Animal Detective

Chapter 287 Playing Tricks
Ningshan City, the most bustling old street entrance.

Here, the old and the new coexist, with towering skyscrapers reaching into the clouds as well as old buildings full of ancient charm from the Jiangnan region.

Surrounded by the subway station, large shopping malls and several pedestrian streets, it is extremely bustling.

It was nine o'clock in the morning, but it happened to be Saturday, and the pedestrian street was already packed with people.

In one corner of the entrance plaza, all the participating teams had already gathered.

All were in civilian clothes, and none of the police dogs wore their special dog vests.

Today is the penultimate day of the competition, and the assessment task is hard-surface roadside tracking.

Peng An and his group were isolated.

However, Fang Weijie didn't care at all, and just pulled Li Yanfei aside to give him some final words of advice.

"Yanfei, you are our last hope."

Fang Weijie's expression was solemn.

Peng An suffered a crushing defeat in the previous project.

More accurately, all of them, these professionals, were utterly defeated by Shen Xin, an amateur.

Security and crime prevention, drug detection, explosives detection, bloodstain tracking—Shen Xin controlled all aspects of these operations.

Fang Weijie now only wants to salvage the reputation of Peng'an Jiangbei King in the last two projects, which are the ones that the top leader excels at.

Li Yanfei nodded solemnly and turned to look in the other direction.

The twelve teams gathered together, engaging in heated debate about their strategies for the upcoming assessment.

With Ning Shan's defection, Peng An became the only participating team that did not know the content of the assessment.

But it's okay.

"Brother, it's up to you now."

Li Yanfei looked at the well-behaved First Brother squatting beside him.

Knowing the exam questions is useless; in the end, it all comes down to ability.

Having solved so many criminal cases, Li Yanfei had enough confidence to track down this project.

At that moment, several team leaders' phones vibrated, receiving messages from the organizing committee.

Here comes the test question.

On Shen Xin's side, Li Yinjiang read the exam questions aloud in front of everyone.

[A Class A wanted criminal infiltrated our city. After a thorough investigation, the suspect was located in a hotel near the old street entrance. However, by the time the police arrived at the scene, the suspect had already fled in a panic, leaving behind a bag containing personal belongings.]

[The Municipal Public Security Bureau immediately launched a large-scale search and, with the help of the Skynet system, located the target at 11:40 pm last night via the Laojiekou Pedestrian Street, which was also monitored by the Xingguang Plaza surveillance cameras.]

[Then they disappeared. Now use police dogs to track the suspect. Once the target is located, do not act rashly, but report immediately.]

After reading it, Li Yinjiang looked at everyone.

Meng Fuqiang nodded slightly and said that the test question was similar to what he had known in advance.

It involves tracking suspects in the most bustling areas under real-world conditions.

Shi Xianbo said, "It was almost midnight last night, so it's been more than nine hours now."

"Also, the old street corner needs to be cleaned at night, right? It's an open area with lots of people coming and going, so the smells spread really well and it's not easy to track them down."

Everyone nodded in agreement, realizing the difficulty involved.

The daily foot traffic here is in the hundreds of thousands, and everyone leaves their scent behind.

This means that police dogs are now tasked with finding the target from hundreds of thousands of scents.

Even after 9 hours and the area had been cleaned.

Li Yinjiang asked, "Shen Xin, are you confident?"

Everyone looked at Shen Xin.

They knew that tracking projects was Peng An's forte.

The number one dog is a nationally recognized meritorious dog.

Shen Xin glanced at Tian Kui beside him and said, "It should be fine."

Since it's designed to simulate real combat, the suspect would naturally choose to flee to a crowded area.

So, does that mean we shouldn't pursue it anymore?
"But there's a problem," Shen Xin hesitated for a moment, then said, "Why does the message at the end say that after spotting the target, you shouldn't act rashly, but report immediately?"

Everyone was stunned.

Shen Xin continued, "What I mean is, could this really be a wanted criminal?"

Otherwise, why would they add such an unnecessary line?

Everyone's expression suddenly changed.

"Don't say it, really don't say it." Meng Fuqiang crossed his arms, his eyebrows furrowed into a deep frown.

The organizing committee has put in a lot of work for this competition.

In previous drug enforcement operations, they would go directly to the scene of the drug raid.

Wan Chao and his team kept talking about real combat, so could this assessment be another real combat exercise?

There was indeed such a wanted criminal.

In Nanjiang, the contestant is named Wang Xiaojiang, and his police dog is Gangya, a German Shepherd.

His eye twitched, and he said, "It can't be that ruthless."

Facing a wanted criminal head-on, or is it a Class A criminal?

Everyone nodded in agreement, thinking to themselves that it couldn't be that bad.

It's worth noting that they were operating alone with their police dogs this time.

If there really is a wanted criminal, that would be very dangerous.

Shen Xin said, "What I mean is, it may not be an A-level wanted criminal, but there may be such a suspect who may have committed something else, and then we are the ones to hunt them down."

"So when we're tracking them later, we don't necessarily have to rely solely on police dogs. We can also use our own brains to think about how the suspect might escape. That might help us with the tracking."

Shen Xin thought the wanted criminal was fake, but there might actually be such a suspect, so he took the opportunity to conduct a test.

Based on previous projects designed by Wan Chao and his team, this is indeed a possibility.

Everyone looked at each other and nodded.

