The First Order

Chapter 479 The paper crane appears again

In a certain house, someone curiously muttered, “There seems to be a problem with the D-rank mission near Stronghold 61.”

“What’s the problem?” a shrill voice asked from close by. “What problems can there be for a D-rank mission?”

“In the past, these D-rank missions would be completed not long after they got assigned. Look, the average completion time is four hours, but the last two missions were only completed after a day.”

“Eh? Is that true?” The other person went over. “Oh, it’s really true. One took 21 hours, the other one took 23 hours. What’s going on here? Are there no qualified account holders around Stronghold 61?”

“That can’t be. There were a total of 11 qualified account holders who accepted both missions.”

This meant 11 hitmen must have accepted the missions. But even with so many hitmen taking on the jobs, problems were still encountered.

“Could it be that these two missions’ targets were harder to kill? Which missions did you assign?”

“They were both very simple D-rank missions. The goal was to clean up some of the more corrupt Zong Consortium officials. What’s more, they aren’t protected by any bodyguards.” The person who started this discussion asked doubtfully, “Could something have happened?”

“Then who completed those two missions?”

“It’s that dumbass who sent us pictures of lamb stew.”

“Pfft.” The person next to him burst into laughter. “It must be a newly qualified account holder, and he actually managed to complete the missions smoothly too?”

“That’s not the case either. He did take a few missions before. But perhaps because he was too far away from them, he did not manage to complete those missions. I think this qualified account holder should be in the town of Stronghold 61.”

“Report this to the boss.” The person next to him said as he chewed on a cracker, “Put this information into the latest mission summary report. Although D-rank qualified account holders are not that big a deal, we should still let the boss know.”

“Sure.”

The person beside him suddenly thought of something. “By the way, did those people who accepted the missions at Stronghold 61 take on any other missions after that?”

“Let me see.” The first person who spoke was surprised to find that all the qualified account holders that had gone to Stronghold 61 to carry out the missions had disappeared without sending another text.

He was puzzled. Could they have taken a break? So they did not take any further missions for the time being?

However, among the 11 people, there was someone who was still taking missions without fail. Even if the targets were far away, he would still attempt it.

“This won’t do. We have to inform the boss as soon as possible.”

…

During this period, Ren Xiaosu did not do anything else. He just peacefully remained at the small tavern and waited for new missions to be assigned before going “fishing.”

The thought of going to the other strongholds to complete missions had also crossed his mind, but they were way too far away and he was not at all familiar with the places. He might as well stay here for now and familiarize himself with the organization behind the cell phones.

In just half a month, he had already collected more than ten cell phones in his storage space. But to his disappointment, in this same time frame, the other party had only issued two missions related to Stronghold 61.

In this duration, more than a dozen missions related to the other strongholds were issued. But due to the distance and his unfamiliarity, Ren Xiaosu did not venture there.

Ren Xiaosu made a rough calculation. If he could only advance to C-rank after completing five missions in 60 days, then the missions related to a single stronghold would definitely not be enough for him to achieve that. After all, assassinations could not keep occurring in the same stronghold over and over.

‘I would have to take this step by step,’ Ren Xiaosu thought.

At this moment, he received a new text on his cell phone: “The target is Zhang Cengran, the former Director of the Taxation Department of Stronghold 144. He escaped to the town outside Stronghold 61. Reward: 20,000 yuan.”

Ren Xiaosu was delighted. This was someone else he was familiar with. He did not expect that the Anjing House would keep sending out missions to kill these officials like they had something against them.

But based on the previous mission assignments, the organization behind the cell phone would always write a summary of the evil deeds committed by the person they wanted killed, as though to lessen the guilt of the hitmen. Meanwhile, the D-rank missions were mainly focused on the factory managers who bullied the people or some extremely terrible town administrators.

But Ren Xiaosu did not quite understand. Would anyone really pay to have these people killed?

He did not understand the reason and went to ask the storyteller. In the end, the storyteller said, “My guess is that the missions assigned to the account holders of these cell phones were all issued by the Anjing House themselves. After they accept the incredibly well-paying missions that required superhumans to complete, they pay a portion of it to the superhuman who completes it and uses their own part of the commission to maintain the mercenary hitman system. This acts as their assassin trial selection and, at the same time, eliminates the targets they want to kill.”

As for what their exact purpose was, only they themselves knew.

Ren Xiaosu did not want to think too much about it anymore. He headed straight to the shack where Zhang Cengran was living. This was the third time he had to carry out a mission at Stronghold 61. By the time he was done with it, there would probably be no more cell phones left in the area, right?

When he was about to reach the shack where Zhang Cengran was living, Ren Xiaosu took a careful detour to deliberately observe the surroundings.

Although it was easy to deal with a former fat cat like him, what if something unexpected happened?

As a result, Ren Xiaosu saw a tiny white paper crane sitting atop a pole next to Zhang Cengran’s shack.

It was already dark. If Ren Xiaosu had not seen a thing like this before, he might not have noticed it at all.

The paper crane was facing Zhang Cengran’s shack, and Zhang Cengran was currently sleeping on the inside.

The situation gradually turned weird. The paper crane was staring at Zhang Cengran while Ren Xiaosu kept his eye on the paper crane…

Ren Xiaosu was quite sure he had not spotted any paper cranes during his previous missions. It must have been his recent actions that had attracted the attention of the other party, so they wanted to see who the one causing trouble was.

However, he was also quite sure this paper crane’s feedback was not immediate. Why else would there be a need to send messages via notes? It would have been more direct to just talk to it instead.

Furthermore, he had also caught a paper crane before. Since that paper crane had seen his appearance before, if it could transmit a message immediately, the other party would probably have tried to capture him long ago.

Thinking of this, Ren Xiaosu decisively activated Shadow Door and grabbed ahold of the paper crane.

The paper crane was caught off guard. When it was grabbed, it tried to spread its wings to cut Ren Xiaosu’s finger. With the sharpness of those wings, a normal person would most likely get their fingers cut off. But this time, Ren Xiaosu had learned his lesson and moved even faster than it could react. He immediately threw the paper crane into his storage space once he grabbed ahold of it.

Now, there were two paper cranes in the storage space. The first one had even been unfolded back into a piece of white paper.

Wouldn’t gathering a 1,000 paper cranes bring good luck to the person he liked? Ren Xiaosu’s thoughts started running wild.

On this mission, Ren Xiaosu couldn’t get any new cell phones, probably because he had already wiped out all of the qualified account holders of the cell phones nearby.