The Card Apprentice

“I know the Night of the Cross!” the bar-browed man said lightly.

He hadn’t said much, but Chen Mu was immediately certain of his counterpart’s identity. “You are a card artisan of the Night of the Cross?”

“Yes!” The bar-browed man flashed a look of excitement. “You were using breath control, weren’t you?” Without realizing it, he’d used the honorific form of “you.”

“No.” Chen Mu shook his head. Seeing the bar-browed man flash a look of disappointment, he added, “But, it came from the method of breath control.”

The bar-browed man then got excited. “Do you know how to do breath control?”

“I do.”

“Might I ask where you learned breath control?” The bar-browed man was having a hard time containing his excitement as he very carefully asked. It was hard to believe such a cold and ruthless fellow would use such a cautious tone. It was clear the question was very important to him. Perhaps it actually reflected a firm belief for the bar-browed man.

Chen Mu suddenly felt somewhat moved. It had been a long time since he’d had such a feeling.

Thinking it over, Chen Mu said rather apologetically, “I’m very sorry, but it wouldn’t really be convenient for me to say.” He didn’t want to give anything away about the mysterious card. Seeing the bar-browed man’s face so full of craving, he didn’t want to trick him either. That’s why he spoke like that.

The bar-browed man wasn’t even surprised by that answer. He lowered his head to think for a second and then looked up. “Would you be able to use breath control for me to watch?”

Chen Mu shook his head. “The side effects of breath control are too powerful, and I wouldn’t use them again except as a last resort.” He immediately followed with, “You must be a Night of the Cross card artisan. But, I let you down since I am not. I’m also not interested in you Night of the Cross card artisans. If I get tangled up with you again, I won’t be so polite.”

Chen Mu’s tone was quite calm, though a certain note of warning came through involuntarily. It made clear he was able to do as he said he would.

The bar-browed man shook his head. “I don’t have any ill intent toward you. By this time, I’m the only one left from the Night of the Cross. I wonder what the conditions would be if I wanted to study breath control with you.”

“Study breath control?” Chen Mu was taken aback, and he rushed to shake his head. “There’s no use thinking about it. There is no way I would teach you breath control.” It was no joke; there wasn’t anyone who understood how dangerous breath control was more than Chen Mu. Its power was sufficient to turn an ordinary card artisan into an ace, not to mention what it might do for someone like the bar-browed man, who already was an ace.

Although Chen Mu admired the bar-browed man’s persistence, he wasn’t going to cause himself trouble because of it. He still hadn’t determined if he was an enemy, and of course he wouldn’t do anything so foolish.

“I could serve you; 20 or 30 years would be fine,” the bar-browed man said resolutely.

Chen Mu was moved, never having thought his counterpart would want to sacrifice so much to learn breath control. Chen Mu stared at him and asked one word at a time, “Why do you want to study breath control so much?”

“The method of breath control has been lost for many generations, and even the one who taught me the skills couldn’t do it. I’ve been told I’m Night of the Cross since I was small, but I only knew later that one couldn’t be considered a true Night of the Cross without breath control.” The bar-browed man showed an expression of nostalgia thinking about matters from the past.

“Before now, I hadn’t thought there was anyone who could do breath control. But, having now discovered there is, of course I have to learn how.” The bar-browed man spoke as if it were a matter of course, as though he were saying something quite natural.

Chen Mu thought for a moment and still shook his head. “I won’t teach you breath control. You can leave. I hope to never see you again.”

“No matter what your conditions might be, I can meet them.” The bar-browed man kept insisting.

“No matter what, I won’t teach you.” Chen Mu’s response was just as firm.

The bar-browed man turned to leave, full of discouragement, when he stopped and turned around to say, “I know this woman. She’s Lu Xiaoru from the Central Island Firm. I hope that is useful to you.” He then left.

After waiting for the bar-browed man to leave, Wei-ah opened his mouth. “Why did you insist you wouldn’t teach it to him?”

“Breath control is too dangerous!” Chen Mu’s expression was stern. If Chen Mu were to use breath control then, he was quite certain he would be a lot stronger than any time before. But, Chen Mu wouldn’t dare use breath control because its side effects were too powerful. Whenever anyone else saw it, they mostly saw its power.

“Maybe you think breath control is more powerful than it is,” Wei-ah said mildly.

“Perhaps.” Chen Mu shrugged. “But, we don’t have to take the risk, do we?”

Wei-ah gave an expression of agreement. Then, pointing to Lu Xiaoru on the floor, he said, “What’s this woman’s problem?”

