The Great Chase

This was very conducive to breaking through the Xu Corporation's pursuit.

Gao Linzhi recalled a forum post he had read before, which said that a real martial world would absolutely shatter the so-called boundaries of power.

Expecting these martial masters to obey the arrangements of major powers was nonsense.

They would only use force to disrupt order, acting mostly based on personal interests and preferences, with a far lower degree of adherence to rules than ordinary people.

For example, when short on money, ordinary people would first think of selling blood or manual labor, while they would think of robbing the rich to help the poor.

As a result, major powers would degenerate into easily manageable "City-State" forms.

Each city lord was the most powerful expert in a region, only able to govern a small nearby area.

The sky grew brighter and brighter.

Gao Linzhi quickened his pace.

With the support of Basic Lightness Skill, he felt he could match the speed of a light jog.

Thus, Gao Linzhi continued southward.

He walked until the afternoon.

Looking ahead, he could already see the plains and villages beyond the distant hillside.

Moreover, along the way, the Minimap gave no warning.

Clearly, the other side had not yet locked onto his route.

Once he entered the mountains, there were no cameras, and many tracking methods would become useless.

The best approach was to use specially trained tracking dogs.

But he wasn't worried about this issue.

Because as he walked, he occasionally deployed Corpse Vine to disrupt the scent he left behind.

Of course, after the disruption, he withdrew it into the Game Backpack to prevent Corpse Vine itself from leaving too many traces.

Under a hound's sense of smell, it would detect a "fierce tiger" appearing within his scent trail.

Actually, it should be far stronger than a fierce tiger.

This could easily suppress his own scent, making the hounds afraid to track or unable to distinguish it.

It was like a hunter using predator feces to scare off a wolf pack.

Even so, Gao Linzhi still made many disguises.

He looked down at the village at the foot of the mountain and walked toward it, pretending to take a route down the mountain.

In reality, halfway there, he circled back into the mountains, heading toward a more remote area.

The reason was simple.

Right now, the Xu Corporation had labeled him a suspect of "deleting the database and running," and had openly issued a wanted notice.

This world was the information age, where everyone had a phone. The villagers would certainly see his wanted information.

Barging into the village would only be walking into a trap and exposing his whereabouts.

Instead, he planned to lie low in these mountains.

This vast mountain range was wide in area, narrow from north to south, and stretched over a thousand kilometers from east to west.

With the Xu Corporation's scale, they didn't have the capability to surround such a large mountain.

If it were a medium or large company with hundreds of thousands of employees, they might be able to deploy massive numbers of drones, mechanical dogs, and a huge workforce, paying a tremendous cost to search the mountain.

That would cause Gao Linzhi a bit of trouble.

But the Xu Corporation only had over twenty thousand employees and lacked that capability.

Moreover, their main target was Lin Qing right now. The search resources they could invest in him wouldn't be too much.

Unless they discovered his true value.

He would train here, strengthen his survival abilities, and eventually trample every company, big or small, into the ground!

He would eat no beef and do whatever he pleased!

Moon Fang!

Meanwhile.

Qi Cheng and the other two were leading a team into the mountains to pursue.

They had mobilized a security team of fifty people, and sure enough, they brought professional tracking hounds—six of them in total.

They had obtained frequently used items from Gao Linzhi's home, such as socks.

Through surveillance, they had identified the initial path Gao Linzhi took into the mountains.

But once inside the mountains, with no cameras, they could only rely on the hounds to track.

At first, everything went well.

The six hounds, tracking the route Gao Linzhi had taken, were highly excited, charging forward with gusto—clearly the scent was still strong.

Qi Cheng and the others were pleased, believing this mission would be completed quickly.

In their minds, a mere wage slave couldn't possibly have any professional anti-surveillance measures.

But when they reached a steep slope, the six hounds suddenly froze in unison, then inexplicably collapsed to the ground. Upon closer inspection, they had actually wet themselves!

The scene was exactly like a video they'd seen, where a dog encountered a tiger at the zoo—identical behavior!

"What's going on?" Qi Cheng exclaimed in surprise.

"It looks like they sense a powerful beast nearby. But in these mountains, at most there are wolves, wild boars, and venomous snakes—not even bears, let alone tigers," Zhao Xianqing said with a frown.

He was utterly baffled.

Several dog handlers then tried desperately to calm their hounds, but no matter how they coaxed, soothed, or commanded, the six dogs just whimpered and refused to get up or take a single step forward in pursuit.

"Useless trash!" Qi Cheng snapped in dissatisfaction.

Zhao Xianqing shook his head. "They must have caught the scent of a wolf pack. Domestic dogs are afraid of wild ones."

"Actually, it should be the opposite—with so many people backing them up, they ought to throw their weight around like bullies. What's there to be afraid of?" Qi Cheng retorted.

Without the hounds to track, their group of over fifty men, though large in number, would make no splash once thrown into the vast mountains.

Every time they had to go into the mountains to hunt a criminal, they needed tens of thousands of people, linked hand in hand, to filter through.

"Damn it. This bastard won't just stay home and wait for us to catch him. He dares to run. Does he think running means he won't die?" Qi Cheng cursed bitterly.

"Save your breath. Ask the passersby if they've seen anything," Zhao Xianqing said impatiently.

The group looked up at the endless forest. A breeze blew, and the leaves rustled.

Without the dogs, how were they supposed to catch him?

They all felt at a loss.

"I have an idea," Liu Jinshan suddenly said. "Our company has over twenty thousand employees. Let's divide this mountain range into a grid pattern."

"In the name of team-building activities, assign employees to different grid sections."

"Then increase the reward for leads—anyone who spots that Gao Linzhi gets a high payout."

"This way, we increase the chances of encountering him."

Zhao Xianqing nodded. "That plan will do. Let's implement it immediately."

"The longer this drags on, the greater the chance he escapes."

Modern companies are highly efficient.

They submitted their report, and just half an hour later, it was approved.

Most non-critical business departments of Xu Corporation received a notice for a large-scale team-building event.

"Exercise your body, work healthily for the company for fifty years!"

"Don't work hard today, work hard to find a job tomorrow!"

"Loyalty, loyalty, and more loyalty!"

Meanwhile.

Although Gao Linzhi knew nothing of Xu Corporation's actions, he could still guess their tactics—nothing more than a human wave search of the mountains, combined with drone patrols.