The Card Apprentice

Chapter 105: The Big Mudfish

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

Transport shuttles screamed into the air one after the other flying toward the front lines. As he watched the transport shuttles leaving from the landing pad at the building, Ning Peng couldn’t help wondering how much use those things would be that were being sent to the front lines.

Every transport shuttle had over eight high grade card artisans to protect it, since even though they would remain within the area of what the Ning family controlled, they still had to defend against small-scale surprise attacks. Logistics are always important in any war. That was something everyone understood, and Ning Peng was not going to be careless.

Hoping for an early end to the conflict, Ning Feng was spellbound staring blankly toward Eastern Shang-Wei City. He was a little more anxious than others, since if they couldn’t conclude the conflict soon, the situation could get messy. Nobody knew how many hunters were staring hungrily from the sidelines watching their prey like tigers. If they couldn’t take Eastern Shang-Wei City soon, that would mean that things could change. Not only wouldn’t they be able to grasp the fruits of victory, the Ning family might be overrun.

This was not something that they wanted, and so the most important thing just then was to quickly resolve the fight. It would be better if they could have more of the raining shuttles cards. Provided he had sufficient raining shuttles cards, Ning Peng believed that they could greatly shorten this time of battling back and forth.

There were very few defensive card artisans – no matter in which power – which was why the raining shuttles card could play such a valuable role. Too bad the numbers weren’t sufficient! Ning Peng had made up his mind that he needed Chen Mu to make more raining shuttles cards, and that it would be worth paying extra for.

The raining shuttles card had been an extremely powerful battle tool without a doubt, for a pretty long time.

* * *

If was the first time Chen Mu had gone into the flight training room. It wasn’t very similar to the other training spaces, having its four walls, as well as the ceiling and floor, all covered with a sky-blue and extremely soft material so that you wouldn’t be harmed when hitting it at high speed. In addition to that it also had obstacles floating in midair. These obstacles were all strange different shapes and types, with most of them irregular. They were made of equally soft material, but if you came into contact with them, points would be deducted.

During the beginning training, the obstacles were all fixed. But once the learner’s ability improved to a certain extent, the obstacles would freely move about in midair. In that way the trainees would have to pay attention to dodging and evading. And, as the training level increased, their movements would also get faster.

The training room had scoring criteria. Chen Mu was very clumsy the first time he entered the training space, and was set to the lowest level.

He took a deep breath. It would be a fraud to say that he wasn’t a little scared. He’d made a lot of improvements to that jet stream card since making it. The card he was using at that time was the one he considered the best, as well as the most perfected.

He had used the mud fish jet stream card as the basis and optimized the token theory. And he took advantage of quite a few top-notch materials to make it. Chen Mu called it the “Big Mud Fish.” He would have to practice before he could find out what the actual performance of the big mud fish was.

Before coming to the training space, Chen Mu had made a concentrated study of a large body of knowledge relating to the skills involved in flight. He would soon find out if that had been useful or not.

Strenuously calming himself down, he carefully activated the apparatus on his wrist.

He could feel it! He was overjoyed to feel a slight thrust lifting him from beneath his feet. He rushed to control it with his perception and increased the thrust. He didn’t dare to increase it too much, so he increased it gradually.

Chen Mu opened his arms as his feet left the ground and put all of his attention nervously on carefully maintaining his balance. That made him look like a bowed piece of shrimp, sometimes twisting strangely.

Chen Mu flew further and further off the ground, swaying and wobbling, and getting to three meters in an instant. He felt as though he were standing on two round logs, and that if he weren’t careful it would be easy to lose his balance. He suddenly felt himself seeming to move toward the side, so he quickly twisted his body, trying to move in the other direction to maintain his balance.

But just then he wasn’t paying attention that his perception had lost its control.

The thrust under his feet suddenly arched him upward like a mud fish, making Chen Mu immediately unstable, looking like a person dancing in midair, with his body all twisted, and completely unable to keep his balance.

The thrust beneath his feet became more untrustworthy, suddenly increasing its thrust and transmitting great power from his feet. Then the crooked Chen Mu discovered that he was shooting like a star to smash into the wall.

The wall was getting suddenly bigger, and Chen Mu’s eyes were wide open, utterly not knowing how to adjust, and only able to helplessly watch himself get closer and closer to the wall.

To tell the truth, as he helplessly saw that he would crash into the wall, he didn’t have any strength left to change the direction of his perception, which really sucked. Chen Mu just watched himself hit the blue colored wall. In the instant that he hit, he couldn’t help closing his eyes in preparation for the pain. The subsequent sensation was far different from what he had anticipated, as he fell into an extremely soft and airbag-like substance, which surrounded his whole body.

