The Card Apprentice - Both Students are Excellent, so Which One Shines?

2Chen Mu was thinking. As far as he could see, the stretch covered with underbrush was quite unlike its surroundings. There were card remnants scattered everywhere, the metallic, table-shaped device, and the designs like compositions carved on its surface. When all of that information was put together, it was as though it was telling him something.
    

That place had some close connection to cards.
    

The earliest cards showed up in a few religions. They all had a long history, and no one knew the mysteries they passed along. In the eyes of the ancients, cards were full of mysterious powers, which provided a lot of help in the promulgation of the religion. Every religion had flourished for a while during ancient times. If some religion had some extensive influence, they had fervently pursued things regarding cards. It was not only the ordinary people at the time, but the religious adepts were also full of reverence for that kind of mysterious, but magical, power.
    

That was until the appearance of Rosenberg when cards became a discipline—a comprehensive discipline involving energy, composition, perception, and so forth.
    

Could these be the remains of some ancient religion?
    

That was the conjecture Chen Mu felt was the most likely. Although it wasn’t possible to accurately determine their precise period from the remnants of those cards, Chen Mu felt they had very possibly passed through more years than the time between Rosenberg and the current time.
    

Too bad he wasn’t an expert in appraising ancient cards; he had no way to make an accurate determination.
    

“I found it!” Alfonso cut off Chen Mu’s thoughts with his excited shout.
    

Alfonso pointed out two places and said to Chen Mu, “It should be here and here. The marks on these two places are clearly different than the other places, though I don’t know which is the starting stroke you spoke of and which is the ending stroke.”
    

That was sufficient for Chen Mu. He turned around and said to Xi Weide, “Give me the Blue Moon Gun.”
    

Xi Weide was stunned as he quickly handed over his Blue Moon Gun to Chen Mu. Everyone looked at one another. Was Chen Mu going to use the gun to blow open the disk?
    

They only saw Chen Mu very handily taking apart the Blue Moon Gun into a pile of parts, at which point no one knew what he was going to do. In the undergrowth, things had become calm again. Everyone stared, though that time their object was Chen Mu.
    

Chen Mu removed the power case of the Blue Moon Gun and gathered up a few other parts to reassemble a very strange-looking structure. He then connected it to the metallic disk.
    

Alfonso was the first one to understand what Chen Mu was doing. He made a few noises as though he were about to say something, though he very quickly retracted any sound. Still, in the end he couldn’t help but mutter, “Really ugly! Your skills are still so messed up!”
    

Chen Mu hadn’t heard Alfonso’s complaints, being immersed and completely cut off from the outside. What he was doing just then was very simple according to basic principles; no matter whether it was a card or a card appliance, they all required energy to be activated. So long as he provided the energy, if it were a card appliance, it would naturally be activated. If it were a card, apart from energy, it would still need to use perception as a medium.
    

Chen Mu had no way to determine if it was a card in the end or a card appliance; though, perhaps from its appearance and structure, it was more like a card appliance. But, Chen Mu actually felt it possible that it was a type of card.
    

The instant the energy was connected, Chen Mu’s heart jumped into his throat. What sort of transformation would that round, metallic table undergo? His heart started to race.
    

However, the round, metallic table didn’t do a thing. All the onlookers looked discouraged.
    

Chen Mu’s heartbeat went back to its normal level. Since the first plan hadn’t succeeded, he would just give the second method a try.
    

While everyone was watching closely, Chen Mu pressed his two hands onto the metallic disk and closed his eyes. With his prompting, the spinning rate of the spiral perceptual composition within him started to quickly gain speed!
    

Bo Wen and Cheng Ying’s expressions had slightly changed as they felt a powerful fluctuation of perception. Card artisans were exceptionally sensitive to fluctuations in perception. Although this fluctuation didn’t have any attack quality, its power made them quite apprehensive. Bo Wen’s astonishment was especially obvious; in his mind, Chen Mu’s strength had always been a riddle. Each of Chen Mu’s stunning displays had all been quite brief, giving him no way to make any accurate determinations.
    

That time, however, he had received its true impact!
    

Perception was the basis of a card artisan’s power. Within the professional system of the card artisan, there were two distinct major kinds of appraisal. One was the strength grade, and the other was the precision of control.
    

The strength of perception was divided into ten levels, and each of the levels was further divided into three ranks of upper, middle, and lower. Bo Wen’s perceptual strength was at the lower rank of the fourth level, which was a rather fantastic score for his age group. That had always been something he was quite proud of, although that bit of pride had vanished in a puff of smoke that day.
    

Chen Mu’s perceptual strength was at least at the middle rank of the fourth level with a good possibility that it reached the upper rank. Moreover, Chen Mu was younger than Bo Wen! From the material Bo Wen had gathered about him, Chen Mu’s age must have been 17 or 18. It had to be known that for perceptual strength to get to the third level, one would be considered a mid-grade card artisan; getting to the fourth level, one would already be considered a mid-grade expert.
    

