We immediately drove to find Shen Xingyue. It was late at night, and although Shabiya was very busy, most people had already gotten off work. Only a few rooms in the entire building had lights on, naturally including Shen Xingyue's, as she was a workaholic.
The doorman, unfamiliar with us, wouldn't let us in. I called Shen Xingyue, and she came down personally to greet us, escorting me and Yaoyao into a large conference room on the sub-basement level. She turned on the computer host and lowered the projection screen. Soon, a high-definition image appeared on the screen. It felt so vivid that if you watched a movie on it, every actress would look like a giant.
Shen Xingyue asked me what I needed the setup for. I told her to focus on her work, and that I was just using the computer to look up some information. My eyesight hasn't been great lately, and my phone screen is too small, making my eyes ache.
Shen Xingyue didn't think much of it and said she was returning to her office. We could leave whenever we wanted and didn't need to turn off the computer.
"Aren't you going home?" Yaoyao asked.
Shen Xingyue yawned, "I live here."
"Her office has a suite with a bed inside," I said, having toured it. "Yaoyao, if you're tired, you can sleep there."
"Then where will she sleep?" Yaoyao giggled.
"A double bed," Shen Xingyue said. "But I'm planning to pull an all-nighter tonight, so I won't be sleeping. Whoever among you is tired can come up – if you both come up, I won't object."
With that, Shen Xingyue shrugged nonchalantly and walked away.
"She wishes," Yaoyao whispered. "She's such a jealous person."
"She's much better now," I said.
Enough small talk. I had intended to use Baidu Maps, but I discovered the computer had BeiDou Maps pre-installed, a customized version. Curious, I opened it. The resolution was indeed higher, and it was fast, with very detailed markings.
The default coordinates were local. Out of curiosity, I moved the mouse to Jinji Ridge, wanting to see what our base would look like from the air.
To my surprise, I saw two girls standing on top of the castle. I zoomed in on the map, and could even clearly see that it was Hu Yao and Meng Meng, gesturing and talking to each other!
"When was this photo taken?" Yaoyao asked nervously. We thought no one had discovered us, but from space, a pair of eyes had seen everything clearly.
I checked the time in the bottom right corner; it was from earlier that day, around noon.
There was also a timeline in a small window, allowing me to view scenes from different times. I opened it and discovered that a photo was taken at a relatively fixed time every day around noon. I flipped back but didn't see anyone else. It seemed relatively safe; we just needed to avoid that time of day in the future. It should be when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. Theoretically, this is when the sun is at its highest position in the sky, but it's not exactly noon. Twelve o'clock is when the sun is highest on the central meridian of the Eastern Eighth Time Zone. Lu Shun is in the Eastern Eighth Time Zone, but not on the central meridian.
"Wow, this feature is amazing!" Yaoyao exclaimed in surprise.
"How so?" I asked.
"The chess battle will definitely start at noon, and the Shanhai Monster Race will undoubtedly test potential battlefield peaks during this time. So, as long as we're in the Zhongnan Mountains and find peaks with people on them, they are very likely to be the locations they are surveying!"
That's good; it will save a lot of trouble.
I moved the mouse and dragged the map to the Qin Mountains, zooming in on the Zhongnan Mountains. The difficulty was much greater than I had imagined, because the afforestation rate in the Zhongnan Mountains was too high. Whether it was the valleys or the peaks, they were basically covered by green trees. We couldn't use our qi-sensing techniques through the map, so we had to zoom in to the maximum and check each peak one by one for any sign of people.
These Zhongnan Mountains are too vast. There are an estimated thousands of peaks alone. No wonder poems mention the phrase "ten thousand mountains turn red." When I learned it, I thought it was an exaggeration, but it turns out there are indeed such continuous mountain regions in the south.
After patiently searching for nearly an hour, I found two mountains with people on their peaks. However, a glance revealed they weren't from the Shanhai Monster Race. One was a hermit Taoist practicing on the mountaintop. Not far away was his small wooden hut, equipped with complete living necessities. I wasn't sure if he was the owner of the hut at first, but when I flipped to the second photo, I saw him outside the hut, stir-frying food. Wisps of smoke curled upwards, a scene both domestic and ethereal.