“I’m not so clear on that.” Chen Mu shook his head. There was that small ball in her hand that had been vibrating all along with the red light flashing. He carefully studied it for a while and still couldn’t get any inkling. He said with some doubt, “It seems I was this woman’s objective. But, I don’t know why she would be interested in me.”

Wei-ah looked around, seeming to be searching for something. Chen Mu couldn’t help but ask, “What are you looking for?”

“The fish tank.” Wei-ah wore a natural expression, though Chen Mu was in a sweat when he heard that.

When Lu Xiaoru came to, there were two people standing in front of her. Chen Mu had removed the ghost-faced flower, showing his original face. Lu Xiaoru very quickly discerned who the person who’d made a sneak attack from behind had been. That tender, youthful voice was identical to this youth’s voice.

Between the two in front of her, Chen Mu was watching her coolly, and Wei-ah didn’t really need to show any expression since he was already cold and ruthless enough. Lu Xiaoru was secretly shocked. Those two, one big and one small, looked to have very similar temperaments. She could tell they were master and apprentice right away. For the youth to be so awesome, she surmised the other one must be even more so.

She understood her situation in a flash, and to play out any thoughts she might have had at such a time wouldn’t benefit her. If it were only the youth alone, she might have considered trying seduction, but there were two of them there. There was no way to use that trick, of course.

Moreover, she understood the human heart very well, and once she caught Wei-ah’s eyes, she knew his mind was as hard as steel—as ruthless and cold toward himself as he was toward others. Any kind of enticement in front of such a person would be in vain.

She looked extremely well-behaved and ready to answer any question, putting on a great performance. Chen Mu quickly understood all that had been happening. He hadn’t thought his own use of the communications array would invite so much trouble. He basically hadn’t paid any attention to the communications array being so coveted. He only then realized its value, along with that of the thousand kilometer card. However, he didn’t have the least ambition and would have preferred if they weren’t worth anything.

He sighed to himself that the world was so full of disputes. By then, he understood why the little ball had been vibrating and why Lu Xiaoru had targeted him as her objective.

Chen Mu immediately shut down the communications array, and for safety he removed the thousand kilometer card from his apparatus.

“What should we do about her?” Chen Mu pointed at Lu Xiaoru. She became abruptly nervous with her fate arriving at the most critical moment.

“Kill her.” Wei-ah looked utterly indifferent. Lu Xiaoru’s face went pallid.

Although that was the expected result, Chen Mu still felt some difficulty accepting it. Chen Mu didn’t have any mental block against killing an enemy in battle, but he didn’t feel he could kill Lu Xiaoru like that.

“Don’t you have any suggestions?” Chen Mu asked, stalling.

Taking a look at Chen Mu, Wei-ah said, “This is the safest way. But, the decision is in your hands.”

That was the agreement between Chen Mu and Wei-ah; whenever they were at odds, Chen Mu had the last word. Wei-ah would carry out the agreement meticulously.

Chen Mu knew what Wei-ah said was right, but he was basically different from Wei-ah. In the depths of his heart, he wasn’t anything more than a card master, and he suddenly felt awkward.

“I will do anything. I can help you. I’m sure you’re short of manpower. I can cook. I can fight. I can do anything.” Seeing Chen Mu a little hesitant, Lu Xiaoru rushed to add more. “I can also do some cosmetic surgery, so they will never recognize me.” She was probably just talking, but her thinking gradually revealed itself. Her tone also become more stable. “I can take you to the Central Island Firm. I know where their most state-of-the-art lab is. You can find out why they are so against you. If you can’t trust me, you can administer some poison, so you can be sure I won’t mutiny.”

Chen Mu looked at Wei-ah, and Wei-ah surprisingly nodded. “I think that could be all right.”

Chen Mu was stunned, not quite daring to believe Wei-ah would be so easy to convince. He then saw Wei-ah take out some kind of pill and stuff it into Lu Xiaoru’s mouth.

“What was that?” Chen Mu asked with some curiosity. It wasn’t so odd that Wei-ah would use poison. In the village, everyone had lots of means—especially Li Duhong, who had a passion for them.

“It still doesn’t have a name. It’s something I invented,” Wei-ah said very peacefully. “Only myself and the little devil know how to prepare it. I taught him. It has a certain painkilling effect, but you need to take a different kind of pill within a month.” He paused, tilting his head to think. “I remembered wrong. The little devil tested it on orangutans, and it was 28 days.”

