The First Order

After leaving Stronghold 73, Ren Xiaosu did not care about what would happen in the stronghold. While he was on his way to join back up with his maidservant, the Anjing House was still issuing missions to deal with the Pyro Company through their text messages. From that, it could be seen that the battle in Stronghold 73 did not end with the cave-in at East Lake.However, two days later, the Anjing House finally stopped sending out any further texts with regards to Stronghold 73. Thus, Ren Xiaosu concluded the battle should have completely ended and that the Anjing House and the Pyro Company would be withdrawing from Stronghold 73.

As for whether there was truly any laboratory data at the site, Ren Xiaosu suddenly had a feeling there should be.

This was because he did not see any of the Riders since the chaotic battle broke out.

After all, finding the research laboratory had been the goal from the start for that group of people. But once the battle began, they went missing. This had to be because they had gone to search for the true location of the laboratory.

Moreover, Ren Xiaosu felt the Riders and the Pyro Company only shared the same goal but were not truly united in their cause. If there were no laboratory there, the Pyro Company would not have been able to convince the Riders to show up.

Therefore, it was probably also in the Pyro Company’s plan for the Riders to head straight for the laboratory while they plotted and fought to the death against the Anjing House.

A corpse of a Pyro Company member was in Ren Xiaosu’s storage space that he prepared for Zhou Yingxue to complete her mission. The two of them were discussing how to pose the body so it would look more natural.

But then, the Anjing House sent out a text, “Due to an unexpected person deliberately breaking the rules, the requirement of killing the Pyro Company members to qualify for next year’s trials has been rescinded. Qualification for the trials will still be determined by the completion of five A-rank missions within the year.”

Ren Xiaosu was stunned. He had fucking spent so much effort to help Zhou Yingxue disqualify the other A-rank hitmen, but in the end, this text from the Anjing House had made his work all for nothing?!

Ren Xiaosu was a little angry. How could a large organization like that not have the most basic form of credibility!

When Zhou Yingxue saw the text, she looked up at Ren Xiaosu and asked, “Master, what exactly did you do in Stronghold 73?”

In the blink of an eye, Zhou Yingxue realized the person in the text who broke the rules must have been her master and not anyone else!

Ren Xiaosu’s face darkened. “Is that the kind of person you see me as?”

“Yes, absolutely!” Zhou Yingxue said with certainty.

Ren Xiaosu was speechless.

This time, Ren Xiaosu had overplayed his hand. The Anjing House had more than 30 A-rank hitmen show up at Stronghold 73. Minus the 11 who died, there were still 26 of them remaining.

But of the 26, only two managed to qualify for the trials next year.

If there had been more than five hitmen who completed this mission, the Anjing House would probably not have gone back on their word. It was purely because of Ren Xiaosu’s meddling that they were forced to rescind their own rules, and that was not something the Anjing House wanted either!

When Ren Xiaosu came back to the hotel, it seemed he had been noticed by someone in the tour group. Not long after his return, Li Ran actually came over to look for Zhou Yingxue. She forced Zhou Yingxue to chat with her for two hours straight before leaving, which nearly drove Zhou Yingxue crazy!

Ren Xiaosu chuckled and said, “Looks like the relationship between you two improved a lot while I was away.”

Zhou Yingxue rolled her eyes. “She obviously came to see you, Master.”

“Oh yes,” Ren Xiaosu took out a bunch of cell phones and said, “all these cell phones have completed the mission with one or two Pyro Company member kills on them. Go and calculate how much reward money we can get from these.”

Zhou Yingxue stared blankly at the 20-plus cell phones in front of her. She could roughly understand why the Anjing House had rescinded the rule. “Master, didn’t they say that only 40 people from the Pyro Company were there? Yet you have more than 20 cell phones here?”

“There were more than 40 of them.” Ren Xiaosu shook his head and said, “I think over 80 Pyro Company members showed up. The Anjing House’s intelligence report gave the wrong info.” Only after Ren Xiaosu explained everything to Zhou Yingxue did she realize her master’s trip to Stronghold 73 was really dangerous.

“Good thing you didn’t go into the tunnel,” Zhou Yingxue rejoiced. “However, the Pyro Company and the Anjing House aren’t easy to deal with at all. I just hope we won’t be dragged in again the next time they fight.”

Zhou Yingxue picked up the cell phones Ren Xiaosu had handed her one by one and counted the reward money earned. “There’s 15 Midnight and 6 Dusk member kills in total. Originally, a reward of 150,000 yuan was offered for each Midnight member killed and 500,000 yuan for each Dusk member killed. However, the Anjing House suddenly doubled the reward money, so we have a total of 10.5 million yuan.” Zhou Yingxue beamed in delight. As a matter of fact, her share of this 10.5 million yuan reward would be more than 2 million yuan. All she did was lie around the hotel with nothing to do and money still came to her. Where else was she supposed to find another master like that?

“The Anjing House will definitely notice that there’s something suspicious with this batch of cell phones. After all, there were not that many Pyro Company members killed by the A-rank hitmen, yet this group of B and C-rank hitmen seem to be playing in god mode or something. It’s clear that there’s something strange going on.” Ren Xiaosu asked, “I think that these accounts might’ve been placed under surveillance. How can we safely transfer the money out?”

Zhou Yingxue explained, “That won’t be difficult. The most straightforward and crude way would be to go to the casino in Luoyang City and transfer the money using the anonymous accounts’ passwords. The casino will then exchange the money for chips that you can either deposit into your new account or take with you. That casino should be owned by the Qinghe Group, so there’s a lot of privacy. Although there’s an administrative fee, I think it’s absolutely worth it.”

Ren Xiaosu frowned. “Even if it’s the Qinghe Group, we can’t completely place our trust in them. They might have a good reputation, but we don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes.”

“Don’t worry.” Zhou Yingxue shook her head. “The other consortiums tried to pressure the casino into freezing some accounts. But the casinos did not bow to the pressure of those consortiums and only took orders from the Qinghe Group.”

“We’ll talk about it when we get back.” Ren Xiaosu said, “Record these accounts and passwords first, then delete the texts and find an opportunity to sell this batch of cell phones. That’ll be another lump sum earned.”

“We can sell these off in the local black markets. If we sell them in batches at the various strongholds, we won’t need to sell them at too low a price.” Zhou Yingxue was absolutely nailing her role as the support teammate right now. Ren Xiaosu did not know much about the Central Plains, so with a former intelligence officer like Zhou Yingxue by his side, he could learn more about how things worked here.

“Where we going next?” Ren Xiaosu asked.

“Our next stop will be Stronghold 73 where we’ll stay for four days while Li Ran attends an audition. After that, we’ll head to Stronghold 74 for another concert,” Zhou Yingxue said.

Ren Xiaosu was speechless. Did Stronghold 73 have some sort of grudge against him? This was the third time he’d be going to Stronghold 73!

Hopefully, the storm at Stronghold 73 would have subsided by the time they got there.