Ke Jin hesitated in the card making room for a while, but finally gave up trying to make the card himself and went to the card renewal room.
The layout of the "card renewal room" is similar to that of the card making room, with a desk and a shelf. However, on the wall facing the desk, there are quicksand bottles of the same shape hanging all over, a bit like the display screens that fill the wall of the monitoring room.
During the extraction process, various cards in the card pool will lose energy, which will be reflected in the "Card Quicksand Bottle" in the card refill room. Each Quicksand Bottle represents a card. Once the quicksand in the Quicksand Bottle disappears, when others draw this card, they will see a blank card. Only when the quicksand is replenished can the card content be displayed.
There are only three snack cards in Ke Jin's current card pool, so only three of the quicksand bottles on the wall are lit up, and most of the quicksand inside has been consumed, especially in the bottle of "Animal Cookies". Because an SSR card was drawn out, the quicksand consumption is obviously much greater than the other two.
Compared to the card making room, Ke Jin was more familiar with the card renewal room, because before the opening, Ounuo had drawn several SSR cards, and some of the energy in the card quicksand bottle had been consumed. Ke Jin had tried to renew the card here at that time.
He sat down at the desk with familiarity, and immediately three cards appeared in front of him. Ke Jin chose "Animal Cookies", and the shadow disappeared, and several blank cards and a colored pen appeared on the desk.
Ke Jin picked up a blank card and turned it over. Unlike the blank front, the back of the card was printed with dense lines, which looked like an integrated circuit board at first glance. All Ke Jin had to do was to use the pen connected to the crystal sand pool to draw along these lines.
It sounds simple, but if you make a mistake in drawing a stroke, the entire card will be invalidated immediately, and the consumed crystal sand energy will not be returned. Before, Ke Jin was renewing a card, and because he was a novice with no experience, he wasted more than half of the energy in the crystal sand pool to barely finish drawing a card. Fortunately, he had not used the several "free crystal sand pool recharge" opportunities given by the system, otherwise he would have been heartbroken.
This time the card quicksand bottles needed to be replenished with much more energy than before. Ke Jin rolled up his sleeves, ready to endure an afternoon and a night to fill up all the quicksand bottles in one go!
***
Bai Fan returned to Rainbow City with his father that afternoon. When he got home, it was already dinner time.
The mother had prepared a delicious meal at home early in the morning. The father and son sat down at the dining table. Bai Fan instinctively glanced at the empty seat opposite him.
"Youyou has already eaten." The considerate mother saw what her son was thinking and explained with a smile, "She seems to be in a good mood today and is playing in her room. You can go see her after dinner."
Bai Fan nodded.
During the meal, the father gently told his wife about his visit to Qixing City. The woman listened with a smile and picked up some food for her husband and son from time to time. Even though Bai Fan didn't say a word during this period, the atmosphere at the table was still warm and harmonious. Anyone who saw it could see that it was a family filled with warm affection.
if……
Bai Fan's gaze shifted from his loving parents to the empty seat opposite, and a sigh flashed in his cold eyes.
How great it would be if... that incident hadn't happened back then.
***
After dinner, Bai Fan helped his mother clean up the kitchen and went upstairs.
He walked along the corridor to the end and stopped at the door of the room decorated with flower stickers. The door was ajar, and he knocked on it out of habit, but naturally received no response. After waiting for a moment, the young man gently opened the door and walked in.
There was no light in the room, the curtains were tightly drawn, and only a table lamp on the floor emitted a soft glow. A cute girl sat barefoot on the soft carpet, with a pile of children's building blocks that did not match her age spread out in front of her. The girl was concentrating on building blocks and did not even glance at the young man who sat down next to her.
Suddenly, a small building block fell from the building block castle and rolled right next to Bai Fan. The girl turned her head a little slowly, but couldn't find the missing building block for a while. Her originally calm expression suddenly became a little anxious.
"Don't worry, it's here." Bai Fan picked up the small green building block, opened his palm and handed it to his sister.
