Master of Trading Star Card Game - Chapter 34-1

Xie Mingzhe rapidly thought of a way to aim at elephants.

He remembered clearly that the character related to an elephant was the child prodigy Cao Chong in the Three Kingdoms period※ of China.

It was said that the King of Wu, Sun Quan, sent an elephant as tribute to Cao Cao. Cao Cao was curious about the animal’s weight but none of his subordinates could think of a method to measure the elephant’s weight. Cao Cao’s son Cao Chong, a six-year-old prodigy, offered a brilliant idea——

Place the elephant on a boat and mark the water level.Then replace the elephant with other objects until the boat was submerged to the same level. The weight of the elephant could be found by summing up the weights of all the objects.

The story “Cao Chong Weighs an Elephant” was widely spread. The principle that he used was actually “Equivalent Replacement Method”, which was commonly applied by later scientists. Replacing a large-sized elephant with countless tiny stones amounted to decomposing the elephant into fragments, which means converting “the large” into “the small”.

The most famous elephant card that Tang Muzhou mentioned was Earth player Zheng Feng’s [White Elephant] with 200,000 HP.

Killing this huge animal was a really difficult and time-consuming process. But the process would be greatly quickened if there was an instant death skill to beat up elephant cards.

After thinking of this, Xie Mingzhe said, “I have an idea. But I’m not sure if I can make the instant death effect.”

Tang Muzhou said, “Give it a whirl.”

Xie Mingzhe connected his Inner Spirit to the card-making system and painted the cute prodigy Cao Chong on the card according to his conception. Then he painted a mini elephant and a boat to put the elephant in.

The skill was named as “Weighing an Elephant”, which triggered the instant death effect on elephant cards.

With abundant experience in making cards, Xie Mingzhe completed the card rapidly.

However, it took so long to examine it. Previously one minute was enough, but three minutes passed and nothing happened this time. Then the system prompt voice rang out, “The card cannot pass the database’s examination,  please change it.”

Cannot pass the examination?

Xie Mingzhe conjectured that the reason why Zhong Kui didn’t pass the examination was that ghost cards were divided into “ghosts”, which means that they couldn’t “instantly die” again. But elephants were creatures, and the character Cao Chong definitely wasn’t used before. Was it possible that the skill description resembled another card’s?

Being confused, Xie Mingzhe turned his head and asked Tang Muzhou, ” Legend Tang, what does this mean?”

Just now Tang Muzhou heard the system prompt voice too. He picked up the card and looked at it. After thinking for a moment, he came to the conclusion, “This instant death skill can’t pass the examination because the authorities have strict control over the data. No matter what the skill is, its single direct damage cannot exceed 150,000 HP.”

In other words, there was a limit to a card’s effect damage. Accordingly, the players could not just make a card with ease and instantly kill the opponent’s defence card with 200,000 HP.

Xie Mingzhe was only beginning to take it in, and he asked, “In this case, the IDE cards that I made before could pass the system examination just because all the previous target cards, such as flower cards, bird cards, butterfly cards as well as demon cards, had HP less than 150,000?”

Tang Muzhou nodded, “Most of them were attack cards with low Health and Defence attributes, so they could be killed instantly in principle. My [Tuberose] should be counted as the card with the highest HP of the wood card group, but it only has 100,000 HP. Elephant cards belong to the cards with Earth attribute. So far there are three kinds of elephant cards, the White Elephant card, the Black Elephant card as well as the Wild Elephant card. All of them are extremely strong defence cards with HP higher than 150,000, so the instant death skill could not be triggered, which means your card could not pass the database examination.”

Xie Mingzhe looked at the card in his hand, scratching his head, “In that case, the instant death effect cannot be applied to the elephant cards. What should I do?”

Tang Mingzhou smiled faintly and pointed to [Zhong Kui] that he had made, then he said, “The ghost IDE cards couldn’t use the instant death effect either. Didn’t you make them unable to perform actions in a subtle way by “hunting ghosts”? By the same token, you can reconsider the skill “weighing an elephant” and change it based on the same way of thinking, say, change the skill to the strong control over elephants.”

Xie Mingzhe had a flash of inspiration, then he immediately connected to the card-making system and changed the card.

Five minutes later, the new card was born——

Cao Chong (Earth)

Card Level: 1

Evolution Level: ★

Available Times of Use: 1/1

Base Attributes: Health 100, Attack 0, Defense 100, Agility 30, Critical Strike Chance 0%

Additional Skill: Weighing an Elephant (The prodigy Cao Chong weighs an elephant. Forces the elephant into getting onto a boat. The elephant can’t move or activate skills until Cao Chong finishes his work.)

Xie Mingzhe pleasantly brought the card to Tang Muzhou, “Legend Tang, is this okay?”

Tang Muzhou, “………”

Okay? It’s perfect!

The idea was beyond expectation and terrific. Can’t kill the elephant instantly, so just imprison it on the boat.

In the card, the cute prodigy held a boat model where an elephant was imprisoned. Tang Muzhou felt ambivalent. Lao Zheng would probably laugh in exasperation when this card appeared in 月半 Card Store tomorrow.

Anyway, it was none of his business. He just inspired Uncle Chubby, and the other work was completed by Uncle Chubby himself.

Besides, he should thank Legend Nie for his curses. Remember Nie Yuandao cursed the ghost cards and the elephant cards in the group chat today, and it turned out all his curses came true. The National Star Card League owed him a prize of the “best curse legend in the league”.

Xie Mingzhe gave each of his three new cards to Tang Muzhou who didn’t pretend to decline and pleasantly received those cards.

Translator’s Note:

The Three Kingdoms (Chinese: 三国时代) from 220-280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the states of Wei, Shu, and Wu. It started with the end of the Han dynasty and was followed by the Jin dynasty.