Chapter 1508

In the heavily sealed conference center, hundreds of pairs of eyes stared fixedly at the four characters on the projection, or rather that string of English words.

Although most of them did not know exactly what had happened.

But after the various arrangements of these days, they had guessed that Lord Lin An might have encountered trouble.

They needed to find Lin An and rescue him!

Wishing he could bore his eyes into the screen, in the deathly silence of the hall, Zhang Tie looked left and right but could see nothing.

His impatience reached its peak; if not for fear of disturbing Gao Tian, he would have loved to tear those characters off and swallow them to see what Captain Lin really wanted to say!

These four characters, aside from proving they were sent by Captain Lin, what else could they prove?!

Proving Captain Lin is in North America?!

North America is so vast; trying to find a person on a continent, or rather the likely self‑hidden Lin An!

This difficulty is about the same as looking for a grain of sand that hides itself in the desert!

Even Deng Xiang in the sky, an electronic life‑form, was about to burn out his CPU!

"Gao Tian! Is Captain Lin hiding some information in this word? Morse code?!"

Straining to use his limited knowledge reserves, even at the thought speed of the Fourth Rank, Zhang Tie could only think of this. IQ and thinking speed are not really related—just like a calculator that computes blazingly fast, it cannot be said to possess wisdom.

Ignoring Zhang Tie, who was scratching his head in frustration, Gao Tian simply kept eliminating possibilities one by one.

Exactly.

Although Zhang Tie's mind is not sharp, his suggestion that there might be hidden information is indeed possible.

What could it be?

Does the order of the English letters correspond to coordinates? Or does it hint at the geographic location of a religious scene they established during their amoeba‑worm times?

Using projection to lock onto coordinates?

Or perhaps only the thing they remember, whose information can be converted into coordinates?

Gao Tian couldn't help recalling the meme incident they encountered during their first out‑of‑base mission with Lin An.

Lin An's mental ability is absolutely capable of doing this.

Cryptography, logic, deductive cracking?

Almost at the same moment, An Jing Tian and he issued the order simultaneously:

"Immediately summon all Long An personnel skilled in cryptography and decryption!"

Many hands make light work.

After simultaneously uploading this information to Zhuanxu, the two realized that if they wanted to crack the message's content, they might as well brute‑force it with exhaustive search—this would be the fastest way!

Ten minutes later, as a third‑rank logic expert—or researcher, even a novelist—entered the conference hall, an extremely tense decryption effort began.

Four minutes later.

"Lord An Jing Tian! Our team tried the letter‑coordinate method, mapping it to map coordinates, and obtained a latitude and longitude!"

Excitedly, they held up their calculation results.

Under orders of heavy reward and pressure, this geography team was the first to offer their hypothesis.

In an instant, An Jing Tian glanced at the projected result, then after a moment frowned and shook his head.

The letter result on the projection turned out to be a location in East Africa, and moreover, that coordinate lay in the ocean.

Could this be the coordinate?

The team members all shook their heads.

Knowing Lin An's character well, they knew that if he gave information, it would absolutely not be useless.

The message was sent from North America, so the coordinate must be in North America!

Reluctantly treating this coordinate as a backup result, An Jing Tian's expression showed some disappointment as he spoke coldly:

"Keep cracking!"

"Everyone pay attention! The coordinate is very likely in North America—solve it along this line!"

Seventeen minutes later.

"Lord Gao Tian! Please look at our results!"

"If the coordinate is locked to North America, could we understand it as expanding the coordinate system to the North American map, performing an inverse overlay, and then obtaining the coordinate?!"

Throwing down the paper and pen he had been calculating with, a bespectacled researcher nervously looked toward Gao Tian.

As researchers of ballistics, skilled in calculation, after the first team's failure they quickly thought of the military's ballistic strike plan!

Just as one must conceal the true strike coordinates, the military, when designating strike coordinates, usually enlarges the selected area relative to the map and, through overlay diffusion, redefines the latitude and longitude!

Instantly looking at the result this research team gave, a few seconds later Gao Tian furrowed his brows and discovered that the coordinate was at the center of New York.

The coordinate looked fine, and it was indeed in North America.

But...

The center of New York is entirely overrun by mutants and zombies, and there are even large numbers of meme‑type special events.

According to their earlier reasoning, Captain Lin is likely severely wounded—how could he possibly survive there?!

Moreover, how could Captain Lin get someone to transmit a message?

This coordinate is logically wrong!

Seeing Gao Tian's suddenly disappointed expression, that research team unconsciously glanced at the satellite map and immediately realized they had made a mistake.

Nineteen minutes later.

"Miss Wen Ya! Team c023 reports a new idea!"

"Based on the memory information you provided, we took the scene where Lord Lin An first spoke those words, converted it into a copy‑map location, then second‑mapped it to the real world, and referenced...."

Holding aloft a densely packed reasoning diagram of condition layers, three awakened ones who looked like mountain surveyors nervously spoke up.

Scaling the amoeba‑worm world proportionally to Earth's size, then estimating the scene at that time, mapping its coordinates to Earth, and then, via scene features, finding a matching area in North America and conducting a comparative conversion...

Under the extremely tedious procedure, the result obtained turned out to be near Yellowstone Park.

Seeing Wen Ya furrow her brows while looking at her team's result, the three surveyors also began to explain somewhat uncertainly:

"Miss Wen Ya! Although there isn't a large safe zone near Yellowstone Park, and there are many monsters, there indeed are survivors active there!"

"Theoretically speaking... Lord Lin An..."

Without waiting for them to finish speaking, they confirmed their own reasoning.

After a moment, Wen Ya let out a bitter laugh, shook her head, and pointed out the crucial loophole.

"It's unlikely; Yellowstone Park is one of our strategic strike targets, so we've been monitoring the personnel structure here."

"The Awakened Ones who dare to survive here are all a tightly-knit group that sticks together."

"Besides them being there, no one else can survive there."

"Likewise, if Lin Ge appears there, they will quickly spot him."

"But..."

Gazing at the satellite map above Yellowstone Park, Wen Ya let out a quiet sigh.

The area where people are active—or rather, where activity is possible—is just a tiny range; among the thousands of images taken over the past few days, there is not the slightest trace resembling Lin An.

So, even if Lin An were there, if he were seriously injured, he would likely have already come to harm...

Moreover, she kept feeling as if she had thought of something, constantly sensing that they might have made a fatal mistake.

"Lin An... what exactly are you trying to convey..."