The Card Apprentice

“How would this be?” Bogner was pointing to a ravine up ahead. It was very deep, and the way in was only ten or so meters across. It only needed a little sprucing up to become a rather outstanding point of defense.

A map of the Pascal Region popped out in front of Chen Mu from a fantasy card, and he marked their current position. Xi Ping’s gaze also fell onto the map. “There are three small forts in the vicinity. They are about 600 kilometers away, so not too far and not too near. They belong to different powers, which is rather favorable for us.”

Chen Mu pondered a moment and nodded. “We’ll station ourselves here to start.”

Seeing that the boss had made his decision, Bogner quickly gave the orders. “Go check out the ravine, Xiaobo. For such an excellent ravine to go unused, I reckon there must be something up inside.”

Xiaobo muttered plaintively, “Why am I always the one to be injured? I’m the electricity, I’m the light…” Although he looked rather reluctant, he flew up and readily executed the order.

Before long, the communications card suddenly transmitted Xiaobo’s exclamation. “My god, there are bugs in here. A lot of them!” It could be seen from the image transmitted by the communications card that there were piles of snow-white, small bugs squirming all over the place.

Brenton’s expression changed, and he said with a trembling voice, “It’s the snow silkworm! No wonder there’s no one here. Who would dare to come where there are so many snow silkworms?”

“Snow silkworms?” Chen Mu tilted his head to ask.

“Yes. It’s a kind of insect that lives in the icy and snowy regions. They can spit out an energy body that contains cold breath. It doesn’t have much power, but it can be trouble in large numbers. There’s nothing useful on their bodies, so no one wants to waste energy to hunt them down.” Although Brenton was still young and didn’t have much experience, he did have a lot of theoretical knowledge.

He suddenly called out. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again, wearing a puzzled expression. “There must be something in the ravine. The concentration of metallic compounds is very high.”

Everyone then remembered Brenton’s area of expertise was smelling with perception. Up until then, everyone felt it was a strange kind of perception.

“What special characteristics does the snow silkworm have?” Chen Mu asked seriously. He was rather happy with the ravine. It would be too bad if they were to abandon it so easily.

Brenton furrowed his brow in thought. “They are social in large numbers, and apart from being able to shoot out cold energy bodies, they have no other abilities.”

“Is poison effective?” Chen Mu responded quickly, coming up with that in the first minute. Since he wasn’t a pure card artisan, the pattern of his thought wasn’t so restricted.

“Poison?” Brenton’s expression turned a bit unnatural. That term was a little far off for a card artisan. After thinking about it, he said, “I don’t know. You can give it a try.”

Chen Mu nodded. When it came to concocting poison, they didn’t lack for that sort of personnel on the team. Wei-ah was the ace among them, though he was better at using all kinds of plants and animals in the jungle to concoct them. Chen Mu could do a little himself, but he was far from Wei-ah’s ability.

Still, there was a professional on the team—Sue Lochiro. As a high-level medical card artisan, understanding poisons was a required course and the object of some research. However, when it came to poisons and that kind of thing, except for some girls with rather special temperaments, it wasn’t something ordinary girls liked. But Sue Lochiro knew the basics. Although she had an uncomfortable expression, she still gave a slight nod. “I’ll give it a try.”

The poison was quickly prepared and put into a special reagent bottle.

Looking at the dense snow silkworms all over the ravine, the rustling sound of their creeping gave people a chill. The snow silkworm was about the length of an adult palm and a little thicker than a thumb. Chen Mu sucked in a breath of air and threw the reagent bottle, which traced a parabola before falling among the snow worms.

There was a light pop as the reagent bottle smashed, and a ball of green mist rose up with a hissing sound.

The snow silkworms were immediately stirred up. In the area enshrouded by the green smoke, they were writhing in pain. The power of that ball of poisonous gas was perfectly evident; within a few short seconds, the snow silkworms enshrouded by the green mist had already turned stiff. A light green layer suffused their originally white bodies.

Wind raged outside the ravine, but there was no wind at all inside.

Watching the green must quickly dissipate, Chen Mu and the rest couldn’t help but look overjoyed. That method was effective, after all. There were so many of the snow silkworms filling the huge ravine that it gave everyone the creeps.

But the other card artisans were looking at Chen Mu in fear. Poison was really too far off for a card artisan. They had already gotten used to using the cards they had to solve all sorts of problems. Only Xiaobo hadn’t changed his expression. When he was deep in the jungle, he needed to fight with all kinds of wild beasts and was no stranger to those kinds of tricks.

The toxicity of the poisonous smoke Sue Lochiro had concocted, along with its fine diffusion, made Chen Mu consider whether he should make it into a conventional weapon.

