Chapter 407

Basement of the Longli County Criminal Investigation Team.

Dr. Ye looked at Dr. Zhai's bloodshot eyes and felt a little uneasy; as he moved out a basket of bones, he kindly said, "Dr. Zhai, wouldn't you like to rest a bit? Work can always wait—you don't have to push yourself so hard."

"Rest..." Dr. Zhai tilted his head slightly, repeating Dr. Ye's words with sluggishness, like a broken tape recorder; after a moment, he said, "If I rest now, wasn't last night's all-nighter wasted?"

"You didn't need to stay up last night either," Dr. Ye said, half-laughing, half-sighing inwardly: you can barely even buy breakfast without getting cheated out of ten yuan—what good is this kind of effort?

Dr. Zhai struggled to sit up, took another sip of his homemade thermos full of goji berry tea, and perked up a little: "I only skimmed some basic material last night, but if I just want to understand cutting-edge techniques, it should be enough."

Dr. Ye clicked his tongue twice: "You're really pushing yourself too hard."

"What about you? You're still young—don't you want to push yourself a little?" Dr. Zhai offered kindly.

Dr. Ye laughed: "I'm already forty-six—how many more years can I push?"

Dr. Zhai gave him a cold look: "You've got at least ten more years than I do."

Dr. Ye froze for a moment. He'd been slacking for years; most supervisors either didn't understand forensic science or were only a few years older than him—no one had ever quite put him on the spot like this before.

Fortunately, he'd slacked long enough to reply casually: "I'm too far from the cutting edge—pulling an all-nighter won't help."

"Just chase it one day at a time. I'm doing my best too," Dr. Zhai softened his tone, then turned to the young forensic trainees.

He said: "You have more opportunities—when you have free time, check out the relevant materials. Don't think Jiangyuan is just in Shannan Province; once you leave the province, it'll be harder to see such cutting-edge techniques."

The young forensic technicians all nodded—they understood the logic.

"Learn as much as you can; even just understanding the basics helps," Dr. Zhai said conservatively, wary of raising false hopes that would lead to disappointment later.

"Understood."

"We'll study hard." "How long has Jiang Team Leader been studying?"

Several forensic technicians were in good spirits. This was the usual reaction during training—when faced with something new and advanced, interest and enthusiasm always ran high.

On one hand, people naturally love novelty; on the other, new technology holds broad prospects—and if those prospects include you, that's even better.

As they spoke, Jiang Yuan arrived.

Whole corpses were still too hard to carry upstairs to the office. Occasionally lifting a skull up, tucking it under your arm, no officer on the way would say a word.

But carrying two full baskets of remains up at once would seem strange, and spreading them out would be inconvenient—so they kept everything in the basement room—the morgue was too far, and no one felt like going there anyway.

So compared to wet remains, dry remains were more popular among forensic technicians.

"Shall we start right away?" Jiang Yuan brought a high-performance laptop—just delivered by Director Huang from the county, its origin unclear.

He installed 3dsler again, placed it on the table, and set out the partially completed cranial model. Then he said: "The upstairs computer is processing Cranial #1—let's start with #2 here. Do you want to observe the bones, or work with me on cranial reconstruction?"

Everyone immediately said they wanted to do cranial reconstruction.

Dr. Zhai smiled openly: "I reviewed all night just so I'd understand what I'm seeing."

Dr. Ye said: "Either way is fine with me."

"You've got real dedication, Dr. Zhai," Jiang Yuan praised. At his age, still pursuing technical mastery—it felt like a sage seeking the Dao.

But hearing the Dao didn't mean you had to comprehend it.

Jiang Yuan never held back.

He opened the software: "Cranial #2 is progressing slowly, but we've reached local deformation. This part needs extra precision, because the final result depends heavily on local deformation. Let's keep going—just observe for now, get a basic feel. If you want to start from scratch later, you can find other cases."

The key steps in cranial reconstruction—3D modeling, landmark identification, overall deformation, and local deformation—involve creating an exact digital replica of the skull, mapping soft tissue onto it, adjusting organ positions and proportions—where the nose is, how high the brow ridge is, the shape of the mouth.

Up to this point, all of it can be understood as unchangeable physiological traits.

Local deformation defines the precise shape and details of facial features—the size and height of the nose, thickness of the lips, etc. —this step is essentially what a plastic surgeon can do.

Theoretically, if the deceased had undergone plastic surgery before death, you could sometimes detect traces of it, depending on the extent.

To perfectly recreate the deceased's original appearance during local deformation is as complex as guessing how they had altered themselves—there are countless details to consider.

"Some key data matters here. For example, the distance between the glabella and the outer canthus of the eye, the distance between the two outer canthi..." Jiang Yuan spoke as he began entering data.

Dr. Zhai nodded slightly—he had a foundation. He lacked only the prerequisite skills; his knowledge of forensic anthropology was still solid.

Dr. Ye nodded too. He didn't care about understanding—he just cared about the atmosphere.

The young forensic trainees nodded solemnly. Jiang Yuan's statement contained forensic anthropology, but also required math and computer knowledge. It was difficult, but since they'd just started, everyone still held their breath, struggling to absorb it.

Seeing this, Jiang Yuan continued.

His main goal was still solving the case—or actually reconstructing these two skulls—so he gave just enough attention to the others and resumed normal work.

As he dragged the screen, he said: "It's well known that current methods for local deformation of reference facial models are mainly two: scattered data interpolation and free-form deformation (FFD). I'm going to use the first method—radial basis function interpolation. Common radial basis functions include Gaussian, Hardy's quadratic, and thin-plate splines with linear terms..."

As he spoke, he began assigning values to these functions.

In the old manual cranial reconstruction method, none of this function business mattered—it required more artistic and sculpting skills. With computer assistance, sculpting skills are no longer essential; replaced instead by demands in math and computing.

Times change—and so do the polynomials, coefficients, and equations on the screen.

Local deformation alters faces beyond recognition.

After typing for a while, Jiang Yuan stood up: "Let's run it. Fundamentally, a radial basis function network is a three-layer feedforward network..."

He looked at Dr. Zhai, Dr. Ye, and the young forensic trainees.

Dr. Zhai was too old to understand any of this—but the young trainees were recent college graduates. Normally, they wouldn't get it either, but maybe one of them was a math prodigy...

No one was. Their eyes instinctively drifted to other parts of the skeletal remains. Forensic anthropology was always intimidating, but compared to this?

Jiang Yuan turned to Dr. Ye.

Dr. Ye gazed at Jiang Yuan with clear eyes and a calm smile. Not understanding? Fine—he, Dr. Lie, had no guilt.

Huashuge checking.