The Card Apprentice

Chapter 151: Wei-ah

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

Walking around in the living room, Chen Mu felt a little hungry. There hadn’t been any sign of the food that Alfonso said would be sent. Chen Mu knocked on the door where Alfonso was.

“What do you want?” Alfonso opened the door a crack, showing part of his face, which looked unhappy.

He had been working and wasn’t very happy to be interrupted by anyone having never experienced it before. These disgusting people from outside! He didn’t do anything on the spot, thinking about how the clan elder had charged him with hosting the little furry head.

Chen Mu saw Alfonso perturbed, so he asked very calmly, “I’d like to ask, when will the food be delivered?”

“What a pain!” Alfonso muttered a couple of words and came out to the wall of the living room. Chen Mu then noticed that there was something hanging on the wall that looked like it had been made from a cow horn. Alfonso walked in front of that thing, and lightly touched the middle of the horn with his finger.

A light gentle glow slowly spread out from the horn like an eager gaze, with several small glowing spots flashing within it, and Alfonso touched one of them with his finger.

The flow of the glow quickly transformed, and the image of a woman appeared in it. Alfonso communicated with the woman in a language Chen Mu had no way to understand, and then a moment later Alfonso shut off the image and turned around to face Chen Mu saying, “There will be a banquet this evening, where the clan elder will welcome you.”

He paid no more attention to Chen Mu, quickly burrowing himself back into his room.

Evening? Looking at the sky, it was still early. If he were to wait until evening he thought he would starve. Chen Mu wondered if he should do something himself.

After thinking it over, Chen Mu found the hunger intolerable and left Alfonso’s house.

The villagers were all very curious to see him walking in the village. Everyone knew that people had come from outside, which was a momentous affair for such a closed off little village. But Chen Mu could see the guardedness in their eyes.

“Are you alone?”

A man’s voice came from behind, and Chen Mu turned around to see Wei-ah. Chen Mu had a deep impression of that chilly-looking man who didn’t say much. He could detect from what the people around him said that they all had a lot of respect for Wei-ah, although it could have been a kind of fear. Even that unruly Li Duhong became a lot more straight in front of him. Once Wei-ah appeared, the rest of the villagers hurriedly avoided him.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Chen Mu suddenly asked.

Just as Chen Mu had formed a deep impression of Wei-ah, so had he formed one of Chen Mu.

“Come with me.” Wei-ah wore the same emotionless expression as he walked right ahead.

Hearing that, Chen Mu immediately caught up with him.

“Is this your house?” Chen Mu was looking around and felt that he had to ask. Wei-ah’s house was extremely simple and crude, completely empty inside. It was hard to imagine that he lived in such a place, which was a whole lot worse than the supportive housing that Chen Mu used to live in.

Right in the middle of the room was pile of ashes, which still gave off some heat, and there were some dry sticks piled in a corner.

“Mmmm.” Wei-ah made a sound in answer, as he went straight over to the wall, and took down a wild deer leg that was hanging there. He stirred the ashes with a branch he was holding to expose some coals that hadn’t gone out, and then twisted the branch as though it were a towel.

Without seeing where his energy was coming from, Chen Mu heard the sound of a loud blast covering the ground, as all the wood fibers in the whole stick of firewood suddenly came loose. And then he just lightly shook his right hand, and the firewood there instantly became a thatch of very fine wood fibers.

Wei-ah very deftly put the thatch of wood fiber onto the coals, where smoke immediately arose, followed by a wisp of flame quickly leaping up. Wei-ah then added some wood in a leisurely way, and the fire grew immediately, raising the temperature in the room.

Chen Mu had been transfixed. When he was so poor in his youth and scavenging to live as a street punk, he had never seen that kind of savage life. You could see from Wei-ah’s actions that he was very used to it, and Chen Mu realized why his house was so empty. If there were anything in it, it would catch fire.

Wei-ah had already put the deer leg on a spit over the fire, while skillfully adding fuel.

Countless doubts arose in Chen Mu’s mind. From what he had seen in Alfonso’s house, he didn’t think that life there had fallen very much behind, with such advanced technology. Even though it was a lot different from the Heavenly Federation, it wouldn’t be called primitive. Bu Wei-ah did seem entirely primitive. And Chen Mu had found something strange. Wei-ah’s house wasn’t equipped with protective devices.

“Why don’t you have any protective devices?” Chen Mu asked, finding it strange, and then adding, “You have the same roof as the rest.”

“I don’t need them.” Wei-ah didn’t raise his head, as he continued patiently to baste the deer leg.

Don’t need them? Chen Mu turned that over in his mind.

The two of them didn’t say anything for a while. Neither of them liked to talk, and so they very naturally fell into silence.

