The Card Apprentice

Chapter 116: The Little Company of Five

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The five small thunderballs were cheerfully circling around Chen Mu, whose face had a grimace more bitter than a bitter melon. Why wouldn’t those five little thunderballs disappear after all? They should normally have disappeared as soon as he turned off the apparatus.

Chen Mu stood up.

His elbow carelessly bumped the edge of the desk, and a cup that had been placed up high became unstable, and then came tumbling toward him.

As Chen Mu was about to grab it, there was suddenly a flash of light. Like fish smelling raw meat, the five small thunderballs came shooting toward the glass from all directions!

Pow! When was such an ordinary glass ever attacked like that, smashing into bits in an instant, shattering in all directions.

What was that?

What the five little thunderballs had done so suddenly was far beyond anything Chen Mu could have anticipated, giving him no chance to react.

Seeing the shards darting toward him, Chen Mu was about to dodge, when an energy shield suddenly appeared in front of him with a crackling sound. The shards hit it with a very crisp-sounding impact.

Chen Mu stared dumbly at that gorgeous five-sided energy shield, on each corner of which was a conspicuous small thunderball. Before he could realize what had happened, the energy shield suddenly disappeared, and the five little thunderballs went back to their previous flitting around.

Then a very fine powder of porcelain floated slowly down from the air to right by the dumbstruck Chen Mu’s heel.

Seeing those five thunderballs still as naughty as ever, Chen Mu felt like his brain had short-circuited. What had occurred in front of his eyes had utterly overturned all the ideas he had in his head.

What? What is this?

What had just happened kept coming back to his brain. Starting from the instant that the cup had come at him, the five little thunderballs shot toward it and smashed it. And when the shards had scattered, the thunderballs formed themselves into a five-sided energy shield right in front of him, and then the energy shield’s power grid pulverized them all, after which the five-sided energy shield disappeared.

The whole process happened like a slow-motion card play, and it kept replaying in Chen Mu’s mind. Although it had happened suddenly, he could see every detail very clearly. This effective memory was the result of every little thunderball hanging onto a perceptual tendril such that he could remember every detail of the entire process.

He stood there dumbly in the thick of the misfortunes passing through his brain, with the changes in the energy endlessly flashing by. With every detail flashing back, that was the first time he had ever experienced such intuitive, direct and clear perception of the transformation of energy.

Although it had all happened in a spark of time, in that instant, the energy transformations that had manifested were enough to greatly widen the scope of Chen Mu’s vision. A clarity came surging out from the depths of his heart, as though a skylight had been opened before him, letting in all the sunlight.

Not knowing how much time had passed, Chen Mu finally came out of this strange state. He took a look at the time and couldn’t help being shocked that a half hour had gone by.

His gaze fell onto those five merry little thunderballs. But he didn’t need to use his eyes, which he closed, and could still sense every little movement of those five little thunderballs. He could very clearly know what they were doing to the finest degree but couldn’t control their any slightest movement.

Yi!

He suddenly noticed that the five little thunderballs had shrunk. He closed his eyes and examined them carefully. As he was sensing them, the five small thunderballs shrunk in a way that couldn’t be hidden.

Then it hit him. Could it be . . .

Thinking about it, he suddenly took some great strides toward his desk which was covered with all sorts of debris.

By the time that he was at the same distance from the desk as the distance he had been from the cup just then, those five little thunderballs stayed selfishly swimming around his body and didn’t mount any attack.

This gave Chen Mu a little more confidence. He slowly picked up a thumb-sized steel ball from his desk, and without any hesitation threw it against the wall.

The ball hit the wall with a ping, and then bounced back, flying toward Chen Mu.

Chen Mu didn’t flinch as he watched the ball coming at him, just like the blockhead that he was. But just as the steel ball flew to where that cup had just been attacked, that stunning scene repeated itself.

Right in front of Chen Mu, black iron powder drifted and fell.

These five little thunderballs would only attack something that was moving fast, which confirmed his conjecture.

And then the five little thunderballs shrank a little more, with their shrinking being still more apparent than the last time. It wasn’t difficult to see that it had taken more power for the five little thunderballs to pulverize the steel ball.