Lu Xiaoru’s complexion whitened a few shades. She choked back the churning in her gut and the urge to vomit and tried to calm herself. Chen Mu felt it was fine. Poison was a very useful trick while he was in the jungle. It wasn’t any different from using any other tool, and Chen Mu understood the villagers’ attitude toward poison after he had lived in the village for a while.

It was really hard to imagine that such a violent man as Wei-ah would also be interested in poison.

“I was thinking you weren’t likely to let her go.” Chen Mu smiled, feeling a lot more relaxed without that burden on his mind.

“She can cook,” Wei-ah said very naturally, adding, “It has to be better than what you make.” Wei-ah took out another pill and tossed it around.

It wouldn’t be good to stay where they were, and Chen Mu and Wei-ah decided to go back to the Heaven’s Wings building. When they got there, Chen Mu was shocked. Several floors at the top of the building had been nearly cut in half. He could even see the remaining half of the pool, and the training room was useless. Chen Mu was angriest about his card making studio. In order to set that up, he had spent nearly all of his Oudi. What had been seen was only its embryonic form. Who would have thought it would be completely destroyed now?

“There’s no way to live here anymore.” Chen Mu looked up into the sky. That battle had caused some rather serious destruction in the northwest corner of Pomelo. There were all kinds of card artisans rushing over constantly from the distance toward where they were. The most conspicuous were the card artisan teams from the public security garrison. Their combat uniforms made them easy to identify. Another conspicuous group were the medical card artisans, most of whom came from the various medical systems. The arrival of those two organizations greatly stabilized the situation. Some miscellaneous card artisans also started to help with search and rescue among the ruins.

Everyone looked sad. It had been a very long time since such a situation had occurred in Pomelo. The area affected by the battle was quite large, and it was a residential district. The casualties were heavy, with heart-rending cries coming from everywhere. Some of them were half-buried, and some of their legs were crushed. Some had turned completely charred, and their faces were hard to recognize.

They could clearly see the situation below from where they were. Out of nowhere, Chen Mu’s heart turned sour. Without saying anything, he manipulated his jet stream card to fly down from the building. Wei-ah said nothing and followed Chen Mu closely. Seeing what was happening, Lu Xiaoru rushed to go along.

The three of them started to rescue people as soon as they landed. Lu Xiaoru was afraid of being recognized. She’d changed into a dusty man’s jacket and had slightly changed her face, which had also abruptly changed her temperament.

The three of them were very efficient, and in a little while they had rescued six people. Among them were two women and one child. Chen Mu’s heart was sorrowful seeing how miserable they were. Although he’d experienced a lot of hardship from the time he was small, he had seldom seen such misery.

“There’s someone here!” Lu Xiaoru’s voice was urgent. “I can’t get that thing off!”

Chen Mu rushed over to where there was a small girl crushed under a huge beam. The two of them bent down to see her little face. The little girl’s expression was awful, and her left leg was pinned by the beam. There was a puddle of blood on the ground.

“She’s hurt, and she needs critical care fast! She’ll die otherwise!” Lu Xiaoru spoke impatiently with a look of anxiety flashing in her eyes.

Chen Mu drew a slight blank. In his eyes, Lu Xiaoru seemed like a completely different person that time. There weren’t all those flirtatious expressions, and there wasn’t a bit of charm. In the dirty jacket with a face covered in mud that couldn’t cover her anxiety, her two eyes were still as bright as could be.

Sending out his perception, every part of the composition of that pile of ruins became gradually clear. Chen Mu had slightly closed his eyes, and his expression was solemn.

Lu Xiaoru was really surprised. Could he perceive the internal structure? She watched Chen Mu’s gaze like she was looking at a monster. Perception could make a person’s six senses become more keen, but that kind of acuity was limited. Most of the time it would be sensitive to energy fluctuations, which was a general characteristic of perception.

However, there would always be every different kind of yet another weird thing in that world, and perception wasn’t any different. The perceptions that came from different kinds of perceptual training could have diametrically different properties. For example, there were some perceptions good at control, some had more of an explosive power, others were good at changing, and so forth.

In the same way, there did exist perception that was good at the perception of physical properties. The most famous was the Materials Refining Code of the Comprehensive Federation Academy. That kind of perceptual training had a very long history, leading up to the newly improved perceptual training method revised after the Comprehensive Federation Academy had brought it in. Its biggest feature was that it could perceive physical changes all around.

So, you could see students who had studied the Materials Refining Code often walking with their eyes closed.

