Chapter 1117: Suicidal Strategy
"Do you see this? This is the sacred land that the Big-horned Rat G.o.d gave to all the rat people!
"The power of the oldest and purest totem that originates from the pits of the underground can produce enough food for an army of a million!
"With this sacred land, our Great Horn Army will be invincible forever!" the priest wearing the rat skull mask shouted at the top of his voice.
The rat people who had just joined the Great Horn Army had never seen such a magnificent scene deep underground.
They all forgot to breathe, were dazzled, and were so excited that they couldn"t control themselves.
Only Meng Chao remained calm.
He could roughly guess the origin of the Great Horn Army.
It seemed that the ambitious person who had hidden behind the scenes and created the Big-horned Rat G.o.d had unintentionally found a vibrant underground cave at the border between the Gold Clan and the Blood Hoof Clan.
Perhaps this unimaginably large underground s.p.a.ce is indeed a small world parallel to the other side.
Just as in the heart of the Dragon City, deep in Ruins No. 1, there was a terrifying amount of room for the entire Dragon City.
Perhaps the ambitious man used the techniques he had learned from excavating countless temples, derived from the ancient Turans, to activate an ecosystem that had been sealed for thousands of years in an underground cave.
That allowed him to occupy a position in the gap between the Gold Clan and the Blood Hoof Clan without anyone noticing. Thus, it became the capital he needed to topple the entire Picturesque Orchid Lake.
Of course, based on what Meng Chao saw, just relying on this underground ecosystem was far from enough to support an army of a million.
Being able to support thirty to fifty thousand soldiers was the limit.
This point could be seen from the scale of the camps left behind by the Great Horn Army.
That"s right, they still did not see the Great Horn Army"s main forces, the "million-strong army."
They only saw the empty camps and a few soldiers.
They also received more news from all directions.
Only then did they realize that over the past ten days and ten nights, the entire Picturesque Orchid Lake had undergone a drastic change.
Just as Meng Chao had expected, the Great Horn Army was like a dragon lurking in the abyss. If they did not move, it would be fine. But once they were activated, they would definitely set off a storm that would shake the heavens and earth.
While Black-corner City was being blown up by a series of large explosions caused by the biogas, the sky and earth turned upside down.
In the towns and settlements of the Gold Clan, the Dark Moon Clan, the Thunder Clan, and the Divine Wood Clan, countless rat people, who could not stand it any longer, were instigated by the Rat G.o.d"s emissaries, and they set off the most furious tides.
It was true that in most places, the results were not satisfactory due to the lack of guidance from "destruction experts" like Meng Chao, and the local clan warriors even discovered their plot in advance and destroyed the entire organization. All the rat people who believed in the Big-horned Rat G.o.d were brutally suppressed.
Despite all that, the continuous riots still shook the ruling order of the clan warriors greatly.
While it shocked the high and mighty n.o.bles, it also simultaneously caused many rat people who were still enslaved and exploited to open their eyes that had been sealed for ten thousand years.
They could clearly see that in front of them, other than the path of slavery that led to humiliating death, there was actually a path that was filled with thorns and flames that were burning fiercely, it was a shining and incomparably glorious journey.
The entire map of Orchid Lake was instantly thrown into chaos.
Every day, tens of thousands of rat people would rise up.
Even in the main cities of the various large clans, the elite battle groups of the clans gathered there could easily crush the rebels who did not even have any weapons.
However, because the vast majority of the clan warriors had gathered in their respective main cities, making a blood oath for the alliance and conducting actual combat drills...
The local towns of the five clans and the border villages that were not even considered towns were extremely empty.
The people stationed in the local towns were mostly the old, weak, and disabled of the various clans.
There would even be a situation where there were only a few clan warriors in the entire town, and they could only rely on tens of thousands of rat civil servants to guard the town.
Once these rat civil servants heard about what had happened in Black-corner City and the main city of their clans, or...
Perhaps they received the Rat G.o.d"s inspiration and blessing in their dreams...
If they were unwilling to be slaves and cannon fodder for eternity, just a few clan warriors would not be enough to stop the wild tide that had gone out of control.
Of course, even if the rat people could temporarily occupy a town, it would be wishful thinking if they wanted to firmly defend their new home under the army of the clan.
The rat people knew this very well.
They knew that the source of their power was quant.i.ty.
"Once all the rat people of Picturesque Orchid Lake gather together and form a super army of unprecedented scale, with the Rat G.o.d"s blessing, no power can stop our existence!"
The Rat G.o.d"s emissaries shouted such slogans and commanded groups of rat people to flee from the important towns guarded by the major clans as well as rush toward the junction where the Blood Hoof Clan and Gold Clan borders met.
