Chapter 113 A Piece of an Ear
Once the plan was finalized, several people left their seats at Tian Xuejun's suggestion to make arrangements.
Communicating with the local government, screening personnel, recruiting volunteers, organizing training, and even arranging accommodations for volunteers and their families all need to be completed as soon as possible.
The first group to be organized will naturally consist of local personnel from City S.
Although there is no evidence, it is known that Fangzhou is located in S City, and the Zombie King will most likely gather his believers here.
As for other regions of China, they must first rely on local surveillance and wait for signs of intelligent zombie activity before sending a request for assistance to Fangzhou. This back-and-forth process will take several days, but there's no better solution.
China has too many provinces, cities, counties and districts of all sizes, and even the official military forces cannot achieve full coverage and protection of the entire region. It is inevitable that resources will be tilted towards certain key areas, not to mention Fangzhou, which has only a little over two thousand people.
Fortunately, the number of intelligent infected individuals should not be too large.
With manpower secured, another, more crucial question arose: how to locate the devout believers?
They were in the open, while the enemy remained hidden. The only thing they seemed certain of was that the enemy would definitely focus their attention on facilities such as shelters, power plants, and hospitals.
But aside from sending more people to these places, there doesn't seem to be much else they can do.
Only when the devout believers take action can Fangzhou send people out in a targeted manner; always being one step behind is far too passive.
"Can't we use the surveillance system?" Song Rushuang asked. "I've heard that there's now technology that combines surveillance video with AI. Could we use AI to identify the special characteristics of zombies? Maybe we could find them before they move. After all, zombies don't appear out of thin air. Before they reach their destination, they'll definitely be exposed to surveillance."
Her suggestion was quickly rejected by a bespectacled technician: "Given the current technology and conditions, it's highly unlikely to be possible."
"The cameras at the front end of my country's existing nationwide surveillance network mainly rely on the civilian Internet for data transmission. Once the network is paralyzed, most of them will immediately become unusable, not even considering the issue of power outages. Moreover, the monitoring centers in various regions must rely on technical personnel for maintenance in order to operate normally. A provincial monitoring center often has more than a hundred people in all positions. To ensure the minimum operation of the national monitoring center, at least seven or eight thousand core technical personnel are needed."
"To protect them, we will only need more people."
"On the other hand, data centers consume a lot of electricity. For example, the daily electricity consumption of a provincial data center can be comparable to that of a small hospital. If there is a power shortage, priority will be given to supplying facilities such as hospitals. If AI analysis technology is used, the power consumption will be even greater... It is really not worth investing so much manpower and electricity just to find a few dozen or a hundred intelligent infected people."
"If simply maintaining the monitoring system could accurately identify each intelligent zombie, that would be fine. But the reality is that even with a large investment of resources to keep the monitoring system running and using AI for initial screening, manual verification is still required. This manpower is not even included in the seven or eight thousand technical personnel mentioned earlier."
"To put it another way, even if AI and human intervention are combined, it's easy to miss things, the accuracy is too low, and the efficiency is too poor..." the man shook his head and sighed.
Although the others weren't as professional as him, they thought about it and understood.
Even though current facial recognition technology can accurately match people appearing in surveillance footage with their identities, the problem is that they simply don't know who is a believer and who isn't.
Even if you try to distinguish them by their appearance, apart from monstrous zombies, other zombies look almost identical to normal humans.
I thought I could save some manpower by using surveillance cameras, but I almost forgot that maintaining the cameras also requires a lot of manpower.
"..." Song Rushuang had a headache.
Even with extensive prior preparation, things rarely go as smoothly as planned once the plan actually begins.
There are all sorts of difficulties in reality.
Sometimes, it's not that it's impossible, but rather that after careful consideration and weighing all the options, we choose to give up.
This is a subject that requires a long time for students who are used to solving problems and finding the correct answer to adapt to. In reality, having theory is not enough; one also needs to consider comprehensive practical factors, think about feasibility, and finally put it into practice... Every step after that is no simpler than solving a problem.
Finding the correct answer is just the beginning.
Fu Qing, who had been listening in silence, suddenly spoke up: "If it's not necessary for all the monitoring centers across the country to operate normally, and only the monitoring center in City S is needed, is the power consumption within an acceptable range?"
The technician nodded without hesitation: "Of course."
Currently, due to the presence of Fu Qing and Fang Zhou, S City is almost the most watched place besides the capital. All resources and manpower are being prioritized and directed towards it.
Fu Qing pondered, "If we give up searching for other believers and only look for one specific person, will it still be very difficult?"
The technician said decisively, "The biggest technical challenge right now is distinguishing between intelligent infected individuals and ordinary people and ordinary zombies, but assuming you already have a specific candidate and can provide their identity, it will be much easier for us to find them."
