Chapter 2142: Backtracking and Analysis

It is Talibu!

At least from the surface, it is indeed Talafu's younger brother, no mistake!

As that slender figure continuously retreated within his perception, more and more information was consciously received by Xia Duo into his consciousness; there were the various characteristics of Talibu himself, as well as the relevant parameters in the environment that were affected as a result.

At the same time, the Wisdom-based brain connected to his essence also began to exert the power of a wisdom cluster; countless pieces of information were classified and analyzed, and point after point was distilled.

Subsequently, under Xia Duo's direction, the focus of the Detection Spell moved from beside the Static Field in the center of the square, following the direction of Talibu's "retreat," to the edge of the square, and even to Talibu's private residence outside the square.

But in his perception, Talibu's "retreat" continued, from his various tracks within the private residence to the Mairide Pasha's palace outside, and then back to the private residence, during which the blurred figure of Talafu also appeared.

However, Xia Duo focused on Talibu, while Talafu was temporarily ignored by him; if there is a need in the future, he can trace back again.

In addition, regarding protection against Detection Spells, Talafu was also more rigorous than Talibu; Xia Duo estimated that he could at most perform this level of backtracking on Talafu twice, after which it would be very difficult to trace further.

As for Talibu, he could be traced at least four more times before the detection results would become too blurred due to interference from various factors to have any actual analytical value.

This situation is somewhat similar to the "uncertainty principle" on Earth, except that on Earth, measuring a quantum might cause its state to change in a single instance, while here, there is a gradual process based on the observation intensity of the Detection Spell.

By the same token, without corresponding protection, someone with intent could erase some information from the past by performing their own backtracking; in fact, this is also a very effective method for the Avoidance of Detection.

……

Just like this, Xia Duo traced back to three days before the assassination incident, to the scene where the brothers Talibu and Talafu were having dinner together; at this time node, Talibu's figure was already very blurred, while Talafu was nothing but a blank space.

Even if he specifically traced Talafu, it would be very difficult to find useful information from that time.

Thus, Xia Duo naturally stopped the spell, "Mage Aisite, that's enough, let's stop here for now!"

"Does Lord Xia Duo have any discoveries?" Aisite asked hurriedly.

"Yes, I have discovered some clues and am currently analyzing them; if nothing goes wrong, I should be able to prove that the assassin was not Talibu himself."

"What?!"

Aisite was immediately shocked, "Lord Xia Duo, what did you discover?"

"We will talk about that later; I need a quiet environment to conduct the analysis."

Xia Duo rubbed his temples, found a chair from his Personal Space, placed it next to the Static Field, and sat down directly; seeing this, Saville immediately took charge of keeping watch.

Upon hearing this news, Talafu was also extremely excited, but he could not show it yet; he just kept sending messages to remind Jiabulile to pass this news back quickly.

Only Aisite seemed to pace back and forth quite anxiously, but seeing that Xia Duo remained unmoved, he gradually calmed down and waited patiently for the final result.

……

At this moment, in Xia Duo's consciousness, the messy information was entangled together, seemingly on the verge of reaching some conclusion, yet it just wouldn't come out.

A Detection Spell does not inherently provide analytical capabilities; it merely collects information, but in this classical era, seeing the scene often equals restoring the truth.

Therefore, when facing incidents involving only ordinary people, the spell is often invincible, but when facing a Spellcaster, especially one who is extremely knowledgeable about the field of detection, it often falls short.

Thus, there has been a constant evolution and alternation between Detection Spells and the Avoidance of Detection.

If he were truly caught in this kind of competition purely about technique, Xia Duo would not have any good methods, but coming from Earth, he has more advanced analytical approaches, enough to allow him to pierce through the Mist and see the truth clearly.

Just like when technology was not yet advanced on Earth, determining the identity of a murderer largely relied on very indirect evidence, such as eyewitnesses, documents, receipts, and so on.

But with the emergence of DNA technology, a single drop of blood is enough to lock onto the true identity of a murderer.

Those criminals who left blood evidence before the appearance of DNA might not have thought that there would be such a thing as DNA testing in the future; by the time the era of DNA testing arrived, they could all be easily detected one by one.

As long as there is a general Ziliaoku of DNA, catching people is just a matter of effort; even without one, one can analyze genetic generations to determine a general direction, which was already a very mature technology when Xia Duo traveled here.

Of course, he is not trying to test Talibu's blood before and after; this was actually mentioned in the investigation report from Calimshan, and the bloodstains left after the assassin committed suicide indeed belonged to Talibu, or rather, belonged to the Mairide Family bloodline.

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In the field of blood testing, Xia Duo considers himself less professional than the people here in Calimshan, and with the Elves raising no objections, he is more inclined to accept this judgment.

But blood evidence does not equal the assassin being Talibu, or rather, it does not equal the assassination act being Talibu's subjective will.

In Xia Duo's hometown, there is a legend that "the mentally ill are not guilty of murder"; it seems absurd, but in reality, it means that an actor can only be held responsible for actions under the control of their free will.

And in the world of Magic, although Xia Duo has never seen a mentally ill person, he has seen plenty of Mind Magic; what a person does may not be what they want to do themselves, but could be under the direct Control of others.

In this situation, one certainly cannot consider the controlled person to be the actual perpetrator.

In fact, regarding Talibu's assassination of Prince Xisi, Xia Duo discovered that it was far from as simple as mere Mind Magic control.

Through an analysis of Talibu's behavior from the time of the incident to three days prior, Xia Duo discovered that it was roughly on the day before the assassination incident, on the way back to his private residence from the Mairide Pasha's palace, that his behavioral patterns underwent extremely subtle changes.

To see if a person has changed, besides the characteristics of the body itself, there are also some more abstract characteristics, such as expressions, movements, and posture.

Xia Duo certainly does not understand professional micro-expression analysis or gait analysis, but as long as some parameters that can be specifically described and measured are written down in the form of data, the problem returns to his old profession before he traveled here.

Data analysis is not something Xia Duo is extremely proficient in either, but this is not an extremely complex problem; abstracted, it is nothing more than a data dimensionality reduction problem of less than 500 dimensions.

Doing it with purely mathematical methods is far less difficult than the dimensionality reduction of the 1200-dimensional data from the Plane Exploration array feedback signals during Plane Exploration.

It is just that Xia Duo has some understanding of Plane Exploration and can perform some dimensionality reduction methods based on feature selection, which greatly reduced the workload.

But for micro-expression analysis, body movement analysis, and gait analysis, he can only half-guess, relying mainly on experiential intuition and pure mathematics to perform data dimensionality reduction, thereby distilling the expression, body, and gait characteristics reflected by the data.

This is a job that consumes a lot of brainpower.

Fortunately, there is the Wisdom-based brain to assist!