The Card Apprentice - The Good and the Bad
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The Good and the Bad
Wei-ah had actually started to teach the children his skills, which delighted Chen Mu. From his point of view, those basic skills truly had stunning power. Chen Mu had always felt Wei-ah’s techniques were quite suited to those village youth. They were clever, and they had outstanding physical constitutions with the temperament to persevere. They were afraid of neither pain nor bitterness. They were simply perfect disciples! But, Wei-ah had never considered imparting his skills to those youth, always concentrating on Chen Mu, who had come from outside.
Wei-ah’s disharmony wasn’t only based on that. Chen Mu had long since discovered that Wei-ah had never gotten along so well with the villagers, apart from being with the clan elder and Li Duhong when his expression would moderate somewhat. More of the villagers dreaded Wei-ah more than they respected him. A few of them would even betray some enmity in their eyes, which Chen Mu didn’t quite understand.
Wei-ah had never given a straight answer as to why, so Chen Mu figured he couldn’t answer it. But, Chen Mu relaxed a little since those adult villagers’ moods hadn’t developed into much of an influence on the children. Those children had experienced the trials of life and death, which had engendered their worship of power to an extreme. And, the classic representative of great power, Wei-ah, had enough capital to become one of the idols of the new generation. Naturally, the other one was Chen Mu.
The bug had been a pleasant surprise for Chen Mu. The black-steel, sickle-bladed bug was one of a few types of creatures in the entire jungle that made people’s color change upon hearing of it. Its carapace was extremely hard, and its movements were quick. It was a natural knife master with its two powerful sickle-blade front claws. When you added to that its excellent hunting skills, it could run amok in the jungle.
Alfonso wasn’t the one who knew of the black-steel, sickle-blade bug. Li Duhong also knew of it, which astonished Chen Mu somewhat. After the bug had been dismembered, they found that those shells that had even been able to block the tailless shuttle were no doubt of some fine material. The children at that time were all barehanded and empty fisted, and they had used anything that could be made into a weapon to arm themselves.
Looking at the shells, Alfonso endlessly coveted them. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any tools with him and had no way to carry out any processing on them. He had only brought along a set of miniature tools, which had limited capabilities. Some of them could only complete the extraction of less than five kilos of metal, and some could only produce metal parts to a diameter of under ten centimeters. But, that set of miniature tools could still help Alfonso set up a simple and crude metallurgical lab in short order. That installation, which included some probing equipment, could help them find some mineral resources if they weren’t buried very deeply.
The biggest after-effect of the breath control for Chen Mu that time was that his whole body was powerless and limp, and he was in pain across three days.
But, they still didn’t have time to rest since time was life for them! They didn’t have many supplies left, and if they weren’t able to leave the area of the gummy cloud layer within half a month, their future would be bleak. Depending on hunting or raising food was impossible with over 2,000 people, and there weren’t even enough hunters in their division.
All the division’s forward progress was exceptionally arduous, though, the crowd of children actually displayed tremendous orderliness and perseverance, which moved Chen Mu.
By their twenty-second day of advancing, they had already succeeded in distancing themselves from the area of the gummy cloud layer’s instability. The division was too awful to watch with everyone having nearly turned into mud-men; their bodies were covered in mud and rotten leaves, and their clothes were beyond repair.
The black-steel, sickle-blade bug was the last obstacle they had encountered, and they hadn’t run into any other fierce wild beasts along the rest of the way. According to what Li Duhong had explained, the smell of the black-steel, sickle-blade bug had kept many of the ferocious wild beasts at a distance. Chen Mu then understood how fierce that bug he and Wei-ah had faced last time truly was.
“How much longer will we have to walk, do you think?” Li Duhong asked Alfonso.
Alfonso’s skin had been darkened by the sun, which changed his formerly frail appearance. The division had already departed from the strange realm of the gummy cloud layer, which allowed everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. But, they were facing another issue—they had to choose a temporary place to live. Alfonso shook his head. “I don’t know, either.” He rubbed Li Duhong’s skull and sighed from some unknown thought.
It wasn’t something simple to choose a temporary living place. It had to be near a source of water, easily guarded, and hard to attack. They had to block attacks from the wild beasts, which was especially important for them at that time. Chen Mu gave Alfonso the responsibility to choose a place to camp, even though he was also at a half-baked level. Still, among the entire division, he was doubtlessly the one with the most right to speak. There were three others to help him; Mogu, Dong Shen, and Li Zexi were all 16 and were the three oldest among the youth. They were also the three who had received the most complete military training.
