The Card Apprentice

Chapter 137: Three People and a Beast

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

With all the fibers in his body taught, Chen Mu stared at the beast in front of him. The apparatus on his wrist was already in an active state, and the five small thunderballs were cheerfully swirling around him.

His knowledge of the jungle was pitifully scant, and he didn’t have any idea what that beast was called or what was special about it. But that didn’t make him look down on it at all. On the contrary, he had a very nasty look on his face.

The beast was about the size of a calf, with four powerful stout limbs and a tuft of black hair along its back. The scariest thing about it was its two tails, each of which was about as thick as Chen Mu’s arm, with a barb at the end of each scorpion shaped tail. It was staring at Chen Mu with a malevolent look, with its two tails swinging in a pattern behind it and gathered into a crouch ready to pounce. Chen Mu could even see the saliva dripping from its fangs.

Sizing up its shape, Chen Mu doubted whether the bipolar thunderball card could block the charge of such a large beast.

Chen Mu turned and ran without a pause.

Charging all his power to his feet, his whole body whooshed away like an arrow with his bouncy shoes proving crucially useful that time. While he was in the air, Chen Mu also swapped out for the “Big Mud Fish” card. The trees beside him flew back as Chen Mu’s heart was finally calmed by the high-speed flight. The beast shouldn’t have been able to chase after him once he was in flight.

As though it knew what Chen Mu was thinking, the beast gave out a roar which startled Chen Mu to the point that he almost fell from midair. He didn’t dare to turn his head as he put all his strength into flying ahead. The beast behind him would shockingly roar now and again.

Chen Mu really looked like a mud fish that time, as he shuttled among the trees like some slippery anomaly. Unlike that dexterity, the beast behind him just charged ahead, paying no attention to those stout trees as the sound of their snapping came to Chen Mu to make his heart race and his muscles jump.

Chen Mu wanted to tell the beast that he was only a novice!

“What’s that sound?” Bo Wen suddenly stopped. His perception was stronger than Cheng Ying’s, so that he could detect movements farther off.

But those movements were obviously big enough for Cheng Ying to sense them too.

The two of them lifted their heads to look ahead, puzzled.

The ground seemed to shake thunderously, more and more fiercely, and the sounds became more and more clear. The two of them looked at one another wondering what had happened.

Bo Wen was looking ahead when his sharp eyes suddenly lit up, “Chen Mu!”

Chen Mu was flying their way with a beleaguered expression. What a great opportunity! Bo Wen immediately swapped to the “thousand swallows wavy blades” card in his apparatus. No matter how, he wasn’t going to let him slip through his hands that time.

The shaking of the ground was getting fierce by that time, and both Bo Wen and Cheng Ying felt that they would lose their footing. There was a loud banging from behind Chen Mu, which was throwing up dirt along with the crowded sound of trees snapping.

What was it?

Chen Mu’s urgent expression caused Bo Wen to hesitate as he was about to fire. The ever cool and calm expression on Chen Mu had made a deep impression on him, seeming never being affected by whatever circumstance or situation, and the Chen Mu in front of him looked like a completely different person. He wondered what kind of situation could make Chen Mu so shocked and pale. It had to be something quite scary.

It was during that brief pause that he caught sight of the beast in hot pursuit of Chen Mu.

“A twin hook beast!” Bo Wen’s pupils immediately contracted, and his complexion changed, hastily swapping for the jet stream card in his apparatus as he turned around to leave. Only after he turned was he awed to find Cheng Ying already out in front of him with her jet stream card wide open, close behind Chen Mu.

He had been too raw in the end, and his face showed it.

Three people and a beast. Three ahead and one behind. There was a battle of pursuit developing in the jungle.

There wasn’t any time then to consider the practice of never flying in the jungle. And there wasn’t any time to think about the grudge between him and Chen Mu.

The three of them formed a triangle with Chen Mu at the top and Cheng Ying and Bo Wen unwittingly following, as the three of them few madly ahead. The calmest among them was Chen Mu. He had the best close-range dodging and evading score, and the “Big Mud Fish” card was best at that kind of turning. Bo Wen and Cheng Ying were about the same as one another. Bo Wen was a little stronger, but close range dodging and evading was the weak point in the training of remote card artisans. Although Cheng Ying wasn’t as strong as Bo Wen, she had a lot more experience in actual battle, which equalized their standing.

Both of their faces were white without any sign of blood, and they were the closest to the twin hook beast, with the sound of the snapping trees coming from behind keeping them on their alert about how close the twin hook beast was to them.

