The Card Apprentice

The two of them remained helplessly silent, making things feel strange in the huge room. Neither of them knew where to start. Needless to say, Chen Mu felt physically uncomfortable soaking in the restorative liquid.

Playing with a model skull that was used for reference, Sue Lochiro didn’t quite know what to do with herself. It raised the hair on her skin somewhat to look directly at Chen Mu. The amorous feelings of a medical card artisan were quite different from those of ordinary people, after all.

Still, Chen Mu’s mental qualities were just a little better in the end, and he quickly calmed down. He actually thought Sue Lochiro being at a loss about what to do was rather interesting. He just kept staring at her, bright-eyed.

She became a little flustered with Chen Mu staring at her and didn’t know what to do with her hands. She lost her grip on the model skull, and it plunked to the ground. Her face flushed red as she hurriedly leaned over to pick it up.

From his angle, Chen Mu could clearly tell her neck had turned pink, which he found still more interesting. His gaze became even more unrestrained.

In actuality, the interactions of a man and a woman were like a battle. One side would advance while the other side would then almost always retreat. If the other side didn’t retreat but advanced instead, the counterpart would often retreat.

With Chen Mu’s gaze so unrestrained and often sweeping up and down her body, Sue Lochiro’s face became so red it was nearly flushed with blood. Even her hands were shaking. She became extremely nervous. If she had been able to maintain clear thought, she would have been surprised at how fast her heart was beating. Too bad she was really too nervous, and her mind had turned blank. It was as though it had short-circuited.

Without knowing how long it took, she finally returned to being more clear-headed. She lifted her head, a little dazed, just in time to make eye contact with Chen Mu’s smile that wasn’t quite a smile, along with his unrestrained gaze, which made her abruptly both ashamed and angry.

That bit of anger immediately rescued her from that dazed state. She had always been a woman who showed her inside on the outside; otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone so long without a boyfriend.

Sue Lochiro’s beautiful, round eyes looked exasperated. “Is there something you haven’t seen already? Something that makes you want to look at it today?” Once she said that, she instantly felt like she had done something wrong, and her face started to burn until it was on fire.

Chen Mu was a little embarrassed by the outburst. He had grown that far without ever really looking at a woman. He hadn’t even noticed the clumsiness of Sue Lochiro’s speech in his embarrassment.

“Hmph, you’ll suffer for what you’re looking at!” Sue Lochiro raised her jade face to show her slender, fair, pink neck, not thinking there were still large splotches of red on it. As soon as she said that, she felt once again that it wasn’t right. She didn’t know what she was thinking that had made the signs of flushing go away, but they abruptly came back.

What had happened to her that day that she could only say the wrong thing? She felt like her feelings were a mess as she kept trying to correct the blather she blurted out.

That made Chen Mu feel embarrassed. When he thought about it, he didn’t know how many times Sue Lochiro had looked his body up and down by then. It did seem like he was surely suffering for it.

“Well, you’ll just have to make up for my suffering.” Some demon must have caught Chen Mu’s tongue for him to suddenly say such a thing.

Sue Lochiro’s face flushed completely red. Without saying a word, she lowered her head and ran out the door.

Truly, just as he said what he did, Chen Mu regretted it. When he saw her run out, he immediately knew he had said the wrong thing. He was afraid he’d offended her that day. It should be easy enough to make amends for offending someone, but no one could afford to offend Sue Lochiro. With his injuries still not healed, he remained in her hands. If she were to make him suffer, he would have to obediently take it.

What was most messed up was that if he made her leave in anger, then where would he ever find such a talented medical card artisan again?

However, he didn’t have a way to move just then; otherwise, he could find her and apologize. It was too bad his health wasn’t entirely restored. He didn’t have the strength even to move a finger, let alone to climb out of the therapeutic apparatus. It looked like he would just have to wait to apologize until she came back.

Soaking in the restorative liquid, Chen Mu was unable to move any part of his body, and he became somewhat bored. Having nothing to do, he simply started to think about the experience of that battle, and especially the ambush that had given him a vaguely new understanding of battling.

Any battle wasn’t necessarily just between card artisans. As far as what moves to make and how to fight, that wasn’t important so long as you could prevail. That was the most powerful thing Chen Mu felt from that battle.

