The Double Win: Bai Fu Wins Twice! [Two-in-One, Thanks to Geshui Liyue for the Silver Alliance Reward]

The night was as dark as ink, and the sky hung low.

Outside the temporary outpost built by the players.

The External Affairs Department Minister looked up at the moon, veiled by clouds as if draped in a black gauze.

"It's been about ten minutes, hasn't it?"

Killing Bai Fu was only a side benefit of this operation. The main objective was to completely destroy the temporary outpost built by the Outsiders and crush their arrogant, invincible attitude.

"Pass down the order. We begin the operation now."

"Yes, sir."

As the second signal flare shot into the sky, leaving a dazzling red streak against the night, the Wildfire Gang members who had already taken up their positions rushed out from behind their cover. They quickly reached the outskirts of the outpost.

The External Affairs Department Minister shouted, "Get them—"

"Stop!"

He never managed to finish the word "them." A shout from inside the building drowned him out.

The External Affairs Department Minister, who had just been forced into an awkward false start, turned livid with rage.

He glared furiously at the outpost's entrance.

Before long, four people emerged from the players' outpost. At the front was Bai Fu, her hands bound and her face smeared with grime.

Wait, Bai Fu—why wasn't she dead?

The External Affairs Department Minister's pupils abruptly contracted.

Under everyone's gaze, Digging Princess pressed a knife against Bai Fu's waist. "Anyone takes one step forward, and I'll kill her. Surely you aren't going to abandon your own comrade to her fate?"

The threat stopped the eager Wildfire Gang members in their tracks.

"How did Bai Fu end up over there?"

They all looked to the External Affairs Department Minister. Nobody dared stick their neck out.

The External Affairs Department Minister said nothing.

The situation had gone completely against his expectations. In the past, he wouldn't have needed to care whether Bai Fu lived or died, but things were a little different now.

On the one hand, Boss valued Bai Fu highly these days.

On the other, morale in the Wildfire Gang was shaky. If he let these Outsiders kill Bai Fu in front of everyone, those who didn't know the whole story would inevitably have doubts.

Today, you could sacrifice Bai Fu without hesitation. Would you sacrifice me tomorrow?

That would only make morale worse.

The External Affairs Department Minister hurriedly signaled to the four people who had gone with Bai Fu, but they acted as if they hadn't seen him, their heads almost lowered to the ground.

Killing Bai Fu would be easy, but if Boss demanded answers afterward, who would take responsibility?

Damn it, Cao Wenliang had really dumped him in a difficult spot.

The External Affairs Department Minister's expression kept shifting.

While he was working out what to do, Bai Fu suddenly shouted.

"Don't worry about me! They'll never let me go anyway. I'm dead either way, so hurry up and attack!"

"Y-you... Shut up! Just shut up!"

Digging Princess seemed completely unprepared for Bai Fu to shout that. She hurried to cover Bai Fu's mouth.

"What are you waiting for? We finally got this chance! Are you going to stand by and watch them escape?"

Bai Fu struggled violently. Even with Digging Princess and Calamity Dragon both holding her down, they couldn't control her.

In the end, Digging Princess had no choice but to chop the side of her neck with her hand.

Bai Fu slumped and fell to the ground.

"Drag her back! Hurry, drag her back!"

Calamity Dragon helped Digging Princess drag Bai Fu back inside in a panic.

What?

The Wildfire Gang members around them were dumbfounded. All they could do was look back at the External Affairs Department Minister.

The External Affairs Department Minister was stunned too. He'd never expected Bai Fu to stage a "Fire at me!" scene. But after his shock wore off, he was overjoyed.

Wasn't this the perfect opportunity?

It wasn't that he was being heartless and choosing to kill Bai Fu. She'd sacrificed herself for the greater good. Who could blame him?

She really was so foolish and innocent!

Honestly, if Cao Wenliang hadn't handed over so many benefits to him, he might not have wanted to kill Bai Fu at all.

People in their line of work might think someone like Bai Fu was an idiot, but when the moment came, who wouldn't want a comrade like her at their side?

The External Affairs Department Minister raised his right hand high and roared, "Brothers, things have come to this. We can't let Bai Fu's sacrifice be in vain! Charge with me and kill these Outsiders!"

At his cry, the Wildfire Gang members all flew into a rage.

They'd been seething ever since they started capturing these Outsiders a few days ago. And now these bastards were persecuting Bai Fu right in front of them.

Damn it! Kill, kill, kill! From this moment on, let these Outsiders taste pain!

"Kill them!"

"..."

The players in the outpost looked bewildered.

We can't let Bai Fu's sacrifice be in vain?

What the heck, those were the exact words we just used!

But now wasn't the time to get hung up on that. The Wildfire Gang had already attacked.

Patrick Star, the commander, shouted, "Follow the plan!"

As soon as he spoke, several players rushed out onto the roof of the outpost's third floor.

"Haha, here comes the boiling water!"

With a series of clatters, several large buckets of boiling water were dumped down without mercy. A few Wildfire Gang members at the front were drenched and immediately screamed.

But this was only the beginning. As soon as the boiling-water team pulled back, the fishing-net team and the shooters hiding behind the windows moved in.

