The battle seemed to have settled into a new balance. Tang Hanpei had not seized the golden opportunity presented by Qiao Yuan's injury to launch a surprise attack. Instead, he was more concerned with Zu Ning's death.
There were many suspicious points surrounding the incident. According to the reports from Zu Ning's card adepts, they had posted a card adept on watch that night. There had only been one, but that alone still revealed a great deal.
This card adept had undergone the Federation Comprehensive Academy's orthodox training for recon card adepts. Every one of his grades so far had been excellent. His performance in tactical courses had also been outstanding. What convinced Tang Hanpei most was that every teacher's assessment of this card adept included the same comment: rigorous, meticulous, and highly disciplined.
The likelihood of such a card adept making an elementary mistake was vanishingly small. Tang Hanpei had also questioned him personally, and his demeanor had only strengthened that conviction.
That left only one possibility: the infiltrator had evaded his scans.
That was not impossible.
Reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance were like a spear and a shield. Tang Hanpei himself, for instance, had several ways to evade scans of that level. He also knew of several cards capable of avoiding scanning pulses of that strength.
But every card needed a card adept to use it. Half of a card's effectiveness depended on the quality of the card itself; the other half was directly tied to the card adept's ability.
As it happened, counter-reconnaissance cards placed extremely high demands on their users. What sort of card adept excelled most in this field? Anyone with a little common knowledge would blurt out the answer: assassin card adepts!
Those who walked in darkness were undoubtedly among the card adepts best suited to