They wished they could sprout a pair of wings, though they didn’t dare to speed up since if they did they wouldn’t need the twin hook beast to die from smashing right into a tree.

Bo Wen suddenly shouted out his brilliant thought, “Let’s fly up!”

In front of him, Chen Mu rashly got what Bo Wen was saying. He had been chased out of breath by the twin hook beast, but never mind that. While the twin hook beast had astonishing speed, it couldn’t fly! He believed that all they had to do was to fly into midair to shake the beast.

“Don’t!” Cheng Ying shouted to stop the two of them, with her voice full of terror.

The two of them were taken aback, and while Chen Mu was fine, Bo Wen nearly smashed into a tree.

Cheng Ying was carefully controlling her own jet stream card with her eyes fixed ahead of her, not daring to be distracted as she quickly explained in her gasping breath, “There are even fiercer things in the sky!”

Chen Mu and Bo Wen hastily dropped any notion of flying up since they didn’t have any experience in the jungle, and naturally didn’t know the situation. But that didn’t prevent their surmise that if Cheng Ying wasn’t willing to fly into the midst of such danger, then what she said about fiercer things in the sky was certainly true.

The twin hook beast was roaring along behind them, with the three in front having lost their color as they dropped back down to flee. That beast was extremely tough, being utterly oblivious to the trees along the way which it snapped as it met them, never flagging in its power. Its strength was perverse, not seeming at all tired after chasing them for six hours. The three of them flying along didn’t feel they could take it anymore, complaining silently in their hearts.

All of the smaller animals along the way bolted in fear of such large movements, without any beasts daring to deal with that twin hook beast.

After nine hours, the three of them showed obvious exhaustion. Flying continually for nine hours through such an environment was something the three of them wouldn’t have dared to think about before. But with the closeness of death, all three had done it.

Even the twin hook beast had started to show some fatigue, no longer resembling its rampage at the outset. Although it was still in hot pursuit, its movements were a lot smaller.

The three of them didn’t dare to slack off, driven almost to their ends. Cheng Ying was the most miserable, with a pallid face and her eyes going slack. She was the weakest among the three. Bo Wen’s perception was the strongest, but since he wasn’t accustomed to that kind of flying, he had used up a lot of it. Adding to that their pursuit of Chen Mu for three days and nights without a rest, they were both in an exhausted state.

By comparison the one in the best condition was actually the novice Chen Mu! Since he had the elastic shoes, he had been able to travel rather quickly over the past three days while getting full rest to restore his strength. And among the three of them, he was the most accustomed to that kind of flying. And the “Big Mud Fish” card was the most suited to that kind of situation.

After the tenth hour, the twin hooked beast was breathing thunderously, with even its strength not being able to keep up.

After the eleventh hour, Cheng Ying’s flying looked like it was collapsing, as though she could fall from the sky at any time. Bo Wen’s face was also as pale as death, with his lips starting to crack. Chen Mu was in a somewhat better state, though his eyes had also lost their spark, not having completely recovered from the wounds to his body. And it wasn’t so good to be tossed about like that.

The twin hook beast had already started frothing at the mouth, and its pupils had begun to slack.

After twelve hours, the twin hook beast finally couldn’t hold out and it collapsed to the ground.

At about that same time, Cheng Ying fell fluttering from the sky in a faint. It was a good thing that they weren’t flying very high – being only one or two meters off the ground – so that it wasn’t very serious.

Bo Wen wanted to stop since he had finally lost control of his perception, though his momentum took him into a pile of underbrush, sending up mournful screams from him. Bo Wen’s screams were sharp enough to stun Chen Mu who was about to faint as he fell from the sky.

Falling to the ground impacted the wounds on his body, which hurt to where Chen Mu kept sucking cold breaths. But the pain had brought him back to his senses.

His lips were cracked open after twelve hours of uninterrupted flight, and his spirits were extremely depleted to the point that he wanted to sleep, though he gritted his teeth still more strongly to hold out. He didn’t know Bo Wen’s situation, but if he were to fall asleep then, he would die there that day.

That flight of Chen Mu just then had been on a single breath, and once he fell from the sky, that breath was gone. He found that his body had already gotten to the situation where the lights were out for lack of oil. Never mind his perception, he didn’t even have the strength to lift a finger. If he had any perception left in him, he would certainly give some to Bo Wen.

After five full minutes, Bo Wen had finally struggled to crawl out from the underbrush. His face was as white as paper, and his eyes were slack, in an obvious sign of extreme physical exhaustion.

The two of them were at a loss, but neither had the strength to move.

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