The Card Apprentice

Looking at the jungle outside the window, Chen Mu had finally gotten a little time to relax. He had just turned over the result of his experimenting to Bogner, and the items needed to undergo testing before there would be any definite results. He would soon find out if the scheme could work.

Chen Mu was glad to have free time, which was so hard to come by. Although he was essentially a motivated person, most of the time he was still passive. It was life forcing him incessantly forward that had gotten him to that point. If things hadn’t happened when he was making “A Chance Encounter” or “The Legend of Master Shi,” he would probably still have been in Eastern Shang-Wei City passing a simple and peaceful life.

But his world was always so wonderful. People never really had much choice. If there wasn’t a fork in the road ahead, there was also never any way back; you just had to harden yourself and move ahead. But then, you unexpectedly discovered that where you were going was a lot different from what you’d imagined.

Outside the window, the emerald green turf was as flat as a carpet, leaving a panoramic view of the jungle in the distance. Taking in the view from his state of mental high gave birth to a heroic spirit.

He’d learned the outlines of the events of the past few days. Even though he wasn’t one to look at the big picture, he did understand a messy world would be on its way when the federation turned chaotic.

What was a chaotic world like? He didn’t know. But he did know a loss of order would be followed by a certain confusion.

His memories of childhood were still fresh, and quite a few details seemed etched into his brain. When he now thought about the fiercest fighting and the most brutal places, no matter where they were, they were all where there was no order nor rules.

He was afraid his existence would become more difficult.

Looking out the window, Chen Mu’s gaze darkened. Even during the struggles of his life as a street punk, they still followed a simple code. Still, whomever had power or whomever was stronger was the one who could get enough food to survive the harsh winters.

Chen Mu knew an awful lot of street punks, but those who survived could be easily counted. Everyone who could survive had undergone layers of testing: hunger, cold, human trafficking, as well as the other street punks. Those were the enemies.

Were there ever any good scraps for him to be able to live until then? Those who were cowardly, not determined, or not tough enough would all be eliminated.

He sighed, never having thought the situation would return to where it had started after so many years. While his current power looked a lot stronger, the enemies he was facing were also a lot stronger!

His dark gaze gradually cleared up and turned resolute. He even showed a kind of unusual ruthlessness.

He really had nothing, so what did he have to lose? Without knowing why, he suddenly thought about that inhuman scene in Eastern Wei Academy, when he was fighting that gang of wealthy princelings along with Copper. The corners of his mouth turned up.

It didn’t matter how strong or high and mighty his adversaries were, nor how long their history or how glorious their past. So long as they were trying to steal a bun from him, he would take them down!

For Chen Mu, the only hope he then had was to be able to live freely, without having to watch out for someone’s stature or to depend on anyone else! It had been quite a few years since his days as a child with difficulty getting food or clothing. Now, he was fighting for his freedom. It just showed that people must relentlessly move forward!

It wasn’t that his life was all that valuable. Someone like him couldn’t even hope for some human treasure like the gold-mottled liquid-soft fungus. There had been no sign of the demonic woman for a long time. It was up to the heavens how long he could live. Although he sometimes felt terrorized, he was mostly at peace that it wasn’t something he could decide.

If he were to say compromise would resolve the problem that had befallen his body, maybe he’d still give in. But he knew that to resolve the hopeless situation of the green thread, he would still have to go muddling along. That green thread was the only thing he really couldn’t take.

His life was the only bun he had left by then!

The apparatus on his wrist suddenly sounded. It was Bogner. It looked like the testing had gotten some results.

Pulling himself together, he mocked himself. It looked like he still wasn’t going to put aside his all-out efforts for a while. His expression returned to normal. Without knowing it, his pace seemed to have become quite a bit more determined than before as he quickly walked toward Training Room No. 3.

Once he entered it, he saw Bogner’s face about split to his ears in a smile. For the ever-calm Bogner to have gotten so excited must have meant he was very pleased.

“How did it go?” Chen Mu went ahead to ask.

“Ha ha, it went well! Take a look!” Bogner’s face looked like a blooming flower as he signaled to the three people there to repeat the demonstration.

There were three ordinary card artisans in front of them, one of whom had just broken through level four with his perceptual strength, while the other two were at level three. They looked both excited and flustered as they stood there, and they activated their apparatuses.

Their three positions formed an equilateral triangle.

