Zooming in on the image showed Nanjing city, sprawling like a spider’s web between green plains and hills. The muddy Yangtze River forked here. Zooming in further revealed Qinhuai District, densely packed with buildings, its dark green moat curving like a ribbon. Zooming in even more showed Plum Blossom Manor, with neat red roofs arranged like standing mahjong tiles. Zhao Bowen stood in front of the large screen, using his hand to zoom in on the map in mid-air. The zooming seemed endless, capable of going from the Eurasian plate down to the rooftop of a residential building in some neighborhood, where you could see an orange cat sunbathing.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Bai Zhen marveled. “Is this your modeling?”

“This is Google Maps,” said Zhao Bowen.

“This is 03, this is 03, the signal is clear.” Old Zhao pressed his walkie-talkie. “Group One switch maps.”

“Copy that, switching maps,” someone responded over the walkie-talkie.

The map on the big screen switched. The previously clear and distinguishable map suddenly became an incomprehensible fine mesh of blue, green, and red that no one could understand. This was the modeling that the computer group had put great effort into completing. Over the past week, the Icom725 radio had worked through the nights as the survey satellite passed over Nanjing once every hour, conducting twenty-four reconnaissance passes in a day and night. The relay satellite had transmitted about 40GB of compressed data in total. The survey satellite’s design life was only 160 hours – seven days at most. As of December 24th, the Hengheng survey satellite had already used up five-sevenths of its lifespan.

Reportedly, setting up this whole system cost 600 million yuan, while the Chang’e 4’s trip to the moon only cost 500 million in total. Of this 600 million, 400 million was the satellite’s cost. Old Bai’s heart ached just counting it – a satellite with 160 hours of life costing 400 million meant burning through 700 yuan per second – you couldn’t burn actual cash that fast even if you threw it directly into a fire pit.

Were they launching a satellite?

More like operating a money shredder.

But at least the money wasn’t wasted – they’d gotten the data they needed. The computer group used this highly compressed data to reconstruct an apocalyptic-era Qinhuai District and roughly build a behavioral model of the Big Eye.

If they had been trapped in the fog of war before, groping in the dark, then from this moment on, they finally had the full map revealed.

Zhao Bowen stood by the coffee table, raising one hand so the camera could capture his gestures. His five fingers nimbly tapped an invisible keyboard in the air, allowing him to manipulate the Nanjing city model on screen from several meters away.

Old Bai watched curiously and secretly waved his hand too, but the camera ignored him.

“Damn, has this thing been blood-bound to its master?”

Old Zhao held the walkie-talkie in his other hand, watching the map while giving orders:

“This is 03, input X coordinate parameter, 117.05791.”

“Input Y coordinate parameter, 32.69723.”

“Calibrate coordinates, 120°21′10.6372 East.”

“Calibrate coordinates, 32°41′50.0559 North.”

“Display terrain contour line text annotations.”

“Display elevation point data.”

Under Old Zhao’s commands, more and more lines appeared on the big screen, becoming increasingly complex as layers stacked upon layers. Rather than becoming clearer, it grew more chaotic, and everyone understood it less. From Bai Zhen’s perspective, he only saw Zhao Bowen facing a tangled mess of yarn.

“This is modeling?” Bai Zhen asked. “Doesn’t look like a model. What are all those sesame seed-like white dots on the map?”

“This is the model,” Old Zhao said. “The white dots are numbers – the elevation of every building in Qinhuai District.”

“I thought it would be like… you know, the kind you see in movies, where a beam of light goes ‘whoosh’ and then a virtual sandbox appears on our coffee table, a virtual sandbox of all of Nanjing,” Bai Zhen gestured. “Then we could turn it around with our hands, zoom in and out…”

“That’s movies. In movies, 007’s car can fly and burrow underground too.”

“But nobody can understand this map model, it looks awful,” said Bai Zhen.

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand it, plenty of people can,” Zhao Bowen said. “Right now there’s at least a battalion’s worth of people watching this map… Old Wang, are you connected yet?”

Wang Ning sat to the side with his laptop, frantically hitting the enter key.

“Almost connected… damn this stupid server, can we please not use Tencent Cloud next time?”

Old Zhao pressed his walkie-talkie:

“This is 03, this is 03, all groups report progress nodes, over.”

A few seconds later, replies came in:

“Group One reporting, completed second orbital correction at Turn Two Cave, estimated time December 24th 18:33 first pass over Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, zenith angle 84°, Purple Mountain Communication Center data distribution, Guizhou Beijing dual redundancy backup, over.”

“Group Two reporting, completed second workflow rehearsal, conducting disaster recovery backup test, over.”

“Group Three reporting, firewall vulnerability discovered, security engineering group investigating, estimated completion 15:00 hours, over.”

“03, 03, this is 02, base personnel all ready, entering level one battle readiness, how’s the situation at command? Over.”

“03 reporting, precisely comparing modeling maps, loading Dao Ke behavioral data,” Zhao Bowen replied. “Other work proceeding smoothly, estimated completion before 16:00 hours today, over.”

“03, this is 01, report work progress, over.”

“03 reporting, precisely comparing modeling maps, loading all Dao Ke behavioral data,” Zhao Bowen could only repeat his response – these higher units always clustered together asking for updates. “Other work proceeding smoothly, estimated completion before 16:00 hours today, over.”

“03, this is 00, is the work going smoothly?”

“Report, everything smooth,” Zhao Bowen startled, his voice changing – this was the superior unit’s superior unit checking in. “We guarantee mission completion.”

Everything was progressing in an orderly manner. While BG4MSR was preparing to go out, her trans-temporal support team was also making preparations.

Bai Zhen somewhat regretted not paying more attention when signing those materials and documents earlier – then he would have known how much force the higher-ups had mobilized to ensure this operation’s smooth execution. Just judging by the number of armed police vehicles he saw across the street when taking out the trash at noon, this was a rare major operation.

He asked Lianqiao about it, who said they were local armed police, probably from the Jiangsu General Unit, transferred over by the provincial committee.

The computer group demonstrated their capabilities to the maximum extent. Strictly speaking, with less than a week’s worth of data, building an accurate and reliable behavioral model of the Big Eye was still somewhat insufficient… What to do without enough data? They could only guess. But the computer group was elite after all, was cream of the crop after all – even their guesses were more accurate than others.

There was a legendary figure in the computer group, a former coin-guessing championship winner who had won 5 million yuan in the lottery. He didn’t need to work to make money, just needed to bend down and pick it up when going out. He once correctly guessed five multiple-choice questions in a row on the college entrance exam, emerged unscathed from car accidents, blessed by the goddess of fortune his whole life. He independently led a small group codenamed “Blind Cat,” using mysterious inspirations to complete the model data.

Using this powerful model blessed by the goddess of fortune, the computer group conducted rigorous analysis through a combination of guessing and estimation, summarizing the behavioral patterns of the Big Eye – this thing called the Big Eye had no patterns to its behavior at all.