The girl calmed down immediately, her expression returning to numbness. She took back the building blocks without saying a word, without even looking at the young man, and continued to immerse herself in her toy world.
"Youyou, is today's dinner delicious?" Bai Fan reached out and touched the girl's head. "Mom said you ate a lot because of your favorite green peppers."
The girl turned a deaf ear to him and just moved her body slightly, as if she didn't like the feeling of others touching her.
Bai Fan sighed softly.
——This situation has been going on for six or seven years.
In fact, they didn't know what had happened. Bai Fan had just entered high school at that time, and Youyou was less than ten years old. One time, she went out to play with her friends and did not return home until very late. Later, her parents went out to look for her anxiously and called the police. Finally, they found Bai Youyou unconscious in an abandoned park in the suburbs.
No one knew how a nine-year-old girl suddenly ran across the entire city and to the suburbs. No clues were found in the road surveillance. Although the girl had no external injuries, she fell into an autistic state after waking up. She did not communicate with anyone and was immersed in her own world. Her expression was numb, completely different from her lively and cheerful appearance in the past.
The family tried many methods and saw all the doctors they could, even going to other planets, but no one could diagnose why the girl became like this, let alone cure her.
Later, a relative who worked at the Kachi Bureau in the neighboring city heard about this and whispered to Bai Fan and his family: Could Youyou's situation have been affected by the "Devil King" incident that year?
During the time when Bai Youyou got into trouble, the Blue Star was actually not peaceful, but ordinary people were not aware of it - at that time they only knew that the Federation Galaxy suddenly discovered the "Thirteenth Galaxy", a new galaxy with extremely rich card pool resources. As long as it was developed reasonably, it would be a good thing for both the government and the people.
However, what happened next was something that many people had never expected. In the fourth year after the discovery of the "Thirteenth Galaxy", a war suddenly broke out between the twelve galaxies of the Federation. At first it was just a small-scale conflict, but later it became a large-scale war. This war lasted for ten years, and six of the leaders of the original twelve galaxies were killed, a loss rate of half, which was a heavy loss.
The official of each star system has never given a clear explanation as to why this interstellar war broke out and why it suddenly stopped. Azure Star belongs to the Aquarius Star System, one of the twelve star systems. Because the planet is located in a remote area, the war did not affect it at that time, but... this is just an appearance.
In the eighth year of the ten-year war, the year when Youyou got into trouble, a group of uninvited guests suddenly came to the Kachi Bureau of Qixing City. Their identities surprised everyone - they were military personnel from the top three galaxies among the twelve galaxies in the Federation.
Moreover, they were not like the reports from the frontline war, where they were incompatible with each other. Although it was clear that there was a rift between them, they were generally in a cooperative state. According to these soldiers, they were hunting down a person whom they called the "Demon King". The other party was a card user and needed the assistance of the local card pool bureau.
Naturally, no one dared to interfere with the military's actions. This group of people stayed here for about a month. During this period, some accidents frequently occurred in Qixing City. The most serious one was that a building with more than 40 floors suddenly collapsed at night, causing many casualties. Afterwards, the official announced that the cause of the accident was a large-scale rupture of underground pipes, which made the foundation of the building unstable, so the collapse occurred.
Ordinary people had no doubts about this, but the people in the Kachi Bureau were not stupid. They could easily figure out that these accidents were definitely related to the "Hunting the Devil" operation. This period of frequent accidents and disasters was privately called the "Devil Period" by people in the know in Qixing City.
A month later, the military personnel left quietly. No one knew whether they had caught the "devil" or not. But after that, the card pool resources in Qixing City obviously declined, as if its vitality was seriously damaged. In just six or seven years, it went from being famous to being unknown.
This incident seemed to have nothing to do with Bai Youyou's illness, but the Bai family took it to heart because when they took Youyou to see a doctor on an alien planet, a doctor had said...
——It’s possible that your child... was hurt by the supernatural card.
There is almost no supernatural card pool on the Blue Star, and the few that exist are firmly controlled by the government. It is impossible for supernatural cards to appear among the people easily, so Bai Fan's parents did not take it seriously at first.
