There may be a clue.
But Ji Jue had not found it.
He meticulously photographed the scene and, after performing work that the police had completely neglected, Ji Jue frustratingly realized that all he could see in the dust were a few spread footprints.
But he couldn't tell who was who.
Whether the visitors were male or female, tall or short, and whether they had any noticeable features, he had no idea.
It was clearly too late now to start learning from a textbook from scratch, but fortunately, there were other methods.
Ji Jue placed his palm on the old computer.
He told it:
— "Wake up!"
After several attempts, an almost imperceptible sensation finally resurfaced. Invisible Hand took control of everything, forcibly initiated the overloaded power supply, bypassed the burned-out circuit as per Ji Jue's will, and performed some level of repair... then the screen lit up again!
He skillfully opened the shop's surveillance footage and adjusted the time.
Two dark figures appeared on the screen, entering from the back door as if premeditated yet ignoring the cash register and the money storage, turning instead to other areas within the shop.
As if they were searching for something else.
Then, they encountered the awakened Lu Ma.
Like a crazed mother bear, the roaring Lu Ma, without spouting any pretentious gang rules or other trivial stuff, swung a wrench and smashed it on the head of one of them, cracking the skull open, spattering blood on her hair—perhaps that was why there were residual spiritual substances.
If it were an ordinary person, such a blow could have caused a concussion, if not death.
But... what if the person wasn't normal?
In the surveillance footage, the man on the ground jerked twice before stiffening like he was electrocuted and creepily rose, effortlessly grabbed Lu Ma's arm, seized the wrench, and smashed it on her head and face.
The other attacked figure restrained Lu Ma as if caressed by a gentle breeze, easily overpowering her.
Ji Jue watched as Lu Ma in the monitor struggled again and again.
She rose, then fell.
Finally, she lost consciousness.
Collapsed on the ground.
His expressions gradually faded, even his anger seemed to drain away through some void, only the old computer's casing gasping and screaming.
The image abruptly froze.
Lu Ma's resistance had pulled off one of their masks, revealing a scarred face with sideburns and unusually colored eyes, which sparked Ji Jue's memory of the old man who went mad and attacked him.
Crimson colors.
Although their mutations did not seem as severe as the old man's, that old man strangely gave Ji Jue a sense of malnutrition. These two men were not driven to madness by hunger either; they simply possessed physical capabilities beyond ordinary people.
The footage quickly ended as the two figures, after a long search and finding nothing, trashed the place in frustration and eventually, not wanting to leave empty-handed, laboriously dragged Lu Ma's body toward the back door.
Ji Jue walked to the back door, following the lingering traces that disappeared outside.
The rain washed away all traces of tire marks.
He looked up at the telephone pole... an old camera that had long been out of maintenance hung non-responsive, its data cable decayed over time.
It looked as if it hadn't been taken care of in over a decade. Throughout these years, Cliff City's surveillance system was replaced time and again, but sadly, none covered the chaotic built-up area of the Northern Mountain District.
It had been long forgotten.
"Who says a useless surveillance can't find people?"
Ji Jue stared intently at the telephone pole, murmuring softly, then pulled out a ladder from the storeroom and climbed the wall. In the drizzle, no one noticed the figure in a rain cape seemingly fixing the roof.
Then, Ji Jue took out wire cutters from his pocket.
"Alive or dead, it all depends on this."
Ji Jue clenched his teeth, put on the barely adequate work gloves, identified the correct cables of the camera, and without hesitation snipped: "It's up to you now, superpower!"
Snap!
In an instant, as if tiny creaks suddenly emerged from the severed cables, followed by sounds that were originally almost non-existent starting to resonate.
It was like they had traveled from a thousand miles away to just next door, yet it was still too far!
Ji Jue thought for a moment, took off the work gloves, grasped with his hands, and the noise amplified again, but still not enough... until Ji Jue, resolved, opened his mouth and bit the data cable.
At that instant, it felt as though his soul had left his body, galloping from the silent cable into the empty surveillance camera.
And ignited the extinguished spark!
On the camera, a red light flashed abruptly.
"Damaged, repair, thank you."
As if possessed by a human consciousness, it emerged disjointedly and weakly from within the machinery: "Is there anything, I can, help with?"
Damn, is it that smart?
From the spiritual substance Ji Jue had endowed, the camera had developed a self-awareness, though slow and vague.
Ji Jue directly transmitted the scene he observed through the surveillance into the camera with the spiritual substance, "Right under your nose, a robbery occurred. Help me out, I just want to know where these two went."
The camera remained silent.
Vibrating.
As if overloaded, sparks burst from the cracks, sounding furiously from within the link of the spiritual substance.
"Damn it! Any evil, shall be brought to justice!!!!"
Boom!
A deluge-like scene roared from the other end of the cable, spewing an uncountable clutter of images into Ji Jue's mind like a hammer.
Suddenly, everything went dark.
From the grogginess, ecstasy emerged.
Holy shit, can this really work?!
