Master of Trading Star Card Game

Chapter 19 – Tang Muzhou’s Subsidiary Account

Fenghua Club.

Tang Muzhou returned to his dormitory and put on a helmet to enter into the World of Star Card.

Two characters appeared in front of him. The first character ID was “Tang” whose facial features were very similar to Tang Muzhou’s. This character, wearing a silver mask, was created when he first entered the game six years ago. It earned him fame in the black market, thus becoming a player who made his own cards in the professional league.

The second character was the adult male character automatically provided by the system. It had a common face that could be seen everywhere in the game. He casually entered garbled characters “7456789” as the ID, which obviously indicated that this was a subsidiary account. He had just used this sub account to post a fragment collection task. Every time he created a new card, he would use this account and go to the Arena to test the card’s data.

Tang Muzhou selected the sub account to enter the game and went to Business Star’s black market.

While Hong Zhu was setting up the stall, she turned her head and suddenly saw a passerby’s ID in the crowd. The number was particularly familiar to her. Hong Zhu immediately went over and sent a PM to the passerby, “Legend Tang, you actually came here?”

“Yes. Is there a clue about the card maker?”

“I’ve sent dozens of people to search the black market inch by inch, but I still can’t find [Lin Daiyu]. And there is no ‘月半’ LOGO on the back of the other original cards. The maker seems to have suddenly disappeared…”

“I’d help you look for the maker.” Tang Muzhou turned and walked away.

Making his debut in the black market, he was very familiar with this place.

In the black market, there were two types of stalls purchasing cards. The first were merchants who bought original cards and sold them for higher prices to make money. These stall owners were relatively professional, able to distinguish between good cards and junk cards. The second type were players who set up their own stalls to buy cards at low prices for collection. They only cared whether the cards’ surface was beautiful.

Some unambitious players, who just collected cards for fun, never went to the Arena to fight against other players and don’t like to study card data. They only liked to collect all kinds of beautiful cards and stuff their display cases in the study, which made them feel very satisfied.

If a professional stall owner bought a card with such a strong skill as [Daiyu Burying the Flowers], he would definitely sell it to the big clubs for a huge sum or take it to an auction. Since Hong Zhu and the others had been looking for [Lin Daiyu] for a long time without success, perhaps some unambitious players, who liked to collect character cards, bought it. These type of stall owners bought cards but didn’t upgrade them; they just put them in the display case. When they were bored, they summoned the cards to view them.

Tang Muzhou found that there were managers of big clubs, including the Adjudication Club and the Flowing Frost City Club, also searching for something in the black market, picking up and putting down cards at various stalls.

Sure enough, as Hong Zhu had said, the in-game black market had become chaotic.

Previously, he had sold a few excellent vine battle cards for low prices at the black market due to not knowing the market price. Soon after, the black market descended into chaos and many clubs began to look for him. After a long period of time, such a thing actually happened again – the card maker was really like him.

Tang Muzhou turned around with a smile and leisurely strolled through the black market.

“Hi, are there any collectable character cards? I’ll pay a high price.” Tang Muzhou asked politely.

Tang Muzhou bypassed the large stalls purchasing and selling battle cards. Instead, he specifically asked small stalls that sold cards which were collected by the stall owners themselves. He asked more than a dozen stalls consecutively, but gained nothing. Then he came to a very cute girl.

When the girl heard his question, she said with a smile, “I have two, but I don’t want to sell them.”

Tang Muzhou asked softly, “I am very interested in character cards. Can you show me the cards you collected?”

“Ehhh… well.” Perhaps because Tang Muzhou’s attitude was so mild, the girl finally took out two character cards.

——As expected, they were [Lin Daiyu].

Tang Muzhou played with the cards in his hand and said, “I really like the style of these cards. Will you sell them to me for 500 gold coins each?”

“These cards are really beautiful. I bought them for collection, so I don’t want to sell them.”

“1000 gold coins.”

“…” She bought the two cards for 50 gold coins each, and now she could sell them for 1000 each – 20 times! The girl, realizing that she could make a lot of money, was very happy and immediately handed the cards over to Tang Muzhou, “Okay, they are yours!”

“Thank you.” Tang Muzhou took the cards and pretended to be curious, asking, “Do you remember the name of the person who sold the cards to you?”

“Yes, he has a very kind name, Uncle Chubby.”

——Uncle Chubby? No wonder the LOGO was “月半”. Was the player a fat uncle?

Tang Muzhou said goodbye to the girl, and then returned to the stall set up by Hong Zhu. He sent a PM, “I bought two [Lin Daiyu] cards from a girl who bought them for collection. Also, the girl told me that the card maker’s name is Uncle Chubby.”

“…” Hong Zhu was stunned. She had been searching for the card maker’s information for an entire afternoon yet failed, while Legend Tang even got the card maker’s name as soon as he stepped in personally. As expected of Tang Muzhou who rose from the black market!

Tang Muzhou continued to send her PMs, “Send an email to Uncle Chubby as soon as possible. Just tell him that we want to acquire [Lin Daiyu] in large quantities. In addition, pay close attention to the Auction House. If Uncle Chubby makes a new card, maybe he will sell it at the auction.”

“Okay… Legend Tang, aren’t you going to sleep?”

