Chapter 66
Screening the remaining photos took just as long as the previous hundreds. The differences were very small, and Tang Ruxin had to use her naked eyes to pick out the details and find the differences.
"How many more?" Yu Lei stood behind her, leaning on the edge of the table and looking at the computer screen.
"Six."
Yu Lei took the mouse and said, "It shouldn't be a completely unrelated place. Have you checked the place names?"
"These five are all in our province. This one is from Yonglin County in the Jinan Mountain area." Tang Ruxin replied.
"If all else fails, we can just run through it in person. At least we can..." Yu Lei stopped talking mid-sentence and pointed at one of the pictures and asked, "Is this the Sigu Bridge on Baling Mountain?"
"Is there any of these words that you don't recognize?" Tang Ruxin asked in a bad mood. What nonsense is this question?
Yu Lei turned to look at her with disbelief in his eyes.
"Baling Mountain is in Tong'an Township, your and Zhao Zheng's hometown. He used to live in the welfare home in Baling Mountain, Tong'an Township. You have been to Tong'an many times, don't you remember?" His breathing was unstable and his speech speed was a little faster.
How could she not remember this? But she had no idea there was a Baling Mountain in Tong'an Township, much less that the welfare home where Zhao Zheng worked was located on Baling Mountain. She had only heard about Zhao Zheng's time in the welfare home from Yu Lei. If she had known earlier, she would have had him screened. It would have nearly blinded her.
Tang Ruxin closed her eyes for a long moment before she spoke: "Tong Jiayu is from the Jinan Mountain area, several provinces away from Tong'an Township. How could she be related to this place?"
"Are you sure the person in that photo is Tong Jiayu?"
Tang Ruxin's brain suddenly shook, as if it was hit by this sentence from a distance. There was no sound, but it caused an endless resonance that spread out like water waves and took a long time to calm down.
Was the person in the photo Tong Jiayu? She wasn't sure. It was just that the photo had appeared in Tong Jiayu's room, next to photos of the two of them. There was no one else in the photo except her and Tong Jiayu, so she naturally assumed it was the young Tong Jiayu.
Now that I think about it, the sense of incongruity that is too strong to be ignored does not come from the background and atmosphere of the photo, nor from the football, but from the person - the person standing on the bridge, looking to the side with his head tilted, his hair covering most of his cheek.
The color drained from Tang Ruxin's face, and she looked at Yu Lei with fear in her eyes. She subconsciously grabbed his arm and said hesitantly:
"You, I...I think that person...seems to be a boy."
Yu Lei froze, even his breathing stopped for several seconds.
"...You mean, Zhao Zheng?"
"I don't know, I've never seen Zhao Zheng..." Tang Ruxin wrapped her arms around herself, as if something was crawling on her arms, causing her to tremble uncontrollably.
If it was really Zhao Zheng, it proved that Tong Jiayu knew him. Then Tong Jiayu's encounter with her was not accidental, but a plot that had been set up eleven years ago, or even earlier - this was too terrifying.
Yu Lei immediately took out his cell phone to make a call, but it took a long time before the call was connected.
"Chief Hu, is it possible to accurately predict a person's appearance when they grow up based on their childhood facial features?"
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long time. Just when Yu Lei thought the call was not connected, a voice came over like a ghost.
"Do you know what time it is?" Hu Ye's voice was hoarse from sleep, and he looked like he was about to strike someone with a knife in the next second. "You'd better give me a good reason, otherwise I'll have an intern perform an autopsy on you after you die."
This threat may not seem like a big deal at first, but it is quite creepy if you think about it carefully. Hu Ye is cursing him to die a violent death and to die with his eyes open.
Yu Lei calmed down a bit, cleared his throat, and said, "I've been looking for that person for years, and I finally have a clue. But I need to see what he looked like when he was fourteen or fifteen. Please, I beg you."
That last sentence dissipated much of Hu Ye's anger. She had worked with Yu Lei for years, but this was the first time she'd heard him say the word "seek." She knew he'd been looking for someone, and she knew how persistent he was. Given Yu Lei's stubborn temper, if she didn't get this done today, he probably wouldn't let her go.
"Send me his childhood photos."
