142: Travel to Beijing

"Uh..." Mavis's attitude suddenly turned cold. Li Xiao was momentarily speechless; it seemed this weapons expert wanted to use this as leverage to force him to do his utmost to rescue his family.

"Alright, I'll be going then. Get some rest."

Returning to the command hall on the first floor, Li Xiao immediately called Zhao Feipeng and Ling Chao to watch the over twenty hours of footage on the USB drive.

Upon opening the first video, Zhao Feipeng immediately gleaned a piece of information.

"According to Mavis, his wife and daughter are being held under house arrest in a villa. Apart from three meals a day and necessary entertainment devices, they have no communication tools.

Every video call is specially controlled, but by combining the time with the lighting conditions in the video, I can determine that they must be in the same time zone as us, and there is a high probability that they are within the territory of the Tianyu Republic!"

"Oh? How do you know?" Li Xiao asked curiously.

Zhao Feipeng pointed at the video and said, "Look, this call took place at 8:00 PM. Although the mother and daughter were sitting in the indoor living room, you can tell from the lighting and the faintly visible doors and windows that it was also nighttime for them.

During this transition between day and night, even within the same time zone, there can be a significant difference. The Tianyu Republic spans over ten thousand kilometers, and there's a one to two-hour difference in when it gets dark between the east, west, north, and south.

Just now, I asked Mavis, and when he received this video call, it was also completely dark outside. Therefore, I concluded that they are in the same time zone and no more than five thousand kilometers away from us.

However, since there is also the Aros Federation to the north of the Tianyu Republic, which is in the same time zone and has a similar solar exposure offset, I said there is a high probability that they are within the Tianyu Republic."

"Not bad! Feipeng, you actually have a bit of a detective's mind." Li Xiao was stunned by Zhao Feipeng's analysis, and he couldn't help but regret spending all his time reading novels during his middle and high school geography classes.

"So, can we determine the specific location?"

Even if Li Xiao tentatively assumed the mother and daughter were currently within the Tianyu Republic, the Tianyu Republic was so vast that even if they cut the daylight difference area in half, it was still twenty to thirty million square kilometers.

"Then we'll have to keep looking and see if we can deduce anything from the details... like the environment and the conversation..."

The three of them watched from noon until afternoon, and then from afternoon until night, first fast-forwarding and then checking minute by minute.

"Ah, I can't take it anymore. You guys keep watching; let me know if you find anything..." Li Xiao felt like his eyes were going blind. He rubbed them and turned to walk out the door.

"Wait!" Before he had even stepped out the door, Zhao Feipeng suddenly shouted, scaring the sleep right out of Li Xiao.

"Damn it! Keep it down, don't wake up Dr. Ma." He hurried back to the monitor and asked Zhao Feipeng, "What did you find?"

Zhao Feipeng said excitedly, "Hail, it's hail!"

He cut the video back to an evening and started playing it. Then Li Xiao heard a clattering sound. Mavis happened to ask about the cause of the noise at that moment, and his wife immediately replied that it was hail.

"What about hail?"

"Of course, we can use the hail to find the location! If it were just raining, the range would be too broad, but when it comes to hail, I don't think there would be many places where it happened at the same time, right?"

"But how do we determine the range based on hail?" Li Xiao still didn't understand.

"Boss, it's very simple. Local meteorological departments all have records of local weather conditions. We just need to check which regions across the country had hail after 6:00 PM that evening, and then we can narrow down the range and lock onto the area with villas!"

Zhao Feipeng's words completely woke Li Xiao up. That's right; he just needed to have Chang Zhan use his intelligence network to collect the information, and he believed there would be news soon.

"I'm going now!" Li Xiao ran out and shouted, "Li Le!"

...

One day later, Li Le handed a report to Li Xiao.

"Boss, this is the meteorological data sent by Chang Zhan. There are three places that had hail around the time you specified that day, but one of them is in the deep mountains and forests, so we only need to confirm the other two."

Li Xiao took it and looked. He discovered that one place was in Jingzhou, over seven thousand kilometers away, and the other was in Ningzhou on the southeast coast.

"Another long-distance raid..."

Li Xiao pondered for a moment and called for Zhao Feipeng. "Feipeng, take your reconnaissance platoon to Wucheng in Ningzhou and investigate the villa districts there. Once you confirm the target, notify me immediately!"

"Yes!"

After saying this, Li Xiao tossed a Star Coins card with five thousand Star Coins to Zhao Feipeng. They would be taking private civil aviation flights back and forth, and they would need money for food, clothing, housing, and transportation.

Furthermore, after they arrived at their destination, they would also need to purchase weapons and equipment on the black market, which would require a significant amount of money.

Then, Li Xiao also set off with the Shadow Special Forces for Jingzhou.

Jingzhou is the province where the capital of the Tianyu Republic, Jingcheng, is located. Resources and population are concentrated here; the taxes of a single town in the outskirts of the capital might add up to more than the three third-tier cities controlled by the Xiaoyao Squad.

However, high income brings high risk. The dense population of players acts out stories of big fish eating small fish and small fish eating shrimp every day.

Therefore, no one who survives here is indecisive or soft-hearted.

The place Li Xiao needed to investigate was a small town called Miyun on the east side of the capital. This town was a famous town for the rich.

Because of the beautiful scenery and its location behind the Miyun Reservoir, the wealthiest among the original inhabitants of the capital all purchased villas here, so there are thousands of villas in the villa district here.

The meteorological department accurately recorded a brief hailstorm that occurred here on that evening, which meant that Li Xiao had to find the place where Mavis's wife and daughter were being held under house arrest among these thousands of villas.

Li Xiao was reluctant when he received this report because the workload was simply too large.

But to avoid being suppressed and beaten in the future, he had to do his best!

Over the capital, the passenger plane began to slowly descend. Li Xiao took off his mask and rubbed his eyes. Outside the porthole, he could already see the downtown area of the capital, filled with high-rise buildings.

Before transmigrating, the longest flight Li Xiao had ever taken was two hours. This seven-thousand-kilometer journey took him over six full hours.

Coming out of the airport, Li Xiao and the members of the Shadow Special Forces split into three taxis and headed straight for Miyun.

The vehicles drove along the ring expressway. Looking at the skyscrapers in the capital, each taller than the last, Li Xiao suddenly felt that Xi City was truly insignificant.

But that was just looking. He didn't know if he would live to see the day he could capture the capital of the Tianyu Republic, which was under the control of the Black Hawk Empire.

Two hours later, Li Xiao and his team arrived at Miyun Town. This was a small town built like a scenic architectural complex, and the buildings in the town were quite retro in style.

The streets of the town were quite lively with people and traffic. Li Xiao took Ling Chao and the others and found a breakfast shop to sit down.