Chapter 130

: The Best Breath Control (II)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Just as Bo Wen was about to question himself, Chen Mu executed a fish-flop, carving a marvelous trajectory in midair like a fish belly. That was also a highly skilled midair tactical maneuver having a difficulty level of 70. Bo Wen was utterly dumbfounded.
Multi-level tactical maneuvering refers to combining several midair tactical maneuvers into a coherent whole. If there were two such maneuvers, they would be called double-level tactics, and if it were to include three, that would be called a triple-level tactic by analogy. Although Bo Wen wasn’t a close-combat card artisan, he still had some basic understanding. If a double-level set of tactical maneuvers included two maneuvers with a difficulty level of 60, then the level of difficulty for the overall set would be far more than a single maneuver at the level of 70. So, most of the card artisans who deployed multi-level tactical maneuvers only included several simple and very low-level midair tactical maneuvers.
The level of difficulty of a double-level tactical maneuver which linked two 70 level of difficulty maneuvers would be a rather frightening number. By that time, Bo Wen was utterly convinced of Chen Mu’s identity as a close-combat card artisan.
From farther away, Cheng Ying was also stunned, as this was her first time seeing a double-level tactical maneuver which combined two 70 difficultly-level maneuvers into a double-level.
Bo Wen had discovered that he had no way to lock onto Chen Mu, and he had delayed releasing the wavy blade from his palm. If a remote card artisan didn’t make a strike with his first attack, that would have an influence on his self-confidence. Therefore, most aces wouldn’t ever make hasty moves. They would always wait for an opportunity and would never fire unless it was going to hit.
Bo Wen was clearly an ace.
He was waiting until Chen Mu completed his fish-flop.
If was already evident from its difficulty level of 70 that the fish-flop made great demands on controlling the jet-stream card. It required that the card artisan control three directions of the jet stream simultaneously. If there were any more directions, then the trajectory would be even harder to track. Being able to use the fish-flop made it clear that his adversary had extremely strong perceptual control.
But while multi-level tactics certainly had excellent evasive results, they weren’t without disadvantages. The demands on the body and on the control of the jet-stream card were extremely high, and even more importantly some flaw would often appear just when they were being completed. That was because the forces on the body were too high, so that by the time the maneuver was completed, and that load had reached its peak, most normal card artisans would experience a momentary blackout.
Of course, that wasn’t a certainty. There were close-combat card artisans who were abnormally strong who could support those kinds of forces and wouldn’t be likely to have those midair blank-outs. And those outstanding card artisans with a lot of combat awareness might optimize those multi-level tactics to bypass or make up for that shortcoming.
Both neither of those two types of card artisans were seen very often.
That had to do with the history of close-combat card artisans. The earliest card artisans were remote card artisans, with close-combat card artisans only appearing later. The early close-combat card artisans had all developed as a subgroup from remote card artisans. That was also why there were far more remote card artisans than close-combat card artisans. The tactical system for remote card artisans had already been quite perfected, in comparison to which the tactical system of the close-combat card artisans was a lot more crude and simple. They were also not so good at physical exercise, having evolved from remote card artisans. Adding to that the constant disadvantage of lower numbers of close-combat card artisans, they never developed nearly as far as remote card artisans had.
In that regard, the Palace of a Hundred Pools and the Mohadi Region were both rather strong.
The two groups were very different when it came to tactical accomplishment. There were several dozen times more remote card artisans than close-combat card artisans. And there were pitifully few close-combat card artisans among the very top aces. No matter the system, its development would depend on the participation of large numbers of aces. Since there were so few aces and the basic numbers were small, the theoretical system was crude. And the most direct result was that most close-combat card artisans weren’t very proficient with general tactics.
So, Bo Wen was waiting for Chen Mu to show his flaws.
The trajectory of the fish flop was so erratic that it was difficult to follow, though Bo Wen remained calm, with the wavy blade in his palm ready to release at will.
There was a sudden flash in Bo Wen’s eyes, with his expression suddenly turning serious, as he made ready with the wavy blades in his palm. Even though Chen Mu’s figure was hard to lock in, Bo Wen’s gaze was firmly fixed in front of him. That was because the fish-flop would have to complete! Bo Wen had already surmised that when it was finished, it would have to be in the place where his gaze was fixed.
