The Card Apprentice

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

That was a challenge noticed by the entire Heavenly Federation. If one were to say fantasy card viewership had gone a little slack, by now, absolutely no one wasn't watching attentively. Some of the reporters were even introducing the Black-Line Star Listing to audiences beyond the Heavenly Drum Village District; it was a ranking unique to that district, after all.

When the audience started to understand the value of the Black-Line Star Listing, the viewership for that battle challenge surged. Any contest between aces would always be highly anticipated. Classes in many schools' card artisan departments were suspended on the spot, all of the teachers turning on the fantasy card viewers in their classrooms.

Some of the viewing platforms enthusiastically sought out well-known card artisans to act as guest informants. In the entire federation, the viewership was highest in the Heavenly Drum Village District. According to the statistics, nearly one in three in that district were watching the contest.

Chen Mu had no intention of moving, and Jin Yin and Dang Han weren't concerned about where the fighting would take place. Even the head of the trading firm, Ah Sang, was only concerned with watching Chen Mu. She was not at all concerned about whether the place would get smashed up. All unrelated personnel had cleared out to leave room for those three.

Chen Mu didn't make a move. If he hadn't just said something, everyone would have wondered if he were even alive. The crowd watched Chen Mu from a distance with trepidation. That unbearably ugly face with its many hard lines looked as though it were chiseled in stone. What really chilled people to the core were those eyes.

A spark suddenly appeared in those gray, vacant eyes. It was as though a ray of sunlight had penetrated the deep darkness before the dawn. Bit by bit, they went from indifferent to bright. In the blink of an eye, that little spark abruptly concentrated into a sea of fire. A raging flame flowed from Chen Mu's eyes. He still didn't make a move, though his aura of power was spreading rapidly.

Hong!

He emitted all of his perception without holding any of it back. There was a shocking aura of power with Chen Mu at its center, holding in check an incredibly crazed, scorching battle urge that rumbled as it spread.

The faces of Jin Yin and Dang Han, who stood facing him, shifted. Card artisans were keen in their perception, and the two could clearly sense Qiao Yuan's crazed bout of battle urge, along with his hearty breathing and fearlessness toward death!

It this guy nuts? The two of them couldn't help but look at one another, each seeing the fear in the other's eyes. They had never thought Qiao Yuan would actually come forth with the intention to fight with his life.

"Bring it on!" Dang Han said in a low voice. He had no way out; even if he were to lose that battle, he would still be on his way to death. The Madam had made her means quite clear. If he were to fall into her hands, it would be a little more painful than to die in battle.

Jin Yin nodded firmly.

Their battle urge raged, and their murderousness was awe-inspiring. Even the air had become solemn with that three-person standoff. The looks on the bystanders' faces shifted, the three aces inconceivably looking to go all-out from the start and not seeming to have the least intention of testing the waters.

In a dark corner of the training room, Bu Mo was biting his lips and staring hard at Chen Mu. He couldn't help but say, "Let's go help him, Wei-ah!"

Wei-ah was watching Chen Mu, but he shook his head. "No."

"Why?" In his hopelessness, Bu Mo wasn't paying attention to the peculiar emotions in Wei-ah's eyes.

"Because he wants to fight!" Wei-ah's response made Bu Mo seem to understand what he didn't.

Wei-ah's gaze turned to the Faya Madam and then slowly swept over the body of that man wearing the bronze mask. He slightly squinted as an intense murderousness flashed through his eyes.

Jin Yin was the first to make a move. He was seen popping out with no warning, his whole body shooting up like a rocket. He flew higher and higher, looking like he had no intention of stopping.

* * *

Dang Han didn't hesitate to deploy his Jade Star in the first instant. The starfish he emitted that time was completely different from the time before. In the middle of the jade-colored energy starfish was, amazingly, a five-pointed silver star.

There were three energy starfish, which was a lot fewer than the last time, but Dang Han was already showing a pretty stressed expression. One of the three energy starfish drilled into the ground. The other two suddenly went shooting toward Chen Mu without warning, showing only two brilliant silver beams cutting through the air.

Chen Mu felt like his whole body was about to explode! Every inch of his skin was on fire. It was as though it wasn't blood flowing through his body, but molten iron! In that feeling of being about to burn up, Chen Mu was perfectly clear about every change in his body. His brain was the only part that had remained clear, and he could capture every finest change in the rest of his body until it was transmitted to his mind. Every fiber in his flesh—the translucent tendons, the blood vessels in his bone sheath, the junctions of his joints…

There was an intensely pleasurable kneading, which was also acutely painful and pounded Chen Mu's mind like waves in the tide. His expression, though, remained as indifferent as ever.

He needed to vent! He needed catharsis for the pain burning his heart! Victory! He needed to win! He had already decided that no matter how, whether it was for Yang An or for himself, even if he died, he had to win! He had never longed so much to win. Never!

Chen Mu's apparatus had been turned on for a while, and the energy was flowing through it, looking calm while full of devastating power. There was a sudden howling sound in the air. It got stronger and stronger and increasingly high-pitched, so sharp that it seemed it would break through the skies.

The streak of a man in midair came shooting down like an arrow!

