Animal Detective

Chapter 327 - 268: He’s Simply the Dog King

After some discussion, they decided to proceed on two fronts.

On one hand, they would continue to expand the scope of the surveillance footage review.

Then, starting from 10:00 AM the day before yesterday—the time Fan Lei left—they would screen several key intersections.

Shitang Mountain was bordered by Li Lake to the west, and heading south also led to Li Lake. For Fan Lei to leave, he could only go north, east, or southeast.

In those three directions, all vehicles at all key road points during the corresponding time frame would be screened.

They would just check the taxis.

They wouldn’t check rideshare services for now, because Fan Lei had never registered an account on any rideshare platform.

His phone numbers were also registered under his real name.

Even if Fan Lei managed to buy a phone number, they would still have to check the taxis before moving on to the rideshare services.

They would filter out the taxis from that time period, then contact the drivers to confirm whether they had picked up Fan Lei.

This would require a huge amount of manpower.

But for a special task force with a deadline, the main principle was to spare no expense when it came to manpower.

In Kong Lingzhi’s words, they had to cast a wide net and, at all costs, not let Fan Lei escape.

On the other hand, there was the plan based on Liu Baoqing’s speculation.

Deploying drones to search the mountainous area.

In the last two years, drones had begun to see police use, and they could even be equipped with thermal imaging modules.

It was late March. The daytime temperature in Nanjiang was just over ten degrees Celsius, and at night, it dropped to single digits, so the thermal imaging should be quite effective.

The city bureau had this equipment.

Shen Xin had grown tired of watching surveillance footage, so he decided to go with the people from the city bureau to watch them deploy the drones.

They would launch them from the location of Fan Lei’s dorm.

Two technicians from the city bureau arrived, one named Wang Qing and the other Mao Jiqiang.

Both were young, in their twenties.

The two of them carried a rather large case down from their vehicle.

Drone technology had developed rapidly in recent years, especially commercial drones for civilian use.

Shen Xin had seen his friends fly drones before; he had just been too busy with work to get into it himself.

But the drone in front of him was clearly not a civilian model. It was an octocopter, and quite large.

After asking Wang Qing, he learned that the city bureau had only just purchased a few units at the end of last year and had trained a few of them to operate them.

He also said they were planning to form a dedicated drone police unit in the future.

"Why didn’t you guys buy these sooner?"

Shen Xin remembered hunting Wang Yuansheng on Dingshan Mountain with police dogs last year.

That had been a real mess.

If they’d had this thing back then, it would have been way too easy.

Wang Qing shrugged and said in a low voice that it was probably the cost. He explained that the industrial-grade T600 drone in front of them, with all its work modules, had a purchase price of 400,000 yuan per unit.

"That expensive?"

Shen Xin was taken aback. ’That’s insane,’ he thought.

Wang Qing didn’t explain, busying himself with calibrating the parameters with Mao Jiqiang.

This thing was equipped with a 30x optical zoom lens and a thermal imaging module with a temperature accuracy of plus or minus two degrees Celsius, capable of identifying a human heat source from 500 meters away.

The 30x optical zoom could also identify targets from a maximum distance of 1,000 meters.

It was specialized for counter-terrorism reconnaissance.

"Impressive."

Shen Xin gave a thumbs-up.

’Aside from the price, it seems perfect. Even better than police dogs.’

The drone started up. Amid a loud whirring noise, it took off and flew toward Shitang Mountain.

The video feed transmitted in real time. Under the thermal imaging lens, everything was very clear.

For example, when a rabbit ran by, it showed up as a bright highlight on the screen.

Mao Jiqiang operated the drone while Wang Qing handled identification. Wang Qing mentioned that the only problem was the need for manual recognition.

He added that software for automatic recognition was currently in development, like the AI in sci-fi movies. If they had that, the job would be even easier.

Shen Xin nodded to himself.

He felt more and more that Geng Ke and the others were right. ’The cost of committing a crime these days is getting too high.’

The drone flew along the ridgeline, scanning as it went.

There were occasional discoveries.

There were still animals on the mountain, and quite a few of them.

Midway through, they even spotted a person.

They flew closer and saw it was a hiking enthusiast.

A single pass from east to west took nearly half an hour, including time for identification.

Then it flew back from the other side, which took another half an hour.

And then... it ran out of battery.

They had to change the battery.

And after this one round trip, Shen Xin suddenly felt that this thing wasn’t as amazing as it seemed.

First, there were the specs.

Not to mention its one-hour battery life.

Earlier, Wang Qing had said the 30x optical zoom could see things a thousand meters away.

And that the thermal imaging module could detect temperature changes 500 meters away.

But Shen Xin felt these were probably the theoretical maximums.

’I can see things a thousand meters away with a pair of binoculars, too.’

In a real-world application, it was completely different.

Take its operational range, for example.

Shen Xin had thought it would fly high in the sky, observing from hundreds of meters away.

But that wasn’t the case.

Because from far away, the field of view was larger, but the details on the ground became unclear.

Its thermal imaging had a resolution of only 320x240. Flying at an altitude of a hundred meters or more, it could only identify heat sources that were meters in size.

Combined with the obstruction from the tree canopy, to ensure the thermal imaging module was effective enough, the drone didn’t fly very high—about 50 meters above the treetops.

In Wang Qing’s words, using the wide-angle lens, it could cover a width of over fifty meters.

’Fifty meters doesn’t sound small, but we’re facing an entire mountain.’

Shitang Mountain alone stretched nearly two kilometers from north to south.

That meant they’d have to make forty passes.

A single pass took half an hour, so scanning Shitang Mountain just once would take twenty hours—almost a full day.

There was another critical problem.

’And what’s more, people move. If they scanned the area sequentially, what was to stop them from missing Fan Lei as he moved into a section they’d already covered? They could miss him completely.’