Gao Linzhi smiled.
That was right. He could do it this way.
Then he got up, went to the counter to pay, and tossed down a twenty-yuan bill.
At that moment, the owner gave him a second look and handed him five yuan in change.
Gao Linzhi realized as soon as he took it that the bill was counterfeit.
He didn't make a scene right there. He just made a note of the shop.
Then he walked out and saw that the inspectors were already very close.
But he continued at an unhurried pace.
Just then,
the ramen shop owner suddenly rushed out and shouted at his back, "That guy's suspicious!"
"He's a young man, but he paid without using his phone!"
Gao Linzhi turned to look at him and stopped.
The owner was ingratiating himself with the Security Team Leader, who was conducting the inspection. "Team Leader Xu, you sent a notice to the shop owners' group saying to pay special attention to customers who don't use their phones to pay, especially young people."
"That guy paid without using his phone."
"Good work. If it checks out, you'll get a reward."
The next moment, the Security Team Leader waved, and a group of fully armed security guards closed in on Gao Linzhi from both sides, submachine guns raised.
Gao Linzhi wasn't in a hurry.
He simply thought, As expected, it's easy to give yourself away in the city.
Lots of things that normally wouldn't matter get blown out of proportion in their eyes.
They don't care at all whether you've been wrongfully accused.
Then he suddenly accelerated and charged straight at them.
"Whoosh!"
With 110 points in Constitution, his speed shot up to 200 kilometers per hour in an instant!
He smashed right through the shop owner, who was still waving his hand, then darted into an alley and vanished.
All the others saw was a cloud of dust.
The Security Team Leader hadn't even had time to fire!
The mission required them to prioritize capturing their target alive. Killing him came second.
Only after capturing him could they interrogate him and find out where the game poster would most likely drop after his death.
When an ordinary player was killed, the game poster didn't drop right beside them.
It dropped somewhere the player had visited before.
Gao Linzhi sped out of the city and plunged into the mountains once more.
With an off-road speed of 200 kilometers per hour on flat ground, there were hardly any enemies he needed to fear.
Then he summoned the Corpse Vine.
In a direct fight, this pet couldn't beat more than a few players, nor could it withstand gunfire.
But in a modern city, it was a truly abnormal presence!
By burrowing underground, it could sneak into all kinds of places without anyone noticing.
After all, modern cities had extensive sewer systems.
"Burrow underground. Once night falls, go into those unoccupied villas and sneak inside. Don't make a sound. Swallow all the shiny gold things, then bring them back to me."
The Corpse Vine opened its enormous mouth, bobbed its head, and burrowed underground.
As for Gao Linzhi, he went somewhere else.
He didn't need to worry that the Corpse Vine wouldn't find any targets.
It was highly intelligent.
Night fell.
In the western district of Xu City, there was an upscale neighborhood.
Dozens of villas stood along the shore of an artificial lake.
Only a few had lights on. The rest were dark.
With their owners away, certain nocturnal visitors had an easy time of it.
Before long, a dark, leafy head emerged from a sewer opening.
It looked around, then burrowed toward one of the villas.
Shiny gold, shiny gold.
That was the only phrase in the leafy head's mind.
Soon, it burrowed up from underground and into the villa.
It kept burrowing, heading for the living room.
When its head emerged from the floor, it left several holes in the expensive, newly installed flooring.
It looked around and spotted a golden Buddha statue.
It swallowed it in one gulp.
Then it went to the bedroom and saw a pair of gold rings on the bedside table. It swallowed them.
Next, it looked at the bed and spotted a gleaming gold necklace. It swallowed that too.
"Ah!" a woman shrieked.
"What's biting me?!"
The leafy head was so startled that it burrowed straight back underground.
It ate corpses, not living things.
It moved on to another house.
The light in a villa bedroom came on.
A woman was lying in bed.
She looked up and was instantly horrified.
A deep, shadowy hole, with slime all around it, had appeared right there in the floor.
And the floor was luxurious marble!
"What's going on? Why is there a huge hole in my house?"
Terrified, she immediately called the security office.
The security team arrived in no time.
It took them only five minutes, and the Department Manager came in person to lead the team.
"This definitely came from that place!" The Department Manager needed only one glance to know that no creature from this planet could have done it.
He knew about the game, Skyfall World.
This was obviously a monster from the game.
But that raised a question: had the game already invaded reality?
A chill ran down his back.
He knew just how terrifying the monsters in the game could be.
Demons were manageable; physical attacks could kill them.
But the paranormal couldn't be killed. You could only discover their rules and evade or contain them.
Fortunately, his instincts told him this time it was probably a demon.
He hurriedly took photos, recorded a video and the woman's statement, then submitted everything to the chairman through the company's management platform.
Dawn came.
Qi Hui stood inside a cave. After a whole night of work, the Corpse Vine had brought him a full fifty kilograms of gold jewelry.
It had avoided places with tight security where armed guards patrolled at all hours.
After all, a direct hit from a bullet could easily kill it.
Its Constitution wasn't nearly as high as Gao Linzhi's.
Fifty kilograms sounded like a lot, but the pile wasn't very large—just a lump the size of a palm.
Gold was, after all, very dense.
"Not bad, not bad. I'll give you all those corpses to eat when we get back."
Earlier, when Gao Linzhi had been grinding monsters, he hadn't let the Corpse Vine devour them, to keep people from noticing anything unusual.
Now, he could charge ahead as hard as he liked without worrying about a thing.
It was like those mega-whales in games; they didn't care about getting ganged up on.
He quickly put the gold into his backpack, then recalled the Corpse Vine.
He didn't plan to keep doing this.
This trick would only work once.
This was the age of big data. After this operation, the relevant information would surely be shared with other companies.
They would definitely take action and seize all the gold jewelry they could find.
Gao Linzhi entered the game.
"Recharge fifty thousand gold!"
Fifty thousand gold was fifty thousand grams, or fifty kilograms.
"Ding! Congratulations, player! You have successfully recharged 50,000 gold and received 500,000 Skyfall Stones."
"Your Noble Privilege level has increased to 8."
"Your privileges are: Force Quit without losing experience; gain 100% more experience from killing monsters."
"Pet breakthrough chance increased by 100%."
"Your Minimap will issue danger warnings one hour in advance."
"Death penalties waived five times per day."
"You have unlocked advanced auto-grinding privileges. It consumes 10 Skyfall Stones per hour, and the higher your level, the more it consumes."
Great. Now that he had money, he could make another desperate push to build up his faction!
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