"Yes, a Nether Ring guild member sent us a live POV a while ago. You can check it out yourself…"
Hot and Sour Noodles looked dejected and helpless as he sent me the video feed.
I tapped it open and saw the rising dawn at Sunset Basin. Last night"s downpour had triggered a mountain flash flood, so boundless river water was flushed down from two canyons and directly into the sea of Chinese players at the center. Countless people were screaming and struggling in the water, but there was nothing they could do to escape. Players couldn"t teleport back to the city when swimming, so they would need to swim to the sh.o.r.e. However, swimming also consumed a huge amount of Stamina, and these players lacked the food to survive until that point at all.
The land that was Sunset Basin had turned into a sea almost immediately. Nearly 20 million players including some of Cyan Earth City"s own players were struggling in the flood. Breeze and Rain wasn"t called the number one general beneath G.o.d of War for nothing. In order to ensure the China army"s demise, he actually ordered a couple million players to herd the China army all the way into the death trap and keep them there, effectively telling them to die for the greater good.
White lights kept flas.h.i.+ng as people drowned in the deep water. Countless pieces of equipment and potions popped out from the dead bodies and sank into the bottom of the newly-formed sea where they would never see the light of the day again.
……
It was too much. Unable to bear watching the POV any longer, I closed it and consoled Hot and Sour Noodles, "Don"t be sad, uncle…"
Hot and Sour Noodles shook his head bitterly. "I"m fine, Lu Chen. In fact, I"m the one who should be saying that to you. I completely understand your pains, you know. There are too many players in China, and most of them don"t listen to orders at all. Right now there are only a handful of people I can trust, and that includes you, Candlelight Shadow, Warsky and Beautiful Little Pepper. The future of China"s three main cities lies in all your hands."
I smiled. "I know. I"ll be back with Ancient Sword"s cavalry in no time!"
"Mn. The Impa.s.sable Great Wall has fallen to 5% or so durability in the last couple hours or so. One more a.s.sault should be enough to take it!"
"Hehe, very good. We"ll be there immediately!"
"Mn!"
Hot and Sour Noodles smiled again and said, "I"ve heard of your battle against Natural Flow, by the way. I should"ve known that you would be able to wipe out all the White Horse Cavalry in just a couple of hours! That"s not the only good news. At Ice River Canton, Candlelight Shadow was able to capitalize on the enemy"s fatigue and wipe out almost 1.4 million Purple Grape City players and 2 million Cyan Earth City players. Let"s all keep this up, okay?"
"Okay!"
I was surprised by the other news, to be honest. I wasn"t expecting Candlelight Shadow to kill this many players at Ice River Canton. Are they going to keep earning those free Nation War contribution points while we have to fight for them every step of the way? Since the very beginning of this invasion, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls had been battling top guilds like G.o.d"s Domain and Natural Flow, while Candle Dragon, Warsky Alliance, Soul Battle Robes, Pop Culture, Hall of Immortality, Rose of the Holy Domain had been battling second and third-rate guilds only. If we looked at it in terms of contribution points alone, we were clearly on the losing end of this war!
That being said, I knew that this was the right thing to do, so I had no regrets. Just like Li Chengfeng said earlier, sometimes some things had to be done!
……
A few minutes later, everyone was gathered at one place. Again, we lost a lot of Cyan Tiger Cavalrymen, but the Dragonlight Cavalry was still mostly unhurt. That made me relax a little. From the start, I knew we couldn"t lose too many Dragonlight Cavalrymen to Natural Flow, or we wouldn"t have the manpower to do battle against super guilds like Cyan Beast, G.o.d"s Domain, Nation Guardian and Dark Clouds!
I unsheathed the Purple Ying Sword and pointed to the northeast. "We return the Impa.s.sable Great Wall! We"re gonna destroy it in one go so that it cannot be a nuisance to us any longer!"
Led by me and Lin Yixin, everyone pulled out their weapons and rode toward the Impa.s.sable Great Wall again.
We encountered a surprising number of Purple Grape City players and Elephant City players along the way, but we still trampled all of them. It was impossible for small patrolling forces to hamper our guilds too much.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the Impa.s.sable Great Wall once more.
The rain had stopped, and the sun had risen from the east. The golden rays of morning illuminated the wall in full and revealed the innumerable cracks and holes that marred its once pristine surface. Our catapults had dug so many deep holes into the Impa.s.sable Great Wall that it looked like a bullet-riddled wall from the distance. It could collapse at any moment.
Rumble rumble rumble...
On the ground, the White Marsh Catapults, ballistae and more siege weapons continued to fire at will, and beneath the wall, countless cloud ladders were propped against the wall. Over