Who told him to make the cards!

Old Zhou laughed freely, but the corners of his eyes were moist, hiding a longing that was about to overflow.

Chen Zhi saw through it but didn't say anything, and continued to clink glasses with Lao Zhou.

It was 2 PM.

Old Zhou collapsed.

There was only a finger's width of wine left in the bottle.

Chen Zhi simply poured it out and drank it all.

I thought to myself, "Old Zhou isn't doing well either. He didn't even drink half a jin (250ml) of liquor, yet he kept shouting 'Cheers!'"

The worse you are at the game, the more you love to play, that's what they say.

After carrying Lao Zhou to the bed, Chen Zhi sat down in a chair and dozed off for a while.

Take a light nap to catch up on last night's sleep.

Old Zhou was still asleep when night fell.

The snoring was deafening.

Chen Zhi's head ached from listening to this, so he simply went to the small hill outside the mining village.

This is the place where he used to watch the moon.

Since the shed with the light leaked out, he has rarely come over anymore.

There was a protruding rock on the hillside, which had been worn smooth by being rubbed.

Chen Zhi lay down with practiced ease, using the stone as a pillow, not caring whether the ground was dirty or not.

……

The night is getting darker.

The moon climbed into the night sky as scheduled.

Chen Zhi thought of a pattern in his mind, slowly closed his eyes, and entered the Crown Domain.

Miss Shen gave him three white cards, and Chen Zhi didn't want to waste a single one.

It would be best to succeed on the first try.

You can use the two extra sheets yourself.

Anyway, he has the celestial crown domain, which allows him to try and practice indefinitely.

You can wait until you are 200% sure before actually starting to practice.

To Chen Zhi's surprise, he saw someone as soon as he entered the Crown Domain.

The other person was sitting on his usual stool, holding a card-making pen, and seriously drawing something.

He frowned from time to time.

Chen Zhi also frowned.

It's that old man again.

They arrived before him tonight, trying to steal his territory, huh?

Chen Zhi walked over, but the old man didn't notice him.

He was too focused.

When Chen Zhi saw the mountain of discarded cards on the table, he realized that the old man hadn't arrived before him, but hadn't left at all.

The old man stayed here for a day and a night.

"What are they researching?"

From the fact that the old man could spot the problem with his card assembly at a glance, Chen Zhi was certain that the other party was a card-making expert.

If he's a master, what card could have stumped him for so long?

Chen Zhi walked around to the old man's side, bent down and peeked over.

He noticed that the old man's hands were very well-maintained.

The skin was smooth, like milk, without a trace of brown spots or wrinkles, and didn't look like an old person's hands at all.

The lines are drawn steadily and powerfully, each stroke precise and accurate.

His movements were just a little slow, as if he was thinking?

Chen Zhi shifted his gaze to the side.

There was a piece of draft paper covered with drawings, and at the top were two words:

tidal.

Chen Zhi felt that the pattern on the paper looked somewhat familiar.

"Isn't this part of the Moon Crown spread?"

He looked up at the wall, searched his memory for a moment, and quickly found the complete pattern in the upper right corner.

"So this part of the pattern represents 'tides'?"

In other words, the old man is researching how to incorporate tidal structures into cards?

No wonder it took a whole day and night to get it done.

Chen Zhi compared the draft and found that the final pattern diagram marked with a "√" by the old man was completely wrong.

The old man probably only saw part of the structure clearly, and relied on his own deductions for the rest. It would be a miracle if he got it right.

So Chen Zhi tapped on the table.

The old man instantly bristled, nearly dropping his pen in fright.

"It's you again, you brat!"

He said angrily, "Don't you know that card makers shouldn't be disturbed while making cards?"

Chen Zhi was too lazy to argue with him, and simply said, "Change the card, and start learning from me now."

"You draw exactly as I draw, understand?"

Old man: "?"

What do you mean?

Are you going to teach me how to make cards?

With your skill level that you can't even figure out how to spell cards?

Before he could speak, Chen Zhi had already taken out a new sheet of draft paper and was drawing and explaining at the same time:

"Start writing at the top left edge."

"Five horizontal strokes and two vertical strokes, hook the left side upwards at 13.5°, a semi-circle to the left, extending forward, aligning with the starting point of the stroke."

"Then diagonally downwards at a 30° angle to the right, draw three vertical lines and one horizontal line, then draw a semi-circle clockwise, connect with ⊙¤⊙, one horizontal line, then connect with △～△..."

Old man: "?"

What a load of nonsense.

This is Chen Zhi's self-created method of verbal description of patterns, which integrates his life's learning and has nothing to do with orthodox professional terminology. The old man didn't understand a single word.

But he understood it.

As Chen Shiyun's brushstrokes flowed across the draft paper, an extremely complex structure gradually took shape.

Because it was a copying process, and paper was used, the entire transcription process was a piece of cake for Chen Zhi, who spent almost every night in the Crown Domain and had seen the tidal structure countless times. He could even draw some of the patterns with his eyes closed.

Chen Zhi didn't know what each pattern represented, but he could draw it accurately enough.

The more the old man looked, the more something seemed off.

He looked down to find his own draft and compared it repeatedly with Chen Zhi's drawing.

As he stared at it, his old eyes gradually widened.

No way, this kid really knows how??

……

Chapter 19 Imperial Preceptor

Chen Zhi drew faster and faster.

A tremendous storm raged in the old man's heart.

The purpose of the pattern is to guide the principles sealed in the white card. A piece of draft paper is obviously not enough to be the object of guidance, so the pattern drawn on the paper will not have any effect, and naturally cannot prove that it is a real tidal structure.

But in the old man's eyes, it was right.

Because every line drawn by Chen Zhi is closely related to the lines above and below.

The arrangement of elements, the extension of the illusory patterns, the integration of the law of effect... no matter which angle you look at it from, this structure perfectly conforms to the existing card theory.

Perhaps it doesn't represent "tides".