Chapter 123: No Thieves Under Heaven

"Gone for so long?"

Wu Jun sat by the office window, leisurely smoking a Zhonghua cigarette. Beside him was a spider plant, already bristling with three or four discarded filters.

To be honest, a week ago, Wu Jun hadn't been in the mood to smoke so relaxedly.

Doing the forensic work for an entire county alone was truly exhausting.

Jiang Yuan placed the remaining red-dyed eggs on the table and said, "I went to the imaging office to see them working on the images, and I helped out a bit."

"Imaging work is also a huge hassle." Wu Jun described it to show he understood, then handed a cigarette to Jiang Yuan, saying, "Slow down, don't be so restless. We work in the county; we aren't chasing money or fame. Isn't the point of having this job just to have a slower pace of life and a bit more of a normal existence?"

Hearing about a "normal existence," Jiang Yuan looked at Wu Jun with a hint of amusement and said, "We're forensic doctors now; we can't really live normal lives anymore, can we?"

"Regarding that..." Wu Jun looked around vigilantly, then stood up to close the door. He pulled his Guan Yu statue from the drawer, hung it on the door, lit some incense, and took a puff of his Zhonghua before saying slowly, "In this life, at least my conscience is clear. I've feared and worshipped what I should. As for your generation, I don't know."

Wu Jun pulled Jiang Yuan in front of the Guan Yu statue. Jiang Yuan had no choice but to bow along with him.

"Right, you've seen enough dead bodies this time. In the future, if you encounter another case with eight or ten deaths, just bow to Guan Yu." Wu Jun pondered for a moment, decided to set a specific number, and added, "If you encounter a case with 8 deaths, bow once. Let's keep things a bit safer for ourselves."

Jiang Yuan chuckled, "Where would we even find a case with 8 deaths nowadays?"

"Didn't you just encounter one?" Wu Jun said. "There are plenty of perverts out there. If you look carefully, you'll always find them. Like this case—if Li Sanqiu hadn't happened to run into those hikers, who knows when or in what state it would have been discovered."

Jiang Yuan had to bow to Guan Yu again, saying, "Alright, let's put it away, lest someone sees it."

"Let them see it if they want." Wu Jun said that, but still carefully put it away, then continued, "Twenty years ago, there were still plenty of murders. Famous ones, like the case in the central region—the killer wanted to take revenge on society, made his own guns, and killed people at random. Later, he even stole service weapons and killed quite a few."

"Antisocial personality, I suppose?"

"Maybe. But what that guy did back then, people might not be unable to do now. He made his own firearms in a machine tool factory; the only thing was he used a relative's hunting license for the gunpowder..." Wu Jun rambled on.

Jiang Yuan brewed a cup of tea to listen, read the newspaper for a while, and then—time to get off work!

The next day.

The sun rose as usual.

Work proceeded as usual.

Jiang Yuan also appeared in the office as usual.

Wei Zhengguo appeared in the office unusually.

"You did this, right?" Wei Zhengguo was too familiar with Jiang Yuan; he asked directly upon meeting.

In his hand was the portrait of the criminal suspect printed yesterday. A middle-aged man in a hat, standing under a big tree, looking up at the sky with a somewhat foolish expression, captured perfectly by the surveillance camera.

Jiang Yuan glanced at it and nodded, "I did it for the imaging office yesterday. Did it get transferred to you?"

"Yeah, our Sixth Team mostly dealt with theft and burglary in the past. Since I just got back and the captain told me to take it easy for a few days, I took on this case," Wei Zhengguo explained casually.

"Is Mu Zhiyang doing okay?" Jiang Yuan had returned earlier than Wei Zhengguo.

Wei Zhengguo nodded and said, "His arm function and everything are fine; he just needs to recuperate for a few more days. Wen Ming will bring him back later, and he'll be about ready after staying in the hospital in Ningtai for a few more days."

"Won't there be any lasting effects?"

"No." Wei Zhengguo said, then looked at Wu Jun and added, "If you're free, why don't we do this case together?"

Jiang Yuan's sense of guilt quickly subsided, and he asked curiously, "Isn't this already done?"

"It's done for the imaging team, but for us, it's just beginning." Wei Zhengguo gave a bitter smile. "The main thing is to secure the evidence. It would be best if there's video or photos of him in the act. Secondly, we need to prove he was indeed in the vicinity during the time of the crime. Third, we need to see if we can find where he discarded the accessories and photos to prove he indeed came into contact with the stolen goods. Only then can it be considered a somewhat complete case."

Jiang Yuan let out an "Oh" and asked, "Then if I hadn't helped you find this, how would you have solved this case?"

"Either we wouldn't, or we'd catch evidence of one instance and try to dig deeper. If we really wanted to solve it, we'd just stake out the scene and catch them in the act." After listing a few plans, Wei Zhengguo said, "Mainly, I want to catch a big one."

"A big one?"

"Thieves talk to each other; news travels fast. If we use imaging to catch and convict Old Juan—that suspect—these guys will pay extra attention to surveillance cameras. They might even destroy the cameras in key locations."

"We could just catch them for destroying the cameras."

"I don't want to spend three or four months on a case like this." Wei Zhengguo was now a man who had done big things; looking at the petty theft in the county, he clearly looked down on it a bit.

Jiang Yuan looked at Wei Zhengguo, waiting for him to continue.

Wei Zhengguo organized his thoughts and said, "There are only 5 traditional pickpockets left in the county. One of them barely comes out anymore. My idea is, can we use imaging to secure evidence on all 5 of them? I'll catch them all at once, and the streets of Ningtai will be quiet from then on."

