Card Maker_Chapter 1 Live by Card

The nib, just like a blade, slipped lightly on a cyan-gray card. A blue thin-line stretched smoothly, following the nib. The number of light-blue lines on the palm-sized card was on the rise. Gradually the complicated and metaphysical pattern was becoming perfect at the slip of the pen.

Chen Mu stared intently at the card, breathing softly as if he was afraid of startling something. If you looked closely, you could see that his right arm was completely unmoved from beginning to end and only his wrist was moving. His right wrist was as flexible as a snake and soft as if without bones. The nib twirled gently and an elegant arc appeared on the card. There was a heavy pause and a change in the light. The pen hook-like blade made a sharp a side hook. The pattern on the card was suddenly bright, then quickly faded and returned to normal.

Chen Mu casually put it in a pile of cards on the side of the desk. His movements were so skillful that no hindrance could be seen. His face remained focused after completing the card he had only fifteen done and had to finish ten more to complete today’s task. He was starting a one-star energy card, as the lowest-level energy card, it was one of the most widely used and consumed cards. He moved to continue his work, but the room suddenly darkened.

“Damn it. The energy has run out again!”, Chen Mu mumbled a few words and took an energy card from the card stack with his left hand, then gently pressed it on his right wrist. A beam of bright light emitted from the degree meter on his right wrist. With the help of the beam, Chen Mu tiptoed to the corner of the wall. The room was so cluttered and he never wanted to knock anything off again. There was a square meter on the wall in the corner of the room with a slot under it. Chen Mu inserted the energy card into the slot of the meter.

As soon as the energy card was inserted into the slot, the room became bright. The meter displayed the number 100. It was unexpected that the energy would run out so quickly, so it seemed that today’s task would include one more. Back to his desk, Chen Mu was quickly buried in his work and all his sources of life relied on this lowest-level card. Since learning to make the energy card three years ago, he had never interrupted the daily quota of twenty-five cards. Chen Mu’s room was so small. It had an area of less than 40 square meters and afforded him a half-old work desk. Aside from the clean work desk, there was a mountain of clutter everywhere else in the room, which contained all sorts of things including piles of old books, scattered materials, and so on.

This humble place Chen Mu lived in for three years was a relief room the federal government offered specially. If you want to live in such a small room, you only have to pay 150 Oudia, which is the currency in circulation. For the poor, like Chen Mu, there was no cheaper place to live than here. It was good enough for him as he had seen families of four huddled into the same sized rooms.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, Chen Mu finally finished the day’s work. 25 energy cards shone in an ordered pile on the clean surface of his desk. After carefully counting the number of the cards again and again, and ensuring that the number was right, he carefully packed all the energy cards into the bag of his clothes.

On the streets the darkness was getting stronger. The gorgeous lights were brightest in the night and the fireworks that broke out of the rear of the shuttle car would flow over the sky from time to time. Each one dragging out a brilliant trail that passed again and again. Chen Mu slightly tightened his coat and looked up at the sky. It was getting colder and looked like winter was coming. However, there was no extra mind to lament the passage of time. In his heart, Chen Mu was thinking that more energy would be consumed to keep warm in the winter.

Every time Chen Mu passed the road before the backdoor of Dongwei Academy, which he had passed for three years. Seeing the students go in and out together, his heart could not help but raise a strange emotion. After adjusting the mood swelling in his chest and throat, he walked quickly to a small shop next to institution of learning, called “Dongwei Grocery Store”. There were no fewer than 20 similarly named shops around Dongwei Academy. For the three years, Chen Mu visited this shop every day, no matter what happened. Nonetheless, he comes here not to buy things, but to sell.

As soon as he entered the door, the shopkeeper noticed and greeted him, “Amu is here!”

“Yeah, Uncle Hua, it’s me,” he replied to the shopkeeper, who was an older man of 50 years. The time had left passing marks on him, such as the fine wrinkles, silver hair, and a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.

"These are today's goods," Chen Mu took out the card bag carefully from his arms, pulled out the stack of energy cards, handed them to the shopkeeper and said, "Twenty-five in total."

Uncle Hua took his cards without having a look and put them on the shelf conveniently close to him. He laughed and said, “Thank goodness you send cards every day. Otherwise, there must a shortage in my shop.”

He smiled, but did not speak because he knew Uncle Hua was just joking. Although the one-star energy card was the cheapest, it was also one of the most consumed. The shop was near the Dong Wei Academy, so how could he only sell twenty-five energy cards in one day?

