiLing asked, somewhat puzzled.

Zuo TingYi hurriedly shows the one-star energy card in his hand in front of his teacher: “This card is, this card……, this card…….”

He is considering how to word it out.

-What is going on with this fellow today?- Jia ZiLing frowned slightly, Zuo TingYi usually always so decisive, speak straightforwardly, never not to the point. Jia ZiLing immediately spoke: “Let me see.”

Taking the card from Zuo TIngYi’s hand, a one-star energy card, what is the big deal? Jia ZiLing is somewhat disappointed, but still brought the one-star energy card near his eyes.

“What!” or “Well!” or “YI!!”

He suddenly sat up, his disapproving expression immediately vanished, replaced with an incomparably imposing expression.

“It really is rather strange.” Jia ZiLing mutters to himself, his gaze fixed on the one-star energy card on his hand. Even though it is him, Dong Wei Inst.i.tute’s Senior Card Maker, would find it hard to tell what is different with this card with just a glance.

There are a lot of slight differences between this card’s structure and the standard structure. Jia ZiLing possesses a lot of experience, he makes out that this structure was based on the standard structure, but with a few alterations. Are these alterations are truly changes? Or just mistakes? He is somewhat undecided; this altered structure is not something he often sees.

Zuo TingYi seeing Jia ZiLing looks troubled, can’t help but remind him: “Teacher, should we try this card, see if it works or not?”

Jia ZiLing eyes shone, ah! As long as you examine if this card works or not first, then we can know whether or not is this card a mistake. However, he changed his facial expressions, showing that he already thought about it long ago. With a slight cough,: “Mhm, TingYi a, you’ve progressed a, I’d expected it of you.

Zuo TingYi respectfully and modestly say: “Teacher’s wisdom surpa.s.sed the ocean, how could this disciple compare?”

Jia ZiLing is very pleased inside, continued his speech: “You don’t need to be too modest, amongst the student, those that can be compared with you can be counted with just my fingers.

“All because of teacher’s guidance, the disciple can be like this this day.” Zuo TIngYi bowed slightly.

“TIngYi shouldn’t forget your own talent, very rare.” The two people finished praising each other, Jia ZiLing deepened his voice (pretend to be profound) says: “Alright, let us see what unusual things this one-star energy card has.”

Inside Jia ZiLing’s card workshop, every kind of device is available.

Although making cards are an abstruse branch of study, there is a large amount of learner. Amongst card maker master, there are extremely serious divide, a great disparity between the rich and the poor. Low-ranked card maker more often than not have it difficult on making a living. Intermediate card maker can obtain a pretty good income. Once one has become a high-ranked/senior card maker, at once the luck will change and one’ll become something hot, become a target of solicitation from influential forces.

Low-ranked card maker can only manufacture one-star and two-star card, but one-star and two-star card at present can already be manufactured industrially. This is also the reason why it is hard for low-ranked card maker to make a living. Three-star and above card can only be made by a card maker, thus why mid and high-ranked card maker were so popular.

Dong Wei Inst.i.tute in order to recruit those high-ranked card makers to be a teacher provided them with extremely generous conditions. Not only they were given superior wages, their yearly research expenses can cause others to feel incomparably jealous. Jia ZiLing have his own workshop, each device inside was paid and provided by Dong Wei Inst.i.tute.

He uses the card a.n.a.lyzer, an extremely specialized and powerful apparatus, very complicated to operate and only specialized card manufacturer will purchase and learn how to use it. The apparatus’ function is very formidable; it can a.n.a.lyse the material of a card, its structure, and the production time and so on. Certainly, it also is extremely expensive.

“This really is a new type of structure!” Seeing the final a.n.a.lysis report, regardless of Zuo TingYi’s startled expression, Jia ZiLing is deep in thought. His knowledge, compared to Zuo TingYi, is much deeper. One-star energy card structure’s brushwork, other than the standard structure, there are still a lot more types.

a.n.a.lysis report is highly detailed, there are no differences between the material of this one-star energy card and the standard energy card, though the brushwork is different, but the performance is identical to the standard one-star energy card without any optimization.

There is nothing valuable about it!! Shaking his head, Jia ZiLing becomes somewhat dejected, to have spent half a day of effort but did not get anything worthwhile. As a high-ranked card maker, he would never suspect that the optimized aspect of this card wasn’t its function, but its cost.

As he sees it, to take great pains to optimize the cost of one-star energy card in itself is a very strange idea.

Conveniently throwing the card aside, Jia ZiLing didn’t intend to waste any more time on this matter. A dignified high-ranked card maker’s time is very precious.

Zuo TingYi similarly didn’t expect that this one-star energy card was cost-optimized. He came from a prosperous family, treated money like dirt, where would anyone think of a plan to make profit by reducing the cost of one-star energy card to just 100 Odi? As a matter of fact, he never used an energy card below three-star.

From these three paper bags there is only one functional card. After experiencing the ravage of the large amount of useless cards, Zuo TingYi has a favourable impression toward this card’s creator. Originally want to help this person join the promotion exam, who would have thought that after looking for quite a while, he still couldn’t find who is this card’s creator, so he dropped this matter.

Chen Mu’s life did not change. He is, still as before, producing one-star energy card every day. However, because of the result of the recent training course, his study and limits increased in leaps and bounds. The most immediate display is his brushwork when making energy cards, now it is fuller and flow smoothly. He roughly estimates, he now can create an energy card with three percent increase in capacity.

One-star energy card’s energy capacity in itself is quite low, an increase of three percent, who can tell the difference?