Chapter 160: Promotion to Cadre

The three major surface districts have basically been dealt with.

And the collapsed underground city, under the Quicksand Team's overnight efforts, had its outer perimeter successfully cleared, rescuing batch after batch of Quicksand Team members.

Master Liu Ge and the others were prominently among them.

When they saw the light of day again.

Dust-covered and in tattered clothes, they looked back at the ruined district, then turned to look at the underground city buried under countless rubble and gravel, not a trace of joy at achieving their goal on their faces, only deep helplessness.

Master Liu Ge's originally vivid wine-red hair had also become dim and lusterless.

The reason everything had to be done through schemes stemmed entirely from insufficient strength.

Once you choose to scheme, you must accept the unexpected when things slip beyond your grasp; the world won't revolve around any one person, at least not around them.

"So it really was mutual destruction after all…"

Baimu stood to one side, and through Master Liu Ge and the others' descriptions, learned what had happened after they entered the underground city.

Under the combined pressure of the three-merged Quicksand Team army, the cadres and members of the Luo Qi Group were simply no match for the Quicksand Team, unable even to keep the situation deadlocked, and within a few hours they retreated again and again, abandoning one district after another.

When they shrank back to the last small patch of territory.

The Quicksand Team immediately chose to urge Luo Qi to surrender, to avoid wasting unnecessary strength, but who would have thought the latter, disregarding his subordinates' wishes, chose to burn everything together, detonating the Naughty Bombs planted in advance at every support point of the underground city.

After that, the entire underground city began to collapse; the Quicksand Team army was trapped underground and couldn't get out immediately, so they had to find ways to protect themselves on the spot, which in turn affected the surface, causing the man-made disaster to expand further.

This was entirely beyond Master Liu Ge's expectations.

He had originally planned to use the opportunity of dividing spoils, while the three top cadres were holding down the nest and hadn't come out, to sow discord among the three groups present and make them fight underground ahead of time.

Then lure the Kejelo Group to invade the Crystal Group's district, making the scene even more chaotic.

Who would have thought Luo Qi's temperament was so fierce.

In Master Liu Ge and the others' view, from the outcome this operation was a win for them—the Quicksand Team's three groups suffered heavy losses, and having just swallowed such a huge piece of meat, there was suspicion they might choke to death on it.

And also a loss—the analysis of Luo Qi's personality wasn't thorough enough, they failed to learn all of Luo Qi's movements, and let this man-made disaster happen.

Master Liu Ge understood such a mistake could not appear again.

And at this point.

This operation of the Quicksand Team occupying the Luo Qi Group's territory came to an end.

But the situation in Huang Tie Town did not become clear because of it.

It even became more chaotic.

The Quicksand Team deliberately downplayed the casualties during the operation, highlighting the gains, making the other forces in Huang Tie Town realize how rich other people's territories were.

Thus.

A few more forces in Huang Tie Town declared war on other forces, completely pulling Huang Tie Town into the mud of chaos.

——

On the other hand.

Because the underground city's condition wasn't suitable for public disclosure, and Baimu's performance during the surface battle was especially outstanding, his fame received further publicity.

Shan Ren told him this was both a good thing and a bad thing.

The good thing was that in the future, when they truly began to carry out the grand plan, Baimu's fame would make things much smoother for them in many ways.

The bad thing was that in the current chaotic environment of Huang Tie Town, being too conspicuous could easily attract some lunatics.

"As Master Liu Ge's plan is carried out, the days ahead will be very tough; you must find a way to raise your strength as quickly as possible. In the future, it's possible that both Master Liu Ge and I will have to count on you."

Shan Ren said earnestly.

Hearing this, Baimu only felt the other party was exaggerating.

Counting on him would have to wait a long time, but given Huang Tie Town's situation, growing even a little was better than nothing.

Since the unrest began in Huang Tie Town, many neutral underground city shops had shown signs of closing, afraid some organization would take the chance to grab a big haul.

The underground city to a certain extent represented Huang Tie Town's "deformed" prosperity; their closing was enough to show how tough a place Huang Tie Town was to operate in.

fantuantanshu.

Less than two days after the operation ended.

The Luo Qi Group's underground city had not yet been fully cleared, but internally the Quicksand Team had already begun dividing up the Luo Qi Group's inheritance—personnel, territory, and mineral resources.

Baimu, as a "meritorious official" of this operation, also had a share.

But what he didn't expect was that he was actually assigned the very first major street district he had suppressed; giving an entire major street district to a subordinate was simply unbelievable in others' eyes.

This also meant the higher-ups officially appointed him as a cadre of the Sand Group, granting him the powers of a cadre.

But to be honest.

Baimu didn't covet that major street district. For one, the Luo Qi Group's three major street districts had already become ruins; whatever could be scavenged had already been scavenged once. For another, taking over that district meant a large portion of the people under his team would have to be chosen from the original Mad Dog members.

Only this way would it be convenient for him to manage the new territory.

Cang Zhi Lang had told him the same thing.

Because of the Quicksand Team's losses in the underground city, they had to quickly replenish a large amount of fresh blood; the original Mad Dog team members, as a viable force, were the kind you could pick up and use right away.

Far better than peripheral members who had just been promoted to full members and were only beginning to come into contact with Pokémon.

However.

Baimu held nothing but naked contempt for the Mad Dog members, despising these scumbags on a personal level; accepting the few relatively honest ones as agreed upon had already been his limit.

To have nearly half of the team filled with Mad Dog members… was truly hard to accept.

But Baimu understood these people had to be taken in.

Just as Master Liu Ge had told him.

"You must understand, there are so many bad guys in Huang Tie Town, you can't kill them all; even settling scores will have to wait a long time. During this period, rather than leaving them alone, if we can reform their thinking, make them realize their past mistakes, it will be very helpful for our upcoming operations."

Big brother's words were very realistic; the number of people who had done bad things in Huang Tie Town was countless; even if they swept the dark clouds away, they had no way of dealing with these people by killing.

Therefore.

On the first day of becoming an executive, with Cang Zhi Lang's approval, Baimu promoted a group of peripheral members from Qingyi Street through a simple assessment, and through Flobo's hints, absorbed many members of the Salvation Organization.

For example, the very first one Baimu had gotten to know.

On the other hand, Baimu came to Magnetic Barium Street, which was being rebuilt at an extremely slow pace, and took in a large number of former Evil Dog Squad members.

After nearly two days of fussing about, he had successfully recruited nearly five hundred-plus people into his ranks.

And there were only a mere two squad leaders—

Otsuka and Narihiro.

The former's strength was roughly at squad leader level—the weakest squad leader was still a squad leader. The latter fell quite a bit short, but at this point there was no choice but to throw him into the deep end.

What pleased Baimu was that the Salvation Organization's infiltrators were all of excellent caliber, and they quickly tamed the newly acquired Pokémon.

Unfortunately, lacking sufficient merit, promoting them rashly would make them unable to command respect.

Moreover, Baimu had to take care of the feelings of the group that had followed him from the very beginning; this bunch was actually competitive enough, doing whatever they were told without complaint.

It was just that being illiterate led to a severe lack of knowledge in all areas, so many aspects of their improvement were rather slow.