As for the Great Horn Army"s main forces, they had already set off and headed north toward the hinterland of the Gold Clan.
The Holy Mountain, which had the highest status in the hearts of all the Turan people, was there.
It was said that the Great Horn Army was going to fight to the death with the Gold Clan"s heavy cavalry at the foot of the Holy Mountain.
Through the glorious sacrifice, the ancestors of the Holy Mountain could see that the brave and fearless rat people were worthy to form the sixth clan.
From the fragmented and exaggerated information, Meng Chao, who had pieced together the evolution of the overall situation in the past ten days, could not help but applaud the Great Horn Army"s strategic choice.
"Do you really think that the Great Horn Army"s main forces should rush to the Gold Clan"s territory and seek their own death?"
"What?" Ice Storm was baffled. "Do the rabble think that conquering a few border towns with empty military forces and the strategic locations of the strongest clans, as well as the heavily-armed cities, are the same thing?
"You should know that many of the Gold Clan"s strategic locations have not been conquered by the army from the land of Holy Light even in the era of the great extermination order three thousand years ago.
"That"s right. On the surface, it is absolutely a dead end to gather all military forces and charge into the Gold Clan"s territory. The safer choice seems to be to seize part of the territory and strategic resources from the Divine Wood Clan, which is the weakest and least aggressive of the five major clans."
"But on second thought, it is obvious that the "safer" strategy is suicidal," Meng Chao said.
"In the past thousands of years, the main theme of the Turan civilization"s internal conflict has always been the Blood Hoof, Thunder, Dark Moon, and Divine Wood Clan, which are relatively weaker, fighting against the dominant Gold Clan.
"Blood Hoof and the other four major clans have long signed an alliance of attack and defense. It is impossible for them to leave one of their own in the lurch.
"Even if the Great Horn Army"s main forces can conquer the Divine Wood Clan"s territory and temporarily occupy a portion of it, what can they do? " Blood Hoof, Thunder, and Dark Moon will definitely hunt them down and pincer the elite troops in Divine Moon from both front and back, completely killing the Great Horn Army"s main forces.
"Even if the Great Horn Army"s main forces really have the Rat G.o.d"s protection and they can kill their way through the encirclement of the four great clans, don"t forget that the strongest and most terrifying Gold Clan is waiting ahead!
"Right now, the Great Horn Army"s choice is to send an unending stream of troops into the Gold Clan"s territory.
"Let"s put aside whether or not the crazy rat people can defeat the hungry wolves, tigers, and leopards.
"Think about it first. If you were the higher-ups of the four great clans like the Blood Hoof Clan, how would you view the change in the situation? Would you wholeheartedly help the Gold Clan and attack the Great Horn Army from the back?"
That question made Ice Storm fall back into deep thought.
"Now that I think about it, the reason why the Blood Hoof Clan"s pursuers changed their strategy from encirclement to expulsion was not only because of our piece of news."
Meng Chao continued. "In fact, for the four great clans, including the Blood Hoof Clan, it was the best solution to drive all the rioting rat people in their respective territories to the Gold Clan"s territory.
"No matter how terrible the chaos caused by the rat people was on the surface, their individual combat abilities were weak, they lacked heavy weapons such as totem armors, they lacked of a foundation, and so on. They were a motley crew. No matter how jubilant they were right then, they would be destroyed sooner or later.
"The real compet.i.tion for the five great clans are still each other.
"To be more precise, for the four great clans like the Blood Hoof Clan, it is the Gold Clan.
"When the Battle of Glory began, the Gold Clan was already in a dominant position.
"However, the main city of the Blood Hoof Clan, their most powerful challenger, suffered the most serious damage from the rat people. As a result, the Blood Hoof Clan"s vitality was greatly damaged, and they almost withdrew from the compet.i.tion stage.
"Without the Blood Hoof clan as a powerful challenger, the Thunder, Dark Moon, and Divine Wood Clans will not be able to compete with the Gold Clan at all. Not to mention, the throne of the War Chief will still be held by the strongest warriors among the lion men or tigermen. Even the spoils of war and the distribution of battle merits in the Battle of Glory will greatly reduce the authority of the Blood Hoof Clan and the other three clans.
"I don"t think that the chiefs, priests, and generals of those four clans are willing to see such a bleak future become a reality.
"Right now, if they still want to defeat the Gold Clan, there is only one way left for them—push the tiger to swallow the wolf. Let the rat people charge into the Gold Clan"s territory and let the Great Horn Army wreak havoc before the eyes of the wolves and tigers. It would be best if they could inflict heavy damage on the Gold Clan"s heavy cavalry."