Fang Xiang

This is both a work of science fiction and an exploration of the meaning of life, love, literature and art. Brainpower is no longer the main ingredient for being human in this far distant future world.  Spirituality, physical balance, and diligence all come together as integrity for Chen Mu, the Card Apprentice.  The cards which Chen Mu masters in his own scrappy way, distill all the powers of the cosmos –  human and nonhuman –  into something that is not a book, not technology, and neither art nor magic, but is these and more.  Learn about these strange cards, which can embody everything you might imagine for the future of technology, but also a future beyond technology which promotes the best, and sometimes the worst, from mankind’s past.

The Card Apprentice

The news of Chen Mu being cured of his "disease" quickly spread throughout the base. Even Jiao Si found out about it from start to finish. After the deliberate embellishments of Xi Ping and the others, his close relations with Sue Lochiro were vividly spread.

Jiao Si, who hadn't been very clear about it all, was stunned scared. He rushed to constrain the card artisans under him. To steal the woman of the boss on someone else's site wouldn't be tolerated, no matter who did it.

Maybe the base didn't amount to much in Jiao Si's eyes, but the demonstrated potential of that bunch, and especially its number-one, Chen Mu, was unfathomable in his eyes. The potential represented by someone who could break through the Van Sant System was something no one could doubt. Jiao Si had already warned the scholars under him with any information that they absolutely couldn't let the news out.

An Unexpected Visitor