Master of Trading Star Card Game - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Reincarnated into Another World

Xie Mingzhe had a nightmare, in which a huge beast was chasing him. He ran away wildly. As the beast opened its mouth and was about to swallow him into its belly, Xie Mingzhe opened his eyes in horror and looked around – above his head was not the ceiling of his university dormitory, and his roomate was not here. He slept alone in a strange room.

He remembered that last night he and his roommate ate out to celebrate the latter’s birthday. At last, his roommate got plastered, so Xie Mingzhe carried his roommate on his back and returned to the dormitory at 3 a.m.

“Why do I wake up in a strange room?” Xie Mingzhe stiffened and looked around carefully.

It seemed he was in a hospital ward with white wall around. He was lying on a bed, beside which was a machine like a monitor apparatus. Some electrodes were placed on his skin, and the corresponding electrodes were attached to the apparatus, which was showing some numerical values ​​he couldn’t understand on its LCD panel.

—— “Is it because I got an acute illness in the middle of the night that my roommate took me to the hospital’s emergency room?”

When he was pondering, suddenly a nurse in a white coat pushed the door in. After seeing him, the nurse instantly widened her eyes as if she saw a ghost.

Xie Mingzhe said on his own initiative: “Hello, did I…”

Before the words were finished, the nurse ran out in panic and shouted: “Doctor Qin, the patient in a vegetative state in the ward 7 woke up!”

Xie Mingzhe：”????”

Vegetable? He just drank with his roommate last night. How could he be a vegetable? Did the nurse confuse him with other patients?

When he was thinking about what’s going on, a middle-aged doctor in his forties, carrying a machine like an ECG monitor, hurriedly came in.

Xie Mingzhe smiled and asked in politeness: “Excuse me, what acute illness I get?”

The doctor activated the monitor and looked up at Xie Mingzhe. He said, “You have been in a coma for a month. Lie down, please. I’m going to check your physical condition.”

A month?

The nightmare, coupled with the unfamiliar surroundings, got Xie Mingzhe at a loss. So he obediently lied flat and the doctor gave him a physical exam.

The doctor quickly got a result, sighing with emotion: “You woke up after getting severe brain damage. This is a medical miracle!”

Xie Mingzhe was totally confused: “Severe brain damage?”

He had never heard that someone got in vegetative status because of drinking. Did he drink fake beer? !

The doctor looked at him in amazement: “Don’t you remember? A month ago, you accidentally fell from the third floor, and your brain was seriously hurt. When you were taken to the hospital, you had been in deep coma. You received a surgery and survived, but you had been in vegetative state since then, until you woke up today.”

Xie Mingzhe：”………………”

Falling down from the third floor? His dormitory was on the seventh floor.

Xie Mingzhe forced a laugh and rub his nose: “Are you kidding? Is it because of alcoholism that I was taken to the hospital? I didn’t drink too much, I think… Wait, where is my roommate?” Xie Mingzhe looked around after finishing his words.

Hearing such nonsense, the doctor looked at Xie Mingzhe in worries. The doctor said to the monitor beside him: “No.777, check his Inner Spirit. Has his Spirit Threshold recovered?”

The square therapeutic apparatus activitaed immediately and quickly turned into a robot. It stretched out his metal arms to place two electrodes on the boy’s temples.

Xie Mingzhe stared at it with his eyes widened, only to see its face, a LCD panel about 20 cm wide, constantly showed strangely bouncing values. After a while, it reported the result with a mechanized sound: “Inner Spirit peak 300, EEG curve is normal.”

Doctor Qin looked back at Xie Mingzhe and said with a complicated expression: “How could it be?”

Xie Mingzhe, with his head held by the robot, was also stunned – how could it be? I also wanted to know!

Then, Dr. Qin seemed to think of something and said excitedly: “This case is really rare. I will immediately arrange you a thorough examination!”

The doctor left in a hurry and took that therapeutic apparatus away in his hands.

Left alone in the hospital bed, Xie Mingzhe was messy in the wind.

At that moment, he wanted to burst out three classic questions – Who am I? Where I am? What should I do!!

But before he spoke, the doctor pushed the door in again. This time he took some instruments shaped like robots. After the doctor pressed their buttons, these ‘robots’ began to work and then Xie Mingzhe was surrounded, just like a Guinea pig. With no force to oppose them, Xie Mingzhe could only lay flat on the bed, regardless of whatever these ‘robots’ did.

Xie Mingzhe suddenly noticed something different.

First, he was healthy and could drink a lot. He was sober when he returned to the dormitory. It was impossible that his roommate sent him to the hospital in the middle of the night, but didn’t wake him; Secondly, the environment of this hospital was not quite the same as the hospital in his memory. The monitor beside him and the robots brought by the doctor all were very advanced, which seemed not to be the products of his time…

Xie Mingzhe’s back suddenly trembled – he had watched a lot of time-travel novels, wouldn’t he also travel through time?

The doctor soon finished his examination and looked at him with a smile. “You are really lucky,” he said, “there is less than 1% chance that a vegetable like you can wake up.”

