The Card Apprentice

Chapter 74: In an Emergency
Chapter 74: In an Emergency

Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

What was that? Chen Mu suddenly had a feeling of great danger, tightening in on him from all around. He was about to explode from holding off that pervasive feeling of oppression! The perception that he had been extending all around his body seemed to be getting compressed back into him by a tremendous force.

That sudden bout of oppression had come out of thin air.

He was struggling to hold up, and didn’t dare to let up. He wasn’t hearing a word of the president’s lecture from the podium. The whole world seemed far away from him, while he kept holding on to his own shred of clarity!

Just when he felt that he couldn’t hold out any longer, that oppressive feeling disappeared without any sign.

Chen Mu immediately heaved a great sigh, holding in his shock. What was that just now? That kind of powerful oppressive feeling was terrifying! He’d had a kind of misapprehension just then that in just a moment longer his own perception could have been crushed to pieces by that powerful bout of oppression.

It would have been difficult even to cry out during that brief period!

Who was it? Who would dare to behave so recklessly in front of so many professors?

Chen Mu’s coloring abruptly changed again! What was going on? His perception that had been oppressed beyond its ability to spring back had now suddenly transformed into a restless impulse to leave his body altogether. It seemed as though there existed some kind of deadly attractive force around his body.

This sucking force was extremely powerful.

He was still rather poor at controlling his perception, which just then seemed like a cauldron of boiling water that kept endlessly roiling. Chen Mu’s face had turned a deathly pale, as the situation got worse and worse. And he was filled with a sense of powerlessness. It was at though a voice were warning him to ’give up, give up.’ Why not? He was so tired and in so much agony.

Without his realizing it, he’d almost bitten right through his lip.

Behind him, Ya Ya had become shocked. She was looking at Chen Mu’s back, where a sweat stain was spreading to the point where Chen Mu’s clothes were saturated and stuck to his body within a minute.

Finding it strange, Ya Ya poked Sister Phoenix to her side and cried, ”Look Sister Phoenix, what’s going on with him?”

Sister Phoenix took a look, and said blandly, ”Who knows. What does that clodhopper have to do with us? He deserves to die as payback for what happened.”

”Could he have gotten sick?” Ya Ya asked with some concern.

”What does getting sick have to do with us?” Sister Phoenix said disdainfully, ”That clodhopper bruised this old lady’s shoulders, so let him die of it. Ya Ya, why are you so worried about this guy?”

Ya Ya shook her head, ”I’m not worried, it’s just that in the end, we’re all classmates.”

”You’re too soft, if you want my opinion.” Sister Phoenix then glanced at the president at the podium, and added, ”That old guy can really talk!” Then she went back to her nap.

A thin glowing membrane was under his seat as placid as a mirror. Those people that Chen Mu had just been paying attention to were all looking serious, and a few of them had sweat dripping from their brows.

Chen Mu’s situation was worse than theirs! He’d used up all his energy, and he still wasn’t able to restrain his turbulent perception, which seemed as though it could leave his body at any time.

The perception which had been evenly spread around his body was now uneven, and incessantly violently throbbing. No matter how hard he tried to control it, his previously tame perception wasn’t taking any orders.

Damn! The veins were bursting out on Chen Mu’s forehead, but he still maintained a shred of calm clarity in his mind. This won’t do. If he were to go on like that, his perception would completely collapse, and all the perceptual training that he’d done for so long would be wasted.

What should I do? What should I do?

There wasn’t any information regarding it in that mysterious card. He flew though everything that he understood and everything that he knew in his mind, and he couldn’t find a single word.

This wasn’t good, and he was quickly approaching his limit. Chen Mu’s violently quaking perception made him look awful, but no one was paying attention to the hideous pain that was underneath it.

Only Ya Ya was paying attention to Chen Mu’s whole back, which was already swimming in sweat. She was about to inquire, but as soon as she started to get up, she became hesitant, and sat back down after a while.

I sure do have to do something, or the aftermath is going to be awful! He was perfectly clear about what a complete collapse of his perception would mean for him.

To some degree, perception and power were wondrously different tunes doing the same work. The most important thing they had in common was composition. There was a sharp distinction in the effects produced by the composition of power. The same was true for perception.

Composition . . . composition . . . this f***king composition!

Then he thought of the tailless shuttle. That crystal clear endlessly spinning tailless shuttle!

This was the power-composition that he was most familiar with and understood the best, up until then. He didn’t know the least thing about power compositions other than that one. There was no more time for him to be hesitant, for him to choose; or for him to make any determinations.

