"Wait, don't you want to attack the casino ring? We are planning to attack it tonight."
The woman's question was completely ignored by Xiaoyun, who didn't even bother to turn around to answer it.
However, before he could exit through the door, one person was missing—the most important person in this whole mission.
"Yezi?"
"I know this is selfish... But I'm going to join their attack. You can go back to Luoping with the soldiers."
Seeing Yezi standing firm in his decision, Xiaoyun let out a sigh as he turned around to look over to Jixi.
"For fuck sake... Jixi, go downstairs and call the rest of the soldiers inside the bus to come up here."
"Yes, sir."
With Jixi heading downstairs, the woman looked a little surprised as Yezi stood beside them, rather than standing with Xiaoyun.
"Fine. I'm willing to work with you to attack that casino ring... You should thank my friend's stubborn ass."
The woman could tell he looked a little annoyed, but she still bowed down slightly in gratitude to the two of them.
"Thank you for changing your mind."
"Before we can continue further, what is your plan?" Xiaoyun asked with caution, his face still a little distrustful of them.
"We'll go through the main entrance and go up the stairs. With these rifles, we can easily overwhelm them..."
---
A few minutes later...
"This sounds like a suicide plan... they have guns of their own," Xiaoyun commented after everyone discussed their information and plans.
"We know, but we are not afraid to die for it." One of the men in the crowd yelled out, with everyone else all agreeing with him.
"Fine. But do any of you even know how to use a gun?" Xiaoyun questioned.
The woman looked back at her men, who had a rifle in hand. They all shook their head as if they were planning to use it as just an intimidation tool.
"How about this: You guys give us the gun back, and we will go in ourselves. All you need to do is assist us, and we'll take care of the problem."
"But how can we trust you?"
Before Xiaoyun could reply, loud footsteps could be heard coming up from the staircase. Turning around, Yueyue and the soldiers had finally arrived.
"With them."
As soon as Xiaoyun used the same signal that Yiming had taught him, all of the soldiers pointed their rifles at her men.
"W-Wait, what are you doing?"
The woman nervously asked as her men quickly raised their rifles right back at Xiaoyun's men.
"Your guys don't even know you have to turn off the safety... Why do you think your men are equipped to use a rifle? "
All of her men immediately checked their M16s, only to see a small pin that pointed at the letter 'safety.'
They immediately turned it off, but it was far too late as all of their face were filled with embarrassment.
"So, are you sure you want to hold onto those rifles? It takes a long time to train someone how to use a gun.
You could just hand them back to my soldiers, and I'll attack the casion right now. I have no reason to break my end of the bargain."
After a short silence, the woman looked over to Yezi for a second, whose eye looked determined to be a part of their plan no matter what.
"Fine, you guys can have your gun back."
Despite the woman signaling her group to give the gun back, none of them made a move. They didn't want to hand the gun over.
"But Miss Li... Are you sure we can trust them?" One of the men with rifles questioned.
"Just give it back... They could have shot us all dead right there. He's right. We don't know how to use it."
As the woman repeated her order, the men finally folded and gave the guns back to the soldier and Yezi, who looked just as embarrassed as they had been earlier.
"Ahem, we don't have to attack through the main entrance. I know there is a back entrance to the hotel." Yezi suddenly suggested.
"Really? Where is it?" Miss Li curiously asked.
"It's in the dark alleyway a few streets from here. I can bring you guys there and see it for yourself."
Yezi murmured as he pointed down in the distance, right towards where he and the soldiers had come from yesterday.
"Let's just do that instead. At least it isn't some suicidal plan through the main entrance."
Miss Li accepted Xiaoyun's decision as her mind seemingly began to realize how bad her plan was previously.
---
After Miss Li picked some of her men to go with her inside Xiaoyun's bus, Yezi directed Renqin towards the dark alleyway.
When they arrived at the dark alleyway that Yezi had gone to earlier, everyone quickly got off before Xiaoyun turned his attention to the bus driver.
"Renqin, if there is a zombie horde coming here, you can just drive away," Xiaoyun ordered.
"Of course... I'm doing that even if you don't tell me to."
Ten minutes of walking and sitting in the elevator later, they finally arrived at a dark parking lot that had several zombie corpses lying around.
