Footnotes test number 1. Kinda screwed around with the formatting of this chapter a lot. Hopefully there's no problems.
"First of all, I need to familiarize myself with my ability. Then I need to acquire knowledge, the more knowledge I have the more information I can understand."
From Huang Ji's perspective, superpowers were nothing more than rare characteristics. If the entire world didn't know how to speak but he did, then speaking was his superpower. If he was the only one who could see in the land of the blind, then sight was his superpower. Huang Ji thought that maybe data perception was the same. This data was perceivable, just not by normal people. He was simply the only one capable of perceiving this data, at least for now. But it was worth mentioning that he couldn't find a single shred of information about this 'data perception' ability when he observed himself.
"Maybe I still haven't grasped the true nature of my ability? Well, that can wait. Now that grandpa's asleep, it's time to go save Dr. Liang."
The best way to improve a skill was to practice it. Dr. Liang's kidnapping was a major mystery. She had helped him a lot so no matter what he had to save her. Back at the clinic while everybody was still clueless about what had happened to Dr. Liang, Huang Ji had already figured out by observing the scene that she had been kidnapped . Tire marks had been left at the scene, they were very faint, but they were there. A normal person couldn't have seen them, but Huang Ji wasn't a normal person.
His eyes were extremely powerful. The tire tracks on the road were very faint, not to mention it had already been twelve hours. They were imperceptible to the human eye, but there was no need for Huang Ji to distinguish the tire tracks. All he had to do was stare at the ground and display the data of some unknown tracks. In the end, one of the pieces of information was perceived as: Jinbei van break marks. Like that, he figured out, "Oh, these are tire marks!"
Following up on the data, he expanded it in search of other information like the time of appearance. From this, he had discovered that the tire marks had been left behind at 7:05 in the morning by the Jinbei1 van braking. Before making the marks, the van had carried four people; after leaving the marks, there were five passengers.
"With just the tire marks I can't find out who was sitting in the car; it's because I didn't see the van itself. Through the tire marks I can only figure out who was the driver." The driver was the creator of the tire marks, that was what allowed Huang Ji to know the driver's name, but that was where it ended. After all, he was merely observing the tire mark's information. Reflecting on his current performance, he concluded, "I found out the names of the five people through the footprints they left behind at 7:05 a.m.."
With a precise time, he was able to eliminate all information on the ground that had been left behind outside of this time frame. As a result, he had found the footprints of the five people. At 7:05 a.m., these footprints were the only new set of footprints in this area. All information had a source. By searching for the creators of the footprints, he could obtain the names, heights, weights, and other information about the five people who'd left them behind.
It was worth noting that since he hadn't directly observed the five people, he was unable to obtain more detailed information about the five people from just their footsteps, especially their history. All he could know was some of the basic information about their bodies when they'd left behind the footsteps.
Huang Ji thought to himself, "For me, the best form of observation is to directly perceive the target with my five senses. It doesn't matter if I see them or hear them or even smell them, I need to have at least some form of direct interaction. Information obtained like this is the most comprehensive. Bar that, I have to use indirect observations. The best would be something they created like footsteps or an object they left behind. With these I can at least figure out some basic information about the creator. The bigger the medium the better. If I don't have even an indirect medium, all I'm left with is process of elimination. "
Process of elimination was the last resort. There was a limit to what humans could accomplish. The more he explored his ability, the more he felt this limit. Process of elimination was very simple, all he had to know was where a person had been and then search through everything there. Unless the time span was too big, the person was bound to have left something behind; some dandruff, the moisture exhaled from their breath, or even something as small as just a couple of cells. The reason he said, the bigger the medium the better, was because he would most likely miss it if it was too small. The world was absolutely filled to the brim, anywhere he looked was an endless supply of matter that could provide information.
Theoretically speaking, if his mind was able to perceive at the atomic level, he would be able to read the information of every separate atom and find out who it had belonged to. This was the process of elimination. Displaying and reading the data of every tiny thing, and maybe it would be something the person had left behind when they'd passed by. For example, a person who'd passed by here would have left behind scent molecules. If Huang Ji just so happened to display the data of those scent molecules, he could obtain the majority of that person's information; but it was easier said than done.
Any mass of air he looked at contained trillions of atoms. Going through them all one by one? The process of elimination would kill him. Even if he looked at them in groups, the information would be too muddled unless the majority of them all came from one person. Not to mention Huang Ji had yet to reach a point where he could read the data of a single atom. He couldn't even do that for a single cell. Thus, even though Huang Ji had come up with this idea, he knew that he couldn't do it. It was purely theoretical. In practice, only objects visible to the naked eye could be investigated. At the very least it would have to be a strand of hair, and even then he'd still have to be very patient and thorough.
