Retribution came so swiftly. Chi Yun Su, who had just left the staff at a loss for how to respond, now found herself unsure what expression to make.
…Could it be that she could still charge if she couldn’t repair it?
The sign she had written in her notebook was just traditional nonsense literature, meant to catch people’s attention.
But faced with her first and only client so far, Chi Yun Su hesitated, words caught in her throat. In the end, she didn’t dare say anything. Instead, she reached out with great solemnity and, with professional integrity, accepted the purple card.
Chi Yun Su had never successfully crafted a purple card before, but after the Inspector’s guidance, she was confident she could repair it.
After all, repairing was always easier than creating from scratch.
When Chi Yun Su first taught herself card crafting, this was how she got started.
Once she had the card in hand, Chi Yun Su examined it carefully and realized the situation was more complicated than she had imagined.
Usually, when a card was damaged, the issue lay in the circuit. But this card was different.
The base card had been violently scratched by a sharp object, with the mark embedding itself a third of the way into the base. Naturally, the circuit had also been severed by the scratch.
This wasn’t just about repairing the card—it required fixing the card base as well.
Chi Yun Su wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Immediately, others who knew a thing or two about cards exclaimed, “How did this card end up like this?” Cards weren’t exactly fragile; even with a knife, most people couldn’t scratch them.
It was precisely because of this reliability that cards had become the mainstream they were today.
“There was a car accident nearby. It blocked a flying part and saved my life,” the passenger said with a lingering sense of fear. Then, turning to Chi Yun Su, he asked, “Can you fix it? I’ll give you fifty star coins if you patch it up.” As he spoke, he confidently held up five fingers.
Chi Yun Su looked up, her gaze slightly nuanced as she took in the passenger’s rather well-dressed appearance.
Even at the Cleaning Company, repairing a card—even a Green Card—earned her a three-digit bonus. Physically damaged cards were harder to fix than ordinary ones, and this guy had the nerve to offer only fifty star coins.
Unaware from the Inspector’s explanations just how extraordinary card repair was, Chi Yun Su didn’t realize that what the passenger meant by “repair” was simply having her fill in the gap on the card.
For something like filling a gap, fifty star coins was actually quite generous.
Completely unaware of this, Chi Yun Su muttered to herself and glanced around. Clearly, no one else in the room was interested in placing an order. Though she felt the offer was too low, this was an opportunity to showcase her skills and attract clients. Even if it were free, she would have done it.
Besides, every little bit helped. Excluding labor costs, Chi Yun Su figured she could still make a small profit.
“Alright,” Chi Yun Su finally agreed, feeling slightly shortchanged but saying nothing more.
After carefully examining the material of the card in her hand, she took out a card repair material from her pocket.
She never kept her important things in her bag.
This material was something Chi Yun Su had brought with her from Black Port, and it was among her more precious possessions.
“Frost Immortal Rock?” Some of the more knowledgeable people in the activity room recognized the card-making material and gasped in surprise.This thing actually isn’t much among wealthy people like them. The small piece about the size of a quail egg that Chi Yun Su took out was probably worth just over ten thousand star coins. What surprised them was that Chi Yun Su used this material just to fill a gap.
They recalled Chi Yun Su’s expression when she said she had ‘some financial difficulties’ earlier and suddenly felt it made perfect sense.
With such wasteful spending, if she isn’t financially troubled, who would be?
The middle-aged passenger looked even more astonished.
He wasn’t just surprised by Chi Yun Su’s ‘wastefulness,’ but also because the main purpose of ‘Frost Immortal Rock’ is to make recording-type cards.
The middle-aged passenger was a somewhat famous director, and that purple card was the master tape of his new film.
Recording cards are also a type of Fixed Card, but they are a bit more special compared to other cards. Since they have the function of recording images, their Card Base, like Spirit Cards, requires special crafting.
Chi Yun Su actually recognized what this card was used for!
Instantly, the middle-aged passenger felt a sense of mystery when looking at Chi Yun Su’s somewhat youthful face.
Could it be that this young girl really knows card crafting?
The Circuit of recording cards is inherently quite unique, so Chi Yun Su herself didn’t think it was anything special to recognize the card’s attributes at a glance. Fully immersed in her work, she paid no attention to the commotion around her. After scraping off the necessary amount of Frost Immortal Rock powder and mixing it with other complementary materials in the right proportions, Chi Yun Su carefully and cautiously filled the gap in the card.
