"Captain Cui, Captain Li, please have some tea first." Huang Qiangmin took the cup from Wang Chuanxing’s hand, personally poured water from the electric kettle brought by Tang Jia, and prepared a Deputy Bureau’s handcrafted · Spring Festival Special · Pure Chinese Style · Limited Return · Bud and Shoot Dragon Well tea.
Cui Xiaohu expressed his thanks, his tiger teeth breaking into a sincere smile, saying, "There’s no need for you to trouble yourself. We’re just foot soldiers; accompanying Captain Jiang to complete the footprint identification is all we need to do."
"There are no foot soldiers inside the ministry, all are celestial soldiers descended to the mortal world." Huang Qiangmin’s face carried a smile, 88.88 degrees wide, not caring in the slightest that his flattering might be seen as embarrassing in front of his subordinates.
Huang Qiangmin firmly believed in one principle: dignity is only above the blade, truth only within the range of a cannon!
Subordinates look down on him? Please tell me, is it this half of the subordinates on the left, or is it the snarl from the front half of a subordinate?
Cui Xiaohu’s loyalty · honesty · caution · reticence · low profile · youthfulness and eagerness to learn, not ostentatious · skilled at observation and a good student, could not withstand Huang Qiangmin’s smile and he humbly said, "We simply carry out orders from above and below, serving experts like Jiang Yuan. You really don’t need to be so courteous; we just wait for a result and then head back to report."
Li Haochen adopted an even more of a follow-along attitude, nodding and smiling without saying a word.
"How long might you be staying here? I’ll put together a customized welcome plan for us." Huang Qiangmin asked.
"There’s really no need to roll out the red carpet, seriously, I still have to follow orders all day and night." Although Cui Xiaohu said this, he still gave a timeframe: "We should be able to wait three or four days. Captain Jiang can take his time with the work, and if there’s any need or changes along the way, you can notify me at any time."
He then glanced at Jiang Yuan. As someone who had served many experts, Cui Xiaohu thought that three or four days should be enough time to make some headway.
Huang Qiangmin thus obtained a time frame and felt Jiang Yuan should be able to finish the job. He felt somewhat relieved and, changing the subject with a smile, said, "Ningtai has two prominent features: one is that we have many and large mountains, and the other is that we have many rivers with deep waters. The game from Siningshan... Of course, many are not allowed to be eaten anymore, but we still have second and third generation farmed products...
"But what I highly recommend is our Tai River fish. The Tai River is quite long, you see, and it runs through several counties and districts within Qinghe City. But if we’re talking about fish production, only our Ningtai region can claim that. Fish from other counties are too small; only the deeply flowing waters here can nurture big fish. Moreover, since these are migratory live water fish, the wild fish caught from the Tai River have exceptionally good physiques—not the kind you find in a gym, but rather those from a fighting ring. They’re extraordinarily delicious when cooked..."
Jiang Yuan shifted his chair, producing some noise.
Huang Qiangmin immediately ceased his culinary enlightenment upon hearing the sound and looked over, concerned, "How is it? Did you hurt yourself climbing out of the sewer?"
"No, I was just looking at my own feet, thinking about something..." Jiang Yuan was actually activating a temporarily acquired +1 skill, and the sudden influx of information caused a slight change in his demeanor.
The skill was originally reserved for Dazhuang today; now it had to be deployed sooner.
Dazhuang missing a day wasn’t a big deal; with a bit of luck, he might even enjoy an extra LV5 dog meal. But the expenses of the special case team back in Jingji are unlikely to be small.
Jiang Yuan, who had just come out from the special case team, was well aware of the exaggerated costs. As the saying goes, where the cannon fires, thousands of gold flow, and once people accumulate, expenses skyrocket exponentially. The costs for 100 people are certainly not 100 times that of one person, and if those people start to be on the move, expenses increase even more sharply.
However, what Jiang Yuan truly cared about was the difficulty of matching the bloody footprint.
Bloody footprints were not hard to analyze—quite the contrary. Looking at the bloody footprints provided by Cui Xiaohu, Jiang Yuan felt the difficulty level could be considered medium, and an LV3 footprint identification skill would be more than sufficient.
While it’s true that an LV3 footprint identification skill is scarce in Shannan Province, it’s not so rare in the Jingji area, especially to a ministry department.
China truly abounds with talent, but when one says this, they’re not referring to the vast rural and county areas, but to Beijing itself, not even including Shanghai.
In an era when the appearance of a Tsinghua and Peking University high-flying graduate in a county town draws days of discussion, the Beijing area is home to six-figure counts of such graduates.
In such an environment, an LV3 difficulty bloody footprint requiring external assistance through ministry channels is quite unreasonable.
So, there is only one truth—not that the footprint is difficult to match, but that the database for comparison lacks the corresponding footprints.
This is a conclusion that Jiang Yuan already reached when doing fingerprint analysis.
If a fingerprint does not pose a high difficulty for matching, yet still doesn’t find a match, it definitely means the database lacks the corresponding fingerprint.
It’s like a creature that looks and smells delicious, rumored to make for a supremely fresh soup or a tender stew. When such a creature strolls through the center of a village, yet no one attempts to catch it, it either has an owner or it is a high-level protected species.
Footprints are the same. The difficulty of matching the half-bloodied footprint isn’t high, so Changyang City Criminal Police Detachment’s request for assistance is understandable. Footprint experts in Shannan Province might face certain odds of getting stuck or fall short in terms of efficiency, but not the ministry department.