79: Chapter 79 The Birth of the Burst Deck

"Strong kick?"

"What the hell is a 'strong kick'!"

Li Qingyue was truly exasperated, but after thinking it over carefully, it seemed Su Bai didn't have any particular way to actually get Chu Yin a Tier 7 card, so she couldn't help but fall silent.

However, looking at it from the perspective of etiquette, this doesn't seem very good for Chu Yin's image, right?

Chu Yin herself is the direct disciple of the Sword Saint of Breaking Seas, Sword Saint Lu Changsheng, and the number one person in the youth division of the Jinghai Kendo Association, at Tier 7. Her personality is serious, earnest, and stern—that is the evaluation in the Sanctuary archives.

Now, these few cards are going to turn her into:

A turret that can only cast Explosion Magic. A cringe machine that shouts chuunibyou lines loudly on the battlefield. A useless person who collapses face-down on the ground after firing a single shot.

And she has no other skills.

[The mage who only knows how to fire cannons].

Li Qingyue placed the communicator on the card creation table, folded her hands on her knees, and watched the aurora slowly flowing outside the window with an extremely complicated mood. She recalled a fact—the person making this card is Su Bai.

He is the person who spent 2.05 million to make a talking ragdoll cat, the person who made a Tier 8 puppet wear a Lolita dress and split a Mustard Seed Space with a single snip. This person's brain has never been normal.

What's even more terrifying is.

The things he makes can actually be used every single time.

[Li Qingyue]: [Su Bai. I will ask one last question.]

[Su Bai]: [Please go ahead.]

[Li Qingyue]: [What is the production cost of this four-card deck?]

[Su Bai]: [As for material costs, it's quite a bit more than Kyubey was before. After all, Chu Yin provided a lot of funding, but the key is that it requires some magic-conductive materials... Well, in short, I bought some expensive demi-human parts. Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper is truly expensive. But overall, it's still very cost-effective. After all, the combat power of the four Tier 1 cards combined—]

[Li Qingyue]: [I am asking for a number.]

[Su Bai]: [Oh. I didn't calculate it carefully. It seems to be around tens of millions.]

Tens of... millions?

Four Tier 1 cards.

Li Qingyue lifted her hands from her knees and slowly pressed them against her temples. She suddenly understood why Lin Weiwei had let out that breakdown scream outside the bookstore back then. Sometimes, numbers themselves are more lethal than any adjective.

[Su Bai, your heart rate has transitioned from creative excitement to the post-purchase cooling-off period.]

"I know."

[Do you need me to help you organize the shopping list?]

"...Since when did you, this cat, learn how to make spreadsheets?"

[Last week. Your Sanctuary account transactions were too messy, so I taught myself financial software. By the way, you overspent by about twenty percent today. Mainly on the Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper. The boss of that black market shop saw you were young and raised the price by five percent.]

Su Bai looked down at Kyubey.

Kyubey looked back at him, its red glass eyes unblinking.

"...You taught yourself financial software."

[Yes. Do you need me to send the overspent portion to your master?]

"No need."

[Understood. But she has already seen it in the backend of your Sanctuary account.]

Su Bai fell silent for a beat.

Then he buried his face in his palms.

...

Su Bai locked himself in the underground card creation room for two days.

The card creation table was piled with materials swept up from the black market. Three fragments of a Tier 9 Abyss Magic Crystal Core, packed in anti-magic glass bottles, each emitting a cold silver-blue fluorescence under the dim light. Six grams of Abyss Sea Sink-Silver—six silver beads the size of rice grains, placed in a special vacuum-insulated box, with a density so great that one felt the box might fall out of their hand at any moment. Four sheets of Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper, each sealed individually in dust-proof film, with a faint layer of seven-colored halo flowing on the surface.

[Su Bai, your heart rate is rising.]

"Shut up, this time it's excitement."

[Understood.]

Kyubey crouched in the corner of the card creation table, its tail wrapped around to its front, red eyes staring unblinkingly at those materials.