The Materials Refining Code wasn’t actually very useful. In battles among card artisans, energy fluctuations were the really crucial things. Whoever could perceive energy fluctuations would be able to take the initiative in the battle. It was a world of remote battle for contemporary card artisans. They were often several thousand meters apart when they had battles among them. Those who used the wavy blade energy body, which had such a fast flight speed, would basically not be able to dodge using their physical strength alone. And, once they could capture their adversary’s energy fluctuations, they could evade them ahead of time or take other responsive measures.

By the time the attack came in front of you, you would discover it was already too late.

The physical range of the perception from the Materials Refining Code wasn’t more than 20 meters. If a wavy blade flew within 20 meters of you, you could basically be pronounced dead.

The reason the Materials Refining Code was famous was because 30 years before, a geek who specialized in the Materials Refining Code had appeared in the Comprehensive Federal Academy. He was a close-combat card artisan and very proficient in wrestling. However, his spirit was odd, and he was extremely bloodthirsty. Incalculable numbers of card artisans were killed at his hands, many having rather notable reputations.

However, while the card artisans all saw what an extremely dangerous psychopath he was, he had towering prestige in the eyes of the masses. Quite a few of the ordinary people worshiped him wildly. And, there were still countless people who glorified what he did. He was always gracious toward ordinary people and would teach them all kinds of skills. But, once he knew someone was a card artisan, he would show his aggression.

That was none other than the famous, freakish genius, Caesar! His acts put the Comprehensive Federation Academy under a lot of pressure at that time. All of the other five academies pressured them. Having no choice, the Comprehensive Federation Academy sent out a group of ten to capture him and bring him back to the school. But, they hadn’t expected that not one of them would survive. By that time, the academy was furious, and it sent out an extermination squad composed of 50 aces. Its leader was the top ace in the academy that year, Pavchek, who was now the president of the Comprehensive Federation Academy.

In that battle, which had lasted for three months, Caesar would lead that platoon, composed entirely of ace card artisans, around in endless circles. They went through deserts, the Gobi, swamps, and finally the jungle, which became his best companion. By the end, there were only 13 of the academy’s finest card artisan squad in history who came back alive. Those 13 all became extremely prestigious card artisans in the academy at that time.

Badly injured in a battle with Pavchek, Caesar finally escaped into the jungle to the Sponge Swamp, from which no one had ever returned. He was never heard from again.

Because of Caesar, the perceptual training method—the Materials Refinement Code of the Comprehensive Federation Academy—became famous throughout the federation. It wouldn’t have been considered well-known before. Now, everyone knew about it. Afterward, although lots of students practiced the Materials Refinement Code, no one ever achieved the heights Caesar had that year.

The first thought in Lu Xiaoru’s head was about whether he was a student from the Comprehensive Federation Academy.

But, when she carefully sized up Chen Mu, she immediately discovered lots of things that didn’t tally. Chen Mu’s clothes were as simple as could be. The social benefits from the Big Six as compared with these exceptional card artisans with rich experience were still a lot higher. Because of the academy being in the capital, where everything was expensive, the students all received rich social benefits and would decidedly never have any reason to dress so shabbily.

What most made her feel he wasn’t like that was Chen Mu’s temperament. As she saw it, although that youth was a little tender, his body didn’t have anything of the flavor of a student. On the contrary, the feeling he gave her was more like a young card artisan who had been hanging out with gangs of card artisans since he was little.

But, what was happening right there in front of her was the youth probing deeply into the structure of the pile of ruins. Those two were so full of oddities. One of them was like a robot; the other, who looked a little more normal, was good at a non-mainstream kind of physical perception.

Lu Xiaoru found that strange but not really scary. Even if he had studied the Materials Refinement Code, she didn’t think there was anything worth being scared about. Untold numbers of people studied the Materials Refinement Code every year, and just then it would be nothing more than another Caesar.

Chen Mu opened his eyes and walked a few paces to the right, getting to the place where the beam branched off.

“Hang on. I can lift this beam. You pull her out right away. You have to move quickly since I can only hold out for three seconds.”

Chen Mu was watching her as he spoke solemnly.

Lift it? Lu Xiaoru was really struck dumb by that. She took a look at the fallen beam, which was about two and a half meters in diameter. Although light alloys had been used, it wasn’t something that could be budged by man-power. Moreover, there were a lot of bricks and stones piled on it. The weight was shocking.

When she took another look at Chen Mu’s body, she wondered still more whether Chen Mu hadn’t gone dizzy. But, she didn’t dare show any expression of doubt when she pointed tentatively at the beam. “Pick that up?”

“Right.”

Chen Mu didn’t waste any words as he lightly held the bottom of the beam.