Chapter 351 - 351 318 The Beauty of Fingerprints

Words : 1404 Updated : Oct 9th, 2025

351: Chapter 318: The Beauty of Fingerprints 351: Chapter 318: The Beauty of Fingerprints 7 grams of tea were placed in the tea cannister, and boiling water at 97 degrees was poured in, causing the curling steam to immediately rise. The rolling tea leaves, like the wheels of bicycles in a circus act, spun playfully in the water. Separated by a green radish plant, three sticks of incense had just been lit, with the ascending smoke carrying a faint scent reminiscent of wheat. Two chairs away, Wu Jun held a cigarette in his mouth while exhaling gray smoke, and simultaneously drew talismans with cinnabar, continuously mumbling, “Prolong life, career success.” Jiang Yuan confidently adjusted his chair, set the mouse in place, regulated his mood, and then seriously pulled out a fingerprint— A fingerprint from a theft case eight years prior. Jiang Yuan glanced at it for just a moment before starting to mark the characteristic points with quick taps. When Wu Jun heard the clicking of his mouse, he came over to look and after half a minute, said, “If the owner of this fingerprint has a spirit in the sky, they probably never imagined that it would be brought out for comparison eight years later.” “The main thing is that the fingerprint was taken from a good location, on the inner side of the door handle inside the room. If there’s a match, the probability of pinpointing the suspect is relatively high,” Jiang Yuan replied, while sending the fingerprint with the marked points to the backend. His expertise in fingerprint analysis was extremely high now, with a Qingdao Single-Finger Fingerprint Analysis Method at Level 4, a Chongqing-style Single-Finger Fingerprint Analysis Method at Level 3, and Image Zeqiang at Level 5, making him more than a match for three experts combined. The internal network responded quickly, churning out a list of thirty fingerprints in just minutes. Jiang Yuan compared them one by one and, in no time at all, found a match with the 17th fingerprint. “This fingerprint is poorly taken, with some serious reflection, but the comparison itself isn’t difficult,” Jiang Yuan explained offhand, seeing Wu Jun looking on. Wu Jun nodded and said, “This thief probably never imagined that a theft case from eight years ago would still come back to haunt him.” Jiang Yuan said, “It’s his own fault for being a thief.” While saying this, Jiang Yuan pulled up the suspect’s information and indeed, he was a habitual offender who had been locked up three times before. Jiang Yuan shook his head, organized the information, and then began to look for a second fingerprint to work on. The fingerprints he was now selecting were generally of difficulty around Level 3—beyond what Ningtai County’s own forensic team could handle and very challenging for Qinghe City’s team as well. For these types of case fingerprints, different places had varying practices. If they weren’t particularly busy, they would generally accumulate a batch and then have a certain expert work on them. With Shannan Province’s standards, not everyone was at Level 3 eight years ago. And even with Level 3 ability, working on Level 3 difficulty fingerprints carried a certain chance of success. For theft cases like these, typically punished with three to seven years, the level of attention wouldn’t be very high. Jiang Yuan’s previous strategy was similar, but this time, he wasn’t picky at all. He even felt a bit of fondness for theft cases. Theft cases are good because the criminals are usually professional or semi-professional, unlike robbers or murderers who are often amateurs on their first offense. Therefore, fingerprints from theft suspects often have a record, which is a crucial step towards making a match. For Jiang Yuan, he wasn’t afraid of complicated fingerprints, he was just concerned about the absence of corresponding fingerprints in the database. Today, Jiang Yuan didn’t want to deal with homicide cases. He had cleared up Ningtai County’s homicide cases up to 20 years back, and the remaining ones couldn’t be solved based on fingerprints alone. In such a situation, theft cases became Jiang Yuan’s target for brushing up his record. Matching a fingerprint, taking a few sips of tea, and then moving on to the next one—it only took half an hour for the second fingerprint to successfully emerge. This time it was even simpler; the criminal was currently in administrative detention, so a direct interrogation would suffice. Tap tap tap tap. Jiang Yuan frantically clicked the mouse. His fingerprint skills, in terms of overall proficiency, were top-tier domestically, and with a little more experience, he would be close to the pinnacle. Experts of his caliber were typically confined to rooms, endlessly comparing prints from murder cases, and to draw one out for a robbery case would require a highly publicized incident, perhaps one so serious that even dogs had been stolen. The idea that a fingerprint expert of his level would ever compare prints for a burglary in a small county town had never crossed anyone’s mind. Some of the backlog cases might even be leftovers from years past when there were too many trace cases to process—like those level LV0.8 trace cases handled by Wang Zhong. It could take half a day to compare prints for a simple burglary case, and with meetings to attend, business trips to take, and errands to run for the bosses, there were days when he couldn’t finish more than two cases. But Jiang Yuan was different. With his focused attention, he could identify standard characteristic points in one go. Even on a bad day, when it took two or three tries, it was only an hour’s work. Therefore, by the end of an afternoon, Jiang Yuan had already matched four fingerprints. His efficiency wasn’t quite what it was at the provincial office, where he could concentrate solely on fingerprinting during a state of peak performance and focus. Now, sitting in an office, it was normal for his efficiency to be slightly reduced. Even so, when Jiang Yuan called Huang Qiangmin, the latter was still slightly taken aback. “Four cases already?” Huang Qiangmin said while holding the phone, somewhat out of practice in expressing his astonishment. “Four burglary cases,” Jiang Yuan emphasized. “Burglary backlog is still backlog! You solved cases others couldn’t, that’s true ability. Alright, I’ll notify them to make the arrests,” cheered Huang Qiangmin, showering him with a few rounds of flattery on the spot. Huang Qiangmin even felt a twinge of regret. If they hadn’t transferred Jiang Yuan to the Changyang City Criminal Police Detachment, who knows how many more cases Ningtai County could have solved by now. Looking up at the small building foundation of the criminal police team ahead, Huang Qiangmin couldn’t help feeling a sense of loss. If they could have just raised the police station’s level a bit and secured more funding, they could have kept Jiang Yuan to clear the backlog. In no time, he would probably have torn apart hundreds of families. Huang Qiangmin dispatched a squad led by Wu Junhao. This pushover squad hadn’t had a great deal of work recently, few opportunities to make arrests; they dealt with minor cases internally and there were no major cases. Huang Qiangmin was worried about them getting rusty, so he gave them the assignment right away. Needless to say, the four thieves faced what was going to be a major crackdown by a dozen hulking men. Jiang Yuan left work on time, as usual, going home to loosen the soil for his winter melon. Meanwhile, the detectives of Ningtai County’s police force became busily engrossed in their work. Though small, a mosquito is still meat, and having been well-rested recently, the criminal police dashed about the county, some even dispatched to other regions to recover the stolen goods. After two days of handling fingerprints, Jiang Yuan saw the progress on his tasks begin to increase. 1/x, 2/x, 3/x... This meant that an arrest needed to be made for a case to be counted. Thus, Jiang Yuan didn’t hurry to claim his achievements, letting the police of Ning County make the arrests as he returned to Changyang City. The end-of-year meeting at the city bureau was imminent. On the day of his return, Jiang Yuan was seized and thrown into the lineup for a rehearsal.

Chapter 351 - 351 318 The Beauty of Fingerprints

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