Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen: Attending a Banquet

Exclude.

Exclude…

Jiang Yuan occasionally clicked the mouse to remove viewed fingerprints from the list, ensuring the software wouldn’t present duplicates in the next round of matching.

Even so, the complexity of fingerprint matching remained unchanged.

Each time Jiang Yuan re-marked the feature points, he had to re-examine 150 fingerprints—about thirty seconds per fingerprint, taking a full hour to complete one set.

This was due to the complexity of fingerprints. If the fingerprints were completely unrelated, a glance would suffice to flip past them, but the ones the system matched had relatively high similarity, requiring careful scrutiny to eliminate.

Yet that’s how fingerprint matching works—especially with difficult cases—always hovering between “Did I mark the feature points right?” and “Is this fingerprint in the database?”

Jiang Yuan was no exception; when adjusting the fingerprint for the fourth time, he unconsciously paused.

“I should adjust it larger,” Jiang Yuan blurted out the thought without realizing it.

Originally, he had been making micro-adjustments within a 20% range, but as more fingerprints were eliminated, by the third set of 150, the system’s matches had become wildly off—many fingerprints, to the naked eye, showed no connection at all; even after two deformations, one couldn’t expect the system to sort them accurately, otherwise Jiang Yuan wouldn’t have had to scroll through 150 fingerprints.

Yet at this moment, Jiang Yuan thought of his colleagues.

They certainly understood micro-adjustments, and as for patience, police officers assigned to fingerprint work were no slouches—hours of viewing fingerprints meant nothing; during fingerprint campaigns, officers had to examine fingerprints for fifteen to twenty days, and expert analysts could review hundreds of thousands, with thousands per case being routine.

Jiang Yuan’s fingers moved slightly, slowly shrinking the suspect’s fingerprint inward by 30%.

This figure was certainly exaggerated—normal deformation never reached this level—but considering the 150 candidate fingerprints, the probability of a match in the latter half had dropped significantly, so Jiang Yuan decided to choose a ratio no ordinary fingerprint expert would ever pick.

Of course, 30% wasn’t arbitrary; Jiang Yuan still based his edit on the more stable central region.

After quickly marking the new feature points, Jiang Yuan clicked “Confirm” again, waited briefly, and saw the refreshed list of candidate fingerprints.

He scanned from top to bottom as usual—no surprise—the similarity scores of the top fingerprints were extremely low.

Jiang Yuan rapidly clicked “Exclude” to scroll down. Having viewed them so many times, he had the suspect’s fingerprint firmly memorized—he could judge solely by the right-side matched prints.

While confirming a match required multiple considerations, eliminating a match was relatively simple: if there was any obvious difference, he could click “Exclude.”

This time, Jiang Yuan reached the 90th fingerprint in just twenty minutes.

As he instinctively reached for the right-click button, Jiang Yuan paused.

The 91st fingerprint, in its upper-middle section, gave Jiang Yuan a sense of familiarity.

Jiang Yuan sat up slightly and examined it more closely.

The difference between two fingerprints could be large or small. In fingerprint identification, to confirm identity, one must first have eight or more matching feature points, and second, no conflicting points—or any conflicting points must be explainable.

For the fingerprint Jiang Yuan was currently analyzing, meeting either of these two standards was extremely difficult—but when accounting for the corrected portion, he had managed to reach eight.

Jiang Yuan swiftly uploaded the prepared image, wrote the identification note confirming identity, clicked “Confirm,” and let out a long breath.

It actually matched.

And it matched at the 91st position in the candidate list—such a low-probability success brought immense satisfaction.

Jiang Yuan leaned back in his chair, picked up his cup, and drank the entire contents in gulps, feeling as refreshed as if he’d downed a whole bottle of ice-cold beer in the dead of winter, his forehead still tingling from mental exhaustion.

“Got a result?” Wu Jun glanced over from across the office, guessing from Jiang Yuan’s expression.

Jiang Yuan chuckled proudly, then added modestly: “Just uploaded it—still waiting for expert verification.”

“Then there’s a good chance,” Wu Jun said, genuinely surprised. He steadied himself and looked again at Jiang Yuan: “Actually, this case belongs to our county—you’ve matched the suspect, just report directly to Captain Huang. No need for expert verification.”

“Better to verify—it’s a severe deformation,” Jiang Yuan paused, then smiled. “Besides, it’s not urgent today.”

“Fair point,” Wu Jun said, sighing. “If you’ve matched this one, you’ve cracked a long-standing serious assault case.”

Jiang Yuan smiled obediently.

While intentional assault cases couldn’t compare to homicides, they were still among the eight major crimes under criminal law, and with the added weight of being an old case, any officer solving one would be the star of the criminal investigation team for months.

Wu Jun himself was just an ordinary forensic technician, relying on experience and being the county’s sole expert, he’d once had his moments of glory—but watching Jiang Yuan now, he couldn’t help feeling envious: if he’d had this level of skill back when he was young, and had grown this tall, wouldn’t he have married a wife who didn’t yell, didn’t hit, didn’t demand his salary card, cooked well, and cleaned the house?

“Go home,” Wu Jun said, glancing at the time, rising with a lackluster air.

It was already 6:30 p.m.—normal quitting time had passed—but in the forensic unit’s floor, officers in every office still worked silently.

The two men exiting the forensic office exchanged glances, then quietly locked the door.

“No corpse, time to clock out. Gotta go wash clothes today,” Wu the forensic tech said lightly, speaking softly.

Jiang Yuan nodded. “I’m going to a banquet.”

“Shh,” Wu Jun pulled Jiang Yuan down the stairs, then relaxed enough to chat: “What banquet?”

“My seventeenth uncle’s.” Jiang Yuan glanced back at Wu Jun and invited: “Want to come?”

“Me? Go to… your seventeenth uncle’s…”

“You cut the meat.”

“Still…,” Wu Jun fell silent, then said after a long pause: “I’ve been a forensic technician for half a century—this is the first time I’ve been invited by a client.”

“Come?”

Wu Jun sighed, dug into his pocket: “Just chip in for me—half a pack of cigarettes. Give them to him.”

Jiang Yuan took the half-pack of Yuxi from Wu Jun, waved goodbye, and headed to the parking spot to ride his electric bike home.