Chapter 24

what a coincidence

the next day, tang rui drove away from home to purchase materials for the fire-fighting drone.

he had already checked the prices of various materials and the models of the accessories yesterday.

today, he could go directly to buy them.

to be honest, he was still somewhat conscientious.

for the body of the fire-fighting drone, he didn’t use the cheapest materials but opted for 6051-t6 grade aluminum alloy instead.

this aluminum alloy cost around twenty yuan per kilogram.

of course, he spent a bit more here, which meant he had to make up for it from other places.

so, he decided to change the originally planned turbine engine to a brushless motor-driven propeller engine.

initially, he wanted to buy the 18-yuan version, but found it didn’t have enough power and couldn’t carry the load.

finally, after a lot of searching, he settled on a waterproof version of an outrunner brushless motor for 150 yuan.

this was already considered a significant expense and the second most expensive component for the fire-fighting drone.

as for the most expensive part, it was undoubtedly the electro-optical system.

no matter how he tried to save money in other areas, he couldn’t compromise on the electro-optical system; otherwise, the drone would become nothing more than a toy.

the complete electro-optical system cost 780 yuan, with the lens alone costing 220 yuan, but it was necessary to buy it.

in addition to the steering motor, flight control mainboard, processor, and other accessories, the total cost of building the fire-fighting drone reached 1,282.5 yuan.

at first glance, it didn’t seem expensive.

but when you have a large quantity, it becomes costly.

according to his plan, these fire-fighting drones would be flying in hundreds at the same time; otherwise, operating just a dozen of them individually would have little effect.

so, for his first material purchase, he bought enough materials for 64 drones, spending a total of 82,080 yuan.

it burned a huge hole in his pocket.

he had already used up one-eighth of the money in his grandma’s bank card.

besides buying the materials, he also rented a small villa with a yard.

there was no other choice as his house couldn’t hold so many things.

the drones couldn’t fit in there now, let alone considering future projects.

this kind of villa with a yard was the most suitable for him.

speaking of this small villa, it reminded him of a regretful incident.

he remembered that the villas in this area were being sold for only 4,288 yuan per square meter.

they didn’t sell well for almost half a year.

back then, his father wanted to buy one and even chose a house.

but due to a quarrel, his parents divorced, and the chance to buy that beautiful villa was lost.

even if they bought the villa before the divorce, it would have been fine.

the more he thought about it, the more upset he became. so, he decided to call his grandmother in the evening and tell her that his father hadn’t contacted him for a month.

after this whole morning of running around, he had spent tens of thousands of yuan.

spending this much money made tang rui feel a bit uneasy.

after all, he was used to frugal living.

now, spending so much money at once, he found it a bit hard to handle.

even the beef noodles at lunch didn’t taste as good.

“celia, has huawei made any progress in verifying the algorithm?”

while having lunch, tang rui thought about money and naturally thought about huawei.

it had already been a whole day, and there was still no news from huawei.

without any money coming in, he felt uncertain.

“do you wish to investigate the relevant information about huawei’s algorithm?”

“it’s not the information about the algorithm itself. i want to know if huawei has verified the image algorithm i sent them yesterday.”

“i do not understand.”

“ugh! although you are an ai, you still need improvement.”

“retrieve the directory of reports submitted to huawei from last night until today.”

“understood. i am collecting and organizing the information.”

finally, he was understood.

whoosh!

a long list of report titles appeared before him.

“search for the keywords ‘image algorithm’ and filter out irrelevant information.”

“done.”

only seven reports remained, and one of them was a summary report about the image algorithm.

tang rui opened it to take a look.

after updating the image algorithm, the photo quality improved on average by 1.6 times without replacing any hardware.

especially for long-distance shooting optimization, it reached an astonishing three times improvement.

however, the technology department also pointed out that the image algorithm was not complete yet.

it was still lacking image recognition and image analysis algorithms.

after reading the report, tang rui felt like giving the technology department at huawei a thumbs up.

the report was correct.

what he sold to huawei was a split version of the algorithm, and it was a poor version at that.

clear photos didn’t matter much.

clarity was essential for humans, but for machines, the key was whether the machine could recognize the information in the photos.

