Lin Qing wound her way through the underground passage. After taking roughly three turns, she suddenly stopped and shifted her gaze toward the front right.
The instant she halted, the enemy blended into the background struck as well. He darted out from a corner, and a flash of cold light swept before her!
Had she taken one more step, that blow would have surely severed her throat.
But she happened to be standing just outside its range. The two of them moved with the precision of actors who had rehearsed together countless times.
Having missed, the man vanished back into the darkness. This time, however, he did not continue fleeing. Instead, he shouted in exasperation, "How the hell did you see me!? My camouflage is supposed to be flawless!"
"...Infrared." Lin Qing uttered two words.
"What?" The man froze.
Switching to natural-light vision, she found that he was indeed extremely well concealed—he stood less than five feet tall, with long, slender limbs, the complete opposite of the burly woman from before. When he curled up with his arms and legs tucked in, the texture of both his skin and bodysuit changed to match the underground surroundings. Unless one looked closely, he was practically indistinguishable from a rock by the roadside.
In a sense, this counted as a form of optical invisibility.
Yet in this lifeless underground passage, a moving red mass was about as conspicuous as it could get. Lin Qing had noticed him the instant he appeared.
Besides, even if he could conceal his heat signature, it did not matter. She still had low-light imaging, radar scanning, and other observation modes. One of them would always work.
"Infrared... what is that?" the man asked after a hesitant pause.
Lin Qing sighed. "Didn't you go to school?"
"Shut up!" He