“I’ll go to the Arena first.”

Tang Muzhou always felt sleepy in the afternoon, but at night he was full of energy. Busy with sending an email to Uncle Chubby, Hong Zhu didn’t try to persuade him to go to sleep.

At the same time, Xie Mingzhe was sound asleep, lying on the bed.

He had a sweet dream where he made a number of the best character cards and became the most popular card maker in the World of Star Card. His cards were sold for high prices at the Auction House, countless people screaming excitedly around him. The screams in the auction were so deafening that he couldn’t hear the exact words at first, but then he heard clearly –

Legend Chubby! Legend Chubby! Legend Chubby Legend Chubby Legend Chubby!

“…” Xie Mingzhe woke with a start.

He touched his skinny body, regretting that he gave himself the name “Uncle Chubby.” If he became famous in the future, would his fans call him “Legend Chubby” like in the dream?

Fortunately, there were also beautiful scenes in the dream, such as his cards being very popular.

He would work hard for this goal.

Now he had 300,000 in his account, so the salary he got for being a booster was nothing to him – he could quit the job, and then sell cards to get rich. But Xie Mingzhe didn’t want to do this. In his toughest time, Brother Chen helped him, not to mention that since he signed the work contract, he should keep his word. At least this month, he would continue to work and wait for the girl who took marriage leave to come back.

Today was Saturday, and all members in the studio got online together. They made up a team, going to instances on Venus. They successively farmed the instances of five different Ziyuan Stars – Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth. This time Xie Mingzhe enriched his experience, and the settings of the creatures, based on the Five Elements, also gave him a lot of inspiration.

After a day’s work, Xie Mingzhe immediately went offline in order to avoid a headache – he had to strike a balance between work and rest, give himself some time to think.

He opened his old laptop and signed into Star Card Storm’s official website.

The official website’s homepage was so gorgeous that when he clicked in, he felt like he was entering a realistic universe. He entered the bulletin board – the latest news was all about the new season of the professional league and various activities, covering a whole page.

He turned a few pages forward and saw a news title in bold that read “Star Card Storm Annual Update Announcement”.

The news was released on July 25th, just a week ago.

Xie Mingzhe quickly swept through the announcement and captured key information about the instant death skill.

First of all, although the instant death effect had been added to the skill database, the official requirement for making IDE (instant death effect) cards were very strict – the card’s image and its skill must be united; the card could only have one instant death skill; it could only be targeted at cards of a small category; its own Defense should be very low, so when it insta-killed an enemy’s card, it would also be insta-killed.

Secondly, players in the Arena could only use one IDE card as a “tactical card” to make a successful surprise raid.

Xie Mingzhe now completely understood why [Lin Daiyu] only had 15 points of Defense.

Because [Lin Daiyu]’s skill was too strong, its Defense must be low.

And so was [Wu Song]. Since it had the instant death effect, its attributes, such as Attack and Defense, were third-rate.

When Xie Mingzhe made these two cards, his Inner Spirit was highly focused on the character’s actions of “burying” the flowers and “slaying” the tiger. These two cards fit perfectly into the official database setting, so they happened to have an instant death effect.

After figuring this out, Xie Mingzhe continued to search for information about the professional league.

Pang Yu said that the Adjudication Club was one of the six giants in the league. Xie Mingzhe wanted to know the Adjudication Club’s real strength.

In recent years, many clubs had appeared due to the large number of professional card players. Among them, Fenghua, Adjudication, Capital of Darkness, Flowing Frost City, Pantheon and Ghost Hell were the six strongest clubs that had been established for the longest time. Having quite a lot of fans, they were the “six giants” mentioned by Pang Yu. These six clubs, with the support of large consortia behind them, had trained countless outstanding players. They were top-tier clubs in the professional league, and there were countless other second- and third-tier clubs.

President Huan Yue did not lie to him. The Adjudication Club was indeed a very powerful club. Nie Yuandao and Shan Lan were legendary players at the top of the league’s pyramid. Especially Nie Yuandao, he had been a player since the first season almost ten years ago. Now other legendary players even have to call him “qianbei”※ when meeting him.

Most people would likely accept if a top club offered them an olive branch.

Xie Mingzhe had also wanted to agree at the beginning, but in the end his rationality overcame the impulse.

He once was a poor guy who only had 200 deposited in his account before he sold the copyright of [Wu Song]. Of course he liked money, but he was not a short-sighted man – his imagination was the most valuable thing he had. The experience of rebirth was his “priceless treasure”.

Joining a club to be a card designer and handing over all the card copyrights to the club? Only fools would agree!

He preferred being a free card designer who could create whatever cards he liked without being controlled by any clubs.

He would not sell the copyrights anymore and only sell the cards.

[Wu Song], used only against tigers, was sold for 300,000 as the copyright price.

[Lin Daiyu] was targeted at a wider range – flower cards.

Even if he did not sell the copyright and only sold [Lin Daiyu] cards, a [Lin Daiyu] could certainly be sold for a high price.

It was a big mistake for him to sell [Lin Daiyu] at the black market for a low price. He should take [Lin Daiyu] to another high-end place.

——Auction House！

Translator’s Note:

1. qianbei（前辈）: This word is used to describe an informal hierarchical interpersonal relationship found in organizations, schools and so on