Within the village, the three of them had focused the most on cultivating each other and were considered youthful geniuses. As they faced helping Alfonso choose a camp, their most important responsibility was the issue of safety.
Since they hadn’t yet found any suitable temporary living place, the crowd of people could only continue walking ahead.
They finally found a suitable temporary camp by the twenty-fourth day. Three sides of the camp were surrounded by 1,000-meter cliffs, which made a natural barrier. There was some deep water at the base of the cliffs. There was also flowing water where an underground stream came together with the pool. Such a camp was doubtlessly quite suited for the youth, who wouldn’t have any battle strength for a while.
They all couldn’t help cheering when the place for a temporary camp had been decided. The youth could finally see some hope!
By the time Chen Mu led everyone into the valley, Wei-ah had cleared out any large wild beasts he could see. Only when he had determined the valley was completely safe did the youths enter and station there.
A new camp felt like a new start. The children’s faces showed brilliant smiles. No matter how old or young they were, they all started to clear away the weeds in the valley on their own initiative.
A fence was quickly built to seal off the mouth of the valley, with the tips of the fresh tree trunks sharpened and set up in a row. Wei-ah had completed the entire project by himself; in the eyes of the children, Wei-ah was a human machine.
Chen Mu couldn’t help but think maybe that guy really was a human-shaped machine.
Alfonso had also become very busy, as he was just then directing a group of children to mine some stones. The mine there was very shallow beneath the surface, and it could be easily dug. But, it still made a very difficult life for those children, who only had a few rudimentary tools. Li Duhong was engrossed in the strenuous digging among them, not uttering a sound and his little face all covered in sweat.
Li Duhong had an honored identity as the clan elder’s grandson. If nothing happened to him, there was a good possibility he would be the clan elder later on. That identity had made the rest of the children fear him to their bones. Though by that time, his calm and capable display had quickly established his trust among the youths.
Wei-ah suddenly stopped what he was doing at the mouth of the valley, showing an alert expression. Chen Mu had noticed something strange about Wei-ah right away, and he stopped the work he was doing and turned his head, making an urgent signal to the youths behind him.
The expressions on the youths behind him changed, as they ran off shouting, “Be on guard! Everyone on guard! Prepare the artillery troops!”
The artillery troops referred to those few small-scale cluster cannons. Everyone was immediately running deep into the valley, and the youths who wielded the small-scale cluster cannons had already gathered them up and made the preparations to fire.
By the time Chen Mu turned back around, there was already no sign of Wei-ah at the mouth of the valley.
By the time Wei-ah reappeared, he was leading a large group of people. There were probably 200 of them, and Chen Mu was quite familiar with the one at their head. It was Bo Wen! They were people from the village, among whom was Cheng Ying, and they all looked miserable. Once the children in the valley saw those familiar people outside, they immediately rushed out.
It was a joyous reunion with relatives that caused crying to sound up in the valley; whether they were male or female, old or young, they were all crying. Even Cheng Ying couldn’t stop wiping her tears.
“Everyone into the valley, and then we can catch up,” Bo Wen said in a clear, loud voice.
From the compliance of the villagers, Chen Mu could see Bo Wen had already become the leader of those 200 people. Bo Wen regarded Chen Mu with a smile that wasn’t a smile, which made Chen Mu very uncomfortable. Given Bo Wen’s ability, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to Chen Mu that he would become the leader of that crowd. Chen Mu wasn’t really interested in the duties of leadership, but he was still very clear that if he were to allow Bo Wen to become the leader of the camp, then his own situation would become miserable.
Chen Mu found that the 200 people were all soldiers. Given Bo Wen’s temperament, he wouldn’t be at all likely to be leading any of those who might hold him back. But, it was undoubtedly a good thing for the camp for those 200 soldiers to join them.
Still, it wasn’t very good news for Chen Mu.
Comparing the strength of the two sides, Chen Mu could derive the verdict that his side was at an utter disadvantage. His side was composed entirely of children who didn’t understand affairs, and their battle power was of no account.
Chen Mu immediately felt a headache.
But, just then, Li Duhong came drilling out of the crowd.
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