The Card Apprentice

For the Victoria opening in two months, Chen Mu and Copper had sufficient time to carry out everything that they had put forward in their plan. Not only did they have the full support of Pei Hang, but the low-grade fantasy card club also gave them quite a bit of help.

That enabled Chen Mu to make rapid progress with his work, and he was able to finish all the fantasy cards that Copper required after spending just two weeks. After seeing the results from the fantasy cards that Chen Mu had produced, Copper couldn’t stop praising him.

While Chen Mu’s work was complete, Copper’s work was far from finished. Being a head producer meant that you had to communicate and coordinate with all the other personnel for the event. He would only ever be seen working dawn to dusk, so busy that he never knew what time it was.

Chen Mu was very worried about Copper’s safety at first, but when he later discovered that there was someone protecting Copper under cover, he stopped worrying.

As a matter of fact, that was his first unintentional discovery. Although he’d only gotten a glimpse of that card artisan, he had still discovered him. The acuity of his perception by that time was completely beyond anything he could have imagined before.

In the same way, he also discovered that someone was protecting himself under cover. Although he didn’t know the person’s actual strength, he looked quite professional. Chen Mu was made a little uncomfortable, since he wasn’t about to carry on his training interests while someone else was spying. So, he could only stay at home all day.

But that made him idle.

No matter the training, it was never the more the better. For example, with perceptual training, Chen Mu had discovered that the results after about three hours were the best, but beyond that amount of time, the results would diminish. It was the same with the exercise gymnastics, where if the time were extended, all the muscles in his body would become fatigued.

Given the added time, his mind and body had nothing else to do. Copper hadn’t yet given him the next installment of the “Legend of Master Shi” card play. So right away after finding himself so idle, he wanted to know what to do with the rest of his time.

In his boredom, he thought of the simple water world. Since there’d been that unwinding game, could there be other games? As soon as the thought came into his head, he got his interest back.

Apart from his daily perceptual training which required that it be done in the water world, it had already been quite a while since he’d done any exploring there.

As soon as he entered the simple water world, the familiar pressure quickly tightened around him. He’d long become used to that, with his strange twists and swings, and he leapt forward like a swimming fish jumping. The loose soft sand-layer had no effect on him half swimming and half walking, like walking on flat ground.

That was a skill that he’d learned from the unwinding game, and he discovered that it was quite suited to moving along in the water. That was also the only use he’d found for the skill until then. But thinking about that tailless shuttle card, he realized that spending all that energy was worth it.

He admonished himself that one shouldn’t be too greedy in life.

With the water grass in the unwinding game, and the giant clam showing the perceptual training methods, what else did the simple water world have in store?

His gaze finally fell onto the school of swordfish swimming about.

A school of triangular swordfish. He was ashamed every time he thought of the designation. The look of those red triangular swordfish wouldn’t draw any compliments, but their cleverly moving forms still had that trajectory which would be hard for anyone to improve, and it bestowed on them the breath of life. This also made Chen Mu’s admiration for the person who made that card a little bit deeper.

There were probably a few hundred in the school of swordfish, and it was pretty magnificent to see them swim about.

It was Chen Mu’s objective to test his theory that there were no useless objects in the simple water world. And why were those swordfish so attention-getting?

Chen Mu tried getting closer to the school of swordfish, but it seemed that they could sense his presence as soon as he got a certain distance away.

Then the few hundred fish which had been merrily swimming along suddenly became still and lined up their bodies. Those swordfish all lined up in ranks, with all of their red triangular little heads aimed at Chen Mu!

At the same time, there were a few hundred pairs of angular fish eyes staring, and Chen Mu was bathed in cold sweat.

In a leap, a sword fish broke away from the formation, and came charging toward Chen Mu.

Chen Mu was startled, and twisted his body and dodged to the side, quickly dodging the swordfish’s attack.

Without waiting for him to have time to rejoice, another swordfish came charging over. The thing that Chen Mu was regretting just then was that he’d made these swordfish skulls sharp triangles. It would have been a lot better if he’d made them rounded! Round bubble fish wouldn’t hurt so much running into his body!

But those swordfish manifestly didn’t intend to let him slowly regret. Having just dodged one, another swordfish came charging over.

A school of swordfish staring like a tiger at its prey took up the rear guard, while each of the ones charging came aggressively. Even though Chen Mu had a lot of guts, he was a little frightened in his heart.

He was becoming flustered, since although he’d developed the skills of deploying power in the water, compared to those underwater creatures, he was as awkward as a duckling who didn’t know the water at all.

After holding up for seven or eight seconds, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

His left arm hurt, and without waiting for him to cry out, and in that little bit of time, he was poked about seven or eight times over his whole body.

Even the Chen Mu who could always endure being wounded without anesthetics had changed his complexion.

Pain! The pain of being stuck to the bone! After only just thinking about how his ability to endure pain had gone up so much, it only just then dawned on him what could really be called pain!

It seemed as though a whole lot of very fine swimming wires were boring in through his skin to his bones in that instant.

Chen Mu’s face was twisted in pain, but he still knew that if he didn’t make any response, he might be poked dead by that school of swordfish. Wrong, he would be killed by the pain!

He stepped his right foot heavily into the sand, and his body bent backwards, seeming as flexible as though it had no bones. He made a few consecutive twists, which made his body look like it had waves, and then he shot out.

“Swordfish Seven, Challenge Failed.” The familiar hoary old voice as though it were annotating Chen Mu’s behavior.

Even the water grass couldn’t hold, winding around him against his full strength, not even to talk about the little swordfish. Like an arrow from a bowstring, he’d whizzed out from the midst of all those surrounding swordfish.

He retreated about ten meters before stopping.

The swordfish didn’t pursue, and so he let out his breath. With a little lingering trepidation, he turned back to watch that school of swordfish swimming about. They had once again returned to their usual disposition of swimming about, not paying attention to the jumpy Chen Mu, who was scared like a bird hearing bowstrings.

Too much pain! Chen Mu’s body was still in pain, and his whole face twitched in fear.

There was a plot in there after all! He had just heard it very clearly when that hoary old voice had said “Challenge Failed.”

It was just that . . . this kind of game . . . could likely kill!

He couldn’t understand how those triangular swordfish poking his body could be so painful. If he had found something dangerous in the mysterious card, Chen Mu would certainly not be surprised.

From the start he had never considered it to be a card without any danger.

But he decided to put the issue to the side for a while, since what he was thinking about just then was a different sort of problem. What was this school of swordfish doing?

“Challenge Failed! Swordfish Seven.”

What was the message in those four words?