Three people had caused the current situation——Tang Muzhou's Shifu had established the foundation of plant cards with the Wood attribute; Nie Yuandao had perfected the design of land animals with the Fire attribute and flying animals; Su Yang had extended the card pool of all the marine creatures with the Water attribute. As early as the first season, the Arena had been awash with plant cards and animal cards, which gave players an illusion that plant cards and animal cards were the strongest cards in the Star Card World. And the idea was still hard to change these days. After all, the plant card group and the animal card group had a history of a whole nine years. Other card categories couldn't compete with them in reference to their card groups' variety.
During the second season, the appearance of weapon cards and stone spirit cards were credited to the two legends, Zheng Feng and Ling Jingtang. Ling Jingtang had personified all his weapon cards, for example, his [Peerless Sword] was a teenage girl holding swords. While every stone spirit and golem that Zheng Feng made also belonged to the personification of objects. Hence, the authorities directly added the cla.s.sification “Spirit of Non-Creatures” that included all the object cards.
The Spirit of Creatures card group was closely related to Gui Sirui. His ghost cards had brought a bunch of players and original card designers who were obsessed with horrifying and supernatural things. After the appearance of ghost cards, all kinds of cards such as zombies,witches and vampires had sprung up. And all these dark cards had been cla.s.sified as “Spirit of Creature” by the authorities.
There had been so many human cards since the first season. However, a complete human card system hadn't been formed yet and so far no one had won first prize by using human cards. The reason was that there was another card group that was much stronger than human cards and both of them were in human shape——G.o.d card group!
Tang Muzhou briefly introduced the card cla.s.sifications to Xie Mingzhe and then he listed several G.o.d cards, “In the G.o.d card group, the most famous one is Odin, the king of all G.o.ds. Other G.o.d cards, such as Loki (G.o.d of Evil), Poseidon (G.o.d of the Sea), Archangel Michael, Fallen Angel Lucifer and so forth, are very strong. G.o.d cards are immune to the instant death effect, so it is hard to target them with IDE cards. The way to deal with G.o.d cards is to break the phantasm or to directly seal the real body.”
Xie Mingzhe, “………”
Weren't these characters G.o.ds in Norse and Greek mythology? Didn't these western myths disappear as the Earth was destroyed? In order to confirm for himself, Xie Mingzhe asked, “Legend Tang, have you heard about the myths about Lucifer and Michael?”
“Yes, but I'm not so familiar with them.” Tang Muzhou answered, “A player in Pantheon is named Xu Xingtu who enjoys myths very much. He expressly carried out research into the mythology and has allegedly published many academic papers about myths and legends. However, he only knows these stories. He doesn't make cards himself. The detailed design of the card skills is the duty of the designer in his club.”
Xie Mingzhe was surprised——since Tang Muzhou had heard about characters like Lucifer and Michael, this meant that western mythology stories didn't completely disappear in the world. On the other hand, it was oriental culture that had a gap.
Xie Mingzhe was very anxious to write novels according to the stories in his mind so that other people would know about the ancient oriental culture. Unfortunately, he was a really bad writer and he couldn't make those stories shine like they did in his mind.
Since there were occidental G.o.ds in the game, the existence of oriental G.o.ds would be reasonable in principle.
Such as Jade Emperor, Queen Mother of the West, Guanyin and Buddha in Journey to the West, as well as Nüwa, f.u.xi and Shennong from mythological stories……If these characters were really made into cards, it would be hard to tell who would win since this would be a compet.i.tion between G.o.ds.
[Taishang Laojun] that was made just now was supposed to be divided into the G.o.d card group. However, after checking the category of the card, Xie Mingzhe noticed that it was automatically divided into “Human” by the system. After all, the system didn't have information about these oriental G.o.ds. As for how to deal with the cla.s.sification stuff, Xie Mingzhe hadn't had any clues so far.
He was just a n.o.body. Even if he went to the headquarters of the authorities, he would definitely be ignored when he told them, “The cards that I designed are G.o.ds cards. These are G.o.ds in oriental myths and legends.” Maybe he would be treated as a psycho and be driven out.
Maybe when he became famous enough and was a dominant figure in the Star Card World after a long time, he could ask the authorities to add the category of oriental G.o.d cards and put these characters into the G.o.d card group. However, currently he could do nothing but let [Taishang Laojun] be divided into the human card group.
Seeing Uncle Chubby lowering his head in meditation, Tang Muzhou thought he was thinking about how to target G.o.d cards. So he couldn't resist pointing out, “You can refer to [Cao Chong]'s skill design by trying to use the magic seal effect, which is “Exile”. You can exile a particular card from the Arena.”
Xie Mingzhe regained his consciousness, “Okay, let me think about it.”
To seal a G.o.d card?
Right, Invest.i.ture of the G.o.ds!
He had watched the cartoon, Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, when he was a kid. And he had read the whole original book, Invest.i.ture of the G.o.ds, in middle school. He had read the book so many times that he could clearly remember the main characters such as Daji, Jiang Ziya, Nezha as well as Yang Jian.
Xie Mingzhe carefully searched his memory.
His favourite character in Invest.i.ture of the G.o.ds was Nezha the “Third Lotus Prince”※. He remembered that Nezha's Shifu was Taiyi Zhenren who used a lotus flower to rebuild Nezha's body and taught him the magic art “Three Heads and Six Arms”. He also gave Nezha many powerful magic weapons such as the Universe Ring, the Red Armillary Sash, the Wind Fire Wheels and the Nine-Dragon-Fire-Net……
“Nine-Dragon-Fire-Net” was undoubtedly an appropriate magic weapon when it came to the design of the skill effect “sealing G.o.d cards”!
According to the original novel, the Nine-Dragon-Fire-Net was extremely powerful. The enemy would be covered from top to toe when the magic weapon was used. And the flames would grow higher and higher in the net where nine fire dragons circled around with the True Samādhi Fire coming out of their mouths. The True Samādhi Fire could burn people in the net to ashes.
On the basis of the principle of “inter-inhibition of five elements”※, Fire counters Metal, and fire could melt metal.
Most of Pantheon's cards were Metal cards. In principle, it would be viable to seal G.o.d cards with the Metal attribute with magic weapons with the Fire attribute. G.o.ds, of course, wouldn't easily be burned to ashes. But maybe it's possible to seal them with the Nine-Dragon-Fire-Net and deprive their of operational ability.
Thinking of this, Xie Mingzhe immediately decided the next card's character, Taiyi Zhenren.
He didn't want to waste Nezha on the IDE card. So he chose his Shifu as the magic weapon used to seal G.o.ds——Taiyi Zhenren.
Translator's Note:
1. The still from NezhaAnimated Chinese Movie Ne Zha
2. The relationship between the five elements (Wuxing)