Xie Mingzhe took a few deep breaths to stabilize the intense heartbeat and asked with courage: “Doctor, when is it today? What is my name? I’m in a mess and can’t remember anything.”

The doctor answered with a good temper: “Your name is Xie Mingzhe. Today is August 1st, 3001. It is just your 18th birthday. It is written on the data card.” He opened the LCD card at the bed, seeming to prove that he was not deceiving.

Xie Mingzhe: “………….”

It was obviously 2018 AD, but what was the strange time, Ephemeris 3001?

Xie Mingzhe’s corner of mouth twitched violently. Thinking of the possibility of time traveling, his brain was almost bursting. He could not help but slam his head with hands. The doctor saw his action and immediately grabbed his hands: “Don’t worry. You were in a coma for a month. Now when you wake up, it is normal that your memory is partially lost, but it will slowly recover.”

Stunned, Xie Mingzhe stared at his pale fingertips and then asked: “Do I have anyone relative?”

The doctor looked at him with sympathy: “The information shows that you are an orphan.”

Xie Mingzhe: “………..”

Why was I still an orphan after a time traveling?

Seeing Xie Mingzhe’s pale face, the doctor reached out his hands and patted his shoulder. He comforted: “Be courageous, it is not easy for you to wake up. You need to recover physical health first. There is always a way through in the future.”

Xie Mingzhe smiled  reluctantly and said to the kind doctor: “Thank you, Doctor.”

After Dr. Qin left, Xie Mingzhe struggled to get up from the bed and washed his face in the washing room to calm himself.

His face was clearly reflected in the mirror.

Because of lying in the hospital bed for a long time, his young face was a little sickly pale. Though the facial features were the same as his before, his present face looked younger, just like his face at eighteen years old when he just graduated from high school.

Feeling headache, Xie Mingzhe buried his face in cold water. He wished it was a dream within another dream and he could wake up soon from the nightmare.

After a long time, he raised his head…

He was still in the washing room and the young man reflected in the mirror was his eighteen-year-old face.

Was this Xie Mingzhe himself in another space time?

They had the same name and appearance, and Xie Mingzhe gradually refreshed some memory of the owner of the body.

The owner of the body became an orphan when he was a kid. He led a frugal life with the government’s relief fund. However, the government only supported orphans who were under eighteen years old, and Xie Mingzhe was seventeen and a half years old. He was admitted to the Art Department of Capital University by his own efforts this summer. Before the new term begins, he left his hometown and came to the capital city to work for his tuition fee.

Nowadays, however, people who did manual work, such as washing dishes, sweeping the floor and moving bricks were replaced by robots. High school graduates would find it hard to get a job. Living in the slum with the poorest condition for a week, he struggled for a job and was disdained by many people.

He once fell off the building when he took part in an interview on a relatively low floor, which seriously damaged his brain. He was sent to the hospital by an ambulance and had been in vegetative state for a month.

Xie Mingzhe in this world was a diligent and hardworking teenager. However, he was not as lucky as that Xie Mingzhe who lived in the 21st century.

Xie Mingzhe in the 21st century was an orphan too, but he was the top student in science in the county in the College Entrance Examination. The scholarship he won that year could afford his entire expenditure in college. But he also led a frugal life in college. He didn’t spend all his scholarship, instead, he saved some money by tutoring and taking part-time jobs.

He planned to find a job and buy a small house in a second-tier city with low consumption level, which could help him live a stable and peaceful life. However, after drinking with his roommates, his was transported to another world, only to see a miserable Xie Mingzhe inexplicably.

He was extremely unfortunate.

Xie Mingzhe rubbed his white face hard.

The distinct touch of fingertips and skin seemed to tell him: give up struggling, you have started your life anew.

God chose him to be this poor boy after his previous period of life had turned for the better. Was that reasonable?

If he committed suicide now, would he be able to return to the earth in 2018 A.D.?

Pinching his thigh hard and feeling the sharp pain, Xie Mingzhe was clearly aware that the body was real. He dared not to commit suicide for fear that he might travel to some other odd space times or just die after suicide. At least, this world boasted advanced science and technology. It was better than travelling to ancient times where you ate weeds and wore leaf-made clothes.

Comforting himself this way, Xie Mingzhe felt better.

Since he was alive, he should try to survive first. Instead of pursuing a high quality life, he preferred a simple life, peaceful and stable.

Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath and reluctantly accepted that he had started his life anew in another world.

Xie Mingzhe in this world didn’t go as smooth as that Xie Mingzhe on earth.

Today was Xie Mingzhe’s eighteenth birthday. The eighteen-year-old boy was so poor that nobody but doctors cared about him even when he was in a vegetative state in hospital.

He had no relatives or friends. Not a single person would burst into tears for his death.

He was a loser in life.

But that didn’t matter, from now on, everything would change.

Xie Mingzhe looked at the boy in the mirror and clenched his fists.

“My history couldn’t be changed. But I would fight for my new future!”