208: Chapter 208 Technology Becomes the Criminal's Nemesis

Just as everyone's nerves were stretched taut, Lu Li merely glanced at the screen and said calmly, "Just watch quietly."

The words were spoken too calmly.

So calmly that Chen Shuyu suddenly turned her head, stared at him for two seconds, and then her eyes widened instantly.

She realized what was happening.

This wasn't cold-bloodedness. It wasn't that he didn't care. It was—he knew.

Su Qingxue also realized something in that instant; her gaze shifted slightly, looking at Lu Li's profile.

She figured it out even faster than Chen Shuyu.

This scene was a test. And it was a high-intensity emergency test closely simulating a real abduction scenario.

It wasn't a joke played on the audience, nor was it acting to deceive people.

Instead, it was throwing the high-risk model—the one most prone to accidents and most likely to send shivers down one's spine—directly into this system to see if it could handle it.

Central response. mechanical police dog diversion. Exit lockdown. Surveillance tracking. Anomaly identification.

These words, usually written in reports, had now all become reality.

And reality is often more convincing than any technical description.

Just as that old woman carrying the "girl" was about to walk to the east exit, two mechanical police dogs simultaneously moved horizontally, precisely blocking her path.

They didn't pounce. They didn't bite. Instead, they extremely stably blocked the center line of the passage and emitted a low-frequency warning sound.

The old woman was clearly panicked for a moment, instinctively wanting to detour to the side.

But another group of mechanical police dogs at the rear had already synchronized to fill the position, locking the route directly.

A nearby patrol Robot also spoke at the same time, "Please remain where you are." "The system is currently verifying the child's identity."

The old woman's movements stiffened.

The "girl" in her arms was also clearly startled awake, struggling a bit, and the wig on his head slipped halfway off, revealing the short hair stubble underneath.

The livestream chat completely exploded.

"Holy f*ck!!!!" "It actually stopped her!" "Oh my god, my hands are shaking!" "This is too scary..." "If the system hadn't been fast, this child might have really been taken away just like that!"

The next second, the security personnel who had arrived with the mechanical police dogs stepped forward.

"Hello, the test is over." "Thank you for your cooperation."

This one sentence finally pulled everyone out of that near-suffocating tension a little bit.

The old woman let out a long breath, stood steady while holding the child, and nodded with a bitter smile.

"Alright." "This thing is truly scary, but it's also truly effective."

The child in her arms pulled off the crooked wig while still not quite recovered from the earlier commotion, his little face flushed.

Not far away, the young mother who "couldn't find her child" had already rushed over, grabbing the little boy into her arms, her eyes red.

This time, she wasn't acting. After running through the entire process, even she was genuinely terrified.

Even though they were all hired actors, this child was truly her son, and she had panicked a little in her mind just now.

The moment she hugged her child, her shoulders clearly trembled. It was as if only at this moment did her heart truly settle.

Chen Shuyu stood where she was, her throat feeling a bit tight.

It wasn't that she hadn't seen such tests before. But like today, where a high-risk model from a real case—a boy temporarily dressed as a girl and carried away from the scene by an older woman—was completely replicated, and the system was made to stop it on the spot, it was her first time seeing it.

She murmured in a low voice, "No wonder..." "No wonder Lu Li insisted on making the mechanical police dogs this ruthless."

She pursed her lips, her voice dropping even lower. "Where we are, when a child goes missing, there really is a saying about the 'golden three minutes'." "After three minutes, in many cases, the person is gone."

Once this sentence was said, the tone of the livestream chat suddenly changed.

On the screen, which was originally scrolling with "Awesome" and "So strong," a few particularly eye-catching remarks suddenly popped up.

"I'm from the Haicheng Missing Persons Association; our child has been missing for thirteen years." "If this system had existed back then, would my son not have been lost..." "I sold my house to find my child, ran around for over ten years, and still have no news to this day..." "When I saw that wig slip off, I just burst into tears."

These few comments were like blunt knives, slowly cutting into everyone's emotions.

It was no longer just amazement. It was pain. The kind of pain that is truly pierced by reality.

The entire livestream seemed to have been suddenly pressed into another dimension.

Many people who had originally just come in for the excitement couldn't say a word at this moment.

Because everyone finally realized that the scene just now wasn't showcasing "how advanced we are." It was telling everyone—

If this city really grows into this, what it can catch isn't just convenience and efficiency. It's also danger. And those things that, in the past, were often gone forever once an accident happened.

Su Qingxue stood there, her eyes also slightly heating up.

She wasn't just thinking about the lost children. After those comments from the missing persons association members passed, other scenes flashed through her mind almost instinctively—

A girl walking home alone late at night. A woman living alone being followed. A person being harassed after getting drunk. A young lady being cornered in an alley on her way home from work.

If this system could perform such high-risk interception for missing children, then it could also intervene one step earlier in other dangerous scenarios.

The city wasn't just more convenient. The city was safer.

She couldn't help but turn her head to look at Lu Li. Lu Li was still standing there, his expression still calm. It was as if everything that just happened was supposed to happen exactly like that in his mind.

But at this moment, Su Qingxue suddenly realized more clearly than ever before—what he was doing was never as simple as "moving machines" and "smarter systems."

What he was doing was protection. It was dragging many things that, in the past, could only rely on luck, on adults not getting distracted, on police arriving fast enough, and on not having bad fate, forcibly forward by a step.

Not far away, the crowd had slowly dispersed. The mother was still holding her child, her eyes red, and the test assistant beside her was whispering an explanation of the procedure. The street regained its order. The mechanical police dogs withdrew. The patrol Robots returned to their positions.

As if that moment of tension and danger just now was just a small ripple passing briefly through the night.

But in the livestream chat, that emotion had completely exploded. Someone was spamming the screen. "This isn't a Robot, this is protection." "This isn't a Robot, this is protection." Sentence after sentence.

It was like some kind of most simple and most accurate summary.

And just when this emotion was pushed to its peak, at the very bottom of the screen, another kind of voice had started to appear sporadically.

"But if everything becomes intelligent, what can ordinary people still do?" "Safety is safety, but what about our livelihoods?" "If it goes on like this, won't many jobs just disappear?"

These words, sandwiched between the screen full of shock and emotion, were not obvious at first. But once seen, it was hard not to notice them.

The wind direction had already quietly planted its seeds. Those few comments were like thin needles, gently piercing into the emotions that had just been ignited to the extreme.

At first, no one paid much attention. After all, the impact of the high-risk scenario test just now was too great.

Whether it was the child being disguised as a little girl and carried away from the scene, the mechanical police dogs precisely blocking the exit, or those few comments from the Haicheng Missing Persons Association members, all were enough to make everyone's hearts shake violently.

So right now, the emotions of most of the audience were still lingering on "This system is too top-tier" and "If only this had existed back then."

But the problem was—those voices didn't stop. They started to grow a little bit more.

"Protection is certainly good, but what about jobs?" "If the future is so advanced, what will happen to the people who used to do these jobs?" "At the end of the day, won't Robots still steal people's livelihoods?"

Chen Shuyu caught a glimpse of a few of them from the corner of her eye, and her brows had already furrowed unconsciously.

She had originally been immersed in the emotion of being struck just now. Seeing these now, the warmth in her heart was instantly dispersed by a wave of anger that welled up.