Shu watched the van disappear from the security monitor. After confirming the direction it headed one last time, he finally left the convenience store.
The streetlights cast a harsh glow on the asphalt, turning it a shade somewhere between ash and pitch. Dusk had completely swallowed the city.
Shu unlocked his phone again, opened a ride-hailing app, and placed an order, randomly selecting a destination just to get a driver to accept.
Every second waiting for the car was sheer agony. Standing by the curb, Shu deliberately regulated his breathing, using the brief downtime to strategize how to quickly secure the driver's absolute cooperation.
Three minutes later, a somewhat worn-out white electric vehicle pulled over. The driver was a man in his early forties, the weathering of age and stress evident on his face.
A good luck charm and a cute little stuffed doll dangled from the rearview mirror—decorations that felt completely at odds with the middle-aged man's rugged appearance.
Electric car. Forties. A family man.
He needs money!
Shu instantly discarded every persuasive argument he had prepared. The moment he pulled the door open and slid into the passenger seat, he snatched the driver's QR code placard from the dashboard, scanned it, and authorized a payment.
[Received: 10,000 Yuan.]
The driver, who had been about to ask for the last four digits of the phone number, jerked his head up in shock, staring at his passenger in sheer disbelief.
"You—"
"Sir, I'm booking your car for the entire day. Ignore the app's route. You go exactly where I tell you to go." Shu's voice was steadier than he expected.
The driver's jaw hung open. He looked from the notification on his phone to Shu's bloodshot eyes. He hesitated for nearly half a minute before he reached out with a slightly trembling hand, pulled his phone from the mount, and exited the ride-hailing app.
Ten thousand yuan...
I'm doing it!
"Alright. You're the boss." The middle-aged driver took a deep breath, the look in his eyes sharpening instantly.
"Wait a moment." Earning his trust had taken roughly a minute. Shu held up a hand, gesturing for the driver to wait. He leaned back against the headrest, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
Given a thirty-minute head start, how many possible routes could a van take from this location?
The darkness behind Shu's eyelids vanished. A topographical map of the city unfurled in his mind, every single road radiating outward from his current position.
His Mind Palace was not a quiet, orderly library waiting to be browsed. It was a sprawling city currently undergoing a carpet bombing.
Every road was a line. They started from this point and spiderwebbed outward along every path a van could traverse.
The first layer of radiation consisted of primary and secondary arterial roads. There were four.
At the first intersection, each of the four main roads split into three directions. At the next intersection, those three split into two to four more.
The secondary roads were even denser, acting as capillaries that wove through residential districts, bleeding into the gaps between the main arteries.
In his Mind Palace, Shu laid these lines out one by one, allowing the map to violently grow inside his head.
The lines pulsed with light, different colors representing different probability weights.
White for main arteries, gray for secondary roads, and dark red for open-access residential streets.
Since he knew the target was driving a van, he could immediately discard the dense capillary network of pedestrian and narrow alleys. He focused his processing power entirely on calculating the white and gray routes.
The white lines split into three at the first fork. Three became nine. Nine became twenty-seven...
The gray lines threaded through the gaps between the white ones, spawning new forks at every single intersection. They branched and branched again, like an inverted tree—its canopy exploding outward from the collar's final location, its roots violently driving themselves into every corner of the city.
The exponential growth was catastrophic.
After only a few short rounds of deduction, Shu realized the number of possible routes had already ballooned into the hundreds, and was rapidly screaming toward the thousands as the distance expanded.
The lines in his Mind Palace stretched, crossed, and wove into a mind-bogglingly complex web.
And this web had no boundaries. As long as the time discrepancy existed, and as long as the target's choices weren't constrained by external forces, the web would continue to expand into infinity.
I can't memorize them all!
Shu forcefully snapped the dry, brute-force calculation in half.
He had to calculate far more than just the routes themselves.
Every single line carried a massive set of variables: travel time, number of traffic lights, density of security cameras, road width, likelihood of street parking, probability of traffic congestion, the possibility of the target switching vehicles...
Every single variable steered the conclusion toward a completely different outcome. And worst of all—
The time discrepancy.
Even if Shu eliminated the vast majority of incorrect answers and narrowed it down to a handful of chokepoints like before, driving to each one to verify would inevitably widen the time gap between him and a target that was moving unobstructed.
Time, time, time... Time is the only thing I need right now!!
He had a vehicle. He had a driver willing to race him across the city all day. But even if this car drove non-stop from this exact moment, it could never simultaneously cover every possibility branching out at the edge of the road network.
Unless he could somehow verify all the routes at once. Unless he could clone himself and chase down every single path simultaneously. Unless...
Unless he had the "Eye of Heaven"—the omniscient view of the city's surveillance network.
——
I can get it.
110! [T/N: China's emergency police number]
The call connected almost instantly. The operator's voice came through the receiver with a standard, professional greeting.
Shu opened his mouth. His voice came out dry and desperate, sounding as if it were echoing from very far away.
"I want to report a crime. I had highly valuable property stolen in a home invasion." I can't just say a cat.
To many people, a cat wasn't significant enough. He had to frame it as a home invasion burglary. He had to escalate the severity.
"I have security footage of the suspect and a general direction of his escape, but I need access to the police traffic surveillance network to lock onto his exact location."
The operator asked for Shu's current location. Shu gave the cross streets and immediately added, "I'm no longer at the crime scene. I'm actively pursuing the suspect. The crime scene is my apartment. The address is—"
He gave his home address. The operator asked him to hold. Shu could clearly hear the rapid clattering of a keyboard on the other end.
About half a minute later, the operator's voice returned. "Your case falls under the category of residential burglary. Jurisdiction belongs to the local precinct where the incident occurred.
"I am transferring your call to the XX Precinct now. Please stay on the line."
The call clicked over to a hold tone. A short, repetitive melody began to play.
In the time it took the music to loop, Shu reorganized exactly what he needed to say next.
The suspect has a vehicle. He is actively fleeing. I need them to access traffic cameras... This was his core demand.
The music stopped abruptly.
A male voice picked up, stating his department and badge number.
"...Precinct. Are you calling to report a crime?"