especially for unmanned driving systems, machine recognition was critical.

without machine recognition, even if you had clear photos, they would be useless.

however, he wasn’t in a hurry to sell these algorithms.

after all, actively selling something was different from others begging you to buy it.

it wasn’t just about having the upper hand, but also about the psychological gap.

finally, he checked the time the report was uploaded.

well, well.

at 3:27 am this morning.

indeed, it was huawei.

they sure worked hard.

now that the testing report was out, the higher-ups at huawei should be discussing it in meetings.

with this in mind, tang rui wasn’t in a rush anymore.

after finishing lunch, as he was preparing to go home to work on the fire-fighting drones, officer chen called him.

he asked if tang rui had time.

if he did, he should come to the police station to collect his reward.

how could he not have time when there was money to be collected?

tang rui immediately agreed and rushed to the police station.

arriving at officer chen’s office, he knocked on the door.

“come in.”

tang rui pushed open the door and took a look inside.

what’s going on? have all the officers here turned into pandas?

why did everyone have such dark circles under their eyes, like they haven’t slept for half a month?

there were more than a dozen police officers in the office, and each of them had darker circles under their eyes than the others.

thankfully, they were all young officers.

they could still hold up.

but if they were over 40, they would probably need rescuing.

“tang rui is here. sorry to keep you waiting. let me finish watching this video, then i’ll take you to the finance department.”

officer chen, with his panda eyes, said with a weary tone.

“it’s alright, if you’re busy, i’m not in a hurry.”

tang rui said nonchalantly.

seeing the situation, he knew they must be dealing with something important; otherwise, they wouldn’t look so tired.

so, he found a spot and sat down, waiting for officer chen.

however, he was still very curious.

what exactly was happening?

so, he looked at officer chen’s computer screen.

video surveillance footage?

or footage from traffic lights?

was he watching videos to search for something related to vehicles?

tang rui couldn’t quite understand.

after glancing at it for a moment, he decided not to bother. it seemed boring.

he sat there idly with nothing to do.

his eyes began to wander aimlessly.

hmm?

suddenly, he came across a piece of information.

and it was a rather shocking one.

“dong jing, female, 25 years old, id number… cause of death: suffocation.

time of death: between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on the 4th, the facial area of the body was severely damaged, and there was evidence of sexual abuse…”

this was the text that was visible in the information, and the rest was blocked by a photo.

and that photo was of the deceased, taken by the forensic team at the place where the body was discovered.

but that wasn’t the crucial part.

the most crucial thing was that the person in the photo looked strangely familiar.

however, among the people he knew, there was definitely no one named dong jing.

tang rui furrowed his brow, thought about it for a while, checked the people he knew, and then started checking the female anchors he followed.

“what are you thinking about? let’s go, let’s get the money.”

officer chen walked over, patting tang rui’s shoulder.

“oh… sure.”

tang rui was taken aback for a moment and then got up to follow him out of the office.

“chen, what’s going on here? everyone looks like they’re about to die from exhaustion.”

on the way to the finance department, tang rui curiously asked.

“let’s not talk about it. we’ve been watching surveillance footage for three days; our eyes are sore.”

officer chen waved his hand, looking like he might puke just thinking about surveillance.

“three days? and you still haven’t found the suspect or the culprit?”

“let alone three days, at this rate, it’ll take another month to see if we can find any leads.”

“can’t you use facial recognition?”

“we can’t even recognize what the murderer looks like. how can we use facial recognition?”

“can you tell me about it? does it violate any rules?”

“there’s nothing we can’t talk about. it’s just that a few days ago, a woman was killed, and we still haven’t found any suspects.

“all we know so far is that she went to a bar that night and encountered someone who may have been a rich heir or a tycoon.

“she was trying to lure someone rich but ended up being lured into something herself.”

“lure someone rich?”

tang rui suddenly remembered.

no wonder he found the deceased familiar.

balenciaga stockings.

silver-colored short dress.

wasn’t she the woman he had photographed sitting in the co-pilot seat last week, saying she was trying to lure a rich person?

who would’ve thought that she would disappear that night.

what a coincidence.

the clues the police were looking for were right here with him.