You were supposed to have a fake marriage with the diva, so how did you become her father?

The situation is slightly more complicated in some of the blank areas in the United States.

Because the United States is sparsely populated, some undeveloped areas are located in areas with low population density, making it difficult for players to get close even if they want to.

Fortunately, there were small towns or highways passing through those areas. After Lu Ran adjusted the refresh logic to prioritize spawning rare creatures near the highways, the situation improved significantly.

On the seventh day, location signals from three players appeared consecutively on the edge of a blank area in the western United States, within a few hours of each other and in similar locations.

None of the three signals crossed the boundary line, but the closest one was only about fifty meters away from the boundary.

The environmental photograph in that photo contains more information than the one from Japan.

The image shows the outline of some undulating terrain, a section of barbed wire, and a corner of the top of a row of low buildings in the distance.

All information that could identify the specific location was automatically blurred, but the overall outline remained.

The direction of the barbed wire and the shape of the building's roof can provide professionals with some reference. Just knowing that there is barbed wire inside already tells a story.

Lu Ran did not proactively send these new developments to Wang Anguo.

He waited two days, until the evening of the ninth day, before sending over the compiled latest data in a package, along with a brief text description listing the number of new location signals in each area over the past week, the distance to the nearest boundary, and the basic information on environmental images collected.

He added at the end of the email: "Signals are approaching but have not yet crossed the border in Japan's Zone 3. The outline of barbed wire-like facilities is visible near Zone 2 in the western United States. The blank areas in the European zone show no significant changes."

After sending the email, he didn't wait for a reply, shut down his computer, and prepared to go home.

But while packing his things, he paused again, turned on his computer again, and dragged the map view in the background to an overall overhead view of the Japanese region.

The map showed the distribution of the road and villages, and the arc where player tracks were densely distributed around the boundary line but never crossed. He stared at that arc for a while, then shut down his computer, stood up, grabbed his coat, and left the office.

Most of the lights in the corridor were already off, with only the emergency lights casting a dim yellow glow overhead. As he passed the break room, he saw through the glass window in the door that there was still someone inside. It was a young woman from the art department, sitting in a chair hugging a cushion, with an open sketchbook in front of her, drawing something with a pencil.

She didn't look up, and Lu Ran didn't knock on the door. He just walked over and continued towards the elevator.

The morning after the email was sent, Wang Anguo called.

After connecting, his first question was, "Mr. Lu, the email mentioned an approaching signal in the area of ​​Japan. Do you believe it's just a normal player passing by or a deliberate attempt to get closer?"

Lu Ran thought for a moment and said, "I judge it to be normal player behavior. That account's activity record has consistently matched the behavior patterns of ordinary players, without any obvious directional characteristics. He lingered in the area for over forty minutes that day, stopping right within the refresh range. He didn't continue further in, possibly because he stopped after getting what he wanted, or perhaps because there was something about that area that made people reluctant to approach."

Which one do you think is more likely?

"The latter. Walking a little further in from that location, the signal density drops drastically, indicating that there is indeed an anomaly in the location service in that area. Ordinary players wouldn't notice that detail; they'd just think, 'There doesn't seem to be anything in there,' and then stop. But what if they knew there was actually something in there?"

Wang Anguo paused for a moment, then said, "I understand what you mean. But what I'm trying to say is that the clues we have at the moment are insufficient to form a complete judgment. The observation data from the first phase is enough to illustrate the problem; what we need next is more specific information—for example, can the resolution of the environmental images be improved? Or is there a way to allow players to collect more detailed environmental features in those areas?"

Lu Ran didn't respond immediately; he first mentally reviewed Wang Anguo's two sentences.

He understood their needs; they wanted to confirm what exactly was in those areas—whether they were civilian or military facilities, and whether they were operational or idle.

With existing image resolutions, only outlines can be seen after blurring, making it difficult to make more accurate judgments.

The problem is that increasing the image resolution involves the boundaries of user privacy, and once those boundaries are crossed, it is very difficult to bring them back.

"The resolution can't be increased any further," Lu Ran said. "The current blurring is designed to ensure user privacy and security. If the resolution is increased, and faces or license plates are detected, the product's reputation will suffer. But I can think of a different approach—instead of increasing the precision of individual images, I can increase the number of images of the same area. If dozens of players take pictures of the edges of the same area at different times and from different angles, and then stitch these images together, even if the resolution of each individual image is not high, a rough overall outline can still be formed."

Wang Anguo remained silent on the other end of the phone.

Lu Ran could faintly hear the sound of papers turning over on his end, as if he was listening to something while flipping through something.

After a dozen seconds, Wang Anguo spoke again: "How long does the collection period require for this method you mentioned?"

