This Is What Technological Prowess Looks Like
"Team leader, the call went through!"
The sudden noise in the office startled Fu Tianli so much that he almost jumped out of his chair. After working overtime intensely for the past few days, he had been in a semi-conscious state. Fortunately, the legend of the Spiritual Energy Revival had gradually subsided due to the intense debunking by Approaching Science and the lack of further explosive developments, which gave him the opportunity to get paid to sleep.
Forcing himself to stay alert, Fu Tianli glanced at Lin Wenxue who had rushed in and frowned, saying:
What call?
"Xiao Chen! Xiao Chen's phone call went through!"
"Xiao Chen!" Upon hearing Lin Wenxue's words, Fu Tianli jumped up from his seat, grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, and draped it over his shoulders.
"What's the situation now?"
"We just got through, we don't know the specifics yet, but the IP address of the call is in Colombia, but we couldn't find any related registration information..." Lin Wenxue said as fast as she could, Fu Tianli immediately strode towards the monitoring room.
As he walked, he said:
"Why did the call suddenly go through? Is today some other special day?"
"I don't know, because the Supernatural Tale Source has been identified. We haven't arranged to contact the code name [Instructor] recently. Today is the weekend, and Chen Xiyao came over for training as usual. During her break, she casually made a call, and it went through."
"Does it mean that you have to make a call without any ulterior motive, simply because you want to? Or do you have to dial the number according to your own wishes, and not be directed by others?"
As the head of the Investigation Group, Fu Tianli quickly came up with a number of rules. However, the monitoring room was already in sight. He immediately pushed open the door and saw that many of the senior members of the Exchange Group, the Archive Group, and other groups had arrived. The recording equipment also carried the meaningless conversation between Chen Xiyao and Feng Xue.
"What's going on now?" Fu Tianli found a seat, and Xiao Zhang, who was on duty today, immediately came over and whispered:
"It's probably because the codenamed instructor went back to his hometown last month and there was no signal, so we can't get through on the phone."
"So this is considered... flirting?" Fu Tianli frowned slightly as he listened to Chen Xiyao and Feng Xue's casual conversation on the phone.
"Can't Xiao Chen ask something of value?"
"Isn't this great?" Old Wang, sitting at the table with a warm, motherly smile, waved his hand leisurely.
"Relationships need to be maintained. If you make every phone call like you're going to investigate someone's entire family history, even the best impression will be ruined. It's much better to just chat casually like this. Besides, it's not like we haven't gotten any information at all."
"Ah, you mean it." Seeing the senior speak, Fu Tianli could only nod, then seemed to realize something and said:
"I'm new here. Did I leak any information beforehand?"
"December." Old Wang uttered three words succinctly, Fu Tianli's expression immediately became somewhat subtle.
Most people would be baffled by such a seemingly random statement, but as the head of the Investigation Group, he knew very well that it referred to the phenomenon worldwide where the number of High-level Supernatural Tale drops dramatically every December.
Even the "hometown of Weird Tale" in the Eastern Kingdom enters a lull during this period. Most of the Weird Tale organizations from various countries will also organize research teams to go to the Eastern Kingdom at this time, and the few resistance organizations in the Eastern Kingdom will also mostly carry out their activities in winter.
The mainstream international view holds that the power of Weird Tale is affected by time cycles, being strongest in summer and weakest in winter. As evidence, the Eastern Country holds a large-scale Weird Tale festival called Hundred Tales every June.
But now it seems there might be another explanation?
"Team leader, judging from the conversation between Instructor Codename and Xiao Chen, December is a very special month for High-level Supernatural Tale, much like our Spring Festival travel rush. During this month, High-level Supernatural Tale return to Infinite City. As for the reason, they didn't say."
Xiao Zhang, who had been listening the whole time, quietly explained a few words to Fu Tianli. But it would have been better if he hadn't said anything; the more Xiao Zhang explained, the more frustrated Fu Tianli felt.
This cyclical pattern isn't just strong in June and weak in December; why do Weird Tale also tend to contract in spring and autumn?
Of course, the number of High-level Supernatural Tale is far less than that of Low-level Supernatural Tale (none). There are no more than 10,000 legends classified as High-level Supernatural Tale worldwide, and at least one-third of them are in the Eastern Kingdom.
Therefore, the research on Weird Tale countermeasures departments of various countries is basically based on the situation in the East and then applied to the whole world.