His perception had reached its critical point.

In that instant, Chen Mu carefully controlled the perception at the most central place in his body, which was also where there was the least throbbing. He very carefully nudged the perception into a spin, afraid that the smallest bit of carelessness could cause the complete collapse of his perception.

The tailless shuttle card didn’t simply spin, there were many parts to its composition, with each section being very tiny. Each part followed a regulated rotation, and among those there was also regulation. But Chen Mu’s understanding of all of that was still too shallow, and he had no way of knowing what kind of regulation it really was. Or why the shuttle would continue to increase its speed after it had shot off.

But for right then, he had enough to make use of from what he did know about the tailless shuttle card.

With his nudging, the perception at his most inner level started to spin little by little. And then it started to spin faster little by little until it was going faster and faster. Then without his awareness, a very small perceptual vortex started to take shape within him.

Chen Mu put all his energy into that tiny vortex. He needed to control it very cautiously, and he had to control the spinning speed within a certain limit. He was still remembering that the faster the tailless shuttle spun, the more powerful it became, but that also meant that it was less stable.

Chen Mu had never considered that he might have such explosive stuff ready to go inside of him.

The spinning of the vortex was increasing little by little, and it started to draw in the perception from the outer levels, spinning them up together. Very quickly, there was more and more of his perception in the vortex, and its drawing power was stronger and stronger. And the speed kept climbing!

Some kind of inexplicable panic arose within Chen Mu. This was a panic in the face of the unknown, since he didn’t know what might happen if he kept on like this, but he did know that if he kept on he would certainly be in trouble.

And then knowing that the perceptual vortex was getting gradually huge, he started to lose some control of its speed.

Like a gigantic whale sucking in a hundred rivers, those previously roiling perceptions were all brought into the perceptual vortex in a moment.

Chen Mu then discovered that there was a peculiarly composed power distributed around his body. Could this composition be the main culprit for the violent throbbing of his perception?

Without waiting for it to react, he drew every last bit of his perception into the vortex.

What happened next surprised him. The rapidly swirling vortex suddenly transformed into some kind of massive repulsive force, bouncing away those strangely composed power structures.

If someone could crawl under the seat to look, it would seem as though a rock were dropped into Chen Mu’s seat, and ring after ring of nearly imperceptible dense ripples would appear on the thin white glowing membrane, spreading with incredible speed in all directions.

The lightly glowing micro membrane which had been as smooth as a mirror became chaotic of a sudden. It began to vibrate restlessly and then in a very short time became suddenly violent.

At the same time, violent vibrations started up in over a dozen places.

Something then snapped as though a mirror had suddenly been broken into pieces, and that lightly glowing membrane fell into pieces, and the fine power was annihilated into thin air.

Qing Qing’s expression changed. Without any chance to react, she had heard her bamboo-stalk classmate stifle a grunt, while his face instantly turned a deathly white. The expressions on the other Star Academy students sitting around him had also changed.

The apparatus crashed broken to the ground from the bamboo-stalk classmate’s wrist, with none of its cards surviving; all mangled beyond recognition.

Even the ever-placid face of Wang Ze changed its expression.

Some cold groans came from among the group in the card artisan department, as though they were ridiculing the bamboo-stalk fellow’s overestimation of himself. The Star Academy students around him flew into a rage, poised to rise up. But they restrained themselves when they looked at Qing Qing and Wang Ze.

Qing Qing quickly put her hand on the bamboo-shoot classmate’s forehead, and said very seriously after a while, ”You’ll have to recuperate for about a month, not using your perception during that time.”

”What happened?” Wang Ze asked anxiously. He hadn’t perceived anything, since his power was not up to Qing Qing’s. But he had never imagined that there could be someone who could break through the bamboo-stalk’s consummate skills.

”We’ve run into an Ace! Such an ace must be in the card artisan department. He suddenly rose up, and those guys saw their advantage and teamed up to destroy the Star Lure. But I’ve already clarified that the card artisan department has eight people, with three in the card making department, and two more in the right corner.” The bamboo-shoot guy’s face had recovered some of its color, but everyone could still hear how much effort it was for him to talk.

Everyone was shocked. They hadn’t imagined that the bamboo-stalk guy could be so injured that it would even be difficult to talk.

”I don’t know where the ace is; I can’t find his seat.” There was still a note of not giving in with what the bamboo-stalk guy said.

The Star Lure was a special and mysterious skill. In all of the Star Academy, there were only a very few people who could use it well. It was very difficult to make the Star Lure card, and there weren’t very many people at the Star Academy who could make it either. There was an even smaller number of people who specialized in the card. Adding to that that it basically wasn’t a battle card, people hadn’t paid much attention to it.