“Here.” Wei-ah gave Chen Mu a deer leg.

Wei-ah was very good at what he did, and the deer leg was golden-brown and shiny, giving off a delicious fragrance. Chen Mu took it without any hesitation and opened his mouth to take a bite. He was starved and wasn’t paying attention to anything else and wolfed it down in a flash.

Chen Mu felt a lot better after eating the deer leg.

The two of them sat by the fire without saying anything.

The silence lasted for almost ten minutes, which felt awkward even to someone like Chen Mu who didn’t like to talk. Just as he was about to leave, Wei-ah suddenly opened his mouth.

“What’s it like outside?”

After asking that, Wei-ah fell silent again.

Chen Mu couldn’t get a handle on what Wei-ah had said, and then said after thinking it over, “I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s not the same as here.”

Wei-ah grunted, and his eyes looked perplexed as though he were thinking of something.

“You wounded little Three?” What did you use?” Wei-ah asked.

Chen Mu pointed to the apparatus on his wrist, “This.” Seeing Wei-ah’s look of puzzlement, Chen Mu activated the apparatus. Very quickly a crystalline tailless shuttle was whirring lightly on his finger.

Wei-ah showed arousal on his face for the first time, “What is this?”

“It’s called a tailless shuttle.” Chen Mu explained and then pointed his finger toward an empty spot in the corner. Xiu! The strange whistling sound took the calm expression from Wei-ah’s face, and then it changed.

The tailless shuttle left a small hole on the wall, letting in a beam of light from outside, and then Wei-ah’s expression quickly resumed its calm, as he nodded, “No wonder you wounded little Three. If I hadn’t been aware of it beforehand, it would have been very hard for me to evade as well.”

“Mine isn’t much. Bo Wen’s thousand swallows wavy blade card is much scarier.” Then he described a little about the scene of attack from Bo Wen’s thousand swallows wavy blades, and Wei-ah nodded, with a calm expression.

Chen Mu couldn’t help asking, “How do you fight here.”

“They use card-matters, which I don’t like to use.” Wei-ah said mildly.

Chen Mu couldn’t help his curiosity, “What do you use?”

“Speed and strength!” Wei-ah answered very directly.

Without knowing why, Chen Mu suddenly thought of the demonic woman, who had once said the same sort of thing. But taking a look at Wei-ah, Chen Mu felt how absurd it was to connect Wei-ah with the demonic woman. Wei-ah had a huge body; whether standing or sitting he was always like a tower of iron, and very overbearing. His face was lined with fortitude and carved like stone. When combined with his stony expression, he looked full of menace. By comparison, the demonic woman had an exquisite body, small and lovely, although she didn’t have a very flattering face.

And the menace which came from Wei-ah was starkly different from the menace which came from the demonic woman. The demonic woman was like an assassin who travelled in the dark, while Wei-ah seemed like a ferocious wild beast of the jungle, or like a lifeless killing machine.

Chen Mu nodded, seeming to understand, though puzzled. He could see from the way that Wei-ah had twisted the firewood just then how much strength he had. And Wei-ah had shown his speed that time at the entrance to the village, which had so awed Bo Wen.

Although he felt a little at odds with the notion, with that kind of skill, if he were to use a card, wouldn’t he be even scarier? The more power, the naturally better it would be. Of course, that was only something that Chen Mu was turning around in his head before it disappeared. His counterpart could crush him like an ant. He wouldn’t have been qualified to make such an assessment about anyone else, given his own strength.

“Are there a lot of people more amazing than you on the outside?” What Wei-ah said was blunt, and you could see that he didn’t spend a lot of time communicating with others.

“Lots.” Chen Mu scratched his head, a movement which made him look more like an ordinary youth. Thinking about the world he was used to, Chen Mu couldn’t help missing it. He had never thought that there was anything exceptional about him, and at the same time, he thought of himself as a duffer. Thinking about those high-grade card artisans who were all so superb, what did his own ability add up to? Among the three of them, if he hadn’t used breath control, he wouldn’t have been able to beat even Cheng Ying, not to mention Bo Wen.

Wei-ah’s expression became more serious, since Chen Mu didn’t seem to be fooling. There were only as many people as you could count on your fingers in the village who could wound little Three. Could any random person on the outside be like that?

Just then someone knocked on the door.

It was Bullet, who breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the two of them, “The banquet is about to begin, and the clan elder has summoned you.”

Wei-ah stood with a grunt.

The banquet was in the biggest building in the village . . . held in a small half-moon-shaped little auditorium. Chen Mu was amazed. It was hard to imagine that in such a closed-off village deep in the old growth of the mountains he would actually see a building that could hold over three-thousand people. That really made a huge impact on him.

Scanning all around, Chen Mu sucked in a cold breath of air.