Chapter 1357: Observing the True Person

The sun was high in the sky.

In the Anwan fingerprint conference room (smoking room), the air conditioner wheezed like a chronic lung condition.

Wei Shikan sat drenched in sweat on a chair, staring blankly at the screen, with scribbled calculations and scattered notes like HE and WT on the draft paper in front of him, all fragmented and incoherent.

Li Zeming pretended to pass by, glanced at Wei Shikan's expression, and his face showed an inexplicable sense of relief.

If watching Jiang Yuan work was like sitting at a volcano's mouth watching lava, then Wei Shikan was like a watermelon-sized ice cube—cooling down when approached, placed in the room to lower the temperature, ultimately a comforting presence.

"Uncle Master, I have a question." Wei Shikan suddenly looked up and called out to Li Zeming.

Li Zeming's smile flickered and vanished, replaced by caution: "I've got a pile of cases here…… what do you want to ask?"

He was just not matching fingerprints, but he understood Wei Shikan, this second-generation cop enthusiast.

These people asking questions—either looking for trouble or genuinely having issues—and Li Zeming didn't want to answer a single one.

Sure enough, Wei Shikan didn't hesitate, spitting out math like a spider spirit: "In a model containing multiple convolutional layers, each pixel of the hyperspectral image contains multiple band information, so the input layer size is HxWxBH…… the activation function uses ReLU (recti? fiedlinearunit)……"

Pa.

Li Zeming struck his lighter, lit a cigarette: "This question is indeed worth pondering—think it over first; if you still don't get it later, come find me, or I'll introduce you to a professor……"

Then Li Zeming walked away briskly, his expression unchanged.

……

When Jiang Yuan woke up and came back to the meeting room, it was already afternoon.

On the meeting room wall, the eight teams dispatched to various locations had mostly arrived and were beginning to feedback newly scanned fingerprints.

Suspects in big cities with direct flights were found fastest; next were those with high-speed rail access; the worst fear was someone actually returning to the countryside, forcing the criminal police of that team to rent cars and speed, terrified their own people hadn't arrived, so they'd call the suspect's phone first.

Jiang Yuan wasn't in a hurry. Once each team found a suspect, they'd bring them to the nearby Fujinde Sect "for protection," not into the interrogation room, just sitting in the consultation room with tea and water.

Of these eight people, five had prior records and were naturally compliant; the others were also reasonable, and under the persuasion of four out-of-town criminal police and multiple local officers, they all followed obediently.

To put it plainly, at least seven of these eight were innocent—just had fingerprints somewhat resembling criminals'. So the criminal police who came all the way from afar in Mercedes were very restrained, took the fingerprints, and were just there to chat.

Jiang Yuan's temporary Level 1 skill was still on cooldown, but there was no need to use it anyway.

The LV6 fingerprint analysis technique, during one-on-one verification, wasn't that difficult either.

The only thing needing attention was the higher requirement for fingerprint extraction, but that wasn't hard either, since the fingerprint owners were sitting in the consultation rooms of each Fujinde Sect—if Jiang Yuan felt the print wasn't clear enough, he could just retake it easily.

Li Zeming again set down his work, stood behind Jiang Yuan, and started eating melon seeds.

Zhu Huanguang especially despised Li Zeming's attitude— a proper fingerprint expert not doing his own job, just watching others do fingerprint work……

Though he thought it, Zhu Huanguang couldn't help but lift his head, his gaze sweeping past his own screen and landing on Jiang Yuan's screen.

Jiang Yuan had several screens in front of him, not restricting others from viewing, displaying dense black-and-white fingerprint lines.

The two largest screens simultaneously showed high-definition details of a single fingerprint's portion.

The tertiary characteristics of fingerprints had been in use for twenty years already, and fingerprint experts were eager to see them rolled out domestically.

But popularizing a new technology is truly a very difficult endeavor.

It's like the fingerprint concept has existed for over a hundred years, but only in the last twenty has it truly forced criminals to wear gloves.

Accordingly, the tertiary characteristics of fingerprints hold infinite allure for fingerprint experts—they mean that even a tiny fragment of a fingerprint might be enough to match a suspect.

The requirement of eight feature points is difficult for secondary characteristics, but for tertiary ones, just the shape of a few sweat pores might be enough to confirm a match.

But promoting this technology is no less difficult than rebuilding an entire fingerprint system—just as fingerprint collection needs to be high-definition, extraction also needs high-definition; at minimum, current fingerprinting methods must be updated, with each field team equipped with a high-definition spectral imager as a basic requirement……

Of course, the hardest part will always be people.

If marking secondary fingerprint characteristics is LV2 difficulty, then marking tertiary ones is LV4.

New technology may be useful, but its error rate is also very high. And in criminal investigation, the cost of error is often enormous—especially in countries like China or Japan, where conviction rates have long held at 90% or higher, power is immense, yet avoiding responsibility is no easy task, and that difficulty grows in tandem.

"Number one is not a match."

Jiang Yuan habitually numbered the eight people, and after obtaining a definitive answer, he directly had Wang Chuanxing call the other side.

After all, with several criminal police accompanying and chatting, the psychological pressure on the suspect and family was already maxed out.

"Number two is not a match……"

"Number three is not a match……"

Jiang Yuan worked quickly, in one go reviewing the first batch of six fingerprints sent over and having examined three of them.

When he started looking at the fourth, Li Zeming suddenly began quietly cheering from behind.

"Hit! Hit! Hit!"

Li Zeming slightly swayed his arms, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a stock trader watching the market.

"Number four is not a match."

Jiang Yuan's feedback was extremely fast.

Li Zeming sighed regretfully.

Jiang Yuan chuckled, glanced back at him, then opened the fifth fingerprint and said: "The fingerprints are already confirmed—whether you shout or not makes no difference."

"As long as you haven't looked, these are Schrödinger's fingerprints. Even this person himself has never seen his own tertiary fingerprint characteristics." Li Zeming said, handing Jiang Yuan a Zhonghua cigarette, his body already beginning to sway forward slightly.

Jiang Yuan chuckled, turned back, enlarged the fingerprint details, adjusting while observing.

The tertiary characteristics of fingerprints also have a problem: too high-definition, too fine—so much so that on a whole fingerprint, you can't even tell which area of the finger it comes from.

This isn't like secondary characteristics, which max out at over a hundred feature points—just a quick comparison and you can confirm it.

Of course, this difficulty only troubles low-level technicians, just like some leaders—it has no effect on experts of Jiang Yuan's level.

"Number five is not a match."

Jiang Yuan gave another negative answer.

"Only number six remains—numbers seven and eight live in relatively remote areas, and their teams still haven't arrived." Liu Zhuangshi said beside him, also gripping his palms tightly, nearly squeezing out sweat.

Jiang Yuan nodded.

Li Zeming beside him chuckled: "Let me say something politically incorrect—living remotely means higher probability, no worries—if number six doesn't match, then the odds for seven and eight increase……"

"Hit."

Jiang Yuan interrupted Li Zeming's words, only did one round of verification, and then said to Wang Chuanshen: "Call Team 6, pay attention to safety, be more careful, don't let the suspect hear!"

Li Zeming held his cigarette and stared blankly: "So fast? Shouldn't we take a good look?"

"Look at the real person after handcuffing." Jiang Yuan answered more directly.