The Card Apprentice Chapter 135

Chapter 135: The Dangerous Jungle
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Chen Mu was naked as he kept washing his clothes which were about to turn to rags. To leave no trace of the scent of blood, he kept on scrubbing them to where the clothes that had already been tattered didn’t look like clothes anymore. And he still wasn’t satisfied, as if he seriously wanted to scrub them into a pulp. Perhaps because of the stimulation from the cold water, Chen Mu had started to recover his strength a little, and his depleted perception was starting to revive.
Chen Mu had kept up his guard while struggling with his clothes and he suddenly seemed to see a dark shadow flash in the water not far away. In the pitch dark of the forest if it weren’t for the reflection off the water and the recent enhancement of his facility in the dark, he certainly wouldn’t have seen that dark shadow.
He quickly stopped his activity and looked alertly at the creek while almost unconsciously activating the bipolar thunderball card.
Five small thunderballs appeared in an instant, while the dark shadow came shooting toward Chen Mu’s chest from the water. A perfect five-sided glowing shield burst out in front of him.
Ping Ping Ping!
Three hits so close that they sounded like one crashed into the light shield. There was a lot of power in that dark shadow, and as the first hit pinged into the light shield it transformed into a shower of sparks as the remaining power of the dark shadow continued to shoot toward Chen Mu. It was a good thing that the bipolar thunderball was so outstanding, as it instantly formed into a second glowing shield, when another shot cracked into it, and the second shield shattered. Then it continued on to smash the third.
In the end, the fourth energy shield smartly fended off the dark shadow, as the light shield’s scattering sparkles reflected back, finally illuminating what the dark shadow looked like. It was about as thick as a finger, about thirty centimeters long, and looked like an eel or a water snake at first glance. There was a slender line along each side of its head, which was its mouth. Its mouth was fully a third the length of its entire body, and once it opened, the two rows of sharp white teeth were enough to chill a person’s heart.
With such a long mouth and the two rows of teeth spiked against the light shield as though they would chomp it, its body was left writhing wildly in midair.
Chen Mu could hear the terrifying sound of its gnashing teeth on the surface of the light shield.
Its two tiny eyes were staring at the stunned Chen Mu, dripping with mad desire. He had never seen such a creepy creature, with its two rows of white teeth so striking in the dark. The most frightening thing was the look of extremely wild hunger which oozed from the small creature, which caused even the heart of one so daring as Chen Mu to pound.
After a while, seeming to know that it wasn’t going to break through the light shield, it twisted around and shot back into the water like an arrow.
Chen Mu hadn’t yet quite reacted to that series of misfortunes which had happened so fast that he couldn’t really take it all in. He instinctively pulled away from the creek, still holding his dripping wet clothes in his hand. Then he suddenly came-to when the drips landed on his foot.
He felt a jolt of fear after the fact, that if he hadn’t activated the bipolar thunderball card in the nick of time then he would have died in the mouth of that scary little thing. That row of sharp teeth could easily have torn through his skin and into his body, killing him for sure. Chen Mu watched the surface of the creek with lingering fear as he quickly moved back. How could he have known that such a terrifying creature could exist in such a small creek where he had thought there wouldn’t be any danger and nothing so large could live.
Its lightning speed and close rows of teeth along with the crazed hunger it oozed had left a deep impression on Chen Mu.
The forest really was a dangerous place where anyplace that might look safe still held unknown lurking danger.
The danger of the outer reaches was something that had been giving humanity headaches forever. Even though human capabilities had been getting ever stronger, humanity still paled in comparison with the beasts in the outer reaches. There weren’t many card artisans in the entire Heavenly Federation who would dare to go there alone.
Ever since Heiner Van Sant, the development of the card system had entered a period of decline which still continued. Even though the system continued to be refined, no entirely new theoretical frameworks had emerged which could bring about fundamental change. And no individuals had come along to compare with the two grand masters Rosenberg and Heiner Van Sant. The phenomena were the same in the worlds of both card masters and card artisans.
No individual powerhouse was enough to change the relations between humanity and the beasts, which is to say that the powerful people at that time only had great individual power and couldn’t bring about fundamental changes in the whole society the way that Rosenberg and Van Sant had done.
They still weren’t strong enough!
All the cities that existed had been opened up during the time of those two great masters, and the Heavenly Federation hadn’t opened up any new cities after the death of the grand master Heiner Van Sant.
