Master of Trading Star Card Game

Chapter 11 – A New Card Designer

Wearing high-heeled shoes, Xue Linxiang ran all the way to the players’ apartment building and knocked at Tang Muzhou’s door.

After a long while, Tang Muzhou opened the door with his eyes squinted, leaning against the door and yawning.

He worked and rested according to a strange schedule. For example, people tend to take a nap at noon, but he preferred to have a rest for an hour from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. everyday, or he would be so sleepy that he would keep yawning.

When he saw Xue Linxiang, he was so sleepy that his eyes were vacant.

Xue Linxiang said seriously, “Xiao Tang, go and wash your face to clear your mind. I have something important to tell you.”

With his eyes closed, Tang Muzhou didn’t respond, instead, he fell into a sleep while standing there.

Xue Linxiang shouted, “Tang Muzhou!”

“OK.” Tang Muzhou finally replied. He kept yawning when he turned back to wash his face. He was light on his foot as if he was sleepwalking.

At that time, the door next to his apartment suddenly opened from the inside. A little boy poked his head out of the crack in the door.

He had a chubby baby face, big and bright sky-blue eyes, and long and dense eyelashes. In the light from the hall, his hair had a golden gloss, which made him look like a doll. The boy hadn’t gone through the voice change period and said in a clear and melodious voice, “Sister Xue, your shout scared me half to death… Are you displeased with my Shifu(a title for and role of a skillful person or a master. The character 师 means “skilled person” or “teacher”, while the meaning of 父 is “father”)? How will you deal with him?”

Looking at the boy, Xue Linxiang said, “Shen An, come here. I have something serious to tell you.”

Shen An, who had intended to watch the show, stopped joking and followed sister Xue when he saw her grim face.

When they stepped into Tang Muzhou’s room, Tang Muzhou had washed his face.

Sitting on the sofa, Tang Muzhou looked relaxed and his brooding eyes showed that he had recovered to a wise, far-sighted and bright man.

Tang Muzhou changed tremendously after washing his face.

In these past few years after he started out as a professional player, Tang Muzhou had won the individual championship and had been playing a stable role in the team events. However, his winning percentage was too terrible to look at when he competed with others from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Gradually, everyone knew his strange work-rest schedule. Some fans joked that legend Tang had made too many plant cards, so his habits became similar to plants’ – in the afternoon, the sunlight was so strong that legend Tang would wither as plants did, therefore he had to sleep.

Fortunately, for the sake of high viewing rate, most matches of National Star Card League were scheduled on primetime between 19 and 22 p.m., which wouldn’t cause a great impact on him.

By 5 p.m., Tang Muzhou was completely awake.

Seeing sister Xue and his apprentice coming in one after another, Tang Muzhou asked with concern, “Sister Xue, you look pale today. What happened?” Tang Muzhou glanced at his apprentice next to sister Xue, but the teenager shook his head to show that he didn’t know.

Xue Linxiang kept silent while quickly opening the flat-panel optical brain.

In front of them, a virtual projection screen, more than two meters wide, appeared immediately. Nine identical cards were displayed on the screen, neatly arranged in a row, which looked very spectacular.

These were character cards. The beauty’s face was bathed in tears, while she strewed petals in her delicate hands over the ground. This was such an elaborate painting.

Tang Muzhou stood up, walked to the card and then watched it carefully, “What card is it?”

“Hong Zhu bought them from the black market,” Xue Linxiang spoke seriously, “look at its data and skill.”

Health 100, Attack 0, Defense 15 – its base attributes were risible. Its skill was “Daiyu Burying the Flowers” – to inflict severe damage on flower cards, with a 10% chance for instant death.

Instant death? Specially targeted at flower cards?

Tang Muzhou raised his eyebrows and remained silent for a moment. Then he turned around and looked at his apprentice, saying, “Xiao’an, what do you think of it?”

Shen An raised his head to look at the card, calculating carefully, “The one-star cards have a 10% chance for instant death, which would reach 80% when they are evolved into seven-star cards. If these cards are strengthened with materials that could increase the probability, the chance for instant death can reach up to 100%. This kind of function cards are of little use to fight against other players, but to Shifu, it can instakill Shifu’s trump flower cards – are these cards specially targeted at Shifu?”