Fu Qing breathed a sigh of relief.
“I do have a specific candidate. She is a young woman who came to S City from another city to work, and she was also one of the victims of the major fire in the urban village of S City last May. After the fire, she did not die on the spot, but was sent to the hospital. After a week of treatment, she mysteriously disappeared from the hospital. Of course, in the hospital's records, she may also have been registered as dead.”
She quickly relayed a string of information: "Following this lead, it shouldn't be difficult to identify her."
As the elite students listened, a code name flashed through their minds simultaneously—
Hooded (scarred) woman!
When Fu Qing announced the existence of the Zombie King to everyone, she also mentioned the identity of the woman she fought with in Xishan that day.
The group slapped their foreheads in disbelief. How come they hadn't thought of this?
As for Fu Qing's claim that the files might have been tampered with, it's naturally due to the Zombie King's hacking abilities.
The fire caused quite a stir, drawing significant attention from social media and the government. The fact that the hooded woman could be taken away from the hospital without anyone noticing was beyond the capabilities of the system and the Zombie King's "blind spot" of attention, so the Zombie King had to handle the aftermath properly.
Seeing the puzzled looks on Tian Xuejun and the others' faces, Fu Qing explained, "This woman's code name is Phoenix, which is probably meant to be reborn from the ashes. She is one of the first subordinates recruited by the Zombie King and has a very high status among the believers. She has an almost fanatical worship of the Zombie King."
"Finding her might lead us to the hideout of the zombie king and the believers."
Isn't this much more efficient than mobilizing nationwide surveillance to find a needle in a haystack?
The Zombie King had been plotting since the final exams, sending Phoenix and several believers to ambush the students. He also used corpses to pinpoint locations and even personally used his consciousness to infiltrate Fangzhou, hiding in the simulation pod to plot against Fu Qing... This series of schemes had finally come to pay off.
They even proactively handed Fu Qing the evidence they had against him.
Upon hearing this, Tian Xuejun's eyes immediately lit up: "Go investigate!"
One of the people next to him said yes, hurriedly left the meeting room, and returned with the message in the blink of an eye.
“I checked the fire department’s alarm system records and ambulance dispatch records. In the May 17th urban village fire, the first hospital to receive patients was the nearest First Hospital. Later, some patients were transferred to Ruian Burn Specialist Hospital. Among them, a 28-year-old female patient was quite consistent with the description. She died late at night a week after being admitted to the hospital. On the night of her death, a patient’s family member suddenly broke into the intensive care unit and stabbed two doctors and nurses on duty that night to death. Three other people were seriously injured.”
He glanced at the record in his hand and said quickly, "The hospital was thrown into chaos while treating the seriously injured medical staff, and the death record of that patient was added later."
In other words, this record, including the subsequent disposal of the body, is very likely to have been falsified.
Those who could testify were either dead or injured, and when they recall that night, they would probably only remember the horrific memories of the medical disputes, with their impressions of the deceased patients being minimized.
"As for the patient's family member who committed the attack with a knife, according to the person in charge, they had actually reached a settlement with the hospital that day. Nobody knows why he suddenly went crazy just a few hours later."
The students exchanged glances, and Su Huaijin said, "This must have been done by the Zombie King; it's very good at manipulating people's emotions."
Tian Xuejun nodded, but the technician suddenly frowned: "You said she had extensive burns all over her body, what about her face?"
Before Fu Qing could speak, the investigators said, "According to the information we received, her face was also severely burned. This is a photo taken at the hospital at the time."
As he spoke, he pulled out a document from his laptop. The moment he opened it, those around him who caught a glimpse of the screen couldn't help but gasp, some even finding it hard to look directly at it.
They simply couldn't imagine how someone who had been burned so horribly could have survived.
The technician glanced at her and frowned: "This is a bit troublesome. In the past, if we knew her identity information, we could find her immediately as long as she took public transportation or went shopping. But now that all social activities have basically stopped, and surveillance and finding people mainly rely on facial recognition, the extensive burns on her face will seriously affect the success rate of recognition."
“In this photo, her original appearance was disfigured, and the new wounds had not healed at all. Considering the possible hyperplasia and atrophy scars that may grow after healing, it is difficult for us to simulate her current appearance through this photo from the treatment period.”
He then looked at Fu Qing: "And you just said that she usually wears a hat when she moves around, which makes it even more difficult."
Fu Qing hadn't been unaware of the impact of disfigurement. She recalled some popular science articles she had read online: "As far as I know, besides relying on facial recognition, there should be other alternative recognition methods, such as gait analysis, ear recognition, and so on."
“That’s right, the accuracy rate of ear recognition can reach over 60%.” The technician hesitated, “but in this photo, her ear is also burned…”
"If the burned area grows back later, it can still be used as a basis for identification, right?" Fu Qing asked rhetorically.
