The Card Apprentice

They had killed hundreds of creatures in these 30 days, including more than 20 Shadow Bees. Even the Black Python which ranked 15th and the Spur Rhino which ranked 14th were killed by them. They had killed many unknown creatures as well.

30 days was not long, but it was like centuries for both of them, who had experienced a lot of gory battles over this period. They had become stronger than before, especially Chen Mu. He showed rapid improvements in every aspect. In the Federation, there were only a few battles that would require him to get involved personally. However, he had fought hard battles in the Hundred Depths every day. The days were filled with killing and life or death experiences. These 30 days of hardship had refined Chen Mu as if he had been reborn into a new person.

“I don’t have many power cards left,” said Chen Mu while frowning. He had used up a lot of power cards in his battles over this period. It was fortunate that he was used to carrying a large number of power cards with him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to cope with the battles. His combat power would be lower if his power cards had exhausted. His talent as a cardless sect was only enough against a typical card artisan, not against these ferocious creatures.

The Demonic Woman paused her actions for a second and immediately resumed. She asked. “Then what should we do?” Chen Mu was running out of clues and taking out everything from his pockets. He had with him a pen with weak ink, several cards, money card and etc., as well as some pieces of mud. The money card had no value in this place. As for the other cards, they were like waste papers if they were without power cards.

He gazed at the pieces of black mud for a while. He was suddenly overjoyed. How could I have forgotten about these little things? He picked up a piece of black mud and carefully open its outer layer. A strong power fluctuation hit Chen Mu’s perception.

A strong energy wave charged towards him! Chen Mu was looking at the sapphire-like crystal. He had more experience now, so, although he still didn’t know what the crystal actually was, he could judge its nature. It was a crystal with considerably high energy content. Its energy density was much higher than the other energy-containing ores that he had seen before. For example, the energy within a Moon Stone, which was commonly used for power card making, could not compare to even a single percent of the energy contained this crystal.

Yet, he did not have enough materials right now. First of all, he needed a blank card. Most importantly, tanning a blank card actually required multiple procedures. He obviously couldn’t do that right now. Moreover, he required many supplementary materials to process the crystal.

Luckily, Chen Mu wasn’t an inflexible person, and he was able to adapt to changes. He had never thrown away any of his used power cards, so now he only needed to clean and treat the cards. The other useless cards in his pocket could also be recycled and repurposed.

As for the problem regarding other materials, he could only face them head-on. Hence, he started to search in the areas that he had explored in these 30 days. He would investigate every living being and ore. Without any probing equipment, processing tools, or any useful cards, he could only use the most primitive way—his perception!

He diligently utilized his perception to scan all the unknown materials. He was trying to determine their nature by observing their microstructure. Chen Mu didn’t know that no one had used perception in this way before. Caesar would be appalled if he knew Chen Mu was applying his Oblivion Mode for such a purpose!

He maximized his perception to distinguish the microstructure of materials, especially in terms of accuracy. Though the total area explored in these 30 days wasn’t big, they had discovered a significant amount of unknown materials. Plants, ores, organisms…

All of these were in his scope of investigation. No one would be willing to start from the base as what Chen Mu was doing because it was such an extreme task. However, without hesitation, Chen Mu chose the method that seemed to be most tedious. No one knew how long they had to stay in this place. These tasks seemed complicated, but with every extra effort, their probability of survival in the Hundred Depths would increase.

Over these 30 days, he had forgotten the number of battles he had fought. He almost died in some of the battles if it weren’t for his luck. However, he couldn’t depend only on luck. He knew how hard it was to survive in this place. He thought he should set up preparations for the long term. These preparations were the foundation for their long term battles.

They had no choice but to slow down their pace. Every day, Chen Mu tried his best to utilize his perception to investigate materials. He did not know if it was because of his frequent utilization of perception, but his perception accuracy had rapidly improved. He was getting used to this material classification method which had not been taught in any of the teaching materials.

After a few close calls with death, there was a quality change in his Oblivion Mode. He could activate Oblivion Mode anytime without feeling uncomfortable. There was also a change in the white lines, where they had become paler in color and almost invisible. However, he was able to clearly and easily perceive these hardly seen lines even if they were in a colored vision. When there was danger approaching, he could perceive it earlier and hence avoid it.

