122: Chapter 122 Clues from AI Screening

Craig's desperation in his prison cell remained unknown to the outside world, but the forces he left behind, under immense pressure and a near-obsessive craving for "Patriot X," launched the "Pandora" project he had once vehemently promoted.

A super-analysis system codenamed "Prometheus," which aggregated the most advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and vast intelligence data from Pretty Country, was entrusted with a singular mission—to sift through the vast ocean of data from Dragon Country and ferret out that mysterious "ghost."

"Prometheus" possessed no emotions and knew no fatigue.

Like an invisible digital behemoth, it began to devour all accessible public and private information related to the technological explosion in Dragon Country in recent years.

It cross-referenced the backgrounds, research papers, project participation records, and even social network activity of millions of researchers, engineers, and scholars.

It analyzed all abnormal resource allocation, material procurement, and energy flow data within Dragon Country over the recent years; it searched the global cyberspace for clandestine discussions containing keywords such as "black tech," "technological breakthrough," and "patriot."

Massive amounts of data flowed, collided, and correlated within the logic core of "Prometheus."

Countless seemingly unrelated clues were proposed and verified, only to be discarded in most cases due to insufficient evidence or broken logical chains.

The screening list shrank rapidly, like sand through an hourglass, from the initial hundreds of millions down to millions, and then to hundreds of thousands.

It was during this tedious and complex screening process that some extremely faint "abnormal" signals began to emerge from the depths of the data ocean.

One such signal pointed to a seemingly ordinary record of civilian electronic component procurement.

The records showed that in a coastal city in Dragon Country, a recent university graduate named "Lin Mo" had, during the period surrounding his unemployment, purchased a wide variety of electronic components, special metal materials, and chemical reagents via both online and offline channels, some of which were industrial or military-grade.

While these purchasing behaviors were not inherently illegal, the "professionalism" and "purposefulness" of the combination of items appeared inconsistent with the status and needs of an ordinary unemployed college student.

More importantly, "Prometheus" discovered through timeline cross-referencing that the period of "Lin Mo's" frequent purchases coincided to a certain extent with the time when the anonymous technical leaks of "Patriot X" first appeared in Dragon Country.

Furthermore, some of the components he purchased could theoretically be used to build basic signal encryption or small-scale energy testing platforms.

Another faint signal originated from a deep analysis of urban traffic surveillance data.

Through facial recognition and behavioral pattern tracking, "Prometheus" captured that during his frequent purchasing periods, "Lin Mo's" activity trajectory exhibited some atypical "evasive" characteristics, such as intentionally choosing routes through surveillance blind spots and subconsciously observing the locations of cameras in public places.

This behavioral pattern bore a low-level similarity to that of trained intelligence personnel or individuals with a high degree of privacy awareness.

"Prometheus" also flagged a key suspicious point: shortly after the official launch of the "Chasing Light Project" in Dragon Country and the subsequent tightening of internal controls, almost all of "Lin Mo's" public activities and digital footprints abruptly diminished, as if he had "vanished into thin air."

To an AI, this sudden "silence" implied that either the individual had met with an accident, or... he had been effectively "protected" or "hidden" by some force.

Based on these faint but existing "traces," "Prometheus" extracted the file of "Lin Mo" from millions of others, marked it as a "low-probability suspect," raised his danger rating from "irrelevant" to "medium observation," and included him in the core candidate list requiring further verification.

There were only a few hundred names on this list, but the name "Lin Mo," like a grain of gold mixed into the sand, had truly entered the hunter's field of vision for the first time.

The cold logic of "Prometheus" could not comprehend "intuition," but its judgment based on probability and correlation had already pointed out a vague yet dangerous direction for Craig's madness.

The hound's nose had finally caught a faint, elusive scent.

Meanwhile, far away in the "Zhulong" safe house, Lin Mo remained completely unaware of this, fully focused on conceiving a starry barrier to protect civilization.