The Mysterious Card Maker: Starting with Zhang Jiao's Deification

"Whoa!" Lin Fan pulled on the reins and slowed the horse down. "This must be the place the boss was talking about. The woods, the gravel road, it all matches up."

Su Wanqing sensed that Red Hare was gradually slowing down, so she released her grip on Lin Fan, braced herself against the horse's back, and leaped off.

She shone her flashlight back and forth and found a dried bloodstain in the middle of the gravel road, which stretched into the distance.

"There's blood here. Do you think it was left by that strange creature?"

Seeing this, Lin Fan rode his horse to the place Su Wanqing had mentioned. Su Wanqing picked up a stone stained with blood and handed it to Lin Fan.

Lin Fan looked at the almost black marks on the stone, then picked it up and sniffed it. A strong smell of blood emanated from it, which did not resemble normal human blood at all.

"This blood doesn't look like human blood!" Lin Fan threw the stone on the ground and looked at the place where the blood was flowing.

"Do you think it might be a result of some strange injury?"

"Who knows? Let's chase after them and see. Shall we get on?" Lin Fan pulled Su Wanqing onto the horse again and rode after them, following the trail of blood.

"You made this horse too? You used a Purple Domain level card as a mount?" Su Wanqing's voice came from behind, somewhat muffled by the wind.

"What?" Lin Fan turned his ear toward Su Wanqing and said loudly.

"Did you make this horse?"

"No! I bought it!" Lin Fan said truthfully, after all, the Red Hare Soul was just a material card.

Normally, a one-star purple domain card produced has one characteristic and three skills, but this Red Hare Soul only has one characteristic, [Divine Speed], which doesn't seem to be of much use except for making it run faster.

"Bought it? A purple card costs at least 300,000 on the market. Weren't you an intern card maker before? Where did you get the money to buy this card!"

"This card only costs 80,000."

"What?! Eighty thousand?! A finished Purple Domain level card costs eighty thousand? Even a regular material card costs sixty or seventy thousand! This card is only eighty thousand?"

Su Wanqing shouted loudly, her words filled with disbelief.

"This isn't a finished card, it's a material card, and it only has one characteristic, so it doesn't have much combat power?" Lin Fan tugged at the reins, slowing down the speed.

Su Wanqing was silent for two seconds, seemingly processing this information. After a while, she finally spoke: "So you spent 80,000 yuan to buy a horse that can only run?"

"Isn't its speed enough? We're using it now, aren't we?"

Lin Fan chuckled, offering no further explanation. He reasoned that she wouldn't understand anyway, given that none of the cards Marco could synthesize were weak.

Su Wanqing didn't reply. Sensing the horse slowing down, she asked instead, "What's wrong?"

"Phew, fog's coming up ahead!" Lin Fan pulled on the reins, took the flashlight from Su Wanqing's hand, and shone it back and forth on the ground, afraid of missing the bloodstains.

"Hmm!" Su Wanqing also looked around warily, fumbling in her card pouch at her waist and taking out a card.

"What is this?" Lin Fan asked, looking at the card he had never seen before in Su Wanqing's hand.

"Radar card, it can detect anything moving nearby."

"There's such a thing? I've never seen it before!" Lin Fan said in shock. He had always made summoning cards before, and he had never really known about functional cards like this.

"These were specially made by our foundation's card makers and are not available on the market, so it's normal that you haven't seen them."

As she spoke, a three-dimensional image appeared in her hand, with two red dots marked in the center, which should represent the two of them.

"There's nothing around, let's keep going." Su Wanqing put one arm around Lin Fan's waist and held the 3D image in the other.

"Giddy up!" Lin Fan kicked the horse's belly, and Red Hare started moving again, but this time it didn't run as fast as before, clearly because Lin Fan had controlled its speed.

"Why don't you put that thing away? Leaving it like that will drain your mental energy." Lin Fan reminded Su Wanqing while searching for the bloodstains.

"These are all one-time use cards, so they don't consume mental energy. Plus, by leaving them here, we can detect anything that gets close in time."

And so the two of them rode their horses forward for a while longer.

"We caught up with them; they're over there."

Su Wanqing looked at the four red dots that appeared in the image, three in front and one behind. However, soon, two of the red dots in front suddenly disappeared, as if they had never existed.

Looking at the two red dots, one in front of the other, on the edge of the image, Lin Fan couldn't help but ask, "Huh~ where did they go!"

"Either they're dead, or they've moved out of the monitoring range," Su Wanqing explained.

"Giddy up!" Seeing the only remaining red dot on the map, Lin Fan urged Red Hare to quicken his pace.

Su Wanqing kept a close eye on the 3D image in her hand. The red dots in front seemed to be waiting for the ones behind, and soon they gathered together.

"They bumped into each other, and it seems like they're not moving anymore!" Su Wanqing's voice rang in Lin Fan's ears.

"Yes, I see it!" Lin Fan pulled on the reins and slowed down.

In the mist, a blurry black shadow carrying a square object slowly moved toward a slender black figure.

Immediately afterwards, a white light shone through the fog, and the fog around the light source thinned considerably.

"They've disappeared!"

"The red dot has disappeared!"

They both said it at the same time.

"Where are they?" Su Wanqing asked.

Lin Fan did not answer. He stared at the direction where the white light dissipated, his pupils slightly contracting.

The fog had risen again, but the fog in that area was noticeably thinner than the surrounding area, as if it had been partially swallowed up by something.

"Let's go take a look." Lin Fan lightly kicked the horse's flank and slowly walked over.

The two arrived at the location where the white light exploded, where the bloodstains on the ground stopped.

Su Wanqing took out a dagger, dismounted, and looked around warily.

The two slowly approached, but saw no one. Instead, they saw a crack hanging vertically in mid-air, its edges gleaming with an unstable grayish-white light.

"The entrance to the secret realm!" Su Wanqing's voice carried a hint of surprise. "How did this secret realm end up here?"

"A secret realm? How come it's different from the ones I've seen before?" Lin Fan asked.

She began, "This is what a newly formed secret realm looks like, and there's a natural barrier around it that ordinary people can't enter."

Lin Fan also reached out and approached the crack, but he only felt an invisible force bounce him back.

He paused, shaking his hands, which were still numb from the shock. "It really is! Well, they're card masters too, so they must have come here specifically for this secret realm?"

"Hmm," Su Wanqing paused, then continued.

"Most card masters have some means of self-preservation, so those strange creatures probably won't succeed so easily."

"Hmm!" Knowing those people were card masters, Lin Fan wasn't in a hurry and asked, "When will your team members arrive?"

Su Wanqing picked up the locator and sent the location to the team members behind her. She glanced at the guesthouse they had come from and said, "At their speed, it should take them another half hour."