Xue Linxiang was very pleased. Shen An was just a fifteen-year-old naughty boy, who followed everybody all day like a little child, but he was highly intelligent and savvy in the card game. He found the problem of the cards at a glance. He surely deserved to be Tang Muzhou’s apprentice.

She was about to echo Shen An’s view, but Tang Muzhou said coolly, “this card is directed against me? That’s not necessarily so.”

Shen An was confused, “What do you mean?”

“Look at the image on this card carefully,” Tang Muzhou pointed to the image, “the decoration is too much.”

Shen An realized, “Yes! The background – these flowers and trees – is like a painting!”

Xue Linxiang also sensed something was wrong. She couldn’t help but ask, “Xiao Tang, do you mean that this card is not directed against you?”

“Yes,” Tang Muzhou looked at the girl bathed in tears on the card and answered calmly, “the real first-tier card designers know that the simpler the image is, the clearer the star card hologram will be. And the card will also be more powerful. This image contains too many messy decorations. In addition to the main character, there are trees, flowers, and a river… these elements make the card rich in content, but they actually greatly lowered the center character’s strength.”

Seeing that both of them were listening carefully, Tang Muzhou patiently analyzed, “If he were a professional card designer, he would only have drawn two key elements: ‘character’ and ‘flowers’. Under this condition, a level-0 card’s chance of instant death can reach 30%, and when it upgrades to level 70, the chance will be 100% without using other materials. But this guy don’t know how to make a card at all, so his card’s chance of instant death is only 10% at the beginning, and the data is terrible, which means that he has to pay dearly for upgrading his card to level 70 and raising the chance to 100%.”

Shen An nodded vigorously, “Shifu is right! The image on this card is so detailed, which is like a work of a student at some art academy. A first-rate card designer must know that drawing a bunch of ornaments on a card is the biggest mistake one can make when creating battle cards!”

Xue Linxiang frowned. After a moment, she asked, “Is this just a coincidence?”

Tang Muzhou nodded.

When Xue Linxiang was about to gave a sigh of relief, Tang Muzhou said, “I’m not afraid that someone creating cards directed against me – but a coincidence is just more horrible.”

Xue Linxiang was stunned, and then she quickly understood what legend Tang meant.

After taking the card from Hong Zhu, she was so stunned by its highly targeted skills that she had failed to keep a clear mind.

But Tang Muzhou was more alert than she was.

Especially when he woke up at 5 pm, he considered problems more calmly and keenly than Xue Linxiang did.

Tang Muzhou didn’t fear in the least that someone provoked him deliberately by making a highly targeted card. Because in recent years, major clubs had studied his set of playing cards and created a large number of cards to defeat him.

Not only his powerful cards, but also his extremely fast adaptability and exceptionally excellent competence to manipulate cards, enabled him to make remarkable achievements. Even if the skill of Daiyu Burying the Flowers could defeat one of his flower and plant trump cards, he still had other more powerful cards. In the competition, players enriched their card pools with several alternative cards, which made it impossible for other players to conquer every card he had.

However, it was horrible that the card was created by coincidence.

Nobody knew the creator of this card and how gifted he was in the least. He had unconsciously made a [Lin Daiyu] that could defeat some of Tang Muzhou’s cards, what if he created other strange cards in the future? If he made a collection of cards that could beat flower and plant cards and sold them to major clubs, Tang Muzhou would undergo an exceedingly tough time in the next season.

Many of Tang Muzhou’s flower and plant cards would be completely worthless if every professional player had a [Lin Daiyu].

While Xue Linxiang was depressed, Tang Muzhou asked her, “Who is the creator of this card? Sister Xue, have you found any clues?”

Regaining her wits, Xue Linxiang replied immediately, “Hong Zhu bought this card at the black market, but the stall owner forgot the name of the seller. The only clue to the identity of the card’s creator was the LOGO on the back of the card, you can take a look at it.”

Turning the card over, Tang Muzhou noticed that there were no decorative patterns on its green back, instead, there were two characters in the lower right corner: 月 and 半¹.

Being confused, Shen An speculated while scratching his head, “What does 月半 mean? Half of the moon?”

Tang Muzhou smiled slightly, saying, “These two characters, 月半, forms one word ‘胖’, which means chubby, the creator is not a fatty, right?”

“…” Shen An and Xue Linxiang looked at each other.