Having gone through so many years of development, card artisan battles were certainly quite rich. But, in many regards, they restricted people’s ways of thinking to a certain extent. The world was so vast, and card artisans occupied such an important position, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for other types of battle personnel under the sun.

There were a few critical aspects of that battle. The first one was the first surprise attack he and Wei-ah had made. Wei-ah had simply inhuman ferocity, which was invincible in that kind of small-group combat. But it wouldn’t be quite right to attribute all the factors to Wei-ah’s strength.

The advantages of the cardless sects were the most important reason among them. Not only were Chen Mu and Wei-ah successful in attacking the enemy during the first ambush, but during the second ambush, when they still succeeded, the issue was resolved once and for all. What most surprised them were the many holes in the perceptual detection of the card artisans in their adversary’s troops.

The decline of the cardless sects went back to the period of sects. After having gone through so many years of development, card artisans had long since become 99 percent of battle personnel. After the card artisan style of battle became popular, there was no room for any other style to exist.

Over time, when people thought about battle, they were already used to only considering that the enemy would also be card artisans. Therefore, no one had thought that just as they were assuming the card system had reached its high point, the cardless sects and other styles of fighting would start their resurgence.

Truth be told, Chen Mu had the advantage of catching them off-guard that time. If his adversaries had been prepared, there would certainly have been plenty of ways to respond to the situation. Even Chen Mu himself could think up quite a few kinds of cards. But there was no such thing as “if” in that world.

So, they won.

Another bright spot in that battle was Lu Xiaoru’s Sound Beam. That sort of alternative card also left people defenseless. Sound waves were invisible, without substance, and belonged to a type of attack that covered an area; they clearly didn’t have enough power to kill people. But they were quite suited to disrupting the enemy and giving one’s teammates an opportunity.

If it hadn’t been for Lu Xiaoru’s sound wave attack, the bar-browed man wouldn’t have had a way to make such an outstanding play. Chen Mu decided he would build some strategies around that characteristic of Lu Xiaoru. He wouldn’t be doing that job himself, of course. He would have to consider who would be the best one to hand it off to.

His own extraordinary play had been one of the crucial parts of the battle. When he thought of it, for him to make such an outstanding play had its own similar reasons. With the cover of darkness, he wasn’t going to attract as much attention as normal. He took a lot of advantage of that during the battle.

Carefully analyzing it all, Chen Mu’s thinking became clearer and clearer. He had succeeded in constraining his energy fluctuations to within a very small range, and he had taken advantage of the cover of darkness. His attacks were undoubtedly also very sudden. However, his previous sparring with Xiaobo had been indoors and fully lit.

He suddenly realized it wasn’t that his strength surged in the dark. Rather, he was successful in using environmental factors to his advantage. Thinking through that crucial point, he felt perfectly excited. So long as he thought clearly, he would be able to take advantage of those obscure points later.

Once he’d cleared up his thinking, Chen Mu reacted more quickly. There were still the other card artisans who fought so tenaciously. If they hadn’t contained the enemy, the pressure he and Wei-ah were under would have increased several times over, and the results of the battle would be hard to tell.

Those card artisans had all died on the field of battle. When he thought of that, Chen Mu’s expression became bleaker after having just been so excited. He was suddenly somewhat dejected.

But he wasn’t the sentimental type, and he quickly pulled back his feelings and tried to cheer himself up. He had yet to determine some things, and he could only do so if he understood and was strong enough himself. No one could grasp everything, but the stronger he was, the more things he could grasp. The reason he was so helpless at that time was probably because he wasn’t strong enough.

Chen Mu didn’t like to indulge strong feelings because they wouldn’t help him change his current situation in the least. If he were to let himself get stuck in unhappy thoughts, it wouldn’t be as good as finding a way out.

The cruelty of reality was that you could only drum up courage going forward; there was no other way to go.

In the subsequent few days, Chen Mu earnestly soaked in the restorative liquid. And, during those few days, Sue Lochiro didn’t come once. Chen Mu thought to himself that he must have really made her angry. But he was enjoying the quiet with no one to disturb him. Having just gone through such a huge battle, he urgently needed the quiet to recalibrate. No matter how strong he was, he was still an almost 20-year-old youth.

Soaking in the restorative liquid and drilling his perception, Chen Mu got some rare leisure for himself.

On the third day, Sue Lochiro finally came in.