The Card Apprentice

“Maintain formation, everyone! Those on the edges be on guard!”

“Fast! Faster! Don’t worry about the power cards!”

“Keep up your spirits and don’t fall asleep!”

“Don’t stop. Steady!”

* * *

Racing along day and night, and avoiding towns and cities along the way, the Wood Battalion went ahead toward Thousand Lakes at the fastest speed. Everyone in the entire Battalion only had three hours to sleep every day. The rest of time was all spent on the road. The forest shuttle cars were all used to load the injured, while Chen Mu used a jet-stream card along with the ordinary team members.

What Chen Mu was then using was a completely new jet-stream card, the four-star Fire Mudfish. That jet-stream card incorporated the best parts of the Rocket and the Big Mudfish, having both enough explosive power and superior swerving performance. And after being optimized, its performance shot up by another level.

His face was full of exhaustion, and his eyes were bloodshot. Not only him, but the entire Battalion from top to bottom was like that.

His entire body already seemed numb, with their being in such a desperate rush and flying mechanically ahead!

When the time to rest finally came, everyone landed from midair and set out the guards as fast as possible. The team members didn’t set up tents, but just chose someplace blocked from the wind and put their heads down to sleep on the snowy ground. Three hours meant that every second was precious. Once they were down, they would fall asleep in the shortest possible time.

Chen Mu didn’t sleep, with a three-dimensional map in front of him. That map had been produced by them, and was made quite crudely, though it included a huge area. Lightly tracing the distance to Thousand Lakes, he fell into deep thought. They had already continuously rushed through five days of travel. The other three underworld troops would certainly have found something unusual.

Still, up until then, they hadn’t discovered any signs of large-scale mobilizations along their way, which made him fell slightly safer.

Given their current speed, they still needed about five days to fly out of the area controlled by the underworld.

He understood that the following five days would doubtless be the most difficult five days!

His gaze scanned back and forth across the map. He needed to find the place where the adversary would be most likely to block them.

If they didn’t find the battlefield, then given the Wood Battalion’s exhausted state, it would be a nightmare to suddenly encounter the enemy.

But, where would the enemy be most likely to stop them?

* * *

With the three troops combined, there were over ten thousand people, all completely silent.

The three chiefs were looking at the just dug-out corpses in the mud beneath their feet, all of them shocked!

“How could this be?” Shi whispered. After constant excavation, they counted the corpses, which were piled like a mountain. With the Cang Jiang Military Force battle suites on the bodies, it made them wonder if they were seeing an illusion.

Yu Jiaran, who had been calm all along, couldn’t help showing his shock, “How did they do it? Could the Wood Battalion be so strong that even the Cang Jiang Military Force collapsed at the first blow?”

Meng Chen’s gaze was captivated by the pile of corpses and he couldn’t say a thing.

The Cang Jiang Military Force was the first team established by the underworld, which had fought all over the place countless times without ever being defeated. Yu Jiaran’s Guard Battalion, Shi’s Jinzhai Tribe and Meng Chen’s Blued Steel Regiment, had all been established on the model of the Cang Jiang Military Force. The four troops were called the four big iron armies of the underworld, but the three of them understood that those three troops were all a notch lower compared to the Cang Jiang Military Force.

But the undefeated Cang Jiang Military Force had just quietly come to grief there, planted at the hands of some unknown bit player. After they found Yan Yu’s headless body, the three of them couldn’t help the panic they showed.

It could be seen from the wounds on Yan Yu’s body that he wasn’t killed in a siege but was killed by another strongman!

Their ranks on the listing were all higher than Yan Yu’s, but their actual strengths were at the same level. If their adversary could kill Yan Yu, then he could kill them! The top ten card artisans on the Black Line Star Listing were all sufficiently ranked in the entire Federation and could all be listed together. The only ones able to kill them would be the very top card artisans in the Federation.

Like Tang Hanpei and like Caesar . . .

Could Caesar have done it? That was the first thing the three of them thought! The more they thought about it, Caesar was the most likely. Cang Lan had made a challenge to Caesar, and Caesar and just simply killed Yan Yu in his rage.

That was their most reasonable conjecture.

A slight chill emerged from each of their hearts. The killing god Caesar’s reputation was really too big, and anyone who angered him would basically not survive.

By himself, Caesar would have no way to destroy the entire Cang Jiang Military Force. So, there was only one possibility, that the Wood Battalion had joined forces with Caesar! Unlike Moon Frost Island, they were clear about what was at the bottom of the Wood Battalion. The White Commander was Caesar’s student, and it would be quite normal for the two of them to join forces.

Having Caesar’s Wood Battalion as an enemy, the three of them couldn’t help a flash of timidity in their eyes.

“Withdraw. We’ll give the news to Master Cang Lan. It’s up to him to decide.” Unexpectedly, the one speaking was the taciturn Meng Chen.

Yu Jiaran added, “Mmmm, I agree.”

The gazes of the two of them fell onto Shi, who sneered to say, “Can I disagree?”

That self-deprecating comment by Shi made the pervasive atmosphere of agitation among the three of them lighten up. Shi was in a nightmare, “I had thought that by the time we got to this point, there wouldn’t be anyone who could kill us. We can’t help, but we can escape. I never imagined . . .”

Looking at Yan Yu’s headless corpse, the three couldn’t avoid the feeling of putting themselves in his position.

“If we go back now, then I’m going into seclusion.” Meng Chen’s face showed resolve.

