Chapter 53.2: Good Thing She Became a Police Officer
As they spoke, they arrived at the reception room.
Jiang Xia and Lu Yixing put down their luggage and waited there for the witnesses to arrive.
Chen Yongyi and Xu Changsong still had other matters to attend to, so they left to get back to work. Rong Zhenhai called over two criminal investigators from his team who still had some energy left to go pick up the witnesses. He then brought over some cups and brewed a cup of hot tea for each of Jiang Xia and Lu Yixing.
He politely explained that he hadn’t gotten much rest the previous day and was extremely sleepy. He would catch up on some sleep first, and they should wake him when the eyewitnesses arrived.
Then he simply dropped his head onto the table and demonstrated the special ability of being able to fall asleep absolutely anywhere.
Jiang Xia wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
That was practically a special skill exclusive to criminal investigators. If you couldn’t master it, once you passed thirty-five you’d have to transfer to another department. Otherwise, you’d eventually work yourself into the grave.
There was no need to pretend to be carsick in the meeting room.
Waiting around doing nothing was too boring. Jiang Xia took out the materials on materials science that she’d only flipped open to the cover during the journey, but she still hadn’t read a single word.
Using the book as cover, she opened up her system and started scrolling through it.
The system interface appeared over the page.
Personal Skills: Thievery Lv. 6, Counterfeit Money Manufacturing Lv. 6, Drawing (Sketching/Quick Sketching) Lv. 5, Criminal Sketching Lv. 4, Trace Examination Lv. 3… Acting Lv. 1.
Titles: King of Thieves, Divine Brush.
New Item: Book of Life and Death.
…
Remaining Experience Points: 62.
Jiang Xia’s finger scrolled over the Acting skill a few times.
When she’d killed Scarface with her own hands, all her attention had been focused on him. She hadn’t heard a single thing from the system at the time. It wasn’t until afterward that she realized the system had actually rewarded her with a whopping 150 experience points.
That was quite a generous amount, but it was reasonable when she thought about it. After all, it involved one of the Eight Great Crimes. How could the reward not be substantial?
A hundred points were enough to raise a skill to LV1. That was basically equivalent to the level of someone with an ordinary, non-STEM college degree who had worked for two or three years after graduation.
With just a few points added, someone could instantly go from having zero foundation to that level, and they could continue adding points beyond that. If someone lacked sufficient willpower, they could probably be tempted by such generous rewards to keep “becoming human” through the system.
Jiang Xia hadn’t even considered that possibility. She put some of the points into Acting.
She had to admit, though, that this was actually a pretty bad deal.
After all, as long as someone had normal intelligence, apart from subjects like mathematics and physics that some people simply couldn’t master, or fields like medicine that required students to study themselves half to death, most college-level subjects could actually be mastered through ordinary learning.
But once you reached the level of a master’s degree, doctorate, or expert, if you didn’t have sufficient intelligence and talent, no amount of hard work would get you there.
Experience points were hard to come by. Using them to increase a skill beyond LV1 and break through one’s own natural limits was when they provided the greatest return.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have time right now, and there was nowhere for Jiang Xia to learn acting properly. She could only use the system to quickly acquire basic acting skills and the relevant theoretical knowledge.
Besides, even professionally trained actors weren’t necessarily all that convincing. Other people could easily notice that they were acting.
In the end, Jiang Xia had drawn on the experience she’d gained and adjusted her performance. She hid the part of herself that wanted to “become human” and replaced it with the mindset of wanting to kill someone.
So far, the results seemed pretty good.
It was just a shame about the experience points she’d spent.
But when she thought about the Third-Class Merit she could earn in the future, Jiang Xia became happy again.
Her gaze continued downward, finally landing on the newly added item.
Earlier, when Jiang Xia had caught pickpockets on the train, she’d originally done it just to relieve her boredom. She hadn’t expected the train police to give the notebook she carried the nickname “Book of Life and Death.” The system had subsequently registered the name as well, though this time it had classified it as an item rather than a title.
In mythology, the Book of Life and Death was controlled by the Judge of the Underworld and recorded all the information about humans and animals from birth to death. Her version really did have something in common with it.
Jiang Xia opened the item’s description.
[Book of Life and Death]
Recognition from a Rival.