“But then, the ID photos she’s taken in our database won’t be usable,” the technician quickly said. “We need new photos of her after her burns have healed, and even then, we still can’t find them without showing her face and ears.”
"It's alright, it's good to have another glimmer of hope." Fu Qing waved her hand. "As for the reference you need... although I don't have any recent photos of her, I do have a piece of her ear. Can you analyze it based on that?"
Everyone, including the technicians: "..."
They were somewhat doubting their ears.
She just said she had something on her.
Tian Xuejun asked the question in a daze.
Fu Qing patiently repeated, "I have a piece of her ear—I cut it off when we fought last time."
At this point, one has to commend Lu Yan and Hao Zhenye for their exceptional eyesight; they managed to find such a thin slice of meat in the dark woods and retrieve it.
She had observed before that although the Zombie King's ability could regenerate the hooded woman's flesh, the regrown parts would have a huge difference in appearance from the original parts of her body.
In short, it will work, but it will become abnormal.
Therefore, the hooded woman's fingerprints and earlobes should have changed significantly compared to before the injury.
However, if the newly grown flesh is injured again, it will not change again after healing.
The evidence is the hands that Lu Yan picked up; they all look exactly the same.
The technician's jaw nearly dropped to the table, and he stammered, "But if her ear has already been cut off, then...then we..."
Then what's the point of our analysis?
Fu Qing thought for two seconds and realized that she had indeed forgotten to mention it: "Sorry, I forgot to say that she has been given the ability to regenerate flesh and blood. Even if it is cut off, it will grow back. Don't worry."
Seeing the strong reaction from the others, she swallowed the fact that she actually had several right hands that could be used to analyze fingerprints.
Anyway, getting the hooded woman's fingerprints isn't of any use for the time being, so I'd better not tell them to scare them.
As for gait recognition, it was temporarily abandoned because it required video of walking, and the hooded woman had been elusive ever since she was recruited by the zombie king. Even if it was possible to retrieve surveillance video showing her, it would be difficult. In addition, her gait might have changed after infection, so previous videos would also be unusable.
In fact, Fu Qing did know that there was a place where surveillance cameras might have captured the hooded woman, which was at the foot of the mountain where she dumped the body.
But that was almost a year ago. Scenic area surveillance footage is usually kept for a maximum of 90 days, and that period has long since expired.
Therefore, auricular recognition became their only hope.
The technician immediately made a phone call to arrange for someone to go to Fangzhou to retrieve her ear. While waiting, he said excitedly, "By combining her facial data before the injury with her height and body type, the accuracy rate of the ear recognition can reach over 80%. The rest can be determined through manual analysis. At this stage, very few technicians will be needed."
"Don't worry, unless she never goes out or never takes off her hat, we'll find her sooner or later!" he assured her, patting his chest.
His profession required him to remain calm at all times, pouring cold water on everyone's various ideas. But now that he had finally found a feasible method, he was more excited than anyone else, which made Tian Xuejun unable to help but smile as well.
As soon as the person with the insulated box arrived, the technician, disregarding his fear of human remains, happily followed them to Fangzhou.
After the meeting ended, Fang Zhou and the others, along with Bai Xianglei, were about to get into their cars to return to school when Tian Xuejun suddenly stopped them: "Principal Fu Qing, you should have received the news that the natural gas supply will be completely cut off after 6 PM, right?"
She was worried that Fu Qing had been too busy these past two days and hadn't had time to check the notification.
Natural gas is flammable and explosive, and relies heavily on routine maintenance. Given that everyone is currently staying at home, it could potentially become a huge safety hazard.
Therefore, the gas supply will be cut off immediately after 6 p.m. today, with only some key buildings and facilities retaining independent gas supply systems.
Fu Qing gave a brief reply: "I have already received the notification. Fangzhou has been relying on underground biogas digesters and solar energy for energy for a long time, so there is no need to worry."
Tian Xuejun nodded: "That's good. Besides gas, the residential internet will probably also be interrupted within half a month, so be prepared."
Although she felt that Fu Qing and the others shouldn't need her reminder.
Network outages are unavoidable. Even if they try to prevent them, the lack of maintenance personnel will cause the city's network to gradually collapse, eventually leaving only the military network.
In addition, starting at noon today, nationwide power and water rationing measures have been implemented. This rationing directly reduces daily electricity usage to one hour and water flow to a minimum, aiming to extend the supply of water and electricity as much as possible.
Tian Xuejun's words weighed heavily on the hearts of Song Rushuang and the others.
Living in Fangzhou and with the aid of wristbands for communication, the impact of internet and power outages is not significant for them. However, for those outside Fangzhou, their lives would undergo a dramatic change.
This is only the second day since the apocalypse began.
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