"Get out of the way!"

The External Affairs Department Minister hurriedly pulled a gun from his clothes.

Bang!

A player on the roof fell at the sound of the shot, and a huge "-30" damage value floated above his head.

"Holy crap, he's got a gun!"

"Ah, I can't move! I'm going to die!"

"Brother, go in peace. I'll take your gear and keep fighting them."

"You bastard, don't touch my gear!"

The players on the roof kept throwing things downstairs as they joked and bickered, without the slightest sense of urgency.

How? How could they stay so calm?

The External Affairs Department Minister lowered his gun, hoping to take Patrick Star out first. But Patrick Star had already slipped back inside as soon as he saw the gun.

[Split up and act. Avoid fighting them in open areas as much as possible.]

The players' first wave of attacks caused only two actual casualties among the Wildfire Gang. The two sides soon entered the stage of street fighting.

Patrick Star led a few high-level player-warriors in local group attacks, outnumbering their opponents.

Digging Princess and the others, who weren't good at fighting, volunteered to act as bait.

Bai Fu, meanwhile, hid in the shadows and played the role of a control mage, handing out Frenzy buffs to people's stomachs.

She now had 55 points of psionic energy. Each Frenzy buff consumed one point per minute. With the constitution of the Wildfire Gang's elite monsters, they would usually start feeling unwell after three or four minutes.

That meant she could control more than ten people at once without using her Innate Spirituality skill to convert her health into psionic energy.

But Bai Fu didn't go all out right away. She picked only the five strongest targets and saved the rest of her psionic energy for emergencies.

Go on, fight! The harder you fight, the sooner your stomachs will start rumbling.

Bai Fu lay in the VIP seat playing dead and watched the show.

"Moron, you think you can catch me, huh?"

"You damn bastard! How'd you like the shit I fed you last time?"

The players' taunts were brutally effective.

"Chris, save that little shit with the red starfish head for me. Damn it, when I ran into him last time, he kept calling me impotent and saying I'd become a supervisor by selling my ass to Boss. I'm going to turn him into a human stump!"

"That's nothing! They blew up the latrine while I was using it! Hahaha, hehehe, teehee, hahahaha! I'm going to kill them all!"

Several Wildfire Gang members chased after them relentlessly.

As they ran, the one in front suddenly felt the ground give way beneath his foot. He fell into a pit trap hidden under weeds.

"Shit!"

A stabbing pain shot up from the bottom of his foot. He had just braced a hand against the wall and was about to climb out when Convert to My Fu leaped down from above with a huge iron club coated in golden juice.

"Eat my mighty sword!"

Stay away from me!

Seeing the golden juice flying through the air, the Wildfire Gang member in the pit tried desperately to dodge, but there was no room in such a small hole.

Thwack!

Convert to My Fu's Golden Juice Cudgel still landed squarely on his face.

"-15"

It was a critical hit—not only to his health bar, but to his sanity as well.

Digging Princess: "Ugh!"

Calamity Dragon: "No matter how many times I see it, it's still outrageous."

"Argh! I'm going to kill you all!"

The Wildfire Gang members who had been lucky enough to avoid the pit flew into a rage and beat the players in front of them mercilessly.

The three- or four-level difference was still too great at this stage, and the players hadn't set enough traps. After catching one elite monster off guard and taking him out, they couldn't stand and fight, so they had no choice but to run.

"Upstairs! Hurry!"

"Trying to run?"

The two sides played another round of wits and strategy around the stairs.

The Wildfire Gang members chasing them were on guard now, so none of them suffered serious injuries. After a chase, they finally cornered Digging Princess and the others on the roof.

"Run! Haha, why aren't you running now?"

A Wildfire Gang member walked toward the panting Digging Princess, laughing as he swung the knife in his hand.

"I'm going to peel off your skin one piece at a time and make you suffer unt—holy crap, my stomach! What's happening..."

He had been laughing when he suddenly clutched his stomach.

Convert to My Fu's eyes lit up. Now's the time! Every Wildfire Gang member they took out would make Fu Fu safer. Charge!

Without a word, he rushed over and slammed headfirst into the Wildfire Gang member.

"Die!"

The two of them tumbled off the roof together like cannonballs.

Crash, crash!

After two loud thuds, both of them died.

Looking at the two bodies that had suddenly landed beside him, the External Affairs Department Minister, who was beating ten players by himself, couldn't help but freeze.

He was handling it well enough, but the Wildfire Gang members upstairs who had witnessed the whole thing were completely dumbfounded.

Were all Outsiders this crazy? If they all fought like that, how could anyone keep playing?

They were starting to lose heart, but they'd already made enemies of the Outsiders in front of them. That made them brave again.

Forget it. Kill them first.

A smug smile appeared on Calamity Dragon's face. "You really think you've already won?"

"What do you mean?"

Calamity Dragon turned around. "Just watch. This is the power of our bond!"

"?"

The Wildfire Gang members looked more closely and suddenly spotted several unfamiliar figures in the night. They were rapidly approaching the outpost.

No, there weren't just a few. There were more in the distance.

"Outsider reinforcements!"

Their expressions changed dramatically.