For example, the December Weird Tale in the Eastern Kingdom would enter a lull, and then everyone would look at their own country and see that there were indeed fewer Weird Tale. So this pattern became a universal pattern until it was overturned by more convincing evidence.
Although such rule-based experience may seem unreliable, any technology initially relies on this kind of experience accumulation. You can start a fire by rubbing sticks together even if you don't understand the principle of friction ignition, and you can still artificially breed organisms even if you don't understand the nature of biological genes.
Technological accumulation has always been like this, but that doesn't mean these researchers don't want to know the truth.
Just as Fu Tianli was struggling between "maintaining relations" and "inquiring about information," a staff member suddenly spoke up:
"Old Wang, Team Leader Fu, Team Leader Qian, the background noise has been cleared!"
As he spoke, a member of the technical team handed several rather professional-looking headsets to the group. Fu Tianli on the headset, and a rather faint sound, clearly distorted, rang in his ears.
The sound was faint and had some background noise, which made people feel irritable, but if you listened carefully, you could discover some special details.
"Is this the sound of the environment where the codename [Instructor] is located?" Fu Tianli took off his headphones and looked at the technical team member, who nodded and said:
"We smashed Xiao Chen's phone using laboratory methods to enhance its sound quality capture capabilities, ensuring maximum call quality. However, the phone used by the person codenamed [Instructor] is of average quality, so some background noise is unavoidable. Fortunately, his phone's noise reduction function isn't particularly advanced, so we were able to extract some background noise from the call."
As the staff were talking, Old Wang, Qian Hongxiu, and several other team leaders took off their headphones, but they all showed some degree of confusion.
After all, sounds mixed with background noise are not so easy to distinguish.
For someone with excellent hearing, listening to this kind of noise is even more of a torment.
The tech team seemed to realize this as well. He immediately picked up a tablet, brought up a somewhat complex program that roughly resembled audio production software, and separated each audio track individually, saying:
"By analyzing the waveform, we distinguished a large number of segments from the noise, and then compared them with an audio library to identify several of them."
"We don't understand these technical details, so let's just get to the conclusion," Old Wang said, rubbing his ears. "I only heard the sound of water on my forehead. What are the other sounds?"
"That's right, the loudest noise in this audio clip should be coming from a relatively fast-flowing river, but since we don't know the distance, we can't determine the water volume." The technician first confirmed Old Wang's guess, and then continued:
"Besides the sound of water, we also heard the sound of a campfire burning, mixed with the sounds of burning wood and a small amount of oil dripping into the fire, along with the sound of wind blowing through the leaves. This was probably a campfire barbecue in the wild, and considering it was near a body of water, it was very likely fish being grilled."
"The timing matches up, but do Weird Tale require meals?" Old Wang looked thoughtful, while the technician nodded and continued:
"Yes, that's the most important thing."
As he spoke, the technician swiped around on the terminal a few times, selected a single audio track from a bunch of tracks, and started playing it.
That wasn't some rare sound; it was something everyone was intimately familiar with... the sound of breathing.
Besides Feng Xue, who was on the phone, there was also the sound of breathing nearby!
"Someone's there?!"
PS1: The story of Old Li Gazi Steals Dog is not the same as the one in our TV Gazi Steals Dog "Little Soldier Zhang Ga". As mentioned before, it's just a supernatural Weird Tale Old Li stealing someone else's dog when the TV series "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" was on.
The Real World Rules is that "when a TV show featuring Little Soldier Zhang Ga or an actor named Ga Zi appears, and the family owns a dog, Old Li can descend and steal their dog." This has little to do with our meme about Gazi Steals Dog.
However, once the meme about Gazi Steals Dog appears in the future, Old Li's dormant Supernatural Tale Entry might just revive. That's the magic of Weird Tale (laughs).
PS2: Black cards have an assessment threshold, which is roughly the assessment of your normal spending. Only if it exceeds this threshold will the bank call the cardholder. Normally, they will not ask the cardholder how much you spend. For example, if you usually spend around a million during peak hours, and suddenly you spend ten million, the bank will notify the cardholder to inquire whether it was you who made the purchase. As for spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, there will basically be no real-time notification.
Obviously, it's impossible to reach this threshold by eating a single meal; at most, you'll see it when checking your monthly bills.
By the way, the black card Zhonghua Family is different from the black cards issued elsewhere. First, it has a limit, and second, the name is also different. Of course, it's assumed to be universally applicable in the book, since it's essentially a credit card.