Su Bai rolled up his sleeves. Two days ago, he finished drawing the sketches for the four-card deck; now, all that remained was to turn the lines on the paper into usable cards. Four components, one closed loop, logically without any loopholes. The problem is that logic is logic, and practical operation is practical operation.

Tier 1 materials carrying Tier 7 magic. In traditional card creation theory, this statement is similar to "boiling water in a paper pot," both belonging to the category that the first chapter of textbooks would explicitly tell you "absolutely do not attempt."

But Su Bai felt that traditional card creation theory had nothing to do with him.

He flipped open the first sheet of Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper and lifted his pen.

— —

Traditional Card Creators making high-tier cards have a very simple approach: piling on materials. The higher the material grade, the larger the magic pool, and the greater the output the card can carry. Tier 3 paper with Tier 3 ink, Tier 5 paper with Tier 5 ink, piling it up by the book. The problem is that the upper limit of Tier 1 materials is right there. The paper is Rainbow-grade, which is already the best Tier 1 paper available on the market, but it is still Tier 1 paper. Using traditional infusion methods, the moment Tier 7 magic enters, it would evaporate the circuits.

Su Bai doesn't pile on materials.

He changed his approach.

Since the circuits themselves cannot withstand the pressure of Tier 7 magic, then throw it out the moment the magic passes through the circuits. No storage, no buffering, no stagnation of magic in any form. The circuit is not a container; it is a funnel. Pour in from one end, spray out from the other. The contact time is as short as milliseconds; the circuit doesn't even have time to heat up before the magic is already fired out.

[One-way high-pressure channel.] Kyubey tilted its head, [You are using the circuit as a magic nozzle.]

"Otherwise what?"

[Traditional Card Creators would consider this a waste of materials.]

"Traditional Card Creators can't even make a cat."

[Reasonable.]

The first card—soul gem.

The pen tip landed on the Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper. This card is the cornerstone of the entire deck, responsible for stripping away the user's pain nerves and switching the physical body into the Magical Girl form. The circuits Su Bai carved on the paper did not seek any output capability; it only did one thing: anchor Chu Yin's soul wavelength to her Tier 7 magic pool, and then open a one-way channel from the magic pool to the soul gem.

The lines were extremely minimalist. They had at least two-thirds fewer nodes than the mass-produced versions on the market. Because the more nodes there are, the longer the magic stagnates, and the longer it stagnates, the faster the paper burns. Su Bai cut away all safety valves, buffer layers, and stability runes, leaving only a bare high-speed pathway.

The cost is that this card itself has no defense. But it doesn't need defense either. The protection of the soul gem relies on conceptual locking at the level of causality, which has nothing to do with physical circuits.

The first card is finished. Time taken: four hours.

— —

The second card—Infinite Phantom Sword.

Su Bai stared at the blank Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper for a long time.

Chu Yin is a Tier 7 sword cultivator.

What a sword cultivator lacks the least is sword qi. Her magic pool was born for swinging a sword; the quality and density of Tier 7 sword qi far exceed other professions of the same tier. But in traditional usage, this sword qi must be attached to a physical sword body to exert power. A physical sword body means weight, air resistance, and most importantly—the sword will break.

Su Bai drew a sword on the draft. Then he drew many swords. Then he erased the concept of "sword body" from the drawing.

No sword body left. Only sword intent remains.

The circuit structure is like this: a miniature Space Folding rift, with the entrance connected to Chu Yin's magic pool, and the exit floating in the space around her. Every time Chu Yin swings her sword, the rift automatically compresses and encapsulates a wisp of Tier 7 sword qi into a transparent projected sword body.

The sword body automatically explodes after hitting the target. No recycling, no looping, throw it away after firing.

"Essentially, it's just firing sword qi like bullets." Su Bai bit on his pen holder and muttered to himself, "Infinite ammo, zero recycling cost."

[This sword will feel very light. So light that it's like holding nothing at all.]

"It needs to be light. The faster she swings the sword, the more swords she projects per unit of time."

The second card is finished. Time taken: six hours.

— —