Who asked him to play Yu-Gi-Oh!

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You Xuan slowly opened his eyes, blankly surveying the unfamiliar surroundings.

He hadn't seen this room before, yet it felt strangely familiar. Sunlight dappled through the window lattice onto the soft floor, like scattered stardust shimmering. Even the air seemed light and transparent under the warm sun.
His head throbbed with a dull pain, strange images and unfamiliar fragments flashing through his mind. Some instinct seemed to tell him about the extraordinary situation he was facing—
—He had transmigrated.

You Xuan looked around the environment, his gaze quickly drawn to the computer on the desk.
The computer was on, displaying the webpage of some search engine, yet it wasn't any search engine he was familiar with.
The large characters displayed on the search bar clearly read, "Kaiba Search".

What struck him as even more peculiar were the trending news headlines below the search bar.
《Dongdu University Research Team Discovers New Form of 'Summoned Skull', Fiend Decks May Receive Major Boost!》
You Xuan: "?"

Curious, he clicked to take a look. The report stated that the research team, after working tirelessly day and night, had developed the potential of the renowned Fiend-type monster "Summoned Skull," and had already published a paper in a top international, authoritative Duel Monsters journal.
The team spokesperson mentioned they had already spoken with Maximillion Pegasus, CEO of Industrial Illusions, and Industrial Illusions was already assisting them in developing the new card...
If he still couldn't recognize what kind of world he had transmigrated into after all this, then You Xuan had truly wasted all those years playing cards.

This was the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, a well-known plane where cards reigned supreme, and the very foundation and laws of the world were built upon card games.
There was an even more outrageous headline below the top search.
《International Conflict in the Middle East Eases, Heads of State Have Decided to Reach Agreement Through Dueling》

You Xuan: "......"
After reading the title, an image seemed to form in his mind. Two armies faced off on a smoke-filled battlefield, both sides fully armed, long rifles and short cannons pointed at the opposition.
At this moment, the generals of both armies stepped out from their positions, revealing the Duel Disks on their arms and their decks, deciding to resolve the territorial dispute with a tense and exciting game of Yu-Gi-Oh!...
That was too damn absurdly hilarious [shencao - internet slang for something so ridiculous it's funny].

But that was precisely how this world operated.
Duel Monsters was the only way in this world to aspire to the extraordinary, to grasp the divine power to transcend time and space and rewrite the laws of reality.
His brain gradually shook off its daze, and new memories seemed to be slowly absorbed. You Xuan quickly clarified his identity in this world.

Fujiki You Xuan, male, current identity... Duel Dojo apprentice?
Although it was called a dojo, it felt more like a community card game training class. Unlike those formal Duel Academies, Duel Dojos were social training institutions that anyone could join as long as they paid the fee.
In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, playing cards was naturally not considered neglecting one's proper duties. On the contrary, if one could truly learn to play cards well, the future was undoubtedly bright.

The development of Duel Monsters cards had reached a point where almost every industry was closely related to card games. These days, even starting a company required a dedicated corporate Duel Agent, specifically to help the company handle all business matters requiring card games. It was even said that Neo Domino City, known as the "Duel Capital," under the operation of KaibaCorp, had reached a point where one couldn't even register for residency without registering a deck...
But this didn't mean the path was easy. Although You Xuan's predecessor worked part-time to earn tuition while studying at the dojo, diligently striving towards the path of a true Duelist, both he himself and those around him knew that his hopes were slim.
Because he was bad at it.

It was true that Duelists had a promising future, but at the same time, this industry was incredibly competitive. This world was different from his previous one; being a Duelist was widely recognized as a profession heavily reliant on talent. Not everyone had the potential to become a master.
Putting everything else aside, if a person couldn't even draw the card they wanted, how could they be a Duelist?
You Xuan pondered for a moment and felt that the development path his predecessor had insisted on, enduring such hardship, was not wrong in itself.

In this world, whether one sought the extraordinary or wanted to make a career in the city, Duel Monsters was the primary path.
So, since he wanted to walk this path, his greatest reliance would be the accumulation of years as a hardcore card player [pailao - veteran card game player] in his previous life.
With this thought, You Xuan immediately sat down at the computer and began searching.