But that didn’t mean that they didn’t understand the Star Lure card. On the contrary, they had a great dread of the Star Lure card. It didn’t have any use in harming ordinary people, but it was very dangerous to those who had refined their perceptions.

Most of the time it was used as a kind of probe card, specifically targeting high level card artisans. Card artisans who were even slightly awesome couldn’t hide from it.

Given Chen Mu’s basic perceptual strength, the card shouldn’t have harmed him. But the acuity of his perception far surpassed its strength.

As it happened, even though one’s perception might not be strong enough, if it was sensitive enough, the Star Lure card could cause injury. The bamboo-shoot guy hadn’t anticipated that at all. His basic idea had been to find out how many hidden aces there were, and he never thought he would run into some guy like Chen Mu.

Chen Mu had put a crack right into the trap emitted by the Star Lure card, and those aces who were in the trap immediately took their opportunity to act together. With ten aces fighting back at once, there was no way that the bamboo-shoot guy wasn’t going to get injured. And because of how fantastic the composition of the Star Lure was, the bamboo-shoot guy was only injured, since with some ten aces acting at the same time, he would have laid down a life that had been pretty good up to then.

Qing Qing stood up and looked over to the card artisan department.

She had also felt the reflected waves. She and the bamboo-shoot guy were made of the same stuff, but with her superior power there were a few things that she understood a little better than he did.

But she wasn’t able to find where that mysterious ace was sitting either, only the general area.

As she scanned, she unfortunately didn’t discover any suspicious targets.

Chen Mu had returned to looking normal, having already tightly bound his perceptions within his body. Their spinning had already slowed, and as they slowed he let out a sigh. Once the spinning slowed, there was no longer any danger. But no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t return his now spinning perception to its original disposition.

He didn’t know if that change was good or bad. There was still some fear lingering in his heart, and he didn’t dare disperse his perception around himself.

What kind of thing was that strangely composed power-body just now anyhow? Having some lingering fear, he leaned back to find that his back was completely soaked. He was still puzzled about why those power bodies so suddenly disappeared.

He never really considered that he was someone who had just received a lethal blow.

His color started to return to normal, while he continued to ponder who it could be that had just released such a power-body.

Pretending to look around for no particular reason, he found that nobody looked any different.

Chen Mu lingered to wonder if it was possible that no one else had been influenced. How could they not have felt something? Whether in strength or acuity of perception, there were lots of people here better than him there. How could they not have felt something?

He suddenly felt a chill, as his heart rose into his throat. Who was it really? Could it have been an attack targeted at him?

It immediately made him very nervous when the idea came into his mind. Was it the Star Academy? Had they discovered him?

He wouldn’t be too surprised if it came from the Star Academy with that strange method of attack.

But what tracks had he left? Could it have been her? Chen Mu suddenly remembered that girl named Qing Qing that he ran into that day.

Chen Mu strove to calm himself down, and to restrain the fear in his heart.

If the Star Academy had really discovered him, what action would they take? They would definitely have attacked more aggressively. And there was no need for them to be so cautious.

The more he thought about it the more confused Chen Mu became, and he could only shut his eyes to rest. That was a pretty scary moment just then, and no matter whether it was physical or emotional strength, he had used up too much of it.

Having closed his eyes, Chen Mu unwittingly fell asleep.

By chance while she was scanning, Qing Qing’s gaze fell on Chen Mu, who she felt looked a little familiar. Thinking carefully, she remembered the scene that day, and then looking again at how Chen Mu was dressed, she suddenly wanted to laugh. And now seeing Chen Mu snoring away like that, she laughed and moved her gaze away.

Chen Mu didn’t know how long he had slept, but when he awakened he found that there were only a very few people scattered about the auditorium.

He walked hurriedly to his dormitory. He was a little anxious about whether that kind of unknown change to his body’s perception would have any adverse effect, whether he’d messed things up this time.

He frowned as soon as he got to the dormitory. Almost all the lights were lit up, and there was noise all over the place which could be heard from far away. He couldn’t tell how many people were singing at once.

As soon as he walked into the dorm, his ears were already ringing. He finally understood why the sponsored student dorm was in such a remote location. The veteran teachers were long prepared for them.

Returning to his own room and closing the door, the sounds of singing were still audible. Only by going into the bathroom could he cut off the sounds. Chen Mu then sat right down in the bathtub, and started to examine his perception.