The air sack slowly pushed him back out without waiting for him to open his eyes, and he felt his body in midair falling to the ground where he once again sank into the soft deep blue.

He was surrounded by such softness that it had no resistance, and so he had to use a lot of energy to climb out from the deep blue floor.

Chen Mu’s first personal flight ended that way. But he didn’t intend to finish immediately. Knowing that everything was covered with the kind of sky blue protective air cushion, the stone fell from his heart, and he immediately spread his hands and feet, intending to fly right back up, since falling back down wouldn’t hurt him.

Chen Mu quickly found the joy of flight.

Chen Mu was really just a boy. Although in many ways he was more mature than similar aged people, once he started to play hard, he was just a child who hadn’t lost his childishness.

He didn’t need to protect himself from anyone just then, and he didn’t need to worry about his safety, and he was alone there, having dropped all his baggage like an innocent child having found his favorite toy, playing to his heart’s content.

He had found the purest and simplest joy in that place.

* * *

“He went to the flight training space?” Ning Peng was startled.

Ning Yan made an expression as though she were clueless, and shrugged her shoulders, “Perhaps he wants to try flying. Isn’t it said that flight is the dream of humans?”

Suddenly remembering all the information about Chen Mu, Ning Peng said as though something were on his mind, “I seem to remember that he is also a card artisan. Right! When I think about it, he once killed Yu Xin from the Zuo household, which means that he’s no weakling.”

“Could he really be a genius?” Saying this, Nin Yan’s expression wasn’t saying that she thought so, “What period are we in to for someone to be both a card artisan and a card master? Is he out of his mind with his brain under water?”

“I find it strange too. According to reason, and given his nature, he wouldn’t be likely to make that kind of mistake.” Ning Peng was also rubbing his bald head a little strangely.

Unlike at the beginning when the card system was established, after so many years of development, the divisions within the card system had become more and more definite. Card artisans and card masters were entirely different, and it was already very rare for someone to concurrently practice both professions, since the direct result would be to be proficient in neither.

Whether it was to make cards or to manipulate them, both represent profound knowledge and study, enough to occupy an entire life.

For example, in making cards, in the category of the simple fantasy card alone, there were many subcategories. Basic one or two-star fantasy cards were low grade goods to many people, though they still represented a lot of scholarship. And following recent developments with fantasy card advertisements and card plays, there were still more subcategories.

That was why Ning Peng and Ning Yan were so surprised when they found out that Chen Mu had gone to the flight training space, though mostly they disagreed with the idea. Ning Peng had already been deliberating about when he should go to remind Chen Mu. For a long time now, Chen Mu had been very useful to the Ning family. But of course, what made him the most unhappy was that Chen Mu had time when he wasn’t making raining shuttles cards, but was racing over instead to practice some sort of flying.

He naturally couldn’t say that to Chen Mu’s face. Although Chen Mu was still bound by those two hundred cards, he still wasn’t a card master directly under the Ning family, so Ning Peng couldn’t meddle too much.

At that time Chen Mu was like a child, completely absorbed playing in the flight practice space. His wooden face was brimming with a happy smile. If Copper had seen him then, he would have been surprised as well, wondering if he had recognized the wrong person.

Chen Mu didn’t know how many times he had fallen to the ground while he was trying to get the knack for it.

One important factor was that he could control his perception to a very fine extent, which was crucial. Chen Mu had discovered yet again how important the perceptual sensitivity training was. His degree of precision controlling his perception reflected his ability to a certain extend. He had gotten through quite a few bottlenecks before by increasing his perceptual sensitivity enough to make a breakthrough solution.

Another important factor was his outstanding physical conditioning. Having gone through the exercise gymnastics, he had improved his physical constitution. Beyond that was the mysterious dodging and evading training from the demonic woman, which he had kept up. His flexibility, coordination, and ability to keep his balance were all outstanding.

Chen Mu was naturally diligent even while absorbed in play, which led to his ability improving more quickly. Still, what gave him the most trouble was that “Big Mud Fish” jet stream card.

The “Big Mud Fish” had outstanding capabilities, but the difficulty of controlling it went along with its terrifying capabilities. For a beginner like Chen Mu, that was a big headache.

But Chen Mu had no intention of exchanging it for a different jet stream card. His approach was very simple; that if he could control the “Big Mud Fish,” then why would he need to talk about any other cards?