After Yezi used the remote to open the door entrance, a dark, long tunnel lay ahead of them.
"It's going to take a while to get there," Yezi commented as he took charge to guide everyone down the tunnel.
"Yezi, how do you know this place?" Xiaoyun asked curiously, as he felt the place was way too specific to be known randomly.
"Just an old friend's place..." Yezi replied, not elaborating any further as the tunnel fell into dead silence.
After walking in the dark for a bit, they finally arrived at a ladder that seemed to lead to nowhere, as above was completely blacked out.
"Here it is. Up there is the storage room in the main lobby. I'll go up first. You guys follow me afterward."
Yezi started climbing the ladder. Then, everyone began taking turns to go up the ladder. After five minutes of taking turns climbing, they all finally made it up.
As Xiaoyun came out of the ladder and looked around the storage room, it was empty.
Not a single soul was in the room other than his men. There were zero items in the storage room either.
It looked completely abandoned, except for the footsteps that didn't belong to them on the floor leading up to the ladder cover.
"Miss Li, can I ask how many people you have?"
Xiaoyun curiously asked, as he began to realize there might be too many people crowding the storage space.
"You don't have to call me Miss Li. My name is Wuli... We have thirty-four people, but we only brought fifteen people with us."
"I see... Wuli. Why do I feel like I heard this name before?" Xiaoyun thought the last part to himself before turning around to face everyone.
As one of the soldiers slowly opened the door, everyone was a little surprised to see that before them was the main lobby of the hotel.
"Huh. This is unexpected."
As everyone walked into the main lobby, they were surprised by how quiet it was. The ceiling's camera was all completely cracked as well.
Meanwhile, over to the lobby's entrance, it was stacked with furniture, completely blocking the possibility of entering the building normally.
The stairway leading up was also completely blocked, and the fire exit of the building was nowhere to be seen.
It left the elevator as the only way up, which surprisingly still worked as Xiaoyun pressed one of them and waited.
"We need to take the elevator... How about we go up first?" Xiaoyun suggested.
"Sure. We will go up next."
With Wuli accepting Xiaoyun's decision, Xiaoyun quickly drafted a plan on the spot to split up his men into a few groups to go one at a time.
"The highest we can go is the tenth floor. We will have to check the stairway up. The casino operations are above the tenth floor."
Yezi reminded Wuli before pressing the close button as the elevator began heading up. As the elevator came to a stop and opened, they had arrived at the tenth floor.
The first thing the six of them saw was blood stains all over the floor. Yet, there were no bodies.
It was almost as if all the bodies had been thrown out the window, as not a single window pane was intact.
As Yezi walked over to the stairway entrance to check, it was finally not blocked from the inside, allowing them to go up further.
"Let's wait for the rest to come up first."
The six of them waited, and after several turns taking the elevator, everyone finally got up to the tenth floor.
"When we go up there, open fire on anyone with a weapon."
Everyone nodded as they began heading upstairs, with Xiaoyun standing second in line to boost the soldier's morale.
After walking up to the eleventh floor, the soldier in the very front opened the door, only to see the inside to be pitch black.
The curtain in the distant covered the windows completely, just like what Yezi and Jixi had described earlier in the planning discussion with Wuli's men.
"All clear, sir. No sign of life here." A soldier replied after checking through the entire floor all by himself.
"Let's go up to the next floor..."
After closing the door, they began walking up the stairs once again in the same formation as earlier.
"The next one is going to have people in it," Yezi warned.
All the soldier immediately began to double-check their rifles, putting them in a more raised position for a close combat shootout.
"Yueyue, you stay with Wuli, okay? You don't have a rifle."
Yueyue didn't try to argue back, moving all the way back to be with Wuli and her men with her pistol.
After reaching the entrance to the 12th floor, one of the soldiers kicked the door wide open as the other ten soldiers flooded inside.
"What the hell——"
Before the men inside the building could react, the soldiers immediately opened fire on anyone who was reaching for a weapon.
Most of the henchmen were instantly killed, but some were able to get away just in time as they ducked behind cover.
Xiaoyun's soldier immediately rushed for cover as five of the henchmen were able to get behind a building pillar and started firing back.