Uncle Hua knew his temper, so he didn’t have much to say and asked directly, “Cash or transfer?” “Transfer, please,” Chen Mu answered plainly and handed Uncle Hua a prepared light-green Oudia card. After the transaction and a friendly goodbye to Uncle Hua, Chen Mu turned around, just wanting to leave.

Suddenly, Uncle Hua called Chen Mu, “Wait a minute Amu!”

Chen Mu stopped and turned around again, looking at Uncle Hua with some astonishment. “Is there anything else, Uncle Hua?”

Uncle Hua took a goose-yellow paper from the drawer and looked at Chen Mu with a smile, “I almost forgot it. Yesterday, when I went to buy some goods, the dealer gave me a class permit of the training course for the card maker. You know, for me it is just a piece of useless paper. So Amu, you can take it.”

Looking at the kind Uncle Hua, Chen Mu was moved. He knew how much the old man before him had helped over the years and Chen Mu believed that without him. He would never have lived such a life today without him.

Three years ago, he learned how to make energy card and wanted to sell the cards everywhere. However, few people wanted to buy these, not even merchants. The one-star energy card was in great demand, especially for those that preferred buying large quantities at a time. However, the maximum amount that Chen Mu could finish in one day was only 13, which was too small a number for buyers.

Fortunately, he met Uncle Hua, who agreed to buy his energy cards at a price per card of 103 Oudia, which is two lower than the wholesale price of energy cards in the market. Nevertheless, Chen Mu was extremely grateful to Uncle Hua.

Four years ago, Chen was a homeless child. Once, he met a card maker who was dying. He used his six-month-saved food to save the card maker’s life. In return the card maker taught Chen a skill, how to make one-star energy card. There was nothing left after the death of the card maker, so Chen Mu buried him in the suburb. He never learned the card maker’s name, but his began to change his life after.

He spent a full year trying his best to do temporary work. He tried six different kinds of work at the age of twelve. In the same year, he accrued enough savings of one thousand Oudia, which he would later use to buy all the materials needed to make energy cards. The card maker once told him that the wholesale price of a one-star energy card in the market was 105 Oudia, while the unified retail price was 110 Oudia, but its cost was only 98 Oudia.

Almost all the card maker had the ability to make the one-star energy card. Few people knew the price differences, but even if they did, almost no one would have made a career of it. One-star energy cards were the simplest cards and were already capable of industrial production. Even the card-making master, at most, could make 20 or 30 energy cards in one day and that output was very small. The card makers didn’t want to waste their time on such a small profit margin. For Chen Mu however, that money was enough to feed him.

For the first time, he made eight energy cards with a loss of about two hundred Oudia, but it still gave him the hope. He did not think that when it came to selling the energy cards, it would get stuck because the merchants had no interest in his low numbers. He ran for a full day and did not eat anything. At eight o'clock he stepped into the Uncle Hua's shop. His legs were shaking as he entered. He was hungry to death at that time and was almost unconscious.

Although the price of 103 Oudia was lower than the wholesale price of 105, Chen Mu still felt joyful and lucky. He sold all the energy cards he had, used some of the earnings to buy the cheapest food and the rest to buy the raw materials of the energy cards.

Chen Mu had finally settled down.

Twenty-five energy cards a day and he never stopped.

Three years passed, during which he only made one kind of card, the one-star energy card. In the second year, he had been able to control the cost at 97 Oudia. It was only one Oudia price difference, but it was a great encouragement to him. In addition to making the energy cards, he also spent the all of his spare time studying how to reduce costs.

Finally in the third year, he successfully controlled the cost of the energy card at 95 Oudia and each card could make a profit of 8 Oudia. With the stable daily income of 200 Oudia, a number he couldn’t imagine at all three years ago. The monthly income of 6,000 Oudia has afforded him to live a normal life, though he still lived in the relief room that only cost 150 Oudia per month.

After clearing his mind, he smiled at Uncle Hua and said, “Thank you, Uncle Hua!”. He took the class permit and carefully put it in the card bag in his arms. The training course, especially for card maker, was one of the most popular training courses at the time. They often had very eye-catching advertisements. The class permit read, “Education background admitted by the Dong Wei Academy.” It continued on to say, “Personal prelisting by the senior professional card maker from Dong Wei Academy.” Chen Mu really knew what it was about. The Institution would pay Dong Wei Academy a fee, as the cost to maintain the “co-hosting”. The only relationship between the Institution and Dong Wei Academy was purely financial.