The combination of One Breath Perception Training Method and deep tranquility was able to unleash a high attack power under the stress of being killed. His perception was experiencing change almost every day.

It was a dull life, as they were battling and investigating the materials every day. The Demonic Woman seemed to be getting used to this lifestyle. They usually didn’t talk, but they had built an understanding with each other through the battles. Moreover, they had stronger attack power when combining forces to fight off their opponents.

Chen Mu was carefully collecting the poisonous powder from the Poisonous Colorful Moth. The Poisonous Colorful Moth was big in size, and its body length was more than 25 centimeters with its wings spread out. It had a brightly colored body, especially its wings which were like two rainbows. Its flight speed was not fast, but it would create a colorful but poisonous region surrounding itself. Any creature that intruded its territory would be poisoned.

This was an extremely dangerous creature. However, Chen Mu didn’t find it troublesome as he could quickly kill it by using the Bipolar Card. According to the Demonic Woman, the colorful powder from this creature was a useful material that was usually bought by many tribes with a high price to make weapons.

This had triggered Chen Mu’s interest in it. Hence he collected the poisonous powder purposely. Almost all of the creatures in this area had been killed by the two of them. Even the Spur Rhino, which the Demonic Woman didn’t dare to mess with previously, had been killed by them as well. Now, the Shadow Bees fled as soon as they saw them. Chen Mu was amazed by the intelligence of these creatures.

“Hah! This poisonous powder is such a great thing!” Chen Mu shouted in surprise. He had all the materials and only lacked a catalyst right now, but this poisonous powder was actually a catalyst in nature.

The Demonic Woman felt a little strange when she looked at Chen Mu, who was very happy. He had such a rapid progression over this period. When he first arrived at this place, he was weaker than her. However, he had improved after each battle. After a dozen battles, he was already on par with her. Moreover, his improvement rate hadn’t faltered at all, and he had become the main attacker in every battle.

She had never met such a powerful person before! Was he super talented? Or did he have more potential than anyone else? She was improving at an impressive pace, but her progression was slower than his, which was a little depressing. Moreover, her improvement was from obtaining the Painted Graphistemma.

After killing the Black Python, which was ranked 15th and the Spur Rhino which ranked 14th, she suddenly thought that they could really get out of the Hundred Depths. Chen Mu couldn’t wait to return to the camp with the Demonic Woman after he was done collecting the poisonous powder.

Their camp was quite simple, it was just a concave-shaped land that served as a shelter from the wind. They poured the urine and hairs of some strong creatures around their camp to prevent other animals from entering their camp. The fire pit warmed the camp. However, they were burning pale red-colored stones instead of wood in the fire pit. Chen Mu had never seen such rocks before, but he knew that the stones were incomplete power stones. It was a pity when he realized about this as such stones couldn’t be used to make power cards due to their low power content. Later, he had a sudden idea to burn the stones in the fire pit.

Surprisingly, it was an excellent combustion material. It released no smoke, consistently generated heat, and burned for quite a long time. This shocked the Demonic Woman. According to her, the stone was quite common. It was known as Red Meteorite Stone in the House of a Hundred Depths, but nobody thought of using the stone as combustion material.

The burning Red Meteorite stones in the fire pit were emitting heat energy and warming the place. It was flickering, making the light reflected on Chen Mu’s face also shine unsteadily. He was looking unusually attentive. There were many strange items in front of him, including different types of stones, plant tubers, unknown fruits, animal blood…

He started to work on the materials without hesitation as he had already planned what to do. The Demonic Woman looked at Chen Mu curiously. She had never seen the card-making process of a card master. She had been in the Federation for quite some time; hence, she gained an understanding of many things. She definitely knew how much a power card meant to them. She couldn’t get out from Hundred Depths without Chen Mu as the main attacker. This made her a little nervous.

Chen Mu looked calm and attentive with his quick and controlled actions. It was hard to imagine that he was actually using unfamiliar materials to make the cards. Those who didn’t know about this would think that he had been through the process many times before.

The materials on his hand kept changing, which amazed the Demonic Woman. The whole process took around four hours. For those four hours, Chen Mu did not move his eyes away from the primitive container in front of him. The final products were the three cards that were just finished in front of him!