The Card Apprentice

Chen Mu was immersed in danger! The model in his head had already calculated the path of the Pointed Cloudburst, and his perception had firmly locked in on the quickly approaching ball of air. His calculation even included the best angle and position to cut into it.

However, the energy bead sphere surrounding him was already only a remnant. That change in conditions led to the results of his calculations also changing. He couldn’t completely counteract the Pointed Cloudburst’s impact. Right. It was impossible! So, what could he do?

He lifted his head to see Jin Yin plunging down with shocking power at high speed. In Chen Mu’s eyes was an endless urge to battle and a wild longing for victory!

Hong! His brain felt like it had been suddenly poured full of molten iron, with burning pain to go along with the pleasure filling his entire body in an instant!

He was shuddering! Every cell in his body was shuddering! In that instant, any reasoning and any calm were thrown off beyond the heavens! He felt that something was swelling up in his body like crazy, and it seemed like he might explode any second! He wanted to cry out! He wanted to roar!

With angry, wide eyes but with no fear whatsoever, he looked into the sky at those airflows, which could tear him to shreds! Jin Yin’s image within the airflows was blinking in and out, and the finely stirring airflows made a shrill wail to make one’s scalp go numb. The huge rumbling was like punishment out of the blue and brought along the breath of destruction and death!

Closer! Closer! Now!

I am here! No one can block me!

A soundless roar echoed inside Chen Mu, and a cry from his heart called for victory! He raised his empty right hand and flicked out his five fingers with lightning speed. Fast! Too fast! A string of empty shadows engulfed his entire hand, and no one could clearly see his move.

Then, the broken energy bead sphere suddenly roared apart. The energy beads went toward Jin Yin, who was whistling toward Chen Mu from the sky. Both of them were moving rapidly; before he could blink, the two sides collided. Jin Yin’s high-speed ball of air went headlong into the energy sphere.

However, the expected violent collision didn’t happen. Those fine-looking energy beads didn’t even seem to be influenced by the airflow, which would be enough to pulverize steel. They were calmly distributed within the high-speed airflow, which was unspeakably weird.

Jin Yin’s eyes were bloodshot, and he felt indescribably elated. Almost! It’s about to be that ugly bastard’s date with death! He didn’t believe Qiao Yuan could crack the Pointed Cloudburst! Flying at high speed with the airflow in front of him raging endlessly, Qiao Yuan’s image was a little indistinct in his eyes. Another second, and he would be blown to smithereens!

But he didn’t know that at just that moment, the eyes of the man wearing the bronze mask shifted! The face of Yuchi Bai, who was hiding in the dark, shifted! At the same time, Wen’s eyes shifted!

They were watching a very weird scene. The chaotic black and white energy beads formed themselves into a perfectly square energy composition. The energy beads were in a staggered distribution that was like a huge Go cage, and Jin Yin was like a wild animal that had plunged into it.

By then, the accumulated urge to battle in Chen Mu’s breast had surged to its extreme, and his crazed eyes had lost all restraint. All of the chiseled lines on his face became hideous and wild in that instant!

“Die!”

The crowd’s eyes were suddenly pierced as countless starbursts lit up. The Go cage among the black and white was dazzling! There were countless dense and criss-crossing lines, and each of the glowing beams was incredibly bright.

It was the Go Cage of One Thousand Cuts!

Each energy beam cut a small square from the ball of air beside Jin Yin. Just how many energy beams did that Go cage have? It was dense, and no less than tens of thousands of energy beams shredded the ball of air beside Jin Yin in the blink of an eye!

Jin Yin only felt things light up in front of his eyes, the dazzling starbursts unforgettable! He saw scene after scene of nightmare as each of the gorgeous, lethal beams were woven into a cage. He was trapped in it once again!

The seed of terror that had been buried once again took root in Jin Yin’s mind. His surging urge to battle and his determination to die appeared to slacken ever so slightly in that instant. Jin Yin unconsciously shrunk back. It took place in very little time—not even a tenth of a second.

But that gap, which couldn’t have been any shorter, was keenly captured by Chen Mu. He didn’t know why his adversary would make such a low-level error at such a time, but he had no intention of letting it go by!

Without thinking, he made a fine adjustment to the Go cage under his control. The beams that filled the sky shifted not more than three centimeters!

Jin Yin’s face shifted. At nearly the moment his omission appeared, he finally realized it. But it was already too late! In a contest among aces, the slightest mistake could easily be fatal.

The pupils of the bronze-masked man abruptly widened, and his heart skipped a beat. He looked at the scene in stunned disbelief. While ordinary card artisans might not have been able to tell, an ace like him could surely discover the shift in the situation. As he saw it, while Jin Yin’s momentum was still as terrifying as ever, his threat was already spent, with control of the airflow having gone beyond his direction.

But he still didn’t consider that Qiao Yuan would win. Jin Yin had certainly made a mistake, but Qiao Yuan basically had no way to complete his cracking. Moreover, Dang Han was still pacing on the sidelines, looking for his chance to make the fatal blow.

Jin Yin’s eyes went suddenly red. He had never thought he would actually make such a fatal mistake in that instant! He felt ashamed of his timidity! A hint of determination flashed past his eyes, and the shaking in his body suddenly increased! The already disarrayed ball of air focused once again under Jin Yin’s desperate burst of power!

