Chapter 115: Deep Variations (1/2)

Chapter 115: Deep Variations

Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

It could be seen from the pen strokes on the card that the card master had extremely rich experience making cards. One could only form such fine and precise lines after becoming thoroughly tempered.

The pen strokes in a composition would sometimes show the card master's style. For instance, the first feeling that this card gave Chen Mu was of precision, with nothing being the slightest bit off, like dialed-in precision. In comparison, the mysterious card gave Chen Mu a kind of vast and broad feeling.

Each card master was different from the others, and the cards that they make are naturally different as well.

Will's control of perception was too weak to bring all that card's power into play. Even though it was only a three-star card, it's real power went far beyond what he had demonstrated.

Chen Mu inserted the bipolar thunderball card into his apparatus and activated it. He shut his eyes, feeling carefully for the energy changes in the apparatus.

Two fist-sized glowing balls appeared, twirling around Chen Mu's body, merrily chasing one another. But they weren't the same as the thunderballs Will had formed. The ones that Chen Mu had formed had light-blue colored sparking on their surface, and the arcing sound had almost disappeared.

Chen Mu had never known what his perceptual ability level really was, never having undergone the specialized assessment.

He was very quickly immersed in probing the bipolar thunderball card.

As compared to before, his perception was a lot more fine and sensitive. He carefully experienced the energy flow in the apparatus, where there were twelve energy beams converging from all directions, passing through different structures. They seemed like streams of liquid metal, passing through tubes having differing capabilities, finally forged into metals having different characteristics.

Manipulating the two thunderballs didn't take any energy and he could very easily control them any way he liked. But after Chen Mu had experimented a bit, the farthest that they could be from him was five meters. Any farther, and he would lose control of them.

He could see two light-blue thunderballs sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing, sometimes going clockwise, and sometimes counterclockwise.

He suddenly remembered the light-shield that Will had demonstrated, and Chen Mu tried to get the two thunderballs to come close to one another and move in a circle in front of him.

Like mischievous elves, the two thunderballs chased one another with exhilaration. But Chen Mu never saw any sign of the energy shield that he wanted.

What was going on? Chen Mu was felt a little stupid remembering that he hadn't asked Will anything about how to use the card, which made him sneer at himself.

But he didn't become discouraged, having seen such a situation many times before. Failure was his daily bread. And exploration had always been a kind of joy.

By controlling his perception, he could keep them going continuously at their highest speed at which time his perception was in its most sensitive state.

Chen Mu concentrated all his attention on the two thunderballs, and then he discovered something. They didn't look much different from any energy balls, but under Chen Mu's perceptual scanning, their peculiarities revealed themselves.

Having been formed from countless small beams of energy, those then formed into a peculiar sort of gridwork. But those grids were extremely fine, and in a sense the thunderballs were like a honeycomb, or like a sphere woven from rattan.

There were a lot of little holes on the surface of the thunderballs, some small and some large.

Their size was precisely ordered, with two of the largest size. Next was a slightly smaller hole of which there were four. Chen Mu called them the secondary holes. There were eight of the next smaller size, and these were about as fine as Chen Mu's finest perceptual tendrils. He called those the third-level holes.

The third-level holes were at the limit of what Chen Mu could probe.

From large to small, being arranged in two, four, and eight, one could see that they were extremely orderly. Chen Mu quickly determined that the key to manipulating the two thunderballs was those fine little holes.

Now that his objective was locked in, Chen Mu began to experiment.

He very carefully separated out two perceptual tendrils, extending one of them into one of the two largest holes in each of the two thunderballs.

Then something wonderful happened!

The two thunderballs suddenly started to quickly chase after one another, at such a high speed that in an instant an energy shield took shape in front of Chen Mu. But it wasn't very similar to Will's, being light blue on its surface, with the occasional sparking on its surface coming in flashes.

Chen Mu's spirit was stunned, and as he continually adjusted the strength of the perceptual tendrils inside the thunderballs, he saw the form of the energy shield in front of him also continually transforming.

A mirror, a convex surface, a heart shape, a diamond shape . . .

Then the energy shield in front of him looked like a disc of soft rubber, as it took any shape that he desired. It finally changed into the most classic and common individual shield, slightly thicker in the middle, arching out to both sides, and able to protect the whole person inside it.