Even if Chen Mu only gave him a tenth of a second of blanking out, that would be enough for him.
Like a hunter who’d set his trap, he was waiting for the quarry he’d been chasing for so long to enter the killing zone. His gaze was focused on a thirty-meter round zone, which was where he’d determined that Chen Mu’s fish-flop would finally end up.
Chen Mu was getting closer and closer!
Bo Wen’s gaze became as sharp as a needle, and all his fibers had tensed! Chen Mu was just about touching the edge and about to enter the ‘trap.’ Bo Wen had adjusted the wavy blade in his palm to its optimal state, ready to fire at will.
Then Chen Mu performed a sudden maneuver that was beyond what anyone could have anticipated!
An in-folding direction change!
Having just tapped the locked-in area, Chen Mu suddenly made that in-folding direction change, perilously tagging the circular area as he caromed obliquely away.
That maneuver greatly exceeded what Bo Wen had anticipated, not even having considered it. He released the wavy blade unconsciously.
The folding directional change had a difficulty of 10 and was one of the simplest midair tactical actions. Bo Wen – who was the first ace of the younger generation of the Eastern Ning’s – had been tricked by something any novice could have done.
To use such a basic simple midair tactical maneuver in that situation was simply fabulous. In reality, that had been a triple-level tactic when combined with the others, and not a double-level tactic. Still more importantly, with the three midair tactics’ difficulty arrayed at 70, 70, 10, it was no wonder that Bo Wen had been fooled by that strange combination.
The two previous maneuvers which had such a high degree of difficulty had given the illusion that it was a double-level tactic which included two midair tactical maneuvers. The previous two actions had a difficulty level that was so high – with a correspondingly high level of difficulty for the double-level tactic – that no one would think that yet another would be added afterward. That was because to add another midair tactical maneuver would raise the difficulty level to a point where it basically couldn’t be completed.
And he hadn’t realized that Chen Mu would actually add on the lowest difficulty level maneuver to combine for such a weird triple-level maneuver.
Bo Wen’s face looked awful. Calling himself a genius, he had been abruptly tricked by someone even younger than him. A kind of humiliation that he had never felt rose up from the bottom of his heart, making his face hideously steel-grey. If you were to say that he had begun by wanting to kill Chen Mu because he was a card artisan of the night of the cross, he had just added yet another reason.
He could accept defeat, but he couldn’t accept being taunted.
Greedily watching the fighting explode in front of her from a distance, Cheng Ying had an expression of disbelief.
Bo Wen’s skill far exceeded anything she had imagined, and objectively he was probably a couple of levels higher than her. If you were to say that Bo Wen’s actual strength had made her feel shocked, then the actual strength of that youth had made her feel incredulous. She had previously surmised that the youth’s skill was very high but had only just then discovered that her assessment was way off. She really felt that even the best close-combat card artisan at the base, Mark Victor, wasn’t the equal of that youth.
That spiraling somersaulting midair dodge had dazzled her. That tight fish-flop had made her look like her blood was boiling. But the folding directional change that followed had really made her worship that nondescript sallow-faced youth.
Was that really a close-combat card artisan who had made a name for himself with crude tactics? While ingenious was a term that put something into the realm of the fantastic, she didn’t feel that it was sufficient to describe the youth’s tactics. She had felt a kind of power of wisdom in him.
There had been no deviation in Chen Mu’s mood, and what was in his mind included no feelings that would bias him, as he treated others objectively, as calm as though what was happening before his eyes had nothing to do with him.
The time was at thirty seconds.
He was already under twenty meters away from the roof tops of the residential area. And he still had 120 seconds. He either had to shake off Bo Wen or kill him.
It would be best to shake him off since the Ning family base had probably already started to respond. They had certainly dispatched card artisans to capture him.
Bo Wen swapped cards as quickly as he could, since the single-shot nature of the blood sharp card made its power insufficient for the current turn of events.
Not knowing if it was because of the stimulation, Bo Wen’s speed at swapping cards far exceeded his best results, at nine tenths of a second. But it didn’t give him any pleasure that time, with the chill spilling out of his eyes, and his calm restored, as placid as a mountain rain about to turn to storm.
His perception pivoted at the greatest speed, with his spirit more focused than ever – and his perception more responsive than ever – so that within an instant he was filled with confidence. He believed that his next attack would be the most powerful he had ever delivered in his life.