What the hell! A chubby!

Who would stamp the unpleasant, ugly LOGO on the back of their cards? Were they serious?

Looking at the card with interest, Tang Muzhou smiled and said, “Looking at the base attributes, we could see that the designer knows nothing about how to make cards. But in the aspect of its originality, he is a rare genius. I conclude that he is a talented beginner who just started playing the game and the card may be his first work. He has no notion of balancing, so the card skills are very distinctive, but just as what we see, its numeral distribution isn’t reasonable.”

As he spoke, Tang Muzhou opened his flat-panel optical brain and connected it to the card database.

The game stipulated the rules of copyright protection of cards, and the LOGO must be unique. So the number of cards can be retrieved from the official database, according to the designer’s LOGO; only the number could be seen, and the specific cards would not be displayed for privacy.

Tang Muzhou entered the official database and typed “Chubby” to check the number of the designer’s cards.

19 cards.

Obviously, Xue Linxiang also saw it and her eyes widened, “Hong Zhu said there were only nine cards! Why are there ten more cards?”

Tang Muzhou said, “Maybe Hong Zhu just got nine cards, and the other 10 were already sold in the market.”

Thinking of the possibility, Xue Linxiang broke out into a cold sweat.

The last thing she had wanted to see had happened. If the cards were bought by collectors, it was not too bad. However, once the cards fell into the hands of major clubs that were proficient in card functions and skills, they would be evolved into seven-star cards and strengthened with a 100% chance of instant death, used as a trump card against Tang Muzhou!

In the future PK, all opponents could use this kind of cards to instakill Tang Muzhou’s ace flower cards…

Was the chubby a killer of Tang Muzhou?!

Xue Linxiang took a deep breath and immediately sent a video message to Hong Zhu, “Xiao ‘zhu, there may be another 10 [Lin Daiyu] cards on the market. Call on our club and make a thorough search of the black market and the commercial street. Get all the cards as soon as possible! In addition, once you find the card maker, you must bring him back to the club anyway you can – even if you have to intimidate or tempt him! ”

Hong Zhu had realized the seriousness of the situation. She nodded vigorously, “Sister Xue, rest assured. I bought the card in the black market from stall owner Mr. Zhang. I’m on a stakeout of Zhang’s stall. As long as the card maker comes to sell the card again, I will catch him!”

***

At the same time, at the black market.

Xie Mingzhe didn’t go to Zhang’s stall to sell cards. After all, he just sold 9 cards to Mr. Zhang. If none of them had been sold, then the cards would be slow sellers. Under this condition, Mr. Zhang would definitely not offer a price of 30 gold coins for each card.

So, witty as Xie Mingzhe was, he went to another stall.

The owner of this stall was a little girl who liked [Lin Daiyu] much. She said, “The card’s data is terrible, but the picture is so beautiful. Well, I only need two of them, and I can offer a unit price of 30 gold coins. I won’t sell these two cards – I will add them to my collection!”

Xie Mingzhe agreed without hesitation. Anyway, he was the owner of the copyright, so he could make countless [Lin Daiyu]. He just wanted to sell as many cards as possible.

After he sold two to the little girl, he walked up to a middle-aged man to promote the cards with his silver tongue.

The man said with a long face, “Character cards are not that collectable. This game has been in operation for ten years. There have been too many character cards, but… yours have a special style. I’ll buy 5 at a unit price of 25 gold coins.”

The man was right. Character cards were not very popular in the low-end card market. So Xie Mingzhe, who knew to quit while he was ahead, sold 5 cards to the man. As for the rest, he sold them to another stall owner at a unit price of 25 gold coins.

Ten [Lin Daiyu] were all sold out, but Xie Mingzhe knew that this was not a long-term solution. Character cards with bad attributes were not very popular in this game. He could only create dozens of this card at most. Otherwise, no one would buy [Lin Daiyu] if he promoted it in the black market.

So, he had to think about what cards he should make and how to improve card attributes as soon as possible.

After returning to his single room apartment, Xie Mingzhe began to study how to make a new card. But he did not know that the black market in this game had descended into chaos!

Translator’s Note:

1. 月 and 半 are two parts of the Chinese character 胖, which means chubby. In the future chapters, we will write Xie Mingzhe’s logo as “Chubby”