Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Shen Hanzhou gripped the handlebars tightly, his palms sweating. A thought exploded in his mind: the route had changed three times, and the direction was completely unpredictable. How could they keep up every time? It just didn't make sense.

He restarted the engine, turned onto the farm road, and drove for a kilometer through mud and corn stalks, his tires slipping and splashing mud all over his trousers.

I rode for seven kilometers straight on the county road until I could no longer hear the pursuers.

Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the three sets of headlights lit up for the third time in his rearview mirror.

A surge of anger rose in Shen Hanzhou's heart: He had chased them three times but hadn't shaken them off. They weren't chasing him based on their judgment at all; it was as if someone had planted eyes on him.

He stopped on the side of the county road, squatted down, and went through the process of shaking off the car three times and being caught up three times in his mind. He came to only one conclusion: there was a GPS tracker in the car.

He knew he didn't have time to investigate slowly, but he had worked at the Five Mountains Society for six years and had to go through three security checks to enter and exit the laboratory, including a full-body scan with a metal detector. He was very familiar with this kind of trick of hiding things.

He squatted down and touched the motorcycle from head to toe, including the frame, the bottom of the fuel tank, the seat gaps, and the exhaust pipe bracket. Every time his fingers touched a spot, he mentally ruled out a location.

When I touched the inside of the rear wheel mudguard, my fingertip touched an unusual protrusion, about the size of a thumbnail, which was mixed with the outer shell and mud and could not be distinguished by the naked eye.

Upon closer inspection: it's a magnetic locator with a waterproof casing, military-grade packaging, and the battery and motherboard are integrated into one piece. It's a professional-grade tracking device circulating in underground channels, and you simply can't buy it on the market.

As Shen Hanzhou held the locator in his hand, the first thought that popped into his mind was: Xiongbei Company.

This motorcycle was an evacuation tool handed over to him by Kumahoku Company through Akashi, and it seems that the locator was installed before he received the vehicle.

Xiongbei Company made the deal sound very appealing – raw materials, shelter, armed escort – but then secretly attached a tracking device to the undercarriage, treating it as a bargaining chip that could be resold at any time.

Shen Hanzhou squatted by the roadside, with only one thought in his mind: You've treated me like a pawn, but I'm not going to die.

He pried open the locator's casing with his fingernail, found the main control chip on the circuit board, and crushed the crystal oscillator with the tip of his key. Once the crystal oscillator was broken, the signal transmission cycle was completely destroyed, and the locator was rendered unusable.

He threw the wreckage into a roadside ditch, got on his bike, turned into an abandoned industrial area, and hid the bike in an old factory building that had collapsed halfway.

I went up to the second floor and squatted behind the broken wall for fifteen minutes, keeping my eyes fixed on the way I came. No lights came on in the rearview mirror, and there was no engine noise.

The pursuers have been shaken off, completely shaken off.

Shen Hanzhou sat down against the wall, spat the USB drive out of his mouth, and wiped it clean.

Shen Hanzhou thought to himself: It seems that Xiongbei Company never intended to protect him from the beginning; he has been abandoned.

There was no response on Chiji's communication channel. Zhou Ting and Wang Zhaoping's fates were unknown, and no one in the entire Lieyang Province could reach him.

Shen Hanzhou gripped the USB drive tightly in his hand, his knuckles aching from the pressure, his fingers turning white.

He said to the empty factory, "I still have the drugs, and the synthesis routes in my head. I want to survive."

The sound echoed in the empty factory, without any response.

The only sound was the whistling of the wind through the broken window.

Shen Hanzhou closed his eyes and adjusted his breathing.

Fear still lingers, but it has been suppressed by reason.

He knew he couldn't stop now. The Five Mountains Society was expanding its search area, and since the Xiongbei Society and Chiji dared to betray him, they wouldn't just send one group of people.

He needs a new refuge.

A new way of contact is needed.

We need a way to turn this medicine into reality.

------

Shen Hanzhou sat against the wall for a long time.

He went through the whole thing from beginning to end.

Xiongbei Company provided the address, the vehicle, and negotiated the deal, while simultaneously installing a GPS tracker—they had prepared for both scenarios.

Transaction successful, here's the recipe.

The transaction failed, and the Five Mountains Society tracked down the locator and eliminated him, while the Xiongbei Society suffered no losses.

Regardless of the outcome, his life was not within the scope of Kumahoku Company's considerations.

As for Chiji, Zhou Ting and Wang Zhaoping have not responded yet.

It's highly likely that the upper echelons of Akashi have sided with Kumamoto Company.

Shen Hanzhou suppressed these thoughts one by one and began to think about something else.

What to do next?

He never expected the Xiongbei Company or the Chiji Society to genuinely protect him.

Having spent six years in the Five Mountains Society, he understood all too well the logic of this underground organization—there are no permanent deals, only permanent interests.

From the very first day he joined the Five Mountains Alliance, his way of securing his own future was never by relying on others, but by ensuring that he always possessed something that no one could take away from him.

It's the same this time.

Shen Hanzhou took the USB drive out from under his tongue, twirled it around on his fingertip, and made a list in his mind.

The complete synthesis route and process parameters were on the USB drive, and also in his mind.

The experimental records left by the senior sister marked every parameter error in the original route of the Five Mountains Alliance—Shen Yan Hui never allowed the Five Mountains Alliance to obtain usable data from the very beginning.

Only he knows the correct parameters.

The Five Mountains Society's system is useless; Xiongbei Company didn't even get its hands on the useless one.

This is his trump card.

He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the outlines of the chimneys in the abandoned industrial area in the gray daylight, and mentally laid out two paths.

First, keep running. Avoid the Five Mountains Society and the Xiongbei Society, and just wait and see how long you can survive.

Secondly, he should proactively contact Xiongbei Company and Chiji, put the transaction back on the table, and gamble his only valuable possession on a way out.

The outcome of the first path is certain: sooner or later, they will be found, and they will lose both the medicine and their lives.

The outcome of the second option is uncertain, but he has something the other party wants, and uncertainty means there is still room for maneuver.

Shen Hanzhou chose the second option.

He restarted his computer and simultaneously sent a message to both Xiongbei Company and Chiji via an encrypted channel.

The message contained only one sentence: "I'm still alive. The cement plant will be handed over as planned in two hours. This is your last chance to get the formula."

After sending it, he turned off his phone and put the USB drive back into his mouth.

He knew what he was betting on.

The fact that Xiongbei Company installed a GPS tracker on his car indicates that they had considered selling him to the Wuyue Society.

But that's assuming he dies—if he dies, the deal is canceled, and Xiongbei Company at least maintains its original structure.

Now that he's alive and has taken the initiative to contact us, the situation has changed.

The fact that he is alive means that he still has control over the formula.

If Kumahoku Company wants to retain the formula, it must return to the negotiating table.

Killing him is what the Five Mountains Society wants, and obtaining the formula is what the Xiongbei Society wants; these two things cannot be accomplished simultaneously.

Shen Hanzhou squatted down and wrote three characters on the cement ground with his finger: Xiong Bei, Wu Yue.

Then he drew a line between the two characters and wrote the character "争" (struggle).

Xiongbei Company and Wuyue Company are competitors in the three northern provinces.

Whoever gets the drug formula first will have the upper hand in the underground drug market.