Spy-x-War Showdown
Chapter 334 - 322 Technical Difficulty

Chapter 334: Chapter 322 Technical Difficulty

In fact, Yang Yi had overestimated how quickly Xiao Ran would shower. Even the quickest shopping trip for clothes would take nearly an hour, but when Yang Yi hurried back, he found Xiao Ran had yet to finish bathing.

Yang Yi left the clothes he bought for Xiao Ran at the bathroom door, and after urging her several times, he finally waited for Xiao Ran to emerge.

With a face full of discomfort, Xiao Ran gave Yang Yi a look and rolled her eyes before sighing deeply and saying loudly, "I’m finally relieved."

Having said that, Xiao Ran twisted her body uncomfortably and glared at Yang Yi intensely.

Yang Yi felt inexplicably wronged. He had rushed to buy clothes for Xiao Ran, so why did he end up getting an eyeroll?

Before Yang Yi could say anything, Kate, who had been paying attention to the situation, came out, looked Xiao Ran up and down, smiled slightly, and said, "The clothes fit well, right?"

While speaking, Kate seemed to deliberately push out her chest.

Xiao Ran glanced at Kate and responded indifferently, "It’s okay, it’s just that the bra is a bit small."

"Oh, is that so?"

Xiao Ran adjusted her hair with her hands and smiled, "It’s not your fault, maybe you bought it based on your own size. It’s no big deal. I’ll buy one that fits when I go shopping myself."

Kate didn’t reply; she just politely smiled and pushed out her chest again.

Indeed, the difference may not be huge, but it was still quite noticeable.

Weapons could be heard clashing verbally, but the silent battle was even fiercer.

Yang Yi felt like he was going crazy. Women were indeed a troublesome species, and what he hated most was that their fights didn’t allow him any chance to interject.

Xiao Ran appeared calm, but once Kate turned to Yang Yi with a smile, saying, "Once you’re ready, we should start quickly. Everyone is waiting for you," Xiao Ran’s expression shifted from calm to gloomy after Kate walked away. She glanced down and gave Yang Yi another eyeroll.

"What have I done to you!"

Yang Yi felt innocent, but Xiao Ran merely sneered twice and left a striking silhouette for Yang Yi to admire.

Entering the makeshift conference room, which was the dining area, right after Xiao Ran, Yang Yi immediately said, "We can start now, Schultz."

Schultz moved the computer over, and Yang Yi pointed at a photo on the screen, saying, "This man is our target, Mihali Kovacek, a Polish national, the second-in-command of a gang who fled after failing in an internal dispute. This woman is his daughter, who has become a British citizen."

After giving a brief overview, Yang Yi stated gravely, "Our mission is to locate Mihali Kovacek. He’s likely to come to London to find his daughter. Aside from an outdated photo, we have no information about Mihali Kovacek’s daughter, not even her name, where she lives, or what she currently looks like."

Kate, examining the photo, said in a serious tone, "Appearances don’t change much unless she has gained a lot of weight, which is the most common cause for a change. Otherwise, facial structures don’t alter too much."

Though Kate wasn’t an elite agent, her status as a skilled makeup artist still gave her a valid perspective.

Yang Yi nodded and said, "We can use this photo to search for Mihali’s daughter, and we can focus on women with the surname Kowalczka."

Mike said gravely, "Polish names have gender variations, so Kowalczek’s daughter would likely have a surname like Kowalczka or something else, but not Kowalczek; that’s a male surname."

Yang Yi nodded, "We need to focus on Polish names, but that isn’t very helpful either. Mihali sent his daughter to the UK to protect her, so she most likely adopted an entirely new, Anglicized name."

After scanning the room and seeing no one else speaking up, Yang Yi continued seriously, "We can start with official departments: passports, driver’s licenses, insurance accounts. That is the simplest way. Schultz, do you have any technical solutions that could speed up the process?"

Schultz spoke earnestly, "We can search for passports or driver’s licenses, as these personal details are held by the government, but they can also be accessed online. For example, traffic police can check a driver’s information in the system, and passports are checked at airport customs. To access these, the records must be uploaded online; they can’t be physically isolated."

Yang Yi smiled and said, "So, hacking into these systems is viable."

Schultz shook his head, "We can hack in, but there’s a big problem. If we were looking for a specific name, it would be easy, but we only have a photo. Just the driver’s license data for London alone is astronomical, not to mention the whole of the UK. It’s simply not possible to review each photo individually."

After a pause, Schultz added in a grave tone, "We could use the UK Transport Department’s data bank with facial recognition technology to sift through the massive amount of data."

"Is it difficult?"

Schultz nodded, "It’s difficult. Individual driver’s license data is encrypted. I can breach firewalls, and even without police search terminals and passwords, I can enter the database, but there’s an issue with transmission speed. Police data terminals don’t require much processing power, and data banks aren’t designed that way, but we need to search the data on eligible female citizens nationwide, and that requires very powerful calculations and high network speeds."

Brian suddenly interjected, "Speak in layman’s terms, please. I mean, in a way we can understand."

Schultz scratched his head and explained, "I can infiltrate the databases of the Transport Department or the Home Office, but if we have to sift through them one by one, it could take years to find the person we’re looking for. The former is a firewall issue, while the latter concerns computer processing power and speed, hardware, and bandwidth problems, of course. If that woman’s data isn’t in the database, then we can search forever and never find her."

Brian asked sternly, "How do we solve this?"

After pondering, Schultz said, "We should target a department, like the Home Office or Transport Department, and establish a physical connection. The point of doing this would be like creating a highway; after I hack in, we could quickly access data that is normally only available to law enforcement officers. Lastly, we’ll need sufficient computing power; a couple of laptops won’t cut it. Additionally, we require facial recognition software, not the kind you can easily download online, but the type used by law enforcement to identify criminals."

Schultz tried to simplify his explanation for Brian’s sake, but Brian was still confused. Unfortunately, decades of a knowledge gap couldn’t be bridged in just a few sentences.