Suddenly, there came spewing quite a few light blue spouts of water from among the snow silkworms. The fine energy fluctuations reminded everyone that these things that looked like columns of water were actually energy bodies.

Sure enough, when the light blue columns of water touched the blue smoke, they turned into a ball of light blue mist. By now, all the other snow silkworms were spitting out light blue columns of water. There were too many of them there. In the blink of an eye, the green smoke had been completely enclosed by the light blue mist.

There was a rustling! The green smoke disappeared at a speed too fast for the naked eye. Given Chen Mu’s stunning eyesight, he could clearly see that the green smoke had condensed into crystals the size of grains of sand. Those hard, green sand crystals then fell onto the ground like a burst of light rain.

Chen Mu’s heart skipped a beat. The light blue energy bodies spewed by those snow silkworms were ice-cold, after all, and they could even freeze the toxic smoke!

Chen Mu’s gaze inclined toward Wei-ah, who shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do.”

But Chen Mu still wasn’t thinking of abandoning such a perfect ravine in that geography. Not wanting to give up, the mass of snow silkworms had to be eradicated. Chen Mu believed if the energy bodies that had been able to freeze the toxic smoke were spewed onto a person, apart from freezing the person, he couldn’t even think of what else they might do.

His gaze fell to where the snow silkworms were. That burst of toxic smoke had already wiped out at least a fifth of them. Staring at the incessantly creeping snow silkworms, Chen Mu was making a quick analysis in his head. The light blue energy bodies had a certain danger, but the main trouble was their numbers. As far as the eye could see, they were all over the place, which inevitably gave rise to a desire to kill them all.

The weakness of the snow silkworm was obvious: They weren’t fast, and they were a lot less dangerous compared to the rapidly moving swarms of ants in the jungle. After thinking about it, Chen Mu said, “Everyone else should scatter. Those with a range of attacks, come up with me.” After saying that, Chen Mu flew first to above where the snow silkworms were. Xiaobo immediately followed him. Among the other card artisans, only Lu Xiaoru and Hertha came along. The others attacked with only a single body.

Since he was concerned about being hit by the light blue energy bodies, they flew up high, at least 100 meters up. Only then did they discover that all around the ravine stood extraordinarily tall cliffs, and they had only reached a small part of them.

Chen Mu made a simple command. “Begin.”

He then swapped to the folding Yanbo card. It was the right place just then to use that sort of explosive card.

Everyone below saw line after line of disordered, fiery red folding wavy blades falling from the sky into the middle of the ravine and causing a string of explosions! The folding Yanbo card’s power left everyone transfixed, and even Chen Mu himself was a little surprised. To tell the truth, he hadn’t had a chance to use the folding Yanbo card now in his hands, except for the time he’d tested its power. Now, once he took a shot, Chen Mu found out it was a lot more powerful than he’d imagined. Only then did he understand why Jiao Si had been so caught up with that card.

Chen Mu had no notion to conserve energy. With no scruples at all, he madly smashed the folding wavy blades down; every one of them was a bomb. In a single breath, Chen Mu had emitted all the energy in a four-star power card. Lu Xiaoru immediately flew to Chen Mu’s side to hold up his body, so he could swap out the power card.

What was it like when all the energy in a four-star power card was emitted within ten seconds? Everyone saw what happened.

Hong! Hong! Hong! Hong!

Ball after ball of utterly gorgeous, bright red fireballs blossomed in every corner of the ravine. The concentrated sound of the explosions hurt everyone’s eardrums, and there was already a sea of red fire within the ravine. The powerful explosions cut off a large chunk of the mountain wall, which crashed down, burying who knew how many snow silkworms.

Ru Qiu was already completely stupefied by the scene! Was that the power of the folding Yanbo card? It was a little different from the president’s refined usage. As she saw it, Chen Mu’s deployment was completely unreasonable. However, she hadn’t thought Chen Mu’s wildly unreasonable deployment would play out so vividly!

Bogner’s expression shifted. “Get out of the ravine.” The poison that had just been turned into ice crystals had immediately turned back into a gas under the high temperature. Because of the airflow formed by the explosions, it kept being stirred up. The toxic smoke was blown into nearly every corner of the ravine.

Just as everyone had gotten out of the ravine, Chen Mu and those with him returned. They also saw the toxic smoke diffusing under their feet. Everyone looked a little dazed, having been scared by that wave of crazy explosions.

They had gone far away from the exit of the ravine. Now, no one dared to go near it. The residual sound of the explosions in the ravine were reverberating off the walls in a dull but striking manner. The light green flow of gas that came from the entrance told them it wouldn’t be a good idea to get any closer just then.