The Card Player In The End Age

Chapter 3

The woman who was Fan’s dream girl hadn’t noticed him at all. At the moment, her attention was concentrated elsewhere.

She was focused on an all-white animal with ruby-like eyes that resembled a rabbit. If there was anything odd about the animal, it had to be the ears.

The rabbit’s ears draped all the way from its head to the ground and extended backward like the train of a wedding dress.

There was no way the rabbit could run fast; if it tried, it wouldn’t even need an obstacle like a tree—it would trip on its very own ears.

Looking at the rabbit, Fan drooled. This past internship disrupted his homebody lifestyle, but it also taught him some outdoor survival skills . . . which was how he knew roasted rabbit was a delicacy.

It was as if his dream girl knew his thoughts; he watched as she slowly reached toward the rabbit with a shaking hand, as if she was about to caress someone beloved.

The long-eared rabbit looked so adorable and understanding, she didn’t even cower or run away as she blinked her big eyes.

As the woman’s fingers got closer to the rabbit, her hand shook more and more. Just as her fingers were about to touch the rabbit, something unexpected happened.

The rabbit opened its cleft lips, locked one of the woman’s fingers in her mouth and didn’t let go. The rabbit’s expression almost seemed gloating.

The woman’s arm shook a little, as if the bite hurt, but she didn’t try to remove her finger; instead, she raised her other hand to try to caress the rabbit’s snow-white fur.

Fan could tell that she didn’t want to catch the rabbit at all; she was more like a twenty-fifth century kid who saw a stuffed animal toy and just wanted to touch it.

She may have looked like a fighter, but Fan could tell she was a gentle soul.

The woman’s gaze was focused and her body shivered slightly. It was as if she had been looking forward to the encounter for a long time.

But just as her other hand was about to touch the rabbit at last, the rabbit opened its mouth and let go, then leapt off the cliff and . . . flew away.

Yes, it flew away, flying with its extraordinary ears.

There was no longer any doubt that he’d time-traveled. This animal isn’t anything like the rabbits on earth, Fan mused as he watched the rabbit’s graceful flight through the air.

The woman’s hand froze, and she ignored the b.l.o.o.d.y finger on her right hand. She watched the departing rabbit, looking lost in spite of her tough exterior. He felt pity for her.

“Hey, do you need help? What can I do?” Fan confidently walked over and hollered, “Oh no, you’re bleeding? Let me take care of the wound.”

He took out bandages from his first-aid kit and started dressing the woman’s wound, while she swept her tough yet tender gaze across his handsome face.

If one got closer, one could hear his eloquent words.

This scene was part of Fan’s imagination—a better word would have been fantasy.

Homebodies tended to have social problems, especially faced with a gorgeous woman. Even people with social skills would develop problems after years of no outside activity, and Fan was no exception.

So, despite his fantasy, when he actually walked over to the woman and talked, it was more like this, “Hey, ex . . . excuse me, l-l-l-lady—”

He’d stuttered more than he talked.

Fan was a true homebody, but the woman wasn’t very social, either. When she heard Fan’s voice, she suddenly realized he was on her left and instantly turned around to face him.

If Fan had been more observant, he might have noticed the fleeting blush on her cheeks. The way she played with the rabbit wasn’t something she liked to reveal in front of others.

When she saw Fan was the one who spoke, her eyes calmed. Because of her surprise, she didn’t notice Fan’s stuttering, only saying, “You came out? It’s getting late, so we should go home.”

Her accent wasn’t the same, but she definitely spoke Chinese.

The mountain they were in front of faced west, and there was still some leftover sunlight. It was indeed getting late.

Yet, Fan could hardly pay attention to these details; instead, his thoughts were, She spoke to me? She was outside the cave all this time to wait for me? Did we travel together as a couple?

As his mind raced, he only answered, “Okay.”

Regardless of what he said, the woman was already on the move. She grabbed a vine on the edge of cliff, crouched down, and used a little strength in her legs before leaping off the cliff, clutching the vine.

If she had bellowed out a yodeling call, she would have been a female version of Tarzan.

In just a second, the woman was standing on a thick tree branch at least a dozen feet away from the cliff. She threw back the vine and shouted to him, “Found anything?”

Find anything? Fan was confused, then realized she was asking if he’d found anything inside the cave.

How should he answer her? He did carry a bunch of things on him, but he had no idea which were found in the cave.

While he considered, he suddenly realized he had a bigger crisis.

The woman was about to use another vine to swing even further away. Seeing how he stood frozen, she stopped moving and looked toward him expectantly; it was obvious she expected him to swing over just like she had.

Fan walked closer to the edge of the cliff in spite of his nerves; when he looked down, he nearly fainted.

The cliff was still here, and it stood 163 meters from the ground. He had always taken a flying car up here before, which was nowhere to be found now, so what was he supposed to do?

Never mind his fear of heights; even if he could grab the vine, he knew himself well—he could never pull off such a move the same way the woman had.

The vine she had grabbed wasn’t hanging by the cliff’s edge; it was just a regular vine that hung nearby.

So she hadn’t flown over as if she was on a swing, but had jumped the ten or so feet in the air. She really was pretty much Tarzan.

What to do? What to do? His dream girl was waiting on the other side. Many thoughts crowded his mind; in the end, Fan gritted his teeth. He would have to use the number one tactic used in all the time-travel stories.