As a Master Criminal, how can you not hold the lifeline of your fellow criminals in your hands and make them work for you?
While holding this book, you can record all relevant information about your fellow criminals and consult or compare it at any time.
[Note: Limited to information entered by the host.]
Jiang Xia’s eyes lit up.
This wasn’t a Book of Life and Death at all. It was clearly a portable criminal database!
A person’s memory was ultimately limited. Given enough time, even things you’d remembered could fade. The system was different. It remembered everything, and its capacity was vast. As long as she entered enough information, then in the future, whenever she encountered a case involving the same modus operandi or a criminal with similar characteristics, she’d be able to search the database and find a match with near certainty.
Hmm…
Come to think of it, calling it a Book of Life and Death really wasn’t wrong after all.
She’d have to read more case files in the future.
Now that she had an external brain, she absolutely had to show her colleagues what she could do someday!
After finishing with the system, Jiang Xia finally started reading the materials on materials science.
She persevered for more than half an hour before finally putting the book away and taking out her notebook and drawing pencil.
After accidentally drawing Lu Yixing from the side while he was sitting, from the front while he was sitting, and standing exactly where he had been when he’d closed his eyes and let her hug him, Jiang Xia finally had two eyewitnesses arrive.
They were an elderly man and an elderly woman.
The old man had a sweat towel draped around his neck and looked completely relaxed.
The old woman was even more fashionable. She had gotten her hair permed into a mass of fluffy curls that made her look a bit like Shaun the Sheep.
“Hello, Comrade Jiang.”
The criminal investigator who had brought them in spoke up. “These two are believed to have been eyewitnesses. On the afternoon of the day of the crime, one of them saw a suspicious person at around four o’clock, while the other saw one in the early evening. Both described the suspect as a young man in his twenties. However…”
As he spoke, the detective frowned. “The suspects they saw were wearing identical clothes—a dark navy jacket over a white undershirt, black pants, with patches sewn over the elbows. But their descriptions of his appearance are completely different. We can’t tell whether they saw the same person or two different people.”
“Oh?”
Jiang Xia quickly flipped to a fresh page. She looked up and asked, “How different are their descriptions?”
“I’m the one who saw that young man while I was out for my evening walk. It was around six, I think? He looked completely unfamiliar. I’d never seen him before, so I took several good looks at him and remember him particularly clearly.”
The old man with the sweat towel looked at Jiang Xia curiously as he spoke.
“He had a round face and big eyes. His hair was a little long too. It came down to about here.”
As he spoke, the old man reached up and tapped a spot about two finger-widths above his eyebrows.
“I saw him in the afternoon while I was chatting with my sisters and making shoe soles.”
The curly-haired old woman immediately chimed in, unwilling to concede the point.
“That man clearly had a square face. His eyes were very narrow, and he had a big nose. He had plenty of hair, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere near that long.”
Huh?
From their descriptions, these sounded like two completely different people.
Judging by the modus operandi, there was indeed more than one person involved in this case. There was nothing strange about two people coming to scout the area beforehand.
But for their clothes to be this similar, while the times they were spotted were so close together, it really was difficult to tell what was going on.
After considering it for a moment, Jiang Xia continued questioning them.
“How did each of you see the suspect? About how far away were you from him?”
“I came face-to-face with him. About a meter away.”
The old man with the sweat towel straightened his back.
“I definitely got the clearest look.”
“I was sitting under a tree at the time, so I was farther away from him. About four or five meters, I’d say.”
The curly-haired old woman said, “But back in my day, I came first in the factory militia team’s shooting competition. My eyesight is perfectly fine. I definitely wouldn’t mistake someone at that distance!”
Compared with the curly-haired old woman, who had been several meters away, the old man with the sweat towel had obviously gotten a more accurate look since he’d come face-to-face with the suspect.
The question was whether they’d seen one person or two.
If there were two, finding them would certainly be easier. But if there was only one, how could their appearances have been so different?
‘Yet their clothes were so similar…’
Jiang Xia pondered this. Then she suddenly remembered what the curly-haired old woman had been doing at the time, and everything clicked.
She turned to confirm something with her.
“Ma’am, when you were making shoe soles, were you standing or sitting? About how high off the ground were you?”
“Of course I was sitting. Standing would be exhausting.”
