Card Master

A four-year-old boy with delicate features and porcelain-like skin was intently studying the half-human-sized box before him. This boy was Long Yin. He circled the box several times, finally noticing a symbol in the upper right corner. Upon a card was an image: a human figure wearing a safety helmet, face shield, protective suit, and holding a tool in each hand—a mechanic! The card depicted a mechanic!

Long Yin arched an eyebrow. A card-machine? So this wasn’t just an ordinary box, but a card-machine—a contraption crafted with the aid of various wondrous cards and tools from daily life! Card-machines possessed all sorts of powerful functions. Each tool bearing the card-machine symbol hid mysterious abilities. The most remarkable aspect was that once a card-machine was perfected, it no longer needed cards to function, completely breaking free from card constraints.

Long Yin scrutinized the symbol again, then shook his head. Not quite a full card-machine, after all. The card showed a mechanic, and while the box was indeed a card-machine, it required energy cards to operate. Any device still dependent on energy cards was, at best, a semi-card-machine. Cards permeated daily life; these common cards were known as daily cards. Daily cards couldn’t function independently, always needing energy cards to power them. Thus, energy cards were the most heavily consumed of all.

In this card-based world, the advent of card-machines was revolutionary, an extension of ancient wisdom—mechanisms that didn’t rely on cards, almost unimaginable. Thus, every mechanic was exce