First, he had to determine which era and background he had «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» transmigrated into. There were many Yu-Gi-Oh! series, and the later the anime, the closer it was to the actual card game environment [shika huanjing - TCG/OCG environment]. Therefore, the later the environment, the smaller the advantage of being a transmigrator.
After a simple search, he quickly obtained the information he needed.
This was the most classic base dimension, the place where the dream began, the world of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (DM) and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX stories.

The current time node should be after the end of DM and before the beginning of GX, or early in its story. This gave You Xuan a general concept of the current Duel Monsters card environment.
Now, let's take a look at the predecessor's deck.
You Xuan: (─_─)

No... are you serious with this deck?
Spread out entirely, a bloated sixty-card deck... no, this thing couldn't even be called a deck, it was just a pile of cards.
First, on the monster side, there was a large handful of Normal Monsters with no effects – card players generally liked to use a term often spoken by President Kaiba to describe these: vanilla [fangu - literally "common bone," refers to Normal Monsters].

Then, the entire construction was simply a chaotic mess [baxian guohai ge xian shentong - idiom meaning everyone showing off their special skills, used here ironically]. There was almost no synergy between any two cards. Drawing any six cards at the start would result in each doing its own thing. You Xuan seriously doubted that putting these things together could have any combat effectiveness worth mentioning.
However, upon a second look, he seemed to grasp the predecessor's deck-building philosophy.
It wasn't useful, but it was mainly expensive...

The feeling was probably like those two episodes in the GX anime where Chazz Princeton's two foolishly rich brothers appeared. Those two nouveau riche had plenty of money but were complete novices at playing cards. However, they believed in the theory that money reigns supreme, firmly convinced that the most expensive was the best.
So they desperately threw money around, buying a bunch of the most expensive rare cards to form a pay-to-win deck to challenge Chazz. Yet, in the end, they were crushed by a temporary deck Chazz built using discarded cards he found in a dry well behind the school...
Clearly, the predecessor had made the same mistake as those two rich guys in the anime. Many cards in the deck might have been painstakingly earned through his part-time work. Seeing the outrageous market prices, You Xuan even suspected that the reason he transmigrated was because the predecessor had overworked himself to death...

However, looking at these few cards in his hand, nominally super rare but meaningless in his eyes, he couldn't help but silently feel it wasn't worth it for his predecessor.
In the world of card games, many powerful cards were indeed expensive, but expensive didn't necessarily mean good. Many cards in this world were expensive simply because they were "rare." For example, some cards were made from excavated artifacts, others used diamond rings or gems as raw materials.
Some were even expensive simply because the summoned monsters were good-looking and widely popular, but their production was low – especially certain large-chested yet scantily clad female angel-type spirits [nü pusa xing jingling - literally "female bodhisattva-type spirit," internet slang for attractive female characters, often implying large breasts]...

So, flipping through the entire deck, You Xuan estimated that only a few expensive Trap Cards seemed somewhat useful.
It looked like the initial deck needed to be completely rebuilt from scratch.
You Xuan thought for a moment, then used the internet again to search for match videos of current mainstream professional Duelists, getting a general understanding of the current environment and mindset of mainstream Duelists.

Indeed, just as depicted in the anime. Duelists of this era generally still pursued overwhelming power, striving to summon their high-attack, cool ace monsters to achieve field dominance.
After watching several match recordings, You Xuan couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
What a simple and pure world...

In short, it seemed that most current Duelists shared a common problem—
—They were too bright [taiyangjian le].
Of the total eight dou [dou - an old Chinese unit of measurement] of underworldliness [yinjian - see Translator's Note] in the world today, the former King of Games, Yugi Muto, alone possessed one shi [shi - another old unit, 1 shi = 10 dou], and the rest of the world owed him two dou. [Note: This is a famous quote parody, originally about talent, implying Yugi hogged all the "dark/tricky" playstyles].

Now that Yugi Muto had sealed his deck and retired, Duelists worldwide looked up to the legendary Duelist Seto Kaiba, who constantly spoke of "crushing and smashing" and pursued power suppression. The entire environment was suddenly filled with a bright, sunny atmosphere.
Thus, You Xuan's deck-building strategy was decided.
He wanted to bring a little bit of underworldly [yinjian] fun to this bright [yangjian] card game world.

 
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