Again, Chen Mu didn’t hesitate to find all the steel balls he could in the apartment, throwing them one after the other. The five little thunderballs could then be seen to shrink in front of him with his naked eye. When Chen Mu had thrown the fifth ball, there was a pop, and the five little thunderballs were finally annihilated into thin air.

The last steel ball which they still hadn’t managed to pulverize really hurt when it hit Chen Mu.

Letting out a long breath, a big stone finally dropped from Chen Mu’s mind. If the five little thunderballs hadn’t disappeared, it would have caused a lot of trouble for him. He wouldn’t have been able to go out with those five eye-catching things around him.

The bipolar thunderball card was a powerful card after all!

Thinking about his having only just tested the secondary holes, that had been his first successful match. According to the previous two experiences, Chen Mu surmised that there should be about four kinds of matches among the secondary holes. Which was to say that at that level, there would probably be three more techniques. And then what about the level-three holes? Chen Mu remembered very clearly that there were eight third-level holes on each of the thunderballs.

Eight techniques?

Chen Mu found that unbelievable. It that’s the way it really was, then that bipolar thunderball card would have fourteen kinds of tactical techniques! This was an extremely terrifying number for any card artisan, without any doubt.

No matter what, he was bowing down in praise before the card master who made the bipolar thunderball card. Apart from the mysterious card, this was the most powerful card he had ever seen.

But he didn’t dare to experiment with abandon just then, since those five little thunderballs had already tired him. The bipolar thunderball card had really brought him too many pleasant surprises. It was too bad that Will’s perceptual control fell too far short, and he couldn’t bring all of the card’s power into play. Otherwise, he would never have needed to exchange his card.

Chen Mu didn’t think he could make a card at that level. It would simply be another tall mountain that he could only gaze up on for him. And as he used to be, he wouldn’t have been able to bring all that card’s power into play either.

The matching of the secondary holes to form different techniques was already extremely difficult for him. And he reckoned that the techniques which might come from matching the third-level holes weren’t something that he could control at that time.

It as an extremely scary and dangerous thing for a card artisan not to be able to maintain control.

If those energy bodies weren’t stable, then any thunderball would be enough to pose a threat to Chen Mu’s life. And if they were to explode, the whole apartment would be blown apart.

He very sensibly decided not to do any more probing for the time being.

Chen Mu used most of his time during those three days on making the card for Will. As awesome as the bipolar thunderball card was, Chen Mu felt a little sorry that he had gotten it so cheaply. That made him really put his heart into the card he was making for Will.

In the middle of all that, he still couldn’t resist trying out the five little thunderballs, which technique he called the “little company of five.” After trying it a few times, he acquired a pretty good general understanding of the “little company of five.”

For example, if he didn’t shut off his apparatus, then the energy emitted by the power card would continuously replenish the energy losses of the “little company of five,” right up until the energy card in the apparatus had been exhausted. And Chen Mu estimated the approximate limit for their sensitivity to speed. Anything entering their range of attack that hadn’t exceeded that speed wouldn’t be attacked by the little company of five. But once it exceeded that speed, the little company of five would immediately attack, pulverizing the flying mass. The territory that the little company of five controlled was within a radius of three meters around Chen Mu’s body.

The thing that Chen Mu found most strange was that the little company of five wasn’t at all interested in the things that he threw, never budging.

That technique alone was enough for Chen Mu to study endlessly, and when he thought about the over ten other techniques, he got really excited.

Not having any battle card, Will didn’t have any way to take commissions during that time, only being able to practice his close-range dodging and evading every day. Still for those few days, he wondered why he never ran into that ace that Cheng Ying had spoken about.

He didn’t have enough points for the high-level training space and could only go to the rudimentary flight training room.

Having been stimulated by the score achieved by that close-combat ace that Cheng Ying had spoken about that day, he would practice hard all day.

The apparatus on his wrist suddenly sounded. That startled him, and the jet stream from the jet stream card dropped for an instant. He plunked down from the sky, almost chewing a mouthful of mud.

“Who the f***k is that!” Will was gritting his teeth and cursing with all his heart at the guy who would call him.

But once he saw the number, his tooth grinding expression suddenly became a breath of spring air, “Mr. Chen Mu, how are you!”

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