"If we maintain the current refresh rate and increase the spawn density of legendary creatures, it should take about two to three weeks for the number of images at the edge of that area to reach the threshold required for stitching. But if you want it to be faster, I can adjust the refresh rate, shortening the spawn interval of rare creatures, so that players will spend more time at the edge of that area."

"How long can it be shortened?"

Lu Ran did the math. If the refresh rate were doubled every day, players would spend more time waiting for legendary creatures, but that didn't necessarily mean more shooting activity—that was a variable. He carefully considered his words, saying, "A week. If the refresh rate increases, the number of location signals at the edge of that area could reach about three times the current number within a week, and the number of environmental images collected would also increase accordingly. But I'm not sure if players will lose patience due to the long waiting time; I have no control over that variable."

Wang Anguo said, "A week is acceptable. Adjust at this pace for now, and share any new developments with us."

After hanging up the phone, Lu Ran sat in his office chair without moving, staring at the untouched cup of tea on his desk for a few seconds. Then he picked up his phone and sent a message to Zhao Yiming, asking him to shorten the spawn interval of legendary creatures in the target areas of Japan and the United States, and to increase the offset of the spawn locations, so that the range of creature appearances would be expanded outwards, allowing players to encounter things without having to walk to the boundary line.

Zhao Yiming replied: "Expand outwards? Won't that just push it further and further away?"

"The purpose of expanding outwards is to allow players to complete the capture from a safer position, reducing their psychological burden. Once they get used to operating within that area, we'll move the location inwards, a small step at a time, until they won't even notice it."

Zhao Yiming didn't reply again; he was probably adjusting the parameters.

In the following days, the fluctuations in the backend data began to increase.

The number of location signals on the edge of that area in Japan nearly doubled on the third day. Players started discussing the pattern of how legendary creatures spawned at that location on the forums. Someone posted a photo of the surrounding area that they had taken while camping there. The background image in the encyclopedia was clearer than any of the previous ones, showing the top outline of a gray wall in the distance and the cross-sections of several pipes protruding from above the wall.

A similar trend has emerged in that area of ​​the western United States.

A player posted a screenshot on social media of a legendary creature he caught by the roadside, accompanied by a brief description. He said that the location was in the middle of nowhere, but there was a large fenced area that was off-limits. He was sitting in his car waiting for it to respawn when he peeked through the gaps in the fence but didn't see anything.

The replies to the post were all asking for the specific location. When he replied, he only gave a general direction and did not reveal the exact coordinates.

None of the replies realized the significance of the fence; they simply felt that the creature in that location was indeed worth staking out.

Some people commented below asking "When will it refresh next time?", and others made plans to team up to wait for it.

The replies to various scheduling requests continued from morning until evening. Finally, a few people agreed on a common time and formed a temporary convoy to go together the next day.

Lu Ran saw all the posts about forming teams and scheduling times, but he didn't interfere.

Players organizing themselves is more natural and harder to detect than official promotion.

At the start of the new week, he opened the backend and saw that the number of environmental images collected on the edge of the Japanese region had accumulated to more than ten.

He retrieved all the archived images of those dozen or so from the system, sorted them by shooting location and date, and then scrolled through them side by side on the screen.

When viewed individually, each of those pictures appears blurry and out of focus, but when viewed together in sequence, gaps appear between the blurred outlines that fill each other out.

The edge of the tree shadow in one photo becomes the ridge of the wall in the next photo; the small section of pipe cross-section that was not clearly visible in the first picture becomes more complete in the third picture due to the different shooting angle.

He spent over an hour going through the pictures three times from beginning to end, and drew a rough directional sketch on paper, marking the recognizable outlines in each picture according to their relative positions.

After finishing the drawing, he looked at it again to confirm that the general layout matched—the wall extended in a straight line, with a height of about four to five meters, and some protruding structures on the top.

Inside the wall, the outline of any main building was not visible, but the top cross-section of a set of vertical pipes could be seen, and the way those pipes were arranged reminded him of the cooling system of some industrial facilities.

He took a picture of the paper and sent it to Wang Anguo along with the previous data summary, adding a note: "The preliminary results of the existing image stitching show that the wall is about four to five meters high, and there is a top structure inside that appears to be an industrial cooling pipe assembly. The resolution is insufficient to confirm the specific purpose of the facility, but the direction warrants further attention."

After sending the message, he put his phone on the table and reached for the cup of tea that had gone cold.

He took a sip and realized it was completely cold. He used the cold tea to wash away the last bit of dryness in his mouth, then stood up and walked to the window for a while.

There was someone walking their dog on the street downstairs. The person stopped on the sidewalk and looked down at their phone. From a distance, it was impossible to tell whether they were scrolling through social media or playing a game to catch creatures.

He probably didn't even realize that the spot where he stopped was right in the middle of a newly added highlight on the heat map in the TUTU backend.

...