"Everyone surrender now, or all of you will be killed! We are the military sent in to catch only the boss!"
As Xiaoyun yelled out loud and tried to bluff to end the stalemate, none of the henchmen seemed to buy it.
"Bullshit! When did the military start using the M16? That's an American rifle!" One of them yelled back across the other side.
"Why die for a boss that doesn't even care about your life? You guys only have pistols! Just surrender, and we will allow you to live!"
Xiaoyun quickly shifted the topic, which worked perfectly, as no one cared about what rifles they used or if they were from the military.
After a short gunfire exchange, Xiaoyun finally gave his final warning to attempt to push them over the edge.
"We are going to start throwing grenades if you don't surrender. We don't want to kill more people than needed."
After a minute of dead silence in the room, the five henchmen finally stepped out with both their hands up in the air.
Several of the soldiers immediately rushed up and tied them with zip ties while others continued to point their rifles at them.
"You'd better keep your promise." One of the henchmen yelled.
"You're lucky that you surrendered," Xiaoyun replied as the rest of the group finally entered the floor.
"So many bodies..."
Several of Wuli's men started to throw up, their minds shaken from all the henchmen's dead bodies. Even Xiaoyun and his soldiers started to gag.
Their bodies started to catch up in reaction as the smell of blood filled the entire room. But they all held down the urge to throw up.
"You two, watch over these five criminals. We are going to the next floor... They probably heard us now."
Xiaoyun directly ordered over Wuli's men, but nobody spoke against it as there was no time to waste.
After everyone had reloaded their rifles and gotten over the smell, the group quickly resumed heading upstairs across the room.
"Yezi, do you know what's on the next floor?" Xiaoyun asked as he started to forget what had been discussed during the short planning talk.
"If I remember correctly, this one has a lot fewer people. I assume it's higher-ups like management of some sort," Yezi replied.
As they arrived at the 13th floor, the soldiers repeated the exact strategy, with ten of them spearheading out to the room.
But to their surprise, no one was there except rows of women lying on the floor fully naked.
"Shit, they ran up the stairs. They must have heard the gunshot."
Xiaoyun didn't waste any time as he continued heading upstairs with his men, while Wuli's men finally arrived on the 13th floor.
"Um, sorry about that... They used to be their wife before being kidnapped here."
Wuli apologized as several of her men rushed up to the naked woman, their eyes filled with tears as they warmly hugged them.
"It's okay. I understand... They might need a lot of time to heal from the trauma."
Yueyue murmured after noticing that a few of them were unresponsive. Their bodies were filled with traces of abuse and defilement.
"No time for hugs. Everyone, get up. We still have a fight ahead of us."
Wuli quickly hurried everyone back up, going towards the staircase before being stopped by a soldier halfway.
"Mr.Xiaoyun told me you guys should stay behind here. He said he can deal with it alone with the soldiers upstairs."
Wuli thought of refusing it. But after thinking back to the gunfight earlier, she nodded slightly in agreement.
"Thank you. You can go catch up with them... I'll stay behind with my men."
---
"What's inside the floor after the boss room again?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as they arrived two-thirds of the way there.
"Their prison, then... Oh shit, I completely forgot. They have an explosive room filled with TNT."
Hearing Yezi's answer, everyone's heart skipped a beat before Xiaoyun stopped to stare at him dead in the eyes.
"You're kidding me? Why didn't you say that earlier? If they blow it up as a last resort, all of us are fucking dead!"
"Sorry. I just remembered... I'm not even sure if those crates are actually full or empty," Yezi murmured as he awkwardly scratched his head.
"Whatever, let's just hope they aren't suicidal... We just have to make sure we don't push them over the edge."
As they arrived at the entrance of this floor, the soldier in front stood still before failing to turn the doorknob.
Xiaoyun tried to open the door himself, only to find it locked. As he tried to kick it open, his leg quickly realized why the soldier didn't try it.
"Ouch!" Xiaoyun complained in pain as the metal door didn't move an inch.
"Wait, I know how to pick up the lock." One of the soldiers volunteered as he stepped forward to the door.
After a few wranglings with a pick, everyone could hear an oddly satisfying click sound coming from the lock.
"It's opened."