The power of the wild beasts was immense as, for example, the power of the blow from that little thing just now had been sufficient to penetrate a shuttle car.
Chen Mu wasn’t as he had been under the state of breath control, and he could feel the impact of negative emotions; his heart was filled with fear of the jungle by then. But it was a good thing that he still had the memory of what he had been thinking while in the state of breath control and knew that what he had thought had been correct. So that despite the fear that he felt he could still drum up his courage, and no matter how dangerous the jungle was, he would survive somehow.
He couldn’t help smirking to himself about his original expectation that he could escape the base, which hadn’t included the realization that he would end up in such dire straights and find himself in such a terrifying spot. If he had known that earlier, he would have remained at the base where at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about survival for a little while.
The price of freedom was high!
But then he thought that wasn’t necessarily so. He had been curious all along about the issue of why Bo Wen was so deadly intent on killing him in the end. Could it have been for the “weak water” pen set? Impossible! Chen Mu immediately vetoed that guess. Bo Wen didn’t seem like that kind of person, as cultivated as he was. Chen Mu had thought that he was a Ning from the beginning, but then when he thought about it later he felt that wasn’t so. If he were a Ning, then he would certainly have found some way to capture him alive, and not try to kill him so mercilessly as soon as he saw him. And if he had still been living on the base, things wouldn’t have been any better.
Why? What was really going on? Chen Mu wracked his brain but couldn’t come up with anything. And then there was that woman whom he never thought would end up under Bo Wen. He still couldn’t remember where he had seen Cheng Ying.
He didn’t know whether they could accompany him into the jungle, but that wasn’t important anymore. He was still in the relative safety of the outskirts of the outer reaches. While they might not dare to enter just then, they would certainly come searching for him once it was light. Then it would be dangerous for him, and so he had to take advantage of the night to go more deeply into the jungle.
He already understood that if he were to fall into the hands of the Ning family just then, he would find himself with no way to live. While Chen Mu hadn’t guessed Bo Wen’s identity, he knew that his relations with the Ning’s were close, since Ning Peng had told him his apartment number.
Although it was a very small chance, his best chance for survival was in his own hands.
Having thought things through, Chen Mu’s terror weakened as his heroic spirit blossomed.
* * *
Things were going smoothly for Bo Wen and Cheng Ying along the way, though they were moving ahead very slowly, not having the ability that Chen Mu had to see things in the dark. They had to constantly go through all sorts of clues to determine if they were moving in the right direction. Cheng Ying was a specialist at that. Bo Wen was immensely gladdened by the decision he had just made, since his speed would have been much slower without Cheng Ying.
But they still hadn’t found any traces of Chen Mu after walking for over half an hour. And they had no way to know that Chen Mu had used a high-speed jet stream card to fly into the jungle. That was something unimaginable, since to fly at such a speed in Amay City incurred a shocking probability of being killed in a crash. There was basically no possibility to survive flying in the jungle.
Chen Mu had once again exceeded their expectations.
They still hadn’t realized that Chen Mu was already quite a distance from them.
The distance flown in ten to twenty high-speed seconds would take a rather long time to walk.
And what had gotten Bo Wen even more discouraged was that they had gotten the news that those card artisans closest behind them had run into some trouble. They had run into a swarm of iron bees, and if it weren’t for some among them bringing along a repellent, they would have been finished there that day. The speed of the iron bee was quite fast among bees and they had bodies as hard as steel. Each one was the size of a fist and had a fifteen centimeter long stinger sharp enough to raise the hair on anyone. Those were often used as an assassin’s weapon for their hardness and sharpness.
There were probably about three hundred in the swarm of iron bees, and they had tightly surrounded the card artisans. But even though they hadn’t come closer because of the repellent, they showed no signs of flying off.
Bo Wen didn’t intend to turn back, since he didn’t want to run into a swarm of iron bees, and he wasn’t concerned with the fate of those card artisans. What he was concerned about what that if he turned back at that time, he would have little chance to find Chen Mu. Bo Wen smiled bitterly for their bad fortune to run into iron bees, and a swarm of them at that.
He had decided to keep going along with Cheng Ying, since Chen Mu was seriously injured which minimized his threat to them. What they had to worry about was running into some awesome beasts.
He was still going to kill Chen Mu, even if he might run into some beasts!
That was his first time to realize the feeling of that kind of fear in his body. So, he had decided that he would kill Chen Mu, whatever it took.