Even so, Chen Mu planned to listen to everything the training course was about. Making cards was one of the most difficult things and he had not given up on self-study for so many years, however, with little success. Until last year, he finally understood it. In truth, he feared that his foundation was poor and a decade of life as a tramp had left him with no cultural education.

It was much more difficult for a young man without a foundation to teach himself how to study card-making that was known for its arcane and cryptic meanings. He had no doubts about his intelligence and could learn to make a one-star energy card within a week based on memory alone. The card maker he had met praised this talent.

From then on, he laid down the temporary exorbitant goal before him and began to turn to the most fundamental theoretical study. No matter how tired he was after working, he would always take time to learn the boring knowledge.

After saying goodbye to Uncle Hua, Chen Mu walked south along a lane. It was Saturday and he had another kind of work to do.

After about 20 minutes of walking across streets, he arrived at a used card receiving station.

“Hey man, you are here!” Somebody greeted Chen Mu. It was the owner of this receiving station, a bareheaded man who was named Xiaohei. He was black-skinned and very thin. Every Saturday and Sunday night, Chen Tu would work here for three hours.

Chen Mu nodded slightly at Xiaohei, but didn’t say anything.

Xiaohei had become accustomed to such a state of Chen Mu. When Chen came to ask for a temporary job, the black turned him down at first. Only Xiaohei’s father had ever run this receiving station in the past, and then he took it over, so it was still in the family.

“Hire someone? That’s obviously unaffordable!” Thought Xiaohei.

However, when Chen Mu said he would not ask for wages, Xiaohei finally agreed. Of course, Chen Mu still got paid. He usually chose some used cards and took them away, as his wages. Sometimes, Chen Mu would pick up some cards whose energy had not been run out. Xiaohei figured out that it could save a lot of money for him each month. Xiaohei was only a little curious about how this kid knew there was residual energy in the cards.

Since they agreed upon the arrangement, every time he saw Chen Mu he behaved cheerful.

Chen Mu crouched down and began to classify the used cards. There were many types of cards, such as energy cards, item cards, quasi-things cards, and even some rare cards, like plant and animal ones. Most here were useless, with no exceptions. All Chen Mu had to do was to sort them into categories.

The work went on very quickly and was obvious that he was very familiar with it.

Chen Mu flipped at his wrists and threw a card to Xiaohei, “Well, this card can still be used for a while”. There was at least half of the energy left in the two-star energy card and Chen Mu could not understand why the original owner would be so wasteful. Two-star energy card had a capacity of 1000 there was at least 500 more units of energy in it.

“Hey, thank you, Brother Chen!”, Xiaohei looked at the two-star energy card in his hand, eyebrows opening with a smile. With joy he quickly ran before the energy-measuring instrument and put the card in. The bright number of “523” showed on it, Xiaohei laughed exaggeratedly, his facial features almost huddled together.

Chen Mu was buried in picking up and sorting, so he didn’t pay attention to Xiaohei. There were some used middle-class energy cards, such as three-star or four-star cards, and the probabilities of occurrence were still quite high. These high level cards were worthless to Chen because he was only interested in one-star energy card.

The three year card-making career enabled him his own understanding of this most common and lowest-level card. There was more than one method of making a one-star energy card. From this shop, Chen had collected 12 kinds of one-star energy cards that were different in structure. These one-star energy cards with different structures greatly inspired Chen Mu. It was because he learned some of the tricks of these cards that he managed to reduce the cost of making them. Nevertheless, such good luck didn’t happen every day, and so far he had only collected 12.

Today however, seemed like a lucky day.

Chen Mu was looking at the one-star energy card in his hand. From the textured runes to the surface, it was a one-star energy card with a new structure that he had never seen before.

He put this energy card aside and went on to continue his work. There were too many one-star energy cards, but Chen Mu never got tired of checking one by one. He had gotten so fast that he barely had to touch one the cards to see if he wanted it.

All this came from his familiarity with the one-star energy card. This familiarity had been accumulated over three years of uninterrupted card making. Even while not looking at it, he could tell by hand whether it was a one-star energy card or a familiar structure.

He was so familiar with them that he knew each and every detail.

Fingers that had been smoothly shuffling along the cards passed by the edge of one and suddenly stopped.

This card was....