Not only that, if dangling a data cable from the mouth can ignore all hardware, models, data protocols, and other conditions to transmit images, then in the future, won't just holding two memory sticks in my mouth suffice for solving transmission system differential equations?
What a bright future!
No longer afraid of struggling with multiple transmission system dynamic models!
Wrong, if it could really work, I could just wave my hand and make the computer do the calculations for me...
But as the jumbled thoughts dissipated, Ji Jue had become immersed in the images transmitted, not knowing how many years' worth of footage was stored within. It was intermittent, unfocused, yet the image suddenly froze at the end.
In a blur of night, there was a white van parked by the road, an old model from Coastal Automobile Factory, worn and scratched, no different from the common black taxis of the Northern Mountain District, mixed cargo of people and goods, convenient, reliable, and fuel-efficient.
As the headlights flared briefly, the license plate appeared in the image, sadly, it was blurry.
"The voltage, abnormal, in disrepair, abandoned, didn't capture, the number." The camera sounded disappointed, stammering, "Sorry, sorry, sorry."
"No, this is already enough," Ji Jue, content, released his mouth and patted his drooping head. "Wait till I get back and I'll give you a major overhaul, surveillance bro."
"You're welcome."
The camera gave its final response, and with the fading of the spiritual, fell silent once again.
Ji Jue, standing on the wall, stared in the direction where the vehicle had disappeared, and at the distant traffic lights along the way, slowly exhaling a breath of white air.
No license plate number, no big deal.
In this day and age, who doesn't have a few fake-plated cars when carrying out shady business and illicit activities?
Experiences naturally help avoid trouble.
But who says without a license plate, the car can't be found?
How to find a fake-plated, white van among tens of thousands in Cliff City?
The answer is simple, just ask directly.
Ji Jue stood under a streetlight, looking toward the camera, "Bro, need to inquire something, last night at five in the morning, did a white van pass by here? About this size, yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks a lot."
"A small matter, mate."
The enthusiastic camera tweaked its head, seeming to wave goodbye, "Come and hang out next time!"
"Didn't see it, maybe check further ahead?"
"It went left, but then at eight it headed south."
"The car downstairs has a dash cam, ask it, surely it'll work!"
"It went north."
"...You still have to go further ahead, yes, just a bit more, turn right."
Cliff City, one of the nineteen central cities in the Federation, covers 7,200 square kilometers and is divided into seven districts. According to statistics, it has a permanent population exceeding 26 million, and realistically, including undocumented and illegal immigrants, it might be over 30 million.
But if you were to ask each of these 30 million people, searching for a car over 7,200 square kilometers would be like finding a needle in a haystack—everyone has their unobservant, unseen, unremembered, and uncooperative moments, but machines don't.
What's witnessed is witnessed, what's not seen is simply not seen.
Throughout the entire Northern Mountain District, aside from the main roads monitored by official surveillance, there are countless cameras in factories, companies, nightclubs, apartments, villas, and even convenience stores and dim sum restaurants; and yes, every vehicle's dash cam as well.
The plethora of cameras, like stars hidden in the darkness, constantly watch the ground before them, loyally recording every change onto hard drives for retrieval.
Just ask them; they'll answer.
Knowledge unrestricted, response comprehensive.
Better than loyal dogs.
In just six hours, Ji Jue had pinpointed the route of the white van, its approximate location, and specific details.
Even the ultimate position!
Indeed, the entire process took less than twenty minutes altogether.
The rest of the time, aside from traveling, Ji Jue was waiting for his spiritual to recover, and voraciously devouring any food he could find on the streets.
At six in the evening, Northern Mountain District, Marine Avenue.
Inside a noisy roadside restaurant filled with the sounds of card games, Ji Jue leaned by the window, staring at the parked white van outside, waiting for the unknown whereabouts of the car owner to show up.
Casually looking down while showing off.
He swept through siu mai, rice noodle rolls, and buns, eating like a starving ghost reborn.
Extreme hunger.
As spiritual was consumed and restored, his body also craved sustenance.
High-calorie food was rapidly draining Ji Jue's bank account balance at a heartbreakingly fast pace, yet despite this, he still felt dizzy, with intermittent ringing in his ears and his face white as a ghost.
The aftereffects brought on by the lack of spiritual, the inability to smoothly control an unmastered power used at such a frequent rate, were taking their toll.
The only upside was that his sporadically functional sense resonance could now be reliably activated while he was fully focused, initially getting the hang of it.
However, the better he got at it, the more discordant and strenuous it felt.
Like a child driving a big vehicle.
Though exciting to look at and to experience, it was incredibly draining; one careless moment could leave him depleted by the huge vehicle, resulting in spiritual overdraft.
If it weren't for the fact that he had squeezed some spiritual reserves out from that old Dean with his watch earlier that day, Ji Jue might have already collapsed.
"The Chosen One... huh?"
Recalling the phrase from the watch system, Ji Jue couldn't help but murmur.