Wen sighed from a corner. “I never thought Jin Yin would be so relentless.”

Yuchi Bai remained silent. That burst of power from Jin Yin just then had thrown away his last hope to survive. The hardest part of the Pointed Cloudburst was to escape it in the end, and the card artisans who used it would have to reserve some strength for the finish in order to escape. Jin Yin’s burst of power had abandoned his last hope of escape!

Mo Ta had died, Jeremy had died, and Bao Le had died; now, Jin Yin would die. Only three of the captains of the seven small teams were left, which was rather upsetting.

The situation on the field had come to its climax.

Chen Mu manipulated the Go cage beams in an attempt to cut apart the airflow. Jin Yin was desperately trying to focus it while also trying to dodge those fatal beams. He was covered in blood. It was basically impossible to even think of completely breaking out of that dense Go cage. But his desire to fight was incredibly powerful, and he disregarded the beams that wouldn’t hit his vital spots right up to the end. Apart from his vital spots, the beams hit everyplace else on his body as though he didn’t even feel it!

The spurting fresh blood went with the fate of the high-speed airflow, which now looked like a bright red cone from a distance!

Chen Mu’s eyes widened in anger, losing anything of their normally calm look. He catalyzed his perception like crazy along with the energy. Again and again, he mechanically and precisely repeated every cut! He forgot about anything else, only paying attention to that air bomb, which was getting closer and closer to him! He had to win!

His incredibly powerful belief was like a raging inferno, and his heart was crying out furiously! His movements became faster and faster, and his control of his perception became increasingly refined. His cuts were more and more precise, and his perception became still more sensitive.

He had never wanted so much to win! The urge to fight in his heart kept wildly raging, as though a ball of fire was burning in his heart, stimulating every cell in his body. He seemed to have separated from control of his body, his brain filled only with belief. I must win!

Jin Yin was covered in blood, which was spurting far faster than normal under such high pressure. He started to lose consciousness but held on with gritted teeth.

Closer! Closer! He only wanted to smash into him!

That’s it! Too close! He was only five meters from Chen Mu.

Suddenly, a beam showed up in front of his throat. If it had just happened, he could have easily dodged it. By that time, though, the maneuver had become too hard! If he were to dodge the beam on his last shred of energy, he would blow apart in an instant, given the constraints of the airflow!

Jin Yin was chewing his lips, but his injury-riddled face looked inexplicably serene. He didn’t dodge. He seemed to feel something on his neck, but he could no longer tell what it was. His eyesight became fuzzier and fuzzier, the world seeming to have gone far away, leaving only some vague coloring.

I’ve finally done it…

Having lost consciousness, Jin Yin was torn apart by the flow of air, which had become as agitated as a knife in that instant. The conical air bomb became bright red. It was just on the verge of collapse, but it was too close to Chen Mu—so close that if it were to collapse at that moment, Chen Mu would have no way to dodge it!

The last glowing beam followed along the tip of the cone of air and cut it cleanly apart! If there had only been a few more energy beads and a few more beams, he could have completely destroyed the air bomb! But he was out of energy beads and out of beams!

Hong!

That last cut of Chen Mu’s made the edge of the air bomb finally collapse! Endless turbulent air exploded in every direction. The airflow was so fast that it was sharper than a knife.

The man with the bronze mask stepped forward, adeptly deflecting the flow of bright red air from the Madam. The rest of the crowd wasn’t so lucky, and quite a few of the card artisans who couldn’t get their energy cloaks up were wounded. Cries of pain arose from all over in the extremely chaotic scene.

As the one closest to the air bomb, Chen Mu was the most miserable! He had been physically blown into the air and went flying straight over to where Dang Han was, leaving the trail of a bloody rainbow along the way.

Just at that time, Dang Han, who had been lurking in the dark all along, finally made his move!

An energy starfish soundlessly appeared in front of him, its five tentacles like five silent arrows. They stabbed in midair toward Chen Mu!

What a perfect sneak attack! With no warning and no sound, his timing was impeccable. The places those tentacles were stabbing were all vital spots. If any one of them succeeded, Chen Mu wouldn’t survive. All of that seemed to bode well for a perfect conclusion to the attack.

Seeing that the five tentacles were going to stab Chen Mu, Dang Han couldn’t keep a look of joy from floating onto his face.

Suddenly, Chen Mu’s body made a weird twist in midair to get his vital parts out of the way. Pu! Pu! Pu! He didn’t completely avoid them, though. Three of the tentacles stabbed him, causing three streams of blood to come shooting out!

Dang Han then made sudden contact with Qiao Yuan’s eyes, and the joy on his face froze. What kind of eyes were those? He had never seen such penetratingly violent eyes, so wild and with such determination to fight! Isn’t he even scared?

In Dang Han’s shock, Chen Mu slid away from him in midair like a mudfish.

Dang Han then became flustered and unconsciously chose to deploy his energy cloak, as though it could give him some sense of security. Okay, okay. He’s still seven or eight meters away, which is enough for me to erect the energy cloak. Dang Han felt a bit glad.

Pa!

There was the crisp sound of an explosion in the air as Chen Mu’s arm burst open with a bang. It was blooming in flesh from the shoulder to the elbow to the wrist, and it was covered in a shooting mist of blood.

While Dang Han’s face showed a stolid expression, a line of blood was creeping onto his neck.