The Card Apprentice

The base at night wasn’t completely devoid of people, with many of the card artisans and those researching card appliances used to working until late at night and then resting during the day. It was completely opposite for card artisans, very few of whom would be likely to be active at night. At that time, groups of two or three card masters might commonly be seen on the base together discussing something or other or rushing to the consignment office or to the self-serve materials supermarket.

Chen Mu was calmly walking about on the base with no one paying any attention to him.

Every five stories on the building there was an exit level, where several exits were distributed about the level. But they were all closed and required access privileges if you needed to leave. If you had the right privileges, the exit would automatically open once you swiped your room card. Many armed probe cards were arrayed around all the exits, not omitting a single nook or cranny, to be certain that those exiting matched their room cards.

Chen Mu’s room card didn’t have access privileges.

Arriving at the fifteenth floor, he hid in a dark nook, from where he could scan all the exits on the floor. Apart from the exits on the ground floor, only the card artisans would use those since they were the only ones who could use a jet stream card to fly.

During that time there were few card artisans leaving, but Chen Mu was watching in the dark, to see starting then how many would generally leave in the course of an hour. In general, there would be six or seven card artisans leaving, and he was only paying attention to those.

What he wanted to do just then was just to wait, and to wait patiently.