Chapter 94

Changyang City.

In the provincial bureau's garden, the flowers were red and bright, as vulgar as Zhonghua cigarettes.

Li Zemin glanced at the flowers outside the window, turned back without any lingering attachment, picked up a Zhonghua cigarette, and sniffed it gently at his nose.

"Go smoke it yourself; I still need a while." Jiang Yuan saw Li Zemin's action but had no intention of leaving his seat.

He had just re-marked the feature points of the fingerprint and felt he had hope of finding a match; he was right in the middle of a burst of progress.

Li Zemin shook his head: "It's not that urgent; I'm just smelling it. I need to get busy, too."

From the beginning of the fingerprint battle until now, half the time had passed, yet Li Zemin hadn't matched a single fingerprint.

And the number of fingerprint experts accompanying him had also plummeted from dozens to just over a dozen.

If Li Zemin couldn't match a fingerprint again, he would fall to the bottom single digits.

Although it was said that the fingerprint battle didn't judge heroes by success or failure, and didn't require one to match fingerprints, as a fingerprint expert, if one couldn't match a single fingerprint in a full fourteen days, one couldn't help but feel like they were wasting time.

Li Zemin took a deep breath and secretly made up his mind: I'll take a good look at this batch, strive to match one fingerprint, and then I'll go out and smoke however I want, smoke a whole pack if I have to...

Ding-dong.

In the large office, the sounds of "good news" rang out sporadically.

There are always people who like to hear the sound of success, and whenever the "ding-dong" sound rang out, it meant...

Li Zemin subconsciously looked at Jiang Yuan, only to see that the fingerprint image was indeed gone from his computer screen.

Then, he saw Jiang Yuan smile slightly and slowly open a new pack of Zhonghua cigarettes.

"Want to go for a stroll outside for a while?" Jiang Yuan issued the familiar invitation.

Li Zemin was stunned, subconsciously clicking on the new message. The fingerprint that needed verification was indeed the one Jiang Yuan had submitted.

"Fine, let's go out for a stroll." Li Zemin stood up readily. Anyway, following Jiang Yuan to smoke meant he could smoke however he wanted.

At this time, on the "Cold Case Solving Ranking," Jiang Yuan, who was ranked first, had 12 battle results. On the "Homicide Cold Case Ranking," Jiang Yuan, who was also ranked first, had 4 battle results, which were also eye-catching.

Yang Ling was standing in the corridor. Seeing Jiang Yuan come out, she immediately followed.

As the person in charge of the provincial bureau's fingerprint post, her own fingerprint identification level could only be described as average. Compared to ordinary county-level trace evidence examiners, it might be considered decent, but compared to the experts selected from the whole province, it didn't stand out.

Precisely because of this, even during the fingerprint battle, Yang Ling wouldn't run around the large office. Fingerprint comparison was a relatively private job; one expert and one computer were enough. Having one more leader was completely unnecessary.

However, Yang Ling had received too many calls from all over the place in the past few days.

It was normal for her position to receive requests for help or pleas from various places, but the recent requests were somewhat different.

Especially during the fingerprint battle, people were specifically asking for Jiang Yuan to look at a certain fingerprint from their area... If it weren't for the fact that she had received many similar calls, Yang Ling would have been prepared to ignore them.

"Teacher Jiang." Seeing Jiang Yuan come out, Yang Ling immediately popped out from the corner.

"Director Yang." Jiang Yuan and Li Zemin both greeted her.

"Resting? Shall we walk a few steps together?" Yang Ling walked over with a smile and said kindly: "Are you tired? You've been in Changyang City for a week; you should be able to adapt, right?"

"It's alright."

"This is your first time participating in the fingerprint battle, Teacher Jiang. If there's anything you're not used to, just tell me. Matching 11 fingerprints is truly surprisingly impressive..."

"It's 12 now." Li Zemin seized the opportunity and interrupted Yang Ling's words in a boastful tone. Although he didn't have a single battle result, he was still proud of this little brother when mentioning Jiang Yuan's results.

Yang Ling was surprised: "Matched another one just now?"

"That's right."

"That's great. I didn't even have time to look at my phone just now, but the colleagues in the office should have processed it..." Yang Ling organized her thoughts slightly; the prepared speech she had ready had been disrupted by the two of them.

After entering the elevator, there were several colleagues in police uniforms present, so Yang Ling didn't say anything.

After walking out, Yang Ling said: "Teacher Jiang, speaking of which, I've received several calls from police stations in various places recommending their own fingerprints. If you have time later, you can take a look."

"Recommended by police stations?" Li Zemin interjected and asked: "Are they not in the fingerprint database for this battle?"

Yang Ling said helplessly: "They are. It's mainly that several places heard that Teacher Jiang has matched several blurred fingerprints, so they want to ask Teacher Jiang to look at similar fingerprints they submitted. I feel that since Teacher Jiang is good at this kind of fingerprint, having a few more choices is actually quite good."

"These people are quite flexible." Li Zemin spoke up for Jiang Yuan.

Yang Ling nodded in agreement and added: "Please help out, Teacher Jiang; these are all calls from leaders in various places. If you don't look at the monk, look at the Buddha..."

