29: Chapter 29 Technological Hunting, Grand Opening

It was just past eight in the morning, and Lin Ning, who had stayed up all night playing games, was woken up by the sound of his phone.

Dazed, he answered the phone, "Emperor Lin Sheng, your package is here."

Who the hell used "Emperor Lin Sheng" as such an embarrassing username?

The next second, Lin Ning fully woke up, "Holy crap!"

For a moment, he didn't know whether to feel ashamed of the username or excited that his equipment was arriving.

He jumped up, opened the door to receive the package, and quickly scurried back into his room.

He could deal with the username later; for now—

He carefully sliced open the package, and a dark gray hard plastic box that looked incredibly high-quality appeared before Lin Ning.

He opened the box to find his "babies" lying inside: a collar-clip camera, a sports bracelet-style recorder, and several micro-magnetic trackers.

They gleamed with a cold, metallic luster in the morning light.

"Hehe, it's finally here." Like a child with a new toy, Lin Ning immediately dove into testing them.

He charged the devices, downloaded the app, and adjusted the angles. He clipped the camera inside his shirt pocket and checked the mirror for a long time—perfectly invisible. The bracelet, worn on his wrist, looked just like a regular piece of sports gear.

He had planned to rest today, but now—he couldn't help it. Rest, my ass! Time to get up and party! There will be plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead!

Lin Ning suppressed his urge to head out immediately and first conducted a "stress test" at home.

He turned on the bracelet's remote audio recording function, stood in the hallway, and spoke softly; the phone inside the room clearly played back the audio.

"The effective range is about thirty meters; that's enough." He nodded with satisfaction. Now, this is what you call professional equipment.

...

Officer Li Feng and his team belonged to a major station, the kind that had both criminal investigation and economic crime investigation squads.

Precisely because of this, their jurisdiction was quite large, and it consisted mostly of old residential complexes with a rich, lived-in atmosphere.

Wearing his equipment, dressed in casual clothes, and holding a cup of milk tea, Lin Ning strolled leisurely down the street.

Lin Ning sighed. If he had known, he would have ridden his electric scooter. How long would it take to walk everywhere like this?

He had gotten carried away!

In these types of residential areas, there were few decent shopping malls or office buildings, which meant that ninety-nine percent of the people on the street had green names.

The occasional red name that popped up was just a light shade of red, and since they were solo, they really weren't worth wasting time on.

At the entrance of a residential complex next to a convenience market, Lin Ning finally made a discovery.

A group of about a dozen men were walking inside, making a ruckus.

They all had red names, and the color was much deeper than that of petty thieves.

Lin Ning perked up. Keeping a calm expression, he sipped his milk tea and followed them in naturally.

At the same time, he adjusted the pinhole camera in his chest pocket to aim at the group's backs and profiles, and gently pressed the side of the bracelet—remote audio recording activated.

He kept a distance of over twenty meters, and fragments of conversation drifted into his earpiece:

"...That batch of cards from last night... were ruined..."

"...The machine is too damn loud... The landlord won't come looking for us, right?"

"...Hurry up and sleep, we still have to work tonight..."

A fake base station!

These three words instantly popped into Lin Ning's mind.

The information matched: nighttime activity, equipment noise, and a large number of phone cards.

The security guard at the old residential complex was just for show; the gate stood wide open for anyone to enter.

Lin Ning strolled along, following at a distance, as they entered Unit 4 of Building 216.

The old building didn't have an elevator, and the stairwell was dimly lit.

Lin Ning lightened his footsteps, listening to the chaotic sound of their footsteps going up.

When he reached the fourth floor, he stopped. He unclipped the pinhole camera from his collar, used a mini selfie-stick-style extension rod to quietly extend it around the corner of the stairs, and the phone screen immediately displayed the image of the sixth-floor corridor.

The group was entering Room 603 one by one. Before closing the door, the last man to go in seemed to glance toward the stairwell inadvertently. Lin Ning immediately retracted the camera and held his breath.

A few seconds later, the door to 603 closed completely.

Lin Ning didn't risk going up to the sixth floor.

He noticed a small, inconspicuous black protrusion above the entrance to 603—it was likely a surveillance camera disguised as a smoke detector. He carefully retreated to the window between the fifth and sixth floors and used the bracelet's telephoto function to clearly capture the camera and the room number of 603.

After leaving the complex, he found a roadside noodle shop and sat down to slurp his noodles; no matter how big the world is, eating is the most important thing.

Having gathered some evidence, Lin Ning was in a good mood.

In any endeavor, going from 0 to 1 is always the hardest part.

Lin Ning had taken that hardest step, and he would leave the rest to Jin Er and his team, or Officer Li Feng and his.

He continued in the afternoon.

Wearing such great equipment, Lin Ning felt a bit pumped up; even though he was tired, he was still quite energetic.

His second gain of the day was at a street-side electric scooter shop. The employees and the boss were all red names. Although the color wasn't as deep as the group he found in the morning, it wasn't light either.

Lin Ning had a hunch that it was either a crime involving receiving stolen goods and modifying vehicles, or something related to counterfeit products.

Pretending to be a customer looking to buy a scooter, Lin Ning took a good look around the shop, keeping the names and faces firmly in mind.

His final gain was on the most remote street in the jurisdiction, at a Traditional Chinese Medicine massage parlor. In a place like that, hehe, everyone knows what kind of crimes are likely going on.

It's just that the employees were all middle-aged women with lingering charm, and when Lin Ning observed from the outside, the customers were all damn old grandpas!

Lin Ning was so scared he didn't dare to get any closer; he was afraid those ravenous sisters would swallow him whole.

As evening approached, Lin Ning really couldn't walk anymore. He checked his step count, and wow...

It was almost eighty thousand steps!

...

Back at his home in Juma Bridge, Lin Ning couldn't wait to export all the materials.

The 603 gang: clear room number, location of the surveillance camera, and a summary of key audio transcripts ("cards," "machine," "work at night").

Electric bicycle shop: storefront photo, employees' faces, and his own notes labeled with names and his suspicions.

Massage parlor: storefront photo, faces of the staff.

He categorized all this information, added concise text descriptions, and printed it out into a thick stack.

Looking at the results before him, Lin Ning let out a long sigh of relief. This wasn't just a reconnaissance mission; it was a successful "full-process test of his new equipment."

From discovery, tracking, and evidence collection to correlation analysis, his "hunting" method had quietly upgraded.

He felt such a sense of accomplishment!

He grabbed his phone and started summoning the "heroes," "Jin Er, come out for dinner, we've got work!"