Digging Princess rolled her eyes. So much for the power of their bond—they'd bought those guys for fifty bucks each, hadn't they? Still, she played along and shouted, "You're trapped! Prepare to face judgment!"

"Damn it, where did these Outsiders come from?"

"We can't keep fighting like this. Even if we win, I'll be half-dead."

As their resolve began to waver, the surviving Wildfire Gang members gradually lost the will to fight.

Once the first person ran, the others no longer had any reason to feel guilty about fleeing.

"Don't run! Stop! Stop, do you hear me?" the External Affairs Department Minister roared, but his shouts were useless.

In the chaos, the few people who had originally gone with Bai Fu started thinking about running too.

Cao Wenliang had repeatedly told them to make sure they saw Bai Fu die before they left, but who cared about that now? They had to escape first.

One of them ran toward the outpost, rubbing his swollen, red eyes.

He ran for a while, then stopped.

"Bai Fu?"

On the blood-soaked road, Bai Fu stood in his way.

He froze for a moment, then grew excited.

He hadn't expected Bai Fu to survive, but it didn't matter. She was about to die at his hands, and he'd be able to report back to Cao Wenliang.

"It's great that you're still alive!" He laughed and walked toward her, quietly resting a hand on the hilt of his knife as he went.

Bai Fu nodded. "You've got a lot of lives to spare."

"Can't complain."

"But this is where it ends."

"Huh?"

Before the Wildfire Gang member could figure out what was happening, a sharp pain shot through his abdomen. He looked down and saw a knife buried in his gut, twisting rapidly. The hand gripping it belonged to Bai Fu.

"You!"

Thud—

When she pulled the knife free, he crumpled to the ground. His eyes stayed wide as saucers until consciousness left him.

[You killed a Wildfire Gang Supervisor (Elite). Contribution Points: 100%. After adjustment for the level difference, you gained 540 experience.]

Bai Fu wiped the blood from her knife and continued searching for her next target. Soon, she found an injured Wildfire Gang member at the stronghold.

"Come with me. This way."

"Bai Fu? You're alive? How did you—"

"Someone kicked me while passing by just now, and I woke up. I took the chance to escape my ropes. All right, hurry and come with me. I'll get you out first, then come back for the others."

"Thank you, thank you. If it weren't for you, I might have died here today."

The injured man was deeply moved and hurried after her.

Bai Fu's back wasn't particularly imposing, but thinking of what had happened not long ago filled him with a sense of security unlike anything he'd ever felt.

This time, Bai Fu didn't kill him. She needed a witness.

After escorting the injured man outside, she secretly circled back to the stronghold's main entrance.

By then, the fighting near the entrance had temporarily subsided. The External Affairs Department Minister had taken down more than twenty players in one go.

With his stats, under normal circumstances, he'd have little trouble avoiding serious injury—even with players like Patrick Star, renowned for his skill, and Black Tiger Afu, who fought as if he didn't care whether he lived or died, not to mention the reinforcements who kept arriving.

After all, the players only dealt one or two points of damage per hit, while he dealt ten or twenty points to them.

But as he fought, he suddenly felt a stomachache. The players seized their chance and shot him in the knee with an arrow.

His injured knee made it hard to move, and his impaired mobility kept him from finishing off the players quickly. As the fighting dragged on, his injuries kept piling up, and he was beginning to feel like he couldn't hold out much longer.

"Damn, he's too strong. This is way above our level."

"Don't get cocky! Just wait till I get the materials—I'll make a homemade bomb and blow you up!"

"Argh! My right hand! My king's power!"

As soon as Bai Fu came out, she saw a player with his right hand chopped off, rolling on the ground.

She hurriedly called out to the External Affairs Department Minister. "Minister!"

"Bai Fu? What are you doing here?"

Like the others, the External Affairs Department Minister was stunned to see her.

"Minister, don't worry about me right now. The outsiders' reinforcements are here. There's nothing to gain by staying and fighting. Let's hurry and get out of here. I'll cover you!"

The External Affairs Department Minister turned his head.

He could just make out shouts rising from the distance.

"Damn, those Wildfire Gang bastards love ambushing people too! Everybody, get 'em! Shove it up their ass!"

These outsiders just wouldn't quit.

Along with his anger, the External Affairs Department Minister felt relieved. Bai Fu might not be strong, but she was the sort who would never betray them. With her covering their retreat, he felt at least a little safer.

"Let's go!"

He limped toward Bai Fu.

Seeing the relief on his face, Bai Fu clenched her fist in secret.

Everything was going perfectly.

In the players' eyes, she was a good person who'd tipped them off and always had their interests at heart.

In the Wildfire Gang's eyes, she was a good person who'd rather die than give in and always put the gang first.

One thing, two boosts to Favorability. Now that was what you called a win-win!

P.S. This is a double-length chapter.

Thanks to the amazing Songshui Liyue for the Silver Alliance! Ahhh, when I first saw it, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I couldn't believe it was really a Silver Alliance! I write this book very slowly, and I have other things to take care of during the day, but I'll do my best to add ten chapters before it goes on sale.

Thanks to ANR_Anran and Yaoduo for the tips.