I Am Your Natural Enemy

Chapter 530: Chapter 213: Thousand-Mile Pursuit, The Final Method (5k)

The Taoist had just finished and was preparing to leave, when over at the Scorching Sun Department, someone monitoring the surveillance feeds had already noticed something unusual.

Other places were easier to deal with; in the middle of the wilderness, you’re not likely to see much surveillance anyway—budget can’t just be burned at this rate. Even now, coverage within various population clusters isn’t yet fully complete.

Upgrades, replacements for damaged units, and so on—all of it costs money every year.

The budget’s already being stretched to the last penny; there’s no way it can be wasted like this.

But ever since that Water Ghost surrendered to the Scorching Sun Department and mentioned the Water Monarch’s resurgence, this was no longer some deserted and neglected corner.

Along the upper and lower stretches of the Huai River basin, at every critical point, there were already monitoring stations—even before a whole new batch of cameras and detection points got added in.

Especially at sites where the Water Monarch might have been suppressed—these were outfitted with all sorts of surveillance and monitoring gear.

They even went so far as to disguise all the cameras and sensors like cell towers, to keep them hidden in plain sight and blended with the environment, in case the Water Monarch caught on to the Scorching Sun Department’s surveillance.

Even if someone noticed, whatever questions they asked, whatever investigations they ran—it would all get pinned on the environmental protection department, or some ecological monitoring office.

Don’t ask, just say they’re for bird-watching—ask again and it’s for monitoring rare protected species.

Anyway, it’s got nothing at all to do with the Scorching Sun Department.

In fact, just in the short time since installation, the new monitoring equipment here had already doubled in amount compared to before.

The Scorching Sun Department couldn’t afford to be careless about this.

The Huai River wasn’t just a river; it was an entire basin, with tributaries and main channels stretching across four or five commanderies—a region that’s one of the Four Pollutions of ancient times. This single basin covered almost two percent of Divine Land’s territory, and all of it densely populated.

Just the downstream Taibao County alone—in the past few decades, the funds pumped into flood management and water conservancy projects were astronomical.

It’s a good thing Taibao County has a strong economy; otherwise, with the increased investment following the Spiritual Qi Resurgence, the poorer counties wouldn’t have been able to hold up at all.

The whole Huai River basin, taking from the Yellow River upstream and flowing into the Yangtze downstream—anything that happens here sets off a chain reaction everywhere. It could be said that the most prosperous, most heavily populated part of Divine Land, over half of it, would be directly affected—and indirectly, even more so.

Whether or not the Water Monarch was powerful wasn’t actually the main issue; the influence was much more critical.

So, no matter what, nothing major could be allowed to happen here.

After the Old Celestial Master learned about this, he even took the rare step of seeking out the General Director for a private talk.

Because after the General Director heard from the Water Ghost that the Water Monarch wanted to meet with the head of the Scorching Sun Department, he quietly arranged things, genuinely preparing to meet with the Water Monarch, to have a conversation.

But the Old Celestial Master had intervened, and so the matter was put on hold indefinitely.

The Old Celestial Master came in person, and his first words were to instruct the Scorching Sun Department to abandon any notion of killing the Water Monarch if necessary.

Back in the days of Great Yu, even with a whole host of powerhouses, all they could do was suppress and seal the Water Monarch.

The Water Monarch’s strength back then was beyond question, but that wasn’t even the focus.

No one really believed Great Yu went soft on hard cases while controlling the floods back then.

It was purely a matter of considering all the factors; the solution they opted for was already the best possible outcome.

The Old Celestial Master was worried that someone inside the Scorching Sun Department would get too extreme and cause disaster, so he wanted to make things crystal clear from the start.

Now when facing the Water Monarch, the Scorching Sun Department wasn’t making any major moves but certainly wasn’t doing nothing, either.

At the highest levels, this was currently the top priority—albeit with monitoring as the first immediate response.

So when that Taoist appeared here—by the riverbank, setting up altar and ritual—the Scorching Sun Department’s alarm was triggered instantly.

The alert was reported immediately, and orders were sent down on the spot—mobilizing all available surveillance resources nearby to monitor the individual’s every move, while field combat unit members assembled.

The report was sent back and within two minutes, the person’s identity had been dug up.

”We’ve found him: a Zhongnan dropout, expelled for breaking precepts, later returned to secular life and got married.

But there’s no marriage record, and after that, he simply disappeared from all records.

The woman he married has also dropped off the radar for years.

The most recent record is a five-year-old purchase; nothing since.

His bank card hasn’t been touched.”

”Found it—he hitched a ride on a freight truck; a camera caught him, and the truck itself came from Guanzhong County.”

In half an hour from when the Taoist was spotted, after getting a photo, they fed it to the AI—a ton of similar and suspected matches flooded in.

His gait in video was captured, the data run through the computers, which used a blunt-force elimination method on the massive database, before passing filtered results to human analysts.

As long as they had a single thread, and threw enough resources at it, unless the person was always outside of Skynet’s reach, if they showed up even once, they’d eventually be tracked down.

If you couldn’t find him, odds are you hadn’t put in enough resources yet.

With that data synced, on another front, the matter Cai Qidong had people look into was triggered simultaneously.

This Taoist was, in Cai Qidong’s investigation, a textbook high-risk target.

Synchronized uploads followed, and the Taoist’s risk rating shot up—originally, the field combat unit closest to the scene was ordered not to act rashly, because the control target’s risk level had soared three ranks in quick succession.

In just half an hour, from the moment the Taoist left the riverbank, as he stealthily caught a lift on a freight truck and sat in the cargo area with eyes closed to rest, the Scorching Sun Department had nearly dug up every last detail on him.