Chapter 87: The Cunning Schemer Versus the Overpowered Immortal (Please Vote)

The combat assistant mini-map was dotted with red markers, all clustered in the large building area on the left. In the row of flat-roofed houses, there was only one small green triangle and one red dot.

The green triangle marked Xing Xiaolong’s position; the red dot marked Black Fox’s.

Aside from those two, there were no other red dots. Xing Xiaolong preliminarily judged that there were no other drug traffickers nearby, and the tension in his chest loosened a little.

The doors of the row houses were all cloth curtains, hanging down from above and covering the entrances completely.

The fabric was too soft to stand firm, unlike a wooden board or steel door. It only needed a push at one point to open, which made the CQB tactic of using the door to cover half the opening and clearing one side by angle far less effective here.

The only window was a wooden frame with frosted glass. Not only could one not see inside from the outside at all—

Looking in from the window would instead allow anyone inside, through the frosted pane, to see the silhouette of the person standing by the window outside, and precisely anticipate their position.

Even more dangerous.

Faced with this unconventional situation, Xing Xiaolong felt a little intimidated. If there really were people inside, he honestly had no idea how to get in.

The only solution he could think of was to point his gun inside and spray a storm of bullets.

After all, he had plenty of ammunition.

But for Black Fox, a professional CQB expert, this posed no obstacle whatsoever. She showed Xing Xiaolong what truly smooth, flowing indoor combat looked like.

“Face outward, stand sideways with your back to the door, keep your body tight to the wall, and minimize the part of yourself exposed. I’ll tap your shoulder when I come out.”

Black Fox taught Xing Xiaolong how to position himself, then took a flashbang from her waist, removed the safety, and tossed it straight in along the edge of the curtain.

“Bang!”

About half a second later, the blast went off. Black Fox advanced in with her weapon up, fast and steady.

“Special police unit, don’t move!”

She shouted the tactical warning, her eyes sweeping quickly like a hawk’s across the room, which was a little dim but not so much that it hindered visibility.

Finding no one inside, she turned and backed out.

“I’m out. First room secure.”

Black Fox gave the tactical call as she came back through the doorway, then tapped Xing Xiaolong’s shoulder as he stood with his back to her. She also took the opportunity to explain, “Tapping the shoulder can also mean you need to keep moving and stay in sync. For the rest of the rooms, you just keep doing exactly what you did before.”

If Xing Xiaolong had trained in CQB room clearing, none of this would have needed to be said; a shoulder tap would have been enough.

That alone would make the movement sufficiently discreet.

And this discretion did not mean preventing the enemy from knowing you had arrived. When clearing room by room, that would be impossible anyway. Its main purpose was to stop enemies hiding in the next room from using sound to tell that you had already passed and were about to search the room they occupied.

That way, they could prepare inside and ambush the search team.

Black Fox’s painstaking instruction naturally filled Xing Xiaolong with gratitude. He cooperated with her with utmost seriousness, like a dried-out sponge crazily soaking up the knowledge he lacked most.

A sharp crack.

“Special police unit, don’t move!”

Black Fox repeated the entire process from the first room and smoothly cleared the second.

Xing Xiaolong still stood guard outside with his back to the door, his left shoulder pressed to the wall, right hand holding his gun pointed outward, his eyes scanning the rear one hundred and twenty degrees to make sure no one could shoot them in the back.

“Very good. Keep going.”

Black Fox was extremely satisfied that Xing Xiaolong could absorb things so quickly and already hold himself in something close to the proper stance. Before heading to the third room, she praised him specifically.

She also took the two flashbangs from Xing Xiaolong’s waist and hung them on herself.

With both hands occupied, Xing Xiaolong could not take out his phone to translate, but that did not stop him from grinning broadly, showing two rows of confident teeth.

As if to say: no choice, I’m just this strong. Learn once, understand once; see once, and I’ve got it.

One expert and one novice, the two of them worked together with a rare degree of tacit coordination and cleared four rooms without incident or danger.

Both of their flashbangs had already been used up, and only the last two rooms remained unchecked.

Perhaps because the first four rooms had all been fine, and they had not heard a single unusual sound on the way, and because the gunfire from the large buildings had already stopped, it seemed the other side had finished searching and was waiting for Black Fox to return for the final confirmation.

By Black Fox’s own judgment, there should no longer be much danger, so she did not waste time going back to fetch two more flashbangs before continuing the search.

She crept along the wall toward the fifth room, then surged forward and went in.

Hesitation gets you nothing; better to act decisively.

“Special police unit, don’t move!”

The moment the warning left her mouth, Black Fox’s eyes had already swept the entire room. Still, there was no human figure inside, which only confirmed the prediction in her heart.

These little houses were just storage for junk. In the sun, they were stiflingly hot and stuffy, the kind of place that could have a person drenched in sweat within minutes.

The last room surely would not have anyone either.

Though she was certain the remaining one would be empty, Black Fox still had to search it. They could not leave even a patch of unexplored territory behind.

What if the hostages were being held inside?

The two of them reached the wall by the final little house. Black Fox signaled Xing Xiaolong to stay alert, brought her weapon up, and prepared to rush in as before.

But just as Black Fox moved—

Xing Xiaolong saw a red dot suddenly appear on the combat assistant mini-map.

It was extremely close to them, right inside the room.

“Damn it!”

Xing Xiaolong had no time to think, nor did he have the kind of movie-style instinct to shout warnings like “watch out!” or “be careful!” because the body simply does not react that way.

When danger suddenly strikes, Xing Xiaolong’s first reaction was not to shout.

Not only was there no time, the thought itself did not even arise.

The instant he realized the danger, Xing Xiaolong reflexively spun and lunged at Black Fox, while using his height advantage to bring his weapon to bear in the same motion.

Relying on the shotgun’s strength of scattering devastation over a wide area, he fired straight through the curtain into the room.

Boom!

The Remington 870P shotgun spat flame, and a fist-sized hole erupted in the curtain hanging at the doorway.

Though the hole was only fist-sized now, a dozen-odd lead pellets, once dispersed over five or six meters, could blanket an area as wide as a washbasin.

Each one could punch through a human skull.

Black Fox, her balance thrown off by Xing Xiaolong’s pounce, staggered and tore the whole curtain down. At the same time, she brought her rifle up and aimed ahead.

When someone from behind shoved her without warning, her first instinct was not to turn around and curse them out, but to bring her weapon up and aim forward.

Clear-headed. Decisive.

This was the difference between a professionally trained former special forces operator—now a top-tier private military contractor—and an ordinary woman.

And when Black Fox brought her rifle up and aimed ahead, what she saw made her feel a chill run down her back, even though the moment had already passed.

Inside the room, on the wall directly opposite the door, there was a drug trafficker whose face had been blasted into a sieve, lying half on his side in the corner, coughing blood and convulsing all over.

Beside him lay a shotgun.

Shotguns are meant for taking down large beasts. Whatever the model, the close-range burst of power is terrifying.

The distance from the trafficker to the doorway was less than five meters. If he had seen the curtain deform even for an instant and fired through the opening, then even with a bulletproof vest and helmet, Black Fox would have had a very high chance of dying on the spot.

Unfortunately for him, he had run into Xing Xiaolong, who was practically cheating.

In the end, the cheat won out after all.