Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2635: The Whiteburn Family

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Southern Capital, Guild Association Mall

"Master Wyatt, I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but I sensed nothing unusual from the Whiteburn family estate. It is always quiet and consistent, like clockwork. Nothing else in the city is as regular or stable as their estate. After noticing this, I even visited the estate personally, yet found nothing suspicious, aside from the fact that the estate’s array formation seemed excessively advanced for a prominent family in a third-rate city.

Because of that, I inquired directly with the Whiteburn family head, Jack Whiteburn. It turns out that one of their family members, previously banished for serious crimes, had returned as a capable array master and helped establish the estate’s current array in an effort to redeem himself and reenter the family.

I requested to meet this young array genius who had made such a glorious homecoming, but they avoided the meeting, claiming he was in seclusion while attempting to break through. I conducted a discreet check and confirmed that he was indeed in the midst of breaking through to the card lord realm. Considering his age, it is impressive.

Since everything aligned and nothing appeared out of the ordinary, I left it at that," the demigod guard captain informed me, after reflecting on the matter in response to my persistent inquiry.

"The Whiteburn family?" I muttered to myself, my left index finger hooked beneath my lower lip.

The last I had heard of the Whiteburn family was when I met Eliza Whiteburn at the silent auction in Sun Blossom City. At the time, there were reports that they planned to migrate to the Southern capital, leaving a branch family behind to manage their assets and businesses in Sky Blossom City. Since Jack Whiteburn was still the head of the Whiteburn family in Sky Blossom City, I supposed they had put those migration plans on hold.

That was not surprising. Jack Whiteburn was a smart man. He should have recognized that, with my growth, his family stood to prosper far more by remaining in Sky Blossom City, where they were already established and possessed a solid foundation, than by moving to the Southern capital. There, they would have had to contend with entrenched powers just to carve out a small foothold and establish themselves, a task far easier to propose than to accomplish.

Moreover, leaving Sky Blossom City at a time when numerous powerful families, guilds, and companies from various two-tier and one-tier cities were relocating there would have been absurd.

The influx was significant enough that the local authorities were already considering expanding the city, and ministers at the capital were deliberating an increase in Sky Blossom City’s tier to secure additional funding and properly accommodate the new wave of immigrants.

Departing under such circumstances would not merely have been foolish; it would have been brain-dead. Simply by investing in Sky Blossom City’s real estate, they stood to earn hundreds of times more than they could ever hope to make by moving in the Southern Capital. If the Whiteburns hadn’t realized this there was no helping them

Making a mental note to visit the Whiteburns, I turned to the demigod guard captain and asked, "Anything else?"

"We noticed that citizens had been complaining about hearing strange, sometimes eerie noises coming from their home drains and the city’s sewers. At first, we suspected that someone was attempting to infiltrate the city from underground through the sewer system, so we immediately launched an investigation. However, after a thorough three-day search, we found nothing.

Even so, we did not stop. We added the city sewers to our regular patrol routes, yet to this day we have found nothing unusual. However, ever since we began patrolling the sewers, our collective mood has gotten irritable and all of us have been plagued by nightmares, even when taking short naps. As a precautionary measure, last night we requested a purification squad to cleanse the entire city sewer system, fearing it might be cursed. They should be arriving any minute now," the guard captain recounted before adding, "Now that I say it out loud, I believe this falls under what you were asking us to look into, right?"

Listening to the last sentence the guard captain added, my face immediately paled as I activated my primordial soul pupils to inspect the demigod guards more closely, only to find that nothing was wrong with them, just as during my previous inspection. My mind immediately suspected Gideon Grim and Sansa Baylor. Only these names came to my mind because among my enemies in the card world only they had abilities capable of playing with an elite demigod’s mind, no one else could manipulate a demigod so flawlessly let alone a couple teams of elite demigods.

Even so, I could not shake the feeling that Gideon Grim was behind this, despite finding no trace of his origin card’s roots within the demigod city guard teams’ soul pathways. The same was true for Sansa Baylor. I found no sign of her soul energy signature in their soul pathways either.

But I didn’t suspect Sansa Baylor, my suspicion lingered on Gideon Grim because that bastard had nothing left in the Card World to lose. Unlike Sansa, who had the love of her life, the man of her dreams, by her side as she wished, she would not dare to conspire against me again as she had with Ellen Duskborn, fully aware of what losing to me entailed. The fear I had installed in her would keep her at bay for a long time. Also, she was smart to weigh the gains and losses of angering me whose abilities were a bane to her own.

Gideon Grim, however, having sold himself to Belphegor and immigrated to the Dark Realm, truly had nothing left in the Card World to fear from my retaliation. Not to mention, if he hated someone the most in the card world then it had to be me because not only did I ruin his plan to earn merits to rank up in the dark faction he joined, not to forget in the process I revealed his origin card ability and introduced a precaution against it to the five regions. He had enough reasons to come after me and what I held dear.