335 The Spinulosa Disk (1/2)

Chen Mu was by himself in the huge warehouse of the Valley Nest, surrounded by mountains of parts. There were several half-finished items in front of him that he had been trying out those last few days. But up until then, there hadn't been a single successful work. His ability with metallic machinery could be considered only ordinary, and that was only thanks to Alfonso.

If Alfonso were there, he would certainly have been able to make use of all those things. Chen Mu couldn't help a bitter smile as he looked at those ugly, half-finished works in front of him.

Casually reclining among the parts, he became strangely relaxed in that moment. He was really enjoying that period of his life. He liked nothing more than the sort of research and improvement work he was doing just then.

A slight grin curved up from the corner of Chen Mu's mouth as he remembered that bright period when he was making card plays with Copper. That was a really lovely time! He didn't know how Copper was doing. Such arbitrary thoughts fluttering past left him without ambition and reminded him how nice it would be if he could retrieve the simple life he once had. His own ideal was to be nothing more than a card master.

Something bright suddenly flashed through his mind, which made him feel that he had vaguely grasped something crucial! He sat right up. Under his disheveled hair, his eyes were like the milky way, shining with a strange brightness.

Card master! How could he forget he was a master of card making? The parts in front of him were nothing more than dead things, looking like they had no way to go together. It was only that he had yet to grasp the right way to do it. What was the ghost in a card appliance? It was the card inside it!

Why not design a card according to the characteristics of the parts?

After thinking that through, everything opened wide for Chen Mu. He had been steeping in that pile of parts for the last few days and had long since impressed their characteristics into his mind. Within the blink of an eye, he had formed the outline of a plan in his mind.

* * *

Every move Faya made touched countless people's minds. The battle shuttle car had quite a few shortcomings, such as how cumbersome it was. It was far from the nimbleness of a card artisan. If a single battle shuttle car were to encounter a mid-level card artisan, the card artisan would have more than an 80 percent chance of winning. However, the battle shuttle car could be mass-produced and could be driven by an ordinary person. Those two qualities gave them the absolute upper hand. There was also no way to compare the two from the aspect of the investment required.

Apart from the Big Six, the other powers were less scrupulous, and the orders swarmed in like snowflakes. Faya did as it said it would and kept delivering them to all the other powers.

That really caused the Big Six to panic! They all developed curricula around battle shuttle cars, but no one succeeded. The hardest part was the production of the fantasy cards; up until then, only one-star power cards could be mass-produced. Although there wasn't much power in the energy bodies shot off from the battle shuttle cars, they were certainly three-star fantasy cards. The most shocking thing behind the affair was that Faya had the ability to mass-produce three-star fantasy cards.

That meant the price of three-star cards plummeted on the market, and it also meant many card artisans were about to lose their jobs. If they were able to mass-produce three-star power cards, then what about four-star fantasy cards? What about five-star fantasy cards?

No one could know how things might develop in the future, but what was happening right in front of everyone would certainly turn the world and all its structure upside down. It was a new epoch.

***

There was a perfectly strange card appliance sitting in front of Chen Mu. It was his latest work.

It was a metallic disk about 20 centimeters across and made entirely of silvery-white metal. When Chen Mu first looked at it, it made him think of the spinulosa wheels thrown by the brilliant apes. Because it was too light, however, Chen Mu discarded any notion of making it into a weapon.

The advantage of its light weight was that it could fly without using much energy, so Chen Mu had the bright idea to turn it into a probe craft. Inside its body was a jet stream card, a simple scanning card, and a simplified communications card. The three were connected by parallel compositions.

The communications card enabled the probe craft to connect with a specialized communications card in Chen Mu's apparatus. In that way, he could see images transmitted from the probe craft on the screen emitted from his apparatus. He could also have some rudimentary control by means of the apparatus.

That was the first work Chen Mu completed during those last few days. Looking at the probe craft sitting there, Chen Mu thought about it and decided to call it the Spinulosa Disk.

He still hadn't tried flying it and didn't know what specific effects it might have. It had finally become time to experiment with what he had been doing for those few days, and Chen Mu was pretty excited. That was about the most fun he could ever have.

Activating his apparatus, Chen Mu carefully used perception to control the communications card within it. The Spinulosa Disk fluttered up and hovered in midair. A look of joy flashed through Chen Mu's eyes, and he made a move with his perception without hesitating. The Spinulosa Disk whooshed through the window and flew up into the sky. The images from the screen in front of Chen Mu kept changing. It went higher and higher until it flew over the ravine and into the clouds, wandering freely among them.

Seeing the snowy mountains and icy plains open out like a painting in front of him made him feel unspeakably carefree and relaxed. The Spinulosa Disk was light and fast—even more so than a shuttle car or a card artisan.

After flying for nearly half an hour, Chen Mu wanted to find out how large the range was within which he could control it. He suddenly saw what looked like a lot of black dots on the screen. He was taken aback and hurriedly guided the Spinulosa Disk into circling and slightly lowering. The images on the screen became a lot clearer.

It was a troop of card artisans! Yikes! They were advancing in the direction of the ravine! Chen Mu was surprised, but he knew what was going on when he saw Wen Zuofu.