She and Li Zemin seemed very concerned about this matter, but Jiang Yuan didn't seem to care much; his emotions were actually still in the state of fingerprint comparison.

Human attention is limited, and using the lv4 fingerprint identification skill is the same.

After Li Zemin reminded him, Jiang Yuan reacted and said: "Looking at fingerprints is no problem, but I can't guarantee whether they can be matched."

"That's for sure." Yang Ling breathed a sigh of relief and explained: "I also feel that Teacher Jiang's ability to handle this kind of blurred fingerprint is quite strong, which is why I specifically introduced them to you..."

On this point, what she said was indeed reasonable. In terms of fingerprint identification ability alone, although Jiang Yuan was at the top of the expert group, it didn't necessarily mean he could get results far exceeding everyone else's.

Having the current results had a lot to do with Jiang Yuan's flexible use of the lv4 image enhancement skill.

As everyone knows, image enhancement involves technologies such as Fourier transform, Walsh-Hadamard transform, grayscale histogram, grayscale point operation, smoothing spatial filtering, and sharpening spatial filtering.

However, if you tell these technologies to fingerprint experts, they will still be completely confused.

Two confused faces against one confused face, the advantage is naturally solid.

Jiang Yuan actually thought Yang Ling's introduction was quite good. The fingerprint database for the fingerprint battle was huge, with a total of over ten thousand fingerprints. There were dozens of counties and dozens of municipal districts in the province, and the cold case fingerprints submitted by each one were in the triple digits.

And in the software system, there was clearly no option for "blurred."

Just on the way back, Li Zemin reminded him: "The fingerprints introduced by Director Yang here must all be homicide fingerprints; otherwise, it wouldn't be worth making such a call. Some fingerprints might even be going into the ministry's fingerprint database."

"I'll take a look and see." Jiang Yuan couldn't make any promises, but after doing fingerprints for these few days, his own self-confidence had also improved quite a bit.

In the large office, the smell of hard work remained.

In the air, there was a strong smell of caffeine, a faint tea fragrance mixed with the lingering smell of stinky feet—a characteristic that only a popular large office could accumulate after a week. The messy desktop also had nothing to do with the initial neatness.

The biggest change was the appearance of the experts. The police uniforms that were once ironed flat had long returned to their most practical state. The changes in the collars, cuffs, and even the chest area could better explain the experts' self-management ability.

Those who were good at internal affairs and could always take care of their clothes, and those who lay flat, were lazy, and called in sick every day, couldn't be experts and couldn't get into the fingerprint battle.

Even if they got in, most wouldn't get good battle results.

And those who could get good battle results, like Zhu Huanguang, were all extremely hardworking and full of self-confidence.

Even if his battle results were only half of Jiang Yuan's, Zhu Huanguang didn't have the slightest intention of relaxing. His idea was also very simple: as long as he used the time others spent resting, sleeping, smoking, and even going to the bathroom to compare fingerprints, even if his efficiency was a bit lower, he would have a chance to catch up bit by bit.

Zhu Huanguang thought this way, and he did this.

He even secretly made up his mind that from today on, as long as Jiang Yuan didn't return to the dormitory to rest, he wouldn't return to the dormitory to rest. Even if Jiang Yuan returned to the dormitory to rest, he would at least do fingerprints for another hour before returning. If he was in good condition, doing two more hours was also fine.

In this way, he could have one or two more hours every day to do fingerprints. In the coming week, it would be equivalent to having more than ten hours of time. Rounding it off, it was equivalent to having two more days of time than ordinary experts.

Zhu Huanguang made up his mind, directly closed the software's message notifications, put on his headphones, and focused on doing fingerprints.

Time passed second by second.

Night fell, and the experts in the office left one after another.

Zhu Huanguang had matched his 8th fingerprint of this trip, matching more than one fingerprint on average every day.

This result, if placed in previous years, would also be the top result.

After waiting for a moment, until his battle results were confirmed, Zhu Huanguang looked up with satisfaction and looked at the ranking list in front of the office.

He saw that on the "Cold Case Solving Ranking," the number of battle results behind Zhu Huanguang's name had been updated to "8."

Zhu Huanguang smiled slightly, then adjusted his mood, and with a healthy mindset, looked at Jiang Yuan's battle results.

Jiang Yuan 14.

Zhu Huanguang took a deep breath.

Actually, it was also within his expectations. Jiang Yuan's strength was outstanding, and he worked hard enough. He hadn't gone back to rest yet, so matching two more fingerprints, matching 3 fingerprints a day, also seemed quite normal.

Zhu Huanguang didn't want to think too much, and took the opportunity to look at the "Homicide Cold Case Ranking."

Zhu Huanguang was not on this list, which had to do with the type of fingerprints he had chosen in the past few days. As for Jiang Yuan...

Jiang Yuan 6

Zhu Huanguang couldn't help but rub his eyes.

Below the "Homicide Cold Case Ranking," the number of battle results for Jiang Yuan in the first row was still "6."

At this moment, one could guess with their eyes closed that the two new battle results Jiang Yuan had added were both homicides.

Solved two homicides in a row? Matched 6 homicides in a week?

Thinking of this number, Zhu Huanguang actually felt goosebumps all over his body.