The Card Apprentice - The House of Chen Lab

There were ten people neatly lined up at the door to his apartment, naked from the waist up and spattered with water and green grass. The thing which surprised Chen Mu was that each of them was carrying a bale of grass over their shoulders which was as thick as two peoples’ waists!
    

They were large bales of gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves! Those were the two kinds of materials for making blank cards which Chen Mu had just ordered, except that Chen Mu’s jaw dropped at such a large quantity, as he stood transfixed at the door.
    

They had very casually tied them into bales with rattan straps as thick as a finger It made Chen Mu’s heart bleed to see such valuable gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves so deformed by the rattan straps.
    

These guys sure are wasteful! Chen Mu mumbled subconsciously.
    

Ten people were each carrying a torso-thick bale of mottled-gold grass or constellation grass, all lifting their faces and standing in front of him, which made a huge visual impact.
    

Golden sparkles flashed on the body of the gold-mottled grass which was as long as a saw blade, as though flecks of gold had been scattered there. That was also where it got its name. The early shoots of the gold-mottled grass were very fine, but the longer they grew over months and years, and the broader the leaves became, the higher their value was. Each blade of the gold-mottled grass that those guys had on their shoulders was wider than the palm of a hand. He knew that one blade of such high-quality gold-mottled grass would have a shocking price on the outside. He had never used such high-grade gold-mottled grass for his handiwork at the base.
    

And the constellation leaves were covered in silver grey star-constellations, which were each the size of a coin. They were top quality constellation leaves without a doubt.
    

None of those guys had any idea of the value of those thick bales on their shoulders. In their eyes, the stuff was just some straw. They found it strange that Mr. Chen would be so interested in it.
    

Peng, peng, peng!
    

The ten of them had just casually thrown the bales of straw on their shoulders to the ground without really looking, sending up clouds of dust. Their movements were utterly coordinated and really nice to watch. They weren’t denigrating those bales of “straw,” each of which weighed several dozen kilos, but they had been carrying them for nearly the whole night, and they were terribly exhausted.
    

Chen Mu couldn’t help his heart skipping a beat at that movement, and he had to restrain his impulse to check whether the gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves had been damaged.
    

“Is that enough, sir?” Colin was asking with an eager face. Influenced by suffering such a loss at Cheng Ying’s hand, as soon as he heard elder Bafu say that Chen Mu needed some gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves, he seized the initiative to volunteer and led some people out of the village. He still remembered what elder Bafu had ordered, ‘to get as much as possible.’ But he had no idea how much that was, so he simply had each person bring back a bale, having no way to bring back more.
    

“Enough, enough.” Chen Mu rushed to respond. It wasn’t a matter of sufficiency any more.
    

Colin breathed a sigh of relief, “Good.” He had been afraid that they wouldn’t have satisfied Chen Mu’s needs with what they brought. But he then asked with curiosity, “Sir, what can this straw do?”
    

Straw . . .
    

Before Chen Mu could respond, a villager happened by, and felt himself clever to say, “Isn’t it for burning, sir? But I’ve already tried it, and those two kinds of straw don’t burn well! Would you like us to gather some straw that’s a little better-burning?”
    

Chen Mu was momentarily speechless, his head a blank.
    

It was difficult to wait for Colin and his team to satisfy their curiosity and leave, leaving Chen Mu flabbergasted looking at those ten bales of materials. He wouldn’t be able to use up even a tenth of such quantities of gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves. If he were to process that much by himself, he couldn’t do anything else all year. But if those materials which were so precious in his eyes weren’t processed, they would lose all their value. If they weren’t processed within five days of picking, they would dry up and turn yellow and become as useless as straw.
    

We can’t just waste it!
    

Chen Mu walked into his house to awaken Alfonso. He said straight-out to the drowsy-eyed Alfonso, “I need manpower!”
    

“Oh.” Alfonso responded semi-consciously and could then be seen to stagger out the door. He walked straight outside and accosted a villager passing by, and said with a heavy note of sleepiness, “Mr. Chen needs manpower, and everyone who wants to come should come, preferably young.”
    

“Ai.” The villager looked delighted and took to his heels to run back.
    

Alfonso staggered back into the house and walked into his room in a daze, where snoring could be heard a moment later. Chen Mu didn’t go to wake him up, since the two of them had stayed up too long, and he was still sleepy himself.
    

Chen Mu laboriously took the bales back to the storeroom, with his heart fulfilled. He didn’t believe that there was any card master who wouldn’t be moved by so much outstanding-quality material.
    