"The Pointed Cloudburst!" one of the guest commentators on a platform screamed as though he had seen a ghost. He was so startled that he fell off his chair.

The Pointed Cloudburst was one of the top flight skills, though it was a kind of attack skill in reality! It made use of the changes to a card artisan's body in high-speed flight to control the surrounding flow and to form it into a sharp, conical air bomb to bombard the ground! The Pointed Cloudburst's power was terrifying, and the air bomb it formed could enshroud an area of ten meters in diameter. Everything within that scope would be torn to shreds by that terrifying flow of air.

In the same way, however, it made high demands on the card artisan's flight skills. To be able to use it, a card artisan's attainments in flight would need to have reached a rather terrifying realm. Not only that, but it also belonged in the category of very risky and high-level tactical behavior. In the instant the air bomb made contact with its objective, the card artisan would basically have no time to escape and could be ripped to pieces by the raging air.

Before anyone had even gotten started, Jin Yin had played a huge maneuver as soon as he'd made his move! Doesn't that guy want to live?

Chen Mu's brain remained as cool as snow. He raised his head, and those eyes so full of crazed fire became crystal-clear in that instant. It was too bad no one was watching. Everyone's gaze and attention was drawn firmly to Jin Yin's crazy move.

The information fed back by perception flashed through Chen Mu's mind like lightning. At such a distance, if he had simply used his eyes, he would have had no way to capture the changes in those flows of air. But the thing Chen Mu was best at with perception was that it made him more sensitive to physical changes than to energy changes.

He clearly captured all of the complex and fine flows of air. He combined the information from all of that almost unconsciously and tried to build it into a model. His mind was strangely calm then, and the originally complicated work now became smoother than he could have expected. The completed model was done in Chen Mu's mind with stunning speed, and he suddenly realized something. Could that be the true use for his perception?

However, that bit of realization quickly became swallowed up in Chen Mu's burning and crazed urge to fight, and his eyes were restored again to red. It was an utterly crazy plan, with even Chen Mu in his sanity showing an obviously crazed face.

It had to be now—the Bipolar Card!

There was a light popping sound as Chen Mu's body rose into the air. All around him, there suddenly appeared countless black and white energy beads, each one the size of a mung bean. There were just too many of them—upward of tens of thousands—densely enshrouding Chen Mu in their midst.

If one were to look closely, one might discover that the closest thing to each white energy bead was a black energy bead and vice-versa. Those tens of thousands of black and white energy beads composed a huge sphere, ten meters in diameter, with Chen Mu right in the middle of it.

Madam Zhi Lian was watching the battle at the Central Repository of the Classics. She wasn't so interested in the battle. Given her political sensibilities, though, she detected that there seemed to be something else strange about it. Ever since the master had been defeated by Tang Hanpei, Madam Zhi Lian had become the one in power at the Central Repository of the Classics.

When she saw Qiao Yuan on the screen release that sphere, she was stunned, and the look on her face changed dramatically. Others might not have known what it was, but how could she not know? Although the sphere was huge, and although she couldn't tell just how many of those countless energy beads there were, it was not essentially different from the Card 007 she had previously bought in Pomelo.

Still more shocking was that Card 007 couldn't release energy beads at such a scale! In other words, that card was a higher level than 007. She knew very well that if one wanted to release energy beads at such a large scale, it would be extremely difficult. Thus, that card's name was on the verge of becoming known. The expression on Madam Zhi Lian's face was fluctuating.

The scene on the field had already reached its climax. The reason Chen Mu had chosen the Bipolar Card and not the Golden Word Shackle was to catch Dang Han unprepared! Jin Yin knew about both of his cards, but Dang Han didn't know anything about the Bipolar Card's existence. That gave Chen Mu the perfect opportunity to put it to use.

Sure enough, Dang Han turned pale with fright, never having thought Qiao Yuan would use something other than the Golden Word Shackle! His attack was especially put into play aiming at Qiao Yuan's Golden Word Shackle.

The two energy starfish plunged headlong into Chen Mu's energy beads. There was a string of concentrated sparking sounds as the two energy starfish burst into starbursts. Their five points lengthened to form five long, fine tentacles, which rolled toward Chen Mu like lightning.

That change caught Chen Mu a little off guard. Before he could make any adjustments, though, there appeared an inconceivable scene. The small energy balls swarmed like a shark smelling fresh blood. In the blink of an eye, the two energy starfish were submerged in a swarm of black and white energy balls.

Zing!

Sparks flashed from the ball of energy beads, and Chen Mu's expression shifted! Within a short time, his energy sphere had lost several hundred beads. He knew that with each little energy bead lost, the energy sphere's defensive qualities would be slightly weaker.

The special quality of Chen Mu's energy sphere was that it could absorb energy. Dang Han's energy starfish had the same characteristic. When the two collided, the only result would be annihilation.

The starbursts expanded as a swarm of energy beads and the two energy starfish were annihilated at the same time. Two large holes directly appeared in Chen Mu's energy sphere.

In midair, Jin Yin gave out a terrifyingly shrill whistle as he tore the air along the way into shreds! He looked like a shooting star exuding the breath of destruction. His perception had firmly locked in on Chen Mu in the middle of that broken energy bead sphere, and he dove wildly down!