The curly-haired old woman gestured with her hands. “I was sitting on a little stool. It was a bit lower than my knees.”
Jiang Xia continued questioning her. “And did you see his face from the front or from the side?”
The old woman thought carefully for a moment.
“Half-profile, I suppose. About like this.”
As she spoke, she turned sideways and angled herself roughly three-quarters away.
“Then there’s no mistake.”
Jiang Xia was certain now. She nodded slightly.
“The two of you most likely saw the same person. It’s just that you were sitting lower down, so you were looking slightly upward at him. Combined with the greater distance, that made his eyes and nose appear smaller and larger respectively.”
With that, Jiang Xia picked up her drawing pencil.
“Sir, I’ll first draw one based on your description. Then I’ll draw another from the angle this lady saw him from, so we can compare the two.”
Jiang Xia began drawing.
Seeing her start, the curly-haired old woman and the detective fell silent and quietly moved behind Jiang Xia to watch.
Even the old man with the sweat towel kept stretching his neck to sneak glances at the notebook while answering the questions.
To avoid giving them the impression that she wasn’t taking the job seriously, Jiang Xia deliberately slowed down. She asked several more questions, made a few adjustments, and spent more than forty minutes before finally completing the portrait.
To everyone watching, it looked as though a featureless human head first appeared on the blank sheet of paper. Then, little by little, from top to bottom, eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears, and finally the hair that affected the entire shape of the face were added, until it became a complete human face.
It was practically like something straight out of a supernatural tale—a painted skin coming to life.
The two detectives who had gone to pick up the witnesses exchanged glances, marveling inwardly.
When Jiang Xia finally stopped drawing, the old man with the sweat towel, who had been sitting to the side, immediately stood up and walked behind her. Unable to contain himself, he clapped his hands twice.
“Oh my, that’s exactly what the man I saw looked like! It’s so accurate it’s as if he came to life right there in front of me!”
The curly-haired old woman looked back and forth between the drawing and Jiang Xia, puzzled.
“That really does look a bit like the man I saw at the time.”
“Just wait a moment.”
Jiang Xia rolled her wrist to loosen it, cut the drawing off the sheet, and then, using the angle from which the curly-haired old woman had looked up at the suspect, drew another portrait.
This time she switched to a charcoal pencil. In just over ten minutes, she’d produced a rough likeness. She hadn’t even begun working on the finer details when the curly-haired old woman’s hand slammed onto the table.
“Yes! That’s exactly what I saw! Exactly! I knew I hadn’t seen it wrong!”
“Then that’s confirmed.”
Jiang Xia stopped drawing. She picked up the portrait she’d just finished.
“This is what the suspect looks like.”
Only then did the older detective rouse Rong Zhenhai, who had already begun snoring softly.
He suddenly sat upright, vigorously shook his head, and finally came back to his senses.
“I slept for more than two hours?”
Rong Zhenhai stood up and walked over to the portrait.
“You’re already finished?”
“Yes. Both eyewitnesses have confirmed the portrait.”
Jiang Xia said, “Captain Rong, how many copies of the portrait do you need?”
“Given the circumstances, we’ll definitely need quite a few. We’re going to search the whole city for him.”
“Then we’ll have to take it to a print shop and make copies.”
Jiang Xia skillfully flipped to another page.
“These days, printing presses use offset printing. Making the printing plates takes time to process, so we’d have to wait another two days before we could get the portraits. I can draw an engraving version as well. Captain Rong, if you can find an experienced old master who is good at engraving plates, it should take about six or seven hours to carve. You could have the portraits printed the same day.”
As she spoke, Jiang Xia took two sheets of paper from the back of her notebook and handed them to Rong Zhenhai.
“These are some lessons we summarized back in Changning City when we were distributing wanted-person portraits. Take a look, Captain Rong. They might come in handy.”
“There’s more?”
Rong Zhenhai took the papers in surprise. He skimmed through them.
The first sheet listed problems that had come up during the distribution process. The second contained an optimized feedback procedure that could practically be copied and implemented as-is.
‘Just how many portraits had Changning City made Jiang Xia draw for them?’
She’d even managed to summarize her experience into a set of procedures?
Looking at the portrait of the young man that had just been completed on the table, Rong Zhenhai suddenly had a strong feeling.
‘This time… maybe they really could catch these criminals!’
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