"Thank you." Yu Lei said, "If it's convenient, I'll process another one for someone around thirty years old."
Hu Ye wanted to say it was inconvenient, but the words turned around and ended up being "add a pound of Longjing tea".
"Okay." Yu Lei responded.
After the call ended, the room fell silent, leaving only the rhythmic chime of the wall clock. Neither Tang Ruxin nor Yu Lei spoke. One sat at the computer desk, the other on the sofa, like prisoners awaiting their verdict. Life or death depended on this single night.
About an hour later, Hu Ye sent the first 3D image, and Yu Lei showed it to Tang Ruxin.
"The outline is similar, the jawline is here, the nose bridge is also... but the eyes of the person in the photo are covered." Tang Ruxin frowned and said. Once the eyebrows and eyes of a portrait are in doubt, the whole face will become uncertain.
Another hour later, Hu Ye's second 3D head was sent.
The two of them looked up and down, left and right from various angles, and Tang Ruxin became more and more confused.
"Does it look familiar?" She asked hesitantly, her brows twisted into knots. "The facial features look quite distinct when viewed separately, but when taken together, I feel like I've seen them somewhere before."
"Isn't this the same style as yours?" Yu Lei gave her a helpless look. "It's just that the outline isn't as soft, and the eyes are a little smaller. Look, the distance between the eyes, the height of the nose bridge, the length of the philtrum, aren't they all the same as yours?"
Tang Ruxin exclaimed "Ah" and showed an expression of sudden enlightenment, forgetting for a moment that this was her brother from the same father and mother.
"Tsk, no wonder she's so beautiful." The more Tang Ruxin looked at it, the more she thought it looked like herself, and she couldn't help but praise it.
She had expected Yu Lei to mock her for being thick-skinned, but after waiting for a long time, she only received a faint "hmm." His gaze remained fixed on the portrait, the gloom in his eyes like a thick, impenetrable fog, covering a wound that could not be exposed.
Tang Ruxin stretched out her hands and slapped his face from both sides at the same time, saying:
"Put aside your emotions and get to work first."
"...Behave yourself!" Yu Lei's cheeks instantly turned red after she slapped him, and he was so angry that he didn't know what to say. If he had known that she would get angry, he would have slapped her twice too.
"Next time," Tang Ruxin agreed immediately. "Doesn't your police system allow you to search for identity information using portraits? Speaking of which, since you have a photo of my brother as a child, why didn't you make a portrait of him as an adult earlier?"
"I have. Back then, the technology wasn't up to par, and the portraits we produced were incredibly accurate. It also didn't support multiple perspectives. AI has developed rapidly in the past two years, and the Criminal Investigations Department has only recently begun using it to deduce age from 3D portraits."
"That's right!" Tang Ruxin grabbed Yu Lei's hand and said excitedly, "Then can we work backwards? Using Tong Jiayu's current photo to infer what she looked like as a child?"
Yu Lei thought for a moment and said, "Of course, it's possible, but what's the use? We already know that she's not the real Tong Jiayu. Even if we have her childhood appearance, we still can't tell who she really is."
"We can find out if the person in the photo is her. If not, then the person in the photo should be Zhao Zheng."
Yu Lei flipped through the previous 3D image and said, "If Zhao Zheng, who looked like he was fourteen or fifteen, was placed before you, you wouldn't be able to identify him. But would you be able to recognize Tong Jiayu?"
"Maybe the difference is huge. Tong Jiayu's eyes and face are round now, and her whole body is round. Then maybe she was round when she was fourteen or fifteen?" Tang Ruxin said hurriedly.
"Isn't that nonsense? The AI's deduction based on her current chubby figure must be the chubby version of her as a teenager. Extreme weight and thinness have a huge impact on portrait modeling. The values ​​generated by the computer are all theoretical and don't take sudden fat gain into account."
This road is blocked.
Tang Ruxin ran to the sofa depressed and slumped down like Ge You. "So annoying! The clue is broken again. Why did I give her the phone then? The devil is always stronger than the good. I was clearly on guard against her."
Yu Lei said coldly: "It's hard to say whether the demon is tall or not, but this one is indeed short..."
A sofa cushion hit him squarely in the face.
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