The Card Apprentice

Chapter 131: The Best Breath Control (III)

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

His perception was like gathering dark clouds brewing as he was about to deliver his strongest attack. Bo Wen had mobilized every bit of his perception, and the energy in his apparatus had already started to take shape with stunning speed.

The transformation of Bo Wen’s perception was so strong that even Chen Mu could sense it. He immediately realized that that the blow he was about to receive would far exceed anything he had ever experienced, and a powerful feeling of danger arose in him. Cool all along, Chen Mu still seemed as if he were looking objectively at the danger from off to the side and hadn’t been disturbed by it at all.

He could then be seen suddenly to tuck himself into a ball at the same time that those five small thunderballs quickly appeared all around him.

And the time for Bo Wen’s attack had also finally arrived.

The thousand swallows wavy blades!

The pitch-black sky suddenly lit up, with the glint in Bo Wen’s eyes from midair eye-poking like the sun. Countless palm sized jade-white wavy blades started to emerge like swallows as they screamed toward the place where Chen Mu had landed.

Pa pa pa pa pa!

The dense blows slammed all around Chen Mu in bright round explosions as magnificent as fireworks. The assault from those undifferentiated wavy blades was as dense as rain, and covered a broad swath of the ground, giving no one any place to hide.

The blood had completely drained from Cheng Ying’s face! A four-star card! Only a four-star card – and only the highest grade among those – could have such terrifying power. That was her first time seeing the scene of attack from a four-star card. It was too scary! At least a hundred wavy blades had been emitted in an instant, followed by wave after wave. Who could make a lucky escape under such an attack? Bo Wen was that strong after all.

In the rain of the flashing wavy blades there was an even more brilliant fireball, which had been formed from the fireworks-like shredded energy, made from a meteor shower of wavy blades. There was no way to shield from the light.

But that bursting glow hadn’t lasted even a second when it was enshrouded by the dust that had been stirred up. The residences in the area came crashing down under the indiscriminate attack as though they were rotten wood and straw, as dust filled the air.

The rain of wavy blades didn’t stop but kept coming in indiscriminate wave after wave. Bo Wen didn’t have any scruples at all about whether anyone was in those residences or not, since to him that made no difference.

The attack took a full fifteen seconds, during which who knows how many wavy blades Bo Wen let loose. He didn’t stop because he had actively stopped, but because the power card in his apparatus was about to be done. Every wavy blade was composed of energy, and with so many blades even a four-star power card could only keep it up for fifteen seconds. It was a good thing that he hadn’t lost his reason and there was still a little bit of energy, or he would have immediately fallen to his death from the sky.

He wobbled down from the sky, and the energy card in his apparatus was exhausted just as he touched the ground.

Bo Wen was breathing heavily with a pallid look and his hands on his knees. Although he was able to manage a four-star card, his perception couldn’t keep up an attack like that. Keeping it up as long as he had was already an extraordinary play. To be able to sustain a four-star card at its highest attack-level for fifteen seconds was enough to elevate him to among the first ranks of card artisans.

The thousand swallows wavy blades was a powerful four-star fantasy card which could bring forth swallow-shaped wavy blades. It’s truly awesome aspect was that while it was emitting countless wavy blades, it could achieve a thousand at a time. But given the limits of Bo Wen’s power, he could only emit six hundred, which was already a terrifying number.

The dust in front of him slowly settled, and the area devastated by the thousand swallows wavy blades during those fifteen seconds finally appeared.

Not a bit of the ground wasn’t pockmarked by the masses of holes from the countless wavy blades whose shocking scars had crisscrossed it. And what was really shocking was the tenacious youth still standing there.

Standing there bloody.

Chen Mu was also gasping for breath, with hardly a stitch of clothing on him that wasn’t shredded by the wavy blades, with over ten of the wounds still oozing the blood which had long since soaked his clothes. He also had both of his hands on his knees as he took deep breaths. Only his eyes were as calm as ever, not showing any emotion.

Those five little thunderballs emitted by the bipolar thunderball card had blocked most of the wavy blades for him, but because by the end the energy from the power card had been depleted, and the five little thunderballs had been extinguished, he had been grazed by umpteen wavy blades. Although he looked awful, he didn’t really have any lethal wounds. The only problem was that he needed to stop the blood in short order or else the situation could turn bad. He had carried with him some of the medicine that the demonic woman had left him, but he needed to get to a safe place to apply it, which wasn’t where he was just then.

There was something strange about the scene.

The two of them were facing one another doing the same thing, breathing heavily with their hands on their knees.

Bo Wen had also taken note of something strange about the scene, which startled him a little, but when he saw Chen Mu’s eyes he felt some chill coming suddenly out of nowhere.

Were those human eyes?