But after hearing about the "devil", the situation was very different.
Qixing City and Rainbow City are very close to each other, and supernatural cards are a kind of war resource. Almost everyone in the military has some. If someone accidentally injured Bai Youyou during the capture operation, this is entirely possible.
It's just that after so much time, the truth is hard to find. There are thousands of types of supernatural cards, and each has different functions. It's impossible to tell which one hurt Bai Youyou.
For this reason, Bai Fan applied for the Card Master Academy after graduating from high school. Although he failed to awaken as a card master, he could enter a field he had never set foot in as a card master. Bai Fan thought that as long as he saw enough and walked far enough, one day he would be able to find the card that caused his sister to fall into this strange disease. As long as he knew the cause of the disease, he would be close to curing Youyou.
Thinking of this, Bai Fan gently touched his sister's head again. The girl still reacted indifferently and just concentrated on building blocks.
Bai Fan sighed lightly, stood up and was about to leave, but suddenly thought of something and sat down again.
He took out a golden card from his pocket. It was the SSR card he had drawn from the newly opened snack card pool in Qixing City that morning.
Bai Fan's card reader was built-in. He held the card with his fingertips and silently recited the command in his mind. A fluorescent blue light as bright as starlight instantly enveloped the entire card. Bai Fan threw the card to the ground, and the light dissipated. A beautifully packaged biscuit barrel appeared in front of him - exactly the same as the pattern on the front of the card.
The young man opened the biscuit barrel, and the aroma of freshly baked pastries hit him. Even though he had just eaten dinner, every cell in Bai Fan's body was clamoring for him to taste a piece immediately. He couldn't help but take out a small animal biscuit from the biscuit barrel. This biscuit was a very cute cartoon bunny, golden in color, with a little milky aroma, and looked soft and delicious.
Bai Fan turned his head and was surprised to find that his sister, who had not reacted no matter what he did, had actually stopped assembling the building blocks and turned her head to stare at the biscuit in his hand.
"Would you like to try it, Youyou?" Bai Fan handed the biscuits to his sister.
The girl's expression was still somewhat numb. She slowly picked up the biscuit, put it to her mouth and took a bite, then another bite, her eyes narrowed slightly in pleasure.
Seeing that she seemed to like the cookies very much, Bai Fan quickly took out a lot more and placed them all in front of the girl. Bai Youyou didn't refuse, and after eating one piece, she picked up the next one. I don't know if it was because of the lighting, but Bai Fan always felt that his sister, who was concentrating on eating the cookies, seemed to have a softer and more lively expression.
"Is it delicious?" Seeing that the other party was eating happily, Bai Fan couldn't help but ask with a smile.
“…Mm, delicious.”
Bai Fan was stunned.
He looked in surprise at the girl in front of him who was still eating cookies seriously with her head down, and it seemed as if his heart had stopped beating at this moment.
What did he hear?
My sister just now...did she talk to him just now?
"This is the first time I've eaten such delicious cookies." Perhaps it was because she hadn't spoken for a long time, or perhaps it was because there were still cookies in her mouth, the girl's voice was a little unclear, and there were some biscuit crumbs at the corners of her mouth. She raised her head and smiled sweetly at Bai Fan.
"Brother, you should try it too, it's really delicious."
With a "clang", the sound of a water cup breaking was heard outside the door. Bai Fan raised his head and saw his mother standing at the door with her mouth covered. Her eyes were gradually filled with tears. She suddenly rushed in and hugged the girl tightly in her arms, sobbing.
"Mother?"
The girl looked blankly at her mother who was hugging her tightly and crying loudly, and then looked at her brother in confusion.
"Brother, Mom...what happened to her?"
Looking at his sister who had regained her ability to communicate and whose eyes had become clear and bright again, for some reason, a picture suddenly flashed through Bai Fan's mind -
That was the line of mysterious words that flashed by on the back of the snack SSR card that he saw when he first pulled it out in the morning.
——[Good luck and may all your wishes come true].
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