Wu Jun was curious at this point: "Are there really only 5 left? You know this, and you haven't caught them yet?"

"We've been busy lately." Wei Zhengguo said, then added, "Actually, they're all habitual thieves. Don't look at them as being in their forties or fifties; their skills aren't great, and they don't have much guts. A few even went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to try their luck, couldn't make it, and had to come back. They can't do anything else, so they spend all day thinking about how to steal things. And they can't even steal anything worth much."

Jiang Yuan had learned a bit about these mid-life crisis thieves yesterday. He found it slightly amusing but felt absolutely no sympathy. He thought for a moment and said, "How about you just copy the files over to me? If there's a lot of footage to watch, it'll probably take some time."

"Alright, I'll go ask for them." Wei Zhengguo responded and ran off.

In a little while, he came back with the first, second, and third generations of the 'Four-Eyed Guys'.

They had heard Jiang Yuan was going to work on images and all came to watch.

"Where do we start?" The third-generation Four-Eyed Guy, Gao Jiansheng, was even more proactive than Jiang Yuan.

"Let's first look for any existing footage that captured the criminal process. If there is, we'll make the portrait clearer so we can confirm who is who. That should be enough." Wei Zhengguo was also asking Jiang Yuan.

"Then let's look for it." Jiang Yuan didn't dawdle; he opened the video and started searching.

Gao Jiansheng leaned in close to Jiang Yuan, staring without blinking, looking like he wanted to learn the secret techniques.

Yesterday, Jiang Yuan had performed image enhancement, and he hadn't quite reacted to it. Today, seeing Wei Zhengguo and recalling Jiang Yuan's operations from yesterday, his feelings were completely different.

As the third-generation Four-Eyed Guy, Gao Jiansheng was relatively young and hadn't been in the county bureau for long; he still had fantasies about technology. In this regard, he was somewhat similar to Wang Zhong.

However, Jiang Yuan didn't think Gao Jiansheng could learn image enhancement well. The technical depth of this stuff was far higher than fingerprint comparison.

Fingerprint comparison relied heavily on talent, but the ceiling for "diligence compensating for lack of talent" was also very high. With careful effort and some guidance, reaching an LV2 level was standard performance. With a bit of talent in certain aspects, or being particularly hardworking, there was a chance to reach LV3.

But image investigation technology didn't work that way. Ultimately, image investigation was actually about mathematics, then physics, and then it had requirements for computer technologies like algorithms.

Therefore, without a strong foundation in theoretical ability, an ordinary person could work themselves to death and only reach LV1, never even touching the door to LV2.

Although it was said that one could achieve some success by starting to learn mathematics at 30, how many ordinary people working could manage to study mathematics at 30?

Based on this, Jiang Yuan sat in front of the computer and just sorted through the videos himself, with no intention of explaining.

Yet, because he didn't explain, Gao Jiansheng actually watched quite happily.

As everyone knew, terms like Fourier were enough to cause depression.

If you didn't talk about it, you wouldn't necessarily think about it.

Jiang Yuan set up a six-screen view and stared at three screens along with Wei Zhengguo. In a while, he caught the figure of a pickpocket stealing something from the bus station surveillance camera.

Jiang Yuan pressed a few shortcut keys and clipped all the videos of the crime.

At this point, the video didn't show the thief's face clearly. Jiang Yuan, just like before, first processed the entire video, then extracted a dozen frames separately to perform high-definition processing.

This set of routines was already established, and there was ready-made software to operate it. To Gao Jiansheng, it looked like Jiang Yuan was just pressing a bunch of shortcut keys, just like yesterday.

This made Gao Jiansheng quite delighted.

The expressions of the first and second generations of Four-Eyed Guys were also very excited.

This routine looked quite complicated, but it wasn't completely unlearnable.

If they could learn this set of techniques, it would be too easy to extract high-definition images from videos and catch thieves in the future.

Jiang Yuan noticed the expressions of the three and pretended not to know.

In fact, this set of operations wasn't fixed. After a while, when he continued to work on other videos, the three should be able to see it.

This kind of thing was actually like a hacker using software.

Normal hackers did their daily work using software; no one really clattered away to write a piece of software themselves to use. But when it came to technical depth, the stuff inside was much more complicated.

Like what Jiang Yuan was doing now, it was mainly aimed at portraits. Things like the high-definition enhancement of blurry license plates, which was most common in criminal investigation, were a different mode.

Of course, being able to master a few tricks was better than having no tricks at all.

Jiang Yuan didn't say a word and continued his work, digging for thieves.

In a little while, Jiang Yuan helped Wei Zhengguo secure the criminal evidence for three thieves.

Wei Zhengguo started with a full face of smiles, but gradually, his expression became desolate.

"What's Old Wei thinking about?" Wu Jun asked curiously.

Wei Zhengguo sighed: "I've actually been catching thieves for half my life, especially these pickpockets. I used to organize plainclothes teams just to catch them. Now, pickpockets can't even stay hungry; those who can switch jobs have switched. There are only these 5 stupid thieves left. If we catch them all this time, there won't be any living pickpockets left in Ningtai."

Jiang Yuan happened to be working on the fourth one and asked, "Then should I leave you a seed?"

"No, no." Wei Zhengguo apologized quickly: "I was just running my mouth. Catch them. If I want to see pickpockets in the future, I'll just go to Qinghe to see them." ===== CHAPTER 124 =====