Card Base crafting isn’t part of the Card Making Fundamentals. Chi Yun Su had only just started learning it recently while studying with the Inspector.
Since the composition of Fixed Cards is simple and uniform, Chi Yun Su began her studies with this. Although the Card Base of recording cards is somewhat different, Chi Yun Su didn’t think it was a big issue.
In her past life, she had done plenty of similar work.
But the reality was, Chi Yun Su did fill the gap, but that was all she did—it didn’t integrate seamlessly with the card.
Chi Yun Su’s psychic energy could clearly sense that the card was still divided into three sections.
Where did the problem lie? Chi Yun Su fell into deep thought, using her psychic energy to carefully examine the entire card.
It wasn’t an error in the materials used to repair the Card Base—Chi Yun Su was confident about that.
So where was the discrepancy?
After pondering seriously, Chi Yun Su finally picked up the carving knife she had used to scrape the Frost Immortal Rock material and placed it on the card the other party had given her. With the support of her psychic energy, Chi Yun Su applied a bit of force and effortlessly enlarged the gap by twice its original size.
She didn’t have many materials on hand, so even if she identified the problem, there was no way to solve it.
Thus, Chi Yun Su actually had only one simple and crude solution.
—No matter where the discrepancy lies, as long as both parts are fused together, there won’t be any discrepancy.
For a fifty-star coin card repair task, isn’t it just about making it work?
“My card!” the middle-aged passenger screamed as soon as he saw Chi Yun Su’s action.
He was planning to take this card to Changhe Star to find a Three-Star Card Maker to redraw a new card based on its Circuit!Chi Yun Su was asked to repair the card because the passenger had glimpsed a few pages of her notebook—the one she used as a signboard—which contained actual content related to card crafting. This led him to believe Chi Yun Su might have some understanding of the craft.
He had hoped Chi Yun Su would simply fill in the card’s gap and then paint over it with a pigment similar to the circuit, making it look like a normal card that wouldn’t hinder a future card maker from redrawing it.
But while Chi Yun Su did fill the gap, what was with the extra cut after the repair?!
Chi Yun Su ignored the middle-aged passenger’s cry of distress. As he lunged forward to snatch the card, she deftly twisted the carving knife in her hand and pressed it against his forehead. The sharp tip of the blade right before his eyes instantly made him break out in a cold sweat.
Having spent years navigating Black Port, Chi Yun Su’s combat skills were far from weak. Compared to ‘Guo Ruofan,’ it was one thing, but compared to others, it was entirely another.
“Don’t disturb me,” Chi Yun Su stated flatly. She withdrew the carving knife, which she had instinctively extended as a threat, and smoothed out the mixed base card materials once more.
This time, after sensing it again with her psychic energy, she felt the overall harmony had improved, though a sense of disparity still lingered.
It was working!
Chi Yun Su’s eyes lit up.
She enlarged the gap again, this time to about four times its original size. Now, the fusion of the materials felt completely seamless, with no trace of disparity left.
Good.
Chi Yun Su was quite satisfied.
As for the middle-aged passenger’s utterly crestfallen expression—several circuits had been flattened by Chi Yun Su’s aggressive knife work—it was completely ignored by her.
Such meddling by an outsider in an expert’s work was truly irritating.
Chi Yun Su was somewhat displeased, but she still had professional integrity. Since she had agreed to repair this card, she wouldn’t break the contract just because of this person’s reckless behavior.
The card base was now repaired, and it was time for the normal circuit redrawing.
Drawing the brush from her waist, Chi Yun Su dipped it into the ink she had prepared earlier and focused intently, tracing lines on the Purple Card.
Streaks of black ink connected to the original pale golden circuits, and a faint glow began to rise. The black ink gradually blended into gold, shimmering with a soft radiance.
The onlookers, who had been watching the spectacle of Chi Yun Su’s earlier reckless actions, now widened their eyes in astonishment.
None of them had ever witnessed a card maker crafting a card right before their eyes, nor did they know what normal card crafting should look like. But this striking and visually captivating color reaction was something anyone with eyes could tell was extraordinary.
“…Could she really be… repairing the card?” someone uttered in disbelief.