They didn’t immediately start the demonstration. They first started to adjust the energy frequency, which was a crucial step. If the energy frequency couldn’t be synchronized, then cards within the three people’s apparatuses would have no way to form a link.

Bogner was standing to Chen Mu’s side and said in a low voice, “They’ve only just gotten those, and their movements are too slow. They will get a lot more efficient after training for a while.” Still, he immediately proposed an improvement. “I would suggest the card could be set to several frequencies, so interference between adjacent fighting units could be avoided.”

Chen Mu nodded. “That won’t be hard.”

Once the frequencies among the three were synchronized, Chen Mu’s exceptional perceptual sensitivity immediately detected the unique connection among them.

To be precise, it was a connection between the three cards. Once the cards’ frequencies had been synchronized, the three cards would actually allow the three of them to realize a sharing of information. The one who controlled the energy composition was the card artisan whose perceptual strength was at level four. The biggest use of the card on his hand was to adjust the energy composition.

The energy composition Chen Mu had used was the energy shuttle!

That energy composition was an optimized version of the tailless shuttle. Previously, because he’d needed to control all the steps alone, Chen Mu didn’t have a way to conduct a thorough optimization. Every little bit of optimization would significantly increase the difficulty for the one who controlled it. That was especially true for something like the tailless shuttle, which was itself a rather perfect energy body. The slightest adjustment would increase the load on perception quite a bit.

Now, however, one card artisan could be specifically responsible for that part, which lightened the load a lot. Chen Mu went on to do the most possible optimizations without holding back at all. That card artisan’s perceptual level was far lower than Chen Mu’s, but he was still competent because of only needing to be responsible for a single aspect.

That was why the card artisan responsible for controlling the energy body needed a level of perceptual strength above level four. It was clear how difficult control was after the optimization.

By then, the two card artisans responsible for locking in had already done so. Originally, Bogner’s scheme included one among them responsible for firing, while the other would be responsible for scanning and locking in. Chen Mu made some adjustments after he thought about it. Now, the two card artisans could both do the scanning and locking in. One of them was the principal card artisan, and the other was the auxiliary card artisan.

The principal card artisan would generally be responsible for firing. Chen Mu had found that if he were to enable cross-scanning, the accuracy would be improved, particularly for objects moving at high speed. Ordinary scanning and locking in would be three times less accurate than cross-scanning. That was a pretty stunning piece of data.

The auxiliary card artisan would still have the right to fire if the principal card artisan were wounded.

The best part was that the scheme now only needed the cooperation of two people to bring the full battle power into play. However, Chen Mu and Bogner had ultimately still chosen to deploy the model of three people. The strength of the three-person mode was easy to see; the hit rate increased significantly.

Xiu!

The tailless shuttle’s unique whistling suddenly sounded out in the training field. The enhanced tailless shuttle made a sound even more terrifying than normal.

The target then showed the destructive value: 998.

Bogner was clearly excited. “To get a value of nearly 1,000…” He clucked his cheek. “That’s at the level of a four-star card. For this gang of rookies to be able to bring such battle power into play is a big win for us.” Bogner was really excited, and he knew the appearance of such a card set would thoroughly subvert the traditional way card artisans made war.

Whether they would enter a new world because of that, he couldn’t be certain. But he believed the new way of making war would impact and influence the current way of making war as never before. As one of its creators, how could he not be excited?

Chen Mu wasn’t so surprised at the destructive value. It was still quite a few levels away from folding Yanbo card, which had reached 1,502. But the result still satisfied him. Unless he used the folding Yanbo card, even Chen Mu himself would have some difficulty getting to such a destructive value.

Although destructive value didn’t mean everything, it was still the foundation for battle. He would turn the rest of the issues over to Bogner.

Chen Mu was quite satisfied that he’d gotten to that point. He wasn’t all that excited, however. It was as though he still didn’t understand the influence that the set of cards he had just made would have on the federation. What he mostly felt was relief; the changes in the federation during that time had made him sense an atmosphere of danger.

Even though he didn’t actually understand what kind of impact it would have on him, he had always had the sense of danger approaching. It was just that kind of feeling that had always pressured him into not being able to breathe easily.

With the most difficult issues resolved, he now needed to make more of those cards. With more than 400 people and three to a group, that meant he would need more than 100 sets of cards, which was no small quantity.

But the thing Chen Mu least feared were issues of quantity. Moreover, how could he squander those 20 card masters, along with the next dean of the Origins Academy card making division?

Chen Mu thought it over and decided he should go see them.