The fourth level was a dividing line. If one’s perceptual strength hadn’t gotten to the fourth level by the age of 30, that would mean the card artisan’s potential for further development didn’t look hopeful. It was like the dividing line for a card master to be able to make three-star cards, with the five-star card being another dividing line.
    

Bo Wen knew very well that in the entire Eastern Ning Clan, there weren’t many card artisans with a perceptual power beyond level four. And, those who had gotten to four were basically all over the age of 30.
    

High-level card artisans were naturally very popular, and the most popular were the young ones. Those with outstanding gifts and youths with huge potential would be strenuously courted by the rich and powerful. It was unheard of for someone of 17 or 18 to have gotten to level four or above with perceptual strength. Bo Wen knew if the news were to get out, he would never be able to—nor would he dare to—kill Chen Mu. By that time, there would be countless of the rich and powerful flocking to him. They would be waving endless Oudi and offering a mouthwatering position to attract such a genius youth with unlimited capacity for future development.
    

In the eyes of the rich and powerful, that kind of youthful genius would be a lot more valuable for the kind of place where the Eastern Ning Clan was. Innumerable precedents had proven that the potential of a card artisan was directly related to the age at which he reached the fourth level; geniuses who got there before age 20 were one of the rarest precious materials in the world.
    

Up until then, the quickest recorded achievement of a level four perceptual power in the entire Heavenly Federation had been ten years prior when Tang Hanpei from the Heavenly Federation Comprehensive Academy had accomplished it. He had been 17, 4 months, and 15 days. Tang Hanpei had already become one of the most prominent young aces in the entire Heavenly Federation by then. He was the incomparably influential standard bearer for the Comprehensive Academy.
    

The unprepossessing youth in front of Bo Wen was, surprisingly, a youthful genius at the level of Tang Hanpei. Bo Wen saw the reflection of Tang Hanpei in Chen Mu. If Chen Mu were to become as awesome as Tang Hanpei later on, then their remaining hatred would be sufficient to cause the Eastern Nings to disappear from the Heavenly Federation.
    

Bo Wen had only broken through to the fourth level that year, and he was 20! That achievement had originally not only filled the clan with anticipation about his future, but he was very proud of it himself. But, as compared with Chen Mu, he fell quite a bit short.
    

When a legendary-ranked genius showed up alive in front of him, Bo Wen’s proud mind had been shattered to pieces.
    

For the Night of the Cross so surprisingly to have such an outstanding genius made Bo Wen feel helpless and jealous. If the Eastern Nings were to have such a genius who possessed such potential, then the future of the Eastern Nings could very possibly enter into the ranks of the truly wealthy and powerful. But, why did it have to be the Night of the Cross? If it had been a different power, Bo Wen would still have been able to pull out all the stops to attract him without being afraid of squandering his wealth. He would have absorbed that genius into the Eastern Ning Clan.
    

But, that was impossible!
    

A deadly glint passed through Bo Wen’s eyes.
    

Wei-ah had also been examining Chen Mu’s perceptual power. Wei-ah’s face showed nothing of what he felt except for a strange, fleeting look in his eyes. When he raised his head, he had seen the deadly glint in Bo Wen’s eyes without him noticing.
    

Although Cheng Ying had also felt the fluctuation in Chen Mu’s perception, her own perceptual strength didn’t go beyond level three, which didn’t provide her any way to determine Chen Mu’s strength. Some wise person once said that people most revere what they don’t know, and Chen Mu’s already high impression in Cheng Ying’s mind got a few notches higher.
    

Chen Mu didn’t have any awareness of the activity of those around him. He had focused the scope of his perception on a very small area, just enough to be able to encompass the disk. The good part of sacrificing the scope of perception was that the fineness of his perception was able to reach an unprecedented level.
    

It had already been a while since he’d used that method of deploying perception, though his move that time wasn’t at all unfamiliar. On the contrary, he felt his progress. That kind of progress wasn’t that his manipulation was more skillful; it was because his perceptual strength had increased his sensitivity.
    

All of the etchings floated up very clearly in his brain to where he could even “see” the mud and dirt that remained in the etchings. In the same way, he could discern the energy in the power case gradually flowing into the metallic disk without any set shape, like it had been blocked by something.
    

It made clear that the energy from the energy case couldn’t make any connection with the metallic disk. The situation just then was like that in an apparatus where a separate power card and fantasy card would be placed and already activated. Though, if there weren’t any perceptual control, the two would basically have no way to produce a connection and thereby emit an attack.
    

What Chen Mu needed to do was to use his own perception to bring the two together.
    

He found the two carving traces Alfonso had pointed out, with the second in a different position. Those were the keys to solving the problem!
    

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