"These people were extremely careful, they didn't leave a single trace behind. Other than me, no one could have seen these footprints." Because the roads in the countryside were fairly poor, they must have gotten out of the car a few times and gotten mud on their shoes before arriving. When they got out of the van, the four of them had all left behind unassuming, but long-lasting footprints on the cement. The footprints had received clear damage and were only a couple spots of mud, even the world's greatest tracker wouldn't have been able to find anything useful. But a 'damaged footprint' was still a footprint, unless it was completely covered by a different mark.
For Huang Ji, as long as it was 'a visible mark left by a foot', he was able to display the information of the 'footprint'. When everyone was still ignorant of Dr. Liang's kidnapping, Huang Ji had already learned the names of the four criminals. In fact, by observing the traces under the old tree, he had even discovered that there was a witness.
After that, while Wang Meng was busy dispersing the crowd, Huang Ji had silently left to follow the tire tracks and find the whereabouts of the van. Huang Ji had followed the tracks onto the main road for a period of time. Generally speaking, how could his two legs have caught up with the van? Twelves hours had already passed by, they might have already been in Zhengzhou. But Huang Ji knew about a few of Dr. Liang's secrets, from this he had already deduced what the kidnappers were after. The kidnappers were after a certain object, and without getting their hands on it they wouldn't have gone far.
Sure enough, after following the tracks for only a short distance, Huang Ji had noticed the information on the ground saying that the car had stopped at 7:15 a.m.. The van had stopped right on the highway, this was further supported by the data of the rail at the side; he learned that four people had gotten out of the van and hopped the rail. Without a doubt, three of the men had stayed behind with Dr. Liang in captivity while the driver had continued driving on.
"I see. Based on the account of the witness, Li Fan, even if the cops check the surveillance cameras at the highway entrance ahead and find out where the van is headed, they would only have found the 'bait'. The cops would assume that the kidnappers had already headed towards the city, completely oblivious to the fact that they were still around Huazhuang."
This was the extent of what Huang Ji had discovered before he had gone back while Wang Meng was dispersing the villagers. Upon returning, he had written a ransom note to the cops to alert them about the presence of the kidnappers. That's right, a ransom note. He had written a note in place of the kidnappers and then secretly placed it between the windshield wipers of the police car while Wang Meng was inside of the clinic taking pictures.
Huang Ji was the one who had written this incredibly bold letter to alert the cops that the kidnappers hadn't left. Not only that, Huang Ji had also signed it with the kidnapper's true name. The name found when reading the data was called the true name. Of course, this wasn't necessarily their common name. A person's common name could be a nickname or something like that. What the true name meant was the person's very first name.
The reason he said it wasn't necessarily their common name was because when Huang Ji observed himself, the name displayed in his own data was 'Huang Xu'. In theory, the name on his registry was Huang Ji and the majority of people had always called him by this name. But for some reason, the name displayed in the data was 'Huang Xu', the name his grandfather had given him before it had been registered. Based on this, the true name was the first name given to a person. In addition, it had to be a name that was widely accepted and not just the first name suggested. After all, before picking the name Huang Xu, the elders in the family had said numerous names that were all rejected. They could only be considered suggestions, only the name Huang Xu was decided in the end by the old man.
"Other than a special case like me, most people's true names should be their legal names. Lu Zongmin, maybe the cops can find something with this name."
This was his motive in writing the ransom note and signing Lu Zongmin's name. The names of the other three people were just too average2, there must have been a lot of people with the same name. As a result, he was forced to pick the name of the kidnapper with the more sophisticated name. Finishing this, Huang Ji had returned to take care of his grandfather. Only when his grandfather had fallen asleep did he come back out. After giving them so many clues, if the cops still couldn't find Dr. Liang, it would be up to him to find her himself.
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1. A Chinese automobile brand that specializes in vans and minibuses, not the pirate↩
2. Chinese names have a lot of overlap. Many people share a family name (eg. Hu, Lu), and having a one character name (eg. Feng, Meng) increases the chances of that overlap. Having a longer name such as Zongmin, 2 chars, decreases the chances of that overlap. Basic math.↩
Thanks for the chapter!
ReplyDeleteIt still makes me dumbfounded what could Huang Ji do with just observing a footprint! It is ridiculous, even. This chapter reveals more of what he could do that normal humans, like I am and others, cannot. *Ehem* He's like an advanced upgrade of a supercomputer with other peripherals like an electron microscope, footprint scanner, etc. connected to a huge database expanding throughout multiverse.