Then Yu Jiaran said with a sneer, “It isn’t as it was any longer. If you want to seclude yourself safely away, that won’t be easy. This blow toward Master Can Lan is unprecedented, and I’m afraid those guys here also wanted to escape when they felt disturbed before.”

“Shi composed his look and nodded, “Right! And once Moon Frost Island completes its alliance, I reckon it won’t be long before they make a move against us. With the Cang Jiang Military Force all destroyed, we’ll disappear, and the enemy will endure, and that will only make them move more quickly.”

They were no idiots to have gotten that far, and the two others also knew that what Shi was saying wasn’t false.

“What should we do?” Meng Chen asked in a cold voice.

Yu Jiaran said in a somber voice, “Strike first to gain the initiative!”

“And the Wood Battalion?” Shi asked hesitantly.

“Of course, we can’t let them off so lightly. That would only make others feel that we’re nobody in the underworld.” Yu Jiaran spoke with a chill, “We must immediately pull back with all haste. I believe that Master Cang Lan will certainly not sit and watch our adversary go unfettered. If Caesar is truly in the Wood Battalion, then there’s only Master Cang Lang on our side who can rival him. Humph, I don’t quite believe that they can escape our territory that quickly. We’ll go through the hub, and transmit the news, and lay out our defenses layer by layer, and strive to stall them!”

Just then, a card artisan suddenly reported, “We’ve discovered the enemy!”

The three of them were startled, “Who is it?”

“I don’t know. There aren’t many of them, but they are very capable. We lost twenty people when we met them.”

Having just choked back a bellyful of anger for the Cang Jiang Military Force in front of them, their three faces all sank.

* * *

It was all desert in the Desert Camp, and the dense mass of card artisans and shuttle cars were all neatly arranged endlessly off into the distance.

Su Heiming sat in his own car looking down on those troops that belonged only to him! He had grabbed the entire Desert Camp in his hands. In strict formation, they stood there silently with murderous ferocity like killing machines. Even the sky seemed to be affected by that powerful killing aura, where the dark clouds were massed.

Su Heiming looked indifferent, when he suddenly knelt down and kowtowed hard toward the sky off in the distance, “Don’t worry, old man, with the Desert Camp in my hands, we will absolutely give the world a big surprise! We won’t fail your name.”

He stood up with a stern gaze.

“All troops set off!”

* * *

The Star Academy

“Everything is arranged.” Nick said in a low voice.

The dark night seemed not to have any effect on the Star Academy with lights all over, and the voices of students laughing and cheering audible from far off.

Rossini watched silently at the place where he had lived since he was small. His expression was complex, and his eyes slightly red.

“So long.”

Rossini waved at the Star Academy in the dark, and turned around to enter the shuttle car parked next to the two.

Nick followed him in.

After a moment, an especially high-class shuttle car departed from the Star Academy on a secret mission, on emergency orders from the President. At the same time, at some other well-hidden place in the Star Academy, the lights were lit and the sound of a fantasy card player could be heard from outside the door. But those on guard didn’t notice that there was no-one in the room.

* * *

Qing Qing’s pure white wrist lightly turned, and a bright green wavy blade accurately hit a card artisan. The green wavy blade had shocking power, and there wasn’t any energy cloak that could resist it’s blow. It penetrated a card artisan’s body, and then stuck into another card artisan’s chest. Altogether it penetrated three cards artisans before it was annihilated into thin air.

The enemies all around seemed endless, but Qing Qing remained quick-witted and graceful, her face perpetually placid and mild. That made her look as though she were on an idle stroll in a courtyard and unspeakably relaxed. Beside her were corpses in disorder everywhere.

They were all aces around her, all above grade seven, whose expressions were calm as they faced wave after wave of attack, without the least hint of being panicked.

Elite! Those were the true elite!

* * *

Yu Jiaran and the three of them caught up. All had bad looks on their faces, having already paid with a hundred casualties while only seven of their adversary had been killed. That disproportionate number chilled the three of them! Especially that woman wearing the light blue suit, who was really too awesome! Surprisingly, none of those under them could block any of her blows. She was the most ferocious!

Meng Chen’s gaze suddenly soared, “They are from the Star Academy!”

“The Star Academy?” The two others’ hearts skipped a beat.

“Mmmm, if I haven’t guessed wrong, the woman is that genius who was the first to come out from the Star Academy in fifteen years!” Meng Chen’s clenched fist was making a pounding sound.

Yu Jiaran’s mind was reeling, “If they are the Star Academy, they must have come after the Wood Battalion!”

Shi gave a cold grunt, “The Star Academy sure does have a long reach! They reached right into our bowl! They sure are willing to part with their hard-earned capital!”

Yu Jiaran muttered, “That woman’s origins are certainly not simple. We’ll have to catch her alive.”

“Right!” Shi showed some joy, “If we can only catch her alive, then the Star Academy would certainly pay a high price to redeem her. Ha-ha!”

The three of them agreed, and those below them got the order.

Qing Qing’s moves weren’t any different from at the beginning, but the ease she had demonstrated wasn’t there. She had become a lot more anxious. Those fourteen beside her were nearly all of the core powers that the Star Academy had stationed in the Heavenly Drum Village District. Those fourteen people were all grade seven card artisans! For such power to be put into the headquarters of the Star Academy made a powerful force. Stationing those fourteen people there had cost the Star Academy several decades.

But the time was too urgent, and the Star Academy had deployed all of its power in the Heavenly Drum Village District without hesitation.

They had never imagined that they hadn’t caught the Wood Battalion but had encountered the united armies of the underworld instead.