Li Yinjiang said, "Xiao Shen is right. For example, you shouldn't just search on the main road. The suspect must have taken a side road. Since you lost the source of the scent, you can search those side roads."

Everyone nodded and took note.

At this moment, Lü Yuan arrived with the source of the odor.

It really was just a bag, containing a few pieces of clothing.

One by one, the officers led their police dogs forward to identify the source of the scent. When it was Shen Xin's turn, he glanced around and saw that they were all wearing men's clothes.

Then I took it out and looked at the style.

It looks rather old-fashioned, and it's all dark colors.

Shen Xin speculated that the target's age should be around forty.

Young people probably wouldn't wear clothes like that.

Shen Xin even picked up the pants and compared them to his own pant legs; they were much shorter.

Shen Xin could roughly guess that this person was probably around 1.7 meters tall.

Lu Yuan looked at Shen Xin with a strange expression.

Meanwhile, at the intelligent command center of the Laojiekou Police Station, Wan Chao, Wang Peidong, Lin Weining, and others were observing Shen Xin and his group through the surveillance cameras at Xingguang Square.

The group noticed Shen Xin's unusual behavior.

Wan Chao raised an eyebrow and said, "He's probably trying to guess the suspect's physical characteristics."

Wang Peidong nodded.

Lin Weining smiled without saying a word and shook his head slightly.

Tian Kui called out, confirming the source of the scent.

Shen Xin put down the clothes, walked back to Wang Xiaojiang and the others and said, "The suspect should be around forty years old, about 1.7 meters tall, and weigh about 150 kilograms. I can tell from his pants that the waist size is not small, so he should be quite fat."

Everyone turned to look, completely surprised that it could be done this way.

Meng Fuqiang realized what was happening and immediately reminded everyone to search according to Shen Xin's instructions.

Shen Xin added, "Not necessarily. The premise of what I'm saying is that these clothes really belong to the suspect, and not that they just picked them up randomly. In short, the key is still the smell."

Everyone nodded, their faces showing a hint of nervousness.

Ready to begin.

The task was to disperse the crowd around the perimeter of the square and begin the search from different locations.

"Shen Xin, keep it up!"

Li Jiahui gave a word of encouragement, and Li Yinjiang and the others nodded in agreement.

All our hopes are pinned on Shen Xin.

Shen Xin, holding Tian Kui's hand, found a spot and set off.

The location is uncertain, but it doesn't matter.

The key is the starting point.

The source of the odor has been identified, but it's uncertain where the target passed through.

Therefore, the first step is to determine the direction of the search.

Shen Xin glanced at the others.

Li Yanfei, holding the hand of the eldest brother, headed straight for the pedestrian street ahead.

Wang Xiaojiang and the others also set off separately.

Shen Xin didn't rush to set off; he thought things through first.

The question provides a hint: the target was captured by surveillance cameras in the square.

However, the square is very large, and it wasn't specified which surveillance camera it was.

Shen Xin took out his phone and checked the map.

Assuming this suspect is real, how would you escape if you were in his shoes?

We definitely need to avoid the surveillance cameras.

Shen Xin zooms in on the map.

The old street area, in a broader sense, surrounds the subway station and covers a large area. The current pedestrian street is located southeast of the intersection, running north-south and stretching for more than one kilometer.

To the west of the pedestrian street is a row of shopping malls adjacent to the main road.

To the east is a street lined with ancient architectural styles.

It's basically just old houses and streets, with some old-fashioned buildings artificially constructed to resemble them. It's still a pedestrian commercial street.

There are many narrow alleys over there, so there should be fewer surveillance cameras.

Shen Xin felt that if he were a suspect, he would have gone that way.

At that moment, Shen Xin led Tian Kui and headed straight east.

At the police station's command center.

Once everyone started moving, a topographical map appeared on the big screen, along with 14 red dots, each with a corresponding marker.

Each police dog wore a tracking collar to facilitate tracking of the group's whereabouts.

Wan Chao stroked his chin, a half-smile on his face, and said, "Shen Xin still doesn't follow the usual path."

Lin Weining said, "But this time, he was too clever for his own good and fell for it."

As he spoke, he couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Considering that Shen Xin is not only highly capable but also unpredictable and always brings surprises, the team put some thought into this project.

It was just a routine city tracking and assessment.

The bustling old street entrance, with a 9-hour interval, already presents a very high level of difficulty.

Now, the group has made some changes to the question, provided some key information, and even specially set up the sniffing source.

I just wanted to confuse Shen Xin.

In retrospect, Shen Xin was completely fooled, overcomplicating the assessment and leading himself astray.

Because everyone thought that they should just search the square carefully, confirm the source of the odor, and then track it directly.

There's no need to consider the suspect's height, weight, or whether they might try to avoid cameras.

There are no so-called wanted criminals.

Of course, the group did not intend to suppress Shen Xin, but rather wanted to take this opportunity to make Shen Xin understand a principle: it is fine to trust one's own judgment, but one should also have more faith in the abilities of police dogs.

Seeing the red dot representing Shen Xin heading towards the pedestrian street, Wang Peidong shook his head slightly, but said, "But if he really doesn't consider anything and just follows like everyone else, then I will really be disappointed."

After all, Shen Xin is a criminal police officer, so he should think like a criminal police officer.

As they were talking, they noticed that a few people were starting to move towards the pedestrian street.

Clearly, they've been led astray by Shen Xin.

(End of this chapter)