"So, you're releasing this information to use those Hunters as guinea pigs?" Candle Dragon looked into Nagano Souta's eyes and said calmly.
Nagano Souta did not deny it. After several seconds of silence, he replied, "To solve a problem, you must first discover the problem."
"In fact, a month ago, two groups of Hunters had already set out for the uncharted territory in search of the treasure," Nagano Souta said.
"Isn't the treasure map still missing my last fragnt?" Sun Hang asked puzzledly.
"That's the part that didn't feel right to just now." Nagano Souta sighed. "In fact, with just the last fragnt missing, the completeness of the treasure map is already so high that I once thought the last fragnt was irrelevant... Yet now, when I obtained this final fragnt, I found that adding it made it unexpectedly awkward and incongruous, no matter where it's placed, it feels sowhat redundant..."
Nagano Souta picked up the fragnt, his chanical arm hovering above the table, and continued, "But when I took the fragnt away, I found that the treasure map that was already quite complete started to feel more and more off... like sothing was missing."
"Could there be an issue with these fragnts?" Sun Hang asked. "After all, human mory can be prone to errors."
"No, these fragnts are sealed deep within the mories of those Hunters. All of their usual brain activities wouldn't touch those fragnts. Only through deep hypnosis, a series of suggestions and inducents, and a technique called 'profiling' can these fragnts be 'extracted' from their mories..."
"Could it be a problem with the profiling?" Sun Hang suggested again. "The skill levels of the profilers vary, and if you encounter soone who's not very competent, it wouldn't be unusual for the extracted fragnts to differ from the originals, right?"
"That's quite normal... but if it's an issue with the profiler's skill, I would have noticed the problem when piecing together this treasure map..." Nagano Souta's expression was quite serious. "But in fact, each fragnt is perfect, even though they co from the mories of thirty-two different people, they fit together with such precision as if they were cut from the sa map. Look at these lines, these curves, and the missing ellipses; they can all fit together precisely... If a profiler's skills were lacking, it wouldn't be possible to achieve such a high degree of matching accuracy."
"I think I understand what you an," Sun Hang nodded. "It's like you're doing a puzzle, and with just one piece missing, you'd be done, but when you get this piece, you find it doesn't complete the final gap. To get a complete picture, you have to disrupt the current puzzle, which is already 96.875% done, and rearrange it, right?"
"Exactly," Nagano Souta nodded.
Sun Hang moved to the other side of the table and looked at the remaining thirty-one fragnts spread out on it.
He noticed that these originally chaotic abstract lines, once rearranged, ford a pattern resembling a satellite image, with houses, streets, and rivers clearly visible.
"Can you pinpoint the exact coordinates from the satellite image?" Sun Hang asked.
"It's difficult. This treasure map is over fifty years old, and in fifty years, the abandoned cities in the uncharted territories have drastically changed..." Nagano Souta said, "Of course, I have checked the satellite images from back then, and with the help of artificial intelligence analysis, there are a total of eight locations with a similarity above sixty percent, and the highest similarity is only seventy-three point five percent."
"Hasn't the search range already been narrowed down significantly?" Sun Hang said.
"Not necessarily," Candle Dragon interjected. "When expanding the towns in the Hexi Corridor back then, to accelerate urbanization, many towns used the sa building module, and many blocks were like they ca from the sa mold, with very high similarity... If it weren't for years of disrepair, geological changes, and sandstorm erosion, we could possibly find dozens or even hundreds of similar locations."
"Tsk..." Sun Hang couldn't help but click his tongue.
"Candle Dragon is right. These eight locations could all be wrong; the actual treasure site might not even have fifty percent similarity... But I still hold a sliver of hope and have dispatched teams to the two locations with the highest similarity," Nagano Souta said.
"How much did you pay those guinea pigs?" Sun Hang asked.
"Zero." Nagano Souta's chanical thumb and forefinger ford a circle. "All I needed to do was spread word about the treasure location and offer to provide supplies and equipnt free of charge to the Hunters, and countless people were willing to embark on this journey... For these people living in Yun, they absolutely wouldn't want to miss out on a chance to get rich or famous overnight. Even if that chance is likely a deadly trap."
"How can people be so foolish?" Sun Hang couldn't help but comnt.
"No, they aren't foolish. On the contrary, they are quite shrewd... They're just gamblers," Nagano Souta said. "They're using their lives as their wager... it's the only valuable stake they have."
"I fail to see where the shrewdness is," Sun Hang shook his head. "It's like selling themselves and then counting the money for others."
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