With his outstanding hearing, he suddenly heard what seemed like something moving in his direction.
    

The movements grew louder and louder, as though quite a few people were running in his direction. He was startled and wondered what was going on. He got up and walked toward the door where he heard a hubbub outside.
    

“We heard that Mr. Chen requires some assistance, are you bringing your Ah-xi along?”
    

“Of course. What kind of person is this Mr. Chen that even Alfonso is under him. If our Ah-xi can learn a couple of tricks, then maybe later he can become the equal of Alfonso.”
    

“Hey, let’s go together. Is there any shortage of warriors in our village? Alfonso wasn’t willing to give instruction before. Since Mr. Chen came along it’s better now. He has a lot more ability than Alfonso. Didn’t I just hear that we should bring our children along.”
    

“Indeed! . . .
    

Chen Mu finally understood what had happened and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
    

* * *
    

Bo Wen was depressed. Very depressed. He was safe enough, but apart from that everything was beyond what he could have anticipated. The clan elder wasn’t even interested in his so-called cooperation, and he had noticed the scary guy called Wei-ah sometimes covertly watching him. That had made him afraid to make any moves, since Wei-ah’s power was unfathomable, and he didn’t want to put himself in jeopardy by coming into conflict with him.
    

Judging from what was in front of him, it would be a long time before he could leave the village.
    

The thing which annoyed him the most was that Chen Mu was enjoying a lot better treatment there than he was. The hatred between the “night of the cross” and the Ning family was only finished in one sense, and it would be natural for him to be out of sorts after having been steeped in that enmity.
    

If there really were no way to leave that jungle, he would certainly kill Chen Mu first!
    

It was just that by then he still couldn’t move, since he glimpsed Wei-ah out of the corner of his eye in a nook not far away, calmly standing there, giving him the chills. He didn’t understand why Wei-ah was so interested in him, since reasonably, starting from when he’d entered the village, he hadn’t done anything to attract anyone’s attention.
    

But very soon, his face darkened again. He’d discovered that the students coming to him that day had dropped below half. He looked up to see all the people in front of Chen Mu’s house. Quite a few of his own students had been taken there by their parents, desperately trying to squeeze inside.
    

Dammit! Bo Wen was noisily gritting his teeth. He’d been asked by his own students the day before what kind of score he could get in close-range dodging and evading training which had a difficulty level of 80. He was a remote card artisan, so why would he do any kind of close-range dodging training? That was something he couldn’t explain to these children who didn’t know anything.
    

Bo Wen’s face had turned grey. Ever since running into that guy, he had been at all kinds of disadvantage. What was happening just then on the street infuriated him to no end. His entire body was trembling invisibly, as a manifestation of his utter rage. He didn’t know if he could restrain himself if Chen Mu were in front of him.
    

Looking at the scene in front of him, Chen Mu also found it a thorny problem, and he simply roused Alfonso another time, just leaving it to him. Alfonso was skilled at handling things, and an instant later there were dozens of ten-year-olds left, all of whom looked very clever. Chen Mu hadn’t realized that Li Duhong was among them.
    

Chen Mu didn’t have such good feelings toward that bratty kid. They hadn’t felt any malice toward Li Duhong at first, and Cheng Ying was the best toward him. She hadn’t realized that the little guy was quietly doing mischief, with utter disregard for their lives. What he disliked the most was his innocent face, underneath which was hidden such deep scheming.
    

He had felt more than once that the little guy would be quite something after he grew up!
    

But the relations between Li Duhong and the clan elder weren’t shallow, and even Alfonso had no way to handle him, so Chen Mu certainly wasn’t going to manage it. He neither targeted him nor valued him but could only treat him as an ordinary youth. Chen Mu had discovered that all the other children were rather afraid of Li Duhong.
    

The preparation of the gold-mottled grass and constellation leaves wasn’t actually complicated, although it was extremely meticulous work. Every time he saw the earnest children preparing them, he couldn’t help feeling that those children were a lot luckier than he’d been, being able to handle such high grade material at the outset of their training.
    

During that interval when the children were preparing the materials, Chen Mu and Alfonso set up the lab. Chen Mu was amazed at Alfonso’s skill with metallurgy, being able to generally make whatever it was that Chen Mu described. After a few adjustments, Chen Mu really believed that the things which Alfonso was making could certainly be sold in the Heavenly Federation. All of the equipment in the lab had come from that famously stingy middle-aged man.
    

After the two of them went through that continuous effort, Chen Mu’s lab was finally taking shape, to be called “The House of Chen Lab.”