In his state of breath control, Chen Mu wasn’t feeling anything strange or astonishing, as he calmly assessed the situation that was on his hands, finally making the most suitable response. Without pausing or losing his focus, he made the most appropriate response to the situation.

He reached into his chest as fast as he could, needing to pull out a power card from his wallet.

Bo Wen’s expression changed, knowing what Chen Mu was trying to do. He became immediately agitated since that was where he would die that day if he waited for Chen Mu to install a good energy card first. There wasn’t a bit of energy left in the energy card in his apparatus. He immediately touched the energy card on his waist.

But he was overjoyed when he saw Chen Mu pull out his card wallet. There was an obvious difference between where a professional and an unprofessional card artisan would put their cards. Bo Wen had placed his cards in a specifically made pocket on his waist, from where they could be conveniently and easily taken out. Chen Mu was just a novice, and Mark Victor hadn’t taught him that little trick. He had all his power cards in his wallet.

That was enough to be fatal under those circumstances.

As soon as he saw Bo Wen’s move, Chen Mu immediately realized that if he were to get another energy card, his adversary would be a little quicker.

Without any hesitation, Chen Mu charged toward Bo Wen. They were too close to one another with fewer than five meters between them. Given his current situation, his first calculation had been that it wouldn’t be suitable to wrestle, since that would accelerate his blood loss. So, he had chosen to swap the power card. But he had put them in the wrong place since he didn’t have sufficient experience, and then he had quickly discovered that he would be at a disadvantage if he were to continue on that way, so he quickly changed his plan.

Between dying on the scene and accelerating his blood loss, the choice went without saying.

Chen Mu’s move immediately flustered Bo Wen. He had been groomed from the time that he was small to be the scion of the Eastern Ning’s and had never gotten into a fight. In his opinion that kind of thing involved no technique and wasn’t a means of self-cultivation. It was nothing that a person of any stature would ever do. What he had studied was the most orthodox and standard card artisan education. That had included training his perception, tactical training and so forth, but the only thing it didn’t include was any content regarding fighting. And within the clan, among those as big as he was there wasn’t anyone who would dare to contend with him . Those bigger than him were like guards beside him, afraid lest he scrape his skin.

For Chen Mu, starting from his youth as a street punk, his daily bread had been fighting. And when he was at the Eastern Wei Academy he had badly beaten ‘Allah’ Gong and his gang along with Copper. Then when he later ran into the demonic woman he finally understood that those original fighting skills could be fatal if he were to use them well. And they were sometimes simpler and more direct. He finally put some technique into his fighting, and then he had used the method of strangulation and crushing the throat to kill that Zuo family card artisan. And now his speed and strength, as well as his reflexes, were far more advanced than before.

Ding!

A green light beam as straight as an arrow suddenly hit in front of Chen Mu’s feet, making a hole the size of a thumb in the ground. Chen Mu stopped his body, knowing that it had been a warning.

Bo Wen also stopped as he suddenly realized Cheng Ying had been closely following them, which quickly overjoyed him! There was no power left in either his or Chen Mu’s apparatus, and the one who had been the weakest of the three of them, Cheng Ying, would now be the one to determine the winner and loser of the battle.

Cheng Ying was gritting her teeth and pursing her lips, conflicted in her mind. Chen Mu had long since conquered her with his stunning performance and his superb tactics, and with his never-yielding tenacious will to fight. That had all made her full of good feelings toward that youth. While on the contrary Bo Wen had ignored the lives of those living in the residences, which cooled any good feelings that she had for him.

But she still couldn’t sit still for Chen Mu killing Bo Wen. If she were to let Bo Wen be killed, then when the Ning’s looked into it the responsibilities that she had needed to bear would change their nature, and her fate was easily imagined. And moreover, she had always suspected that there was a special relationship between Bo Wen and the Ning’s. Otherwise, how would he have so much inside information? And the power that he had shown that day wasn’t that of any ordinary card artisan.

Bo Wen stared at Chen Mu, not daring to insert the energy card in his hand into the apparatus.

Just then, a group of black spots suddenly loomed on the distant horizon.

The card artisans from the Ning family base were finally arriving. In midair, Cheng Ying finally breathed a sigh of relief, understanding that she finally no longer had to decide that thorny problem. She had a complicated expression as she looked at Chen Mu on the ground, and she continued to purse her lips. As she saw it, for things to have come to that point with the dust settling, the youth’s fate had already been decided.

She wouldn’t be around for whatever sort of fate he would face afterward. She was only a little person who could only accept fate, with no way to change it.

Chen Mu and Bo Wen in front of her were also paying attention to the rapidly approaching card artisans in the sky.

Bo Wen heaved a huge sigh of relief, since Chen Mu would never dare to make any wild moves with Cheng Ying’s deterrence on the side. He only had to wait for those card artisans to arrive for there to be no way for him to get away.

It was at just that moment that there was a glint in Chen Mu’s eyes, and he made his move!