The Card Apprentice

Chapter 99: Sensitivity of Perception

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

Taking a deep breath, Chen Mu again extended his perception beyond five meters.

The simple water world disappeared in the blink of an eye, and there was no longer the water pressure, which also disappeared without a trace. Since it wasn’t what he had grown used to, Chen Mu felt very light.

All around was vast misty whiteness such that he couldn’t see the fingers on his hands. Chen Mu was stunned blind and couldn’t see anything other than the extremely thick white fog. He couldn’t see anything else there.

Once his thoughts stirred, Chen Mu caught something indistinctly. It was almost subconscious, as he urged the perceptual vortex to emit the tendrils all around his body.

Very quickly the shapeless intangible white mist seemed to have been stimulated, and it started to change.

They seemed like creatures which had suddenly come alive and were hitting him in waves, all in a disordered activity. Without his knowing why, Chen Mu was feeling that the white mist was following some kind of order beyond the realm of human understanding. He snapped his eyes shut and worked hard to catch those white mists.

He did some regulation which clarified things, and he immediately sensed that the white mists were divided into many strands of very fine turbulence, some of which were crashing into each other, while some were twisting together, and others were slowly permeating one another. . .

“Test score: perceptual sensitivity index: 35. Good for the first level of training.” Chen Mu was startled by the hoarse old voice which suddenly sounded.

As the voice was fading, the thick white mist could be seen to dissolve all around him at a rate that could be seen by the naked eye, until it was completely gone. Chen Mu once again found himself in a void. Floating in front of him were five differently colored cards.

He was pleased that the things he had been anticipating for so long had finally appeared. Based on his prior experience, Chen Mu reached out and touched them with his fingers, triggering each of the cards.

“How to make the folding Yanbo card: required perceptual sensitivity index: 60.”

“Tutorial in mid-grade token card theory: required perceptual sensitivity index: 70.”

“A dynamic demonstration of the seven big power compositions: required perceptual sensitivity index: 80.”

“A method to train perception with a single breath: required perceptual sensitivity index: 90”

“A model for deriving the composition of power: conditions haven’t been met: no way to trigger.”

This string of information made Chen Mu’s chest tighten, since he couldn’t currently handle any one of them. As he paid attention to what they showed, apart from the last one, the other four cards all raised the same concept: perceptual sensitivity index. Chen Mu had never encountered the concept, which must have been in some other books that he hadn’t run into yet.

But one result which had just been revealed was that his perceptual sensitivity index was a pitiful 35. According to what those cards had revealed, ten points in the scale were approximately one level. He fell short by 25 from even the folding Yanpo card which had the lowest requirement; more than two levels short.

Then Chen Mu looked at the last card “A model to derive the composition of power,” which was the only one not to bring up the perceptual sensitivity index, but which had simply determined that his conditions weren’t sufficient.

“Activating the beginning first level perceptual sensitivity training.” The hoarse old voice broke Chen Mu’s train of thought.

Without waiting for any response from Chen Mu, and without asking his opinion, the mysterious card forced him right into the so called beginning first level perceptual sensitivity training.

The scene in front of him changed again, and lots of very small tadpole-like energy bodies appeared all around Chen Mu, all continually swimming about at high speed. Their movements were extremely lively, and hard to follow.

Just when he was in that state of confusion, a screen appeared in front of him. What was written on it was very simple, the rules of the training. Chen Mu had to estimate the numbers of those energy bodies which had appeared around him; the shorter his time, the more points he would get.

Under those conditions, his eyes were completely useless, and he could only use perception.

After he finished reading, Chen Mu decided to give it a try. He closed his eyes and released his perception with all his energy.

It was already three hours later when he came out from the mysterious card. Although the perceptual sensitivity training didn’t consume much physical energy, it certainly consumed a lot of mental energy. He had only trained for two hours, and he was feeling as though he couldn’t take any more. Not only did controlling his internal perception consume energy, his brain seemed to have been emptied, which was very hard to take.

After he had come out, Chen Mu fell into deep thought.

That round of training seemed entirely strange to him, though after careful exploration, it wasn’t very hard to find the connection to the previous training.

The principle content in the previous round in the mysterious card had been to train his perception, while this round was about training his perceptual sensitivity. The two of them were obviously connected.

What really interested Chen Mu were those five cards, with each of them representing a certain topic. Whether it was the mid-grade token card theory, or the folding Yanbo card, all of them left him drooling.

Knowledge about the structure of power was still a little abstruse for Chen Mu at that time. This was already getting into the most central and essential substance of the card system.

The round was indeed very difficult! Chen Mu smiled bitterly since he had been tormented to death in that last training, with very little result. Its alternative method for deploying perception was really strange to him.

He couldn’t trigger a single one of those five cards. And not only that, but the distance between them wasn’t small, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to consider triggering them for a while. The only thing which was useful to him at that time was the reward from the swordfish challenge. Although it didn’t include many specific skills, that card’s outline-style thing was still very valuable.

He was amazed at the few tips that it did have.

The one who made this mysterious card was certainly a person of a scholarly cast, enough to make Chen Mu worship him. For example, it was incredible when it mentioned how to maintain the evenness of perception in the heat of some action, and those sorts of techniques. What felt the most inconceivable to him was its mention of using one’s perceptual sensitivity to test out the techniques most suited to one’s strengths.

If he had seen the outline sooner, he could have easily finished the swordfish challenge. By comparison, while Chen Mu had polished a few small skills from the swordfish training, they were so crude that even he was embarrassed by them.

What Chen Mu had really not expected was that he still hadn’t found any methods for making four-star cards.

He had always had high expectations for the mysterious card, hoping to find in it methods and tricks of the trade for making four-star fantasy cards. That would have enabled him to take those four-star card repair commissions. What he hadn’t thought was that there wouldn’t be a single technique related to four-star cards in it.

That inevitably made Chen Mu feel a little hopeless. Although what was in those five cards was all good, it wasn’t what he most urgently needed just then. What he most needed was knowledge related to four-star cards.

Going through the cards that Ning Yan had sent him, Chen Mu’s bitter smile deepened. Of course, among the twenty cards in the pile, eighteen were four-star cards, with only two that were three-star.

More bitter smiles, he might as well go ahead and take out the two three-star cards, since he couldn’t do nothing.

Although the two three-star cards were rather ingenious, as far as Chen Mu was concerned, they weren’t very complicated, especially since he had the analytical tool of token card theory.

He quickly restored the two cards, and then the next day first thing he went right to the library.

Since there wasn’t anything in the mysterious card regarding knowledge about four-star cards, he would have to go a different route to learn it.

He was very clear about his plight, since even though he had Madam Ning’s request, if he didn’t demonstrate a certain value, his plight could only get worse and worse. No one wanted to cultivate someone who could only eat white rice. On that point, it was the same as everywhere.

Up until then he had consumed a shocking quantity of materials, even though none of them were valuable. So, would the Ning family send him away agreeably once they’d determined that he had no value?

That basically wouldn’t happen. Chen Mu understood the brutality of society very clearly.

It was a good thing that the works relating to cards in this library were extremely complete, and Chen Mu immediately threw himself into them.

While he was studying four-star cards, he specifically spent some time making a shuttle card. That shuttle card made use of only ordinary materials, while Chen Mu had used practically all of the token theory that he had learned on it.

The most direct result of that was that while its power was the same as ordinary three-star shuttle cards, its firing frequency had stunning results.

According to the theory, as long as the card artisan’s perception was strong enough, it could fire off five energy shuttles per second.

You could imagine that this would make a battle scene look like it were raining shuttles, with the density of the hits giving the enemy no escape. By comparison, the tailless shuttle was as slow as an ox dragging a broken cart. While he had made tremendous progress in the control of the tailless shuttle card, it still required one and two-tenths seconds to fire.

Still, the lethal power of the tailless shuttle’s hit made it a terrifying weapon.

Chen Mu called the new shuttle card the “raining shuttles card,” and then he sent it to Li Li to sell on consignment, setting the price at thirty contribution points.

He didn’t’ have any misgivings about using the token card here. On the contrary, it would be better for his plight at that time if he could show his value.

He didn’t put much stock in the raining shuttles card. By that time his schedule was extremely full. Apart from studying knowledge related to four-star cards in the library, he still moved forward every day with the perceptual sensitivity training. As for the perceptual training and the exercise gymnastics, these were unmovable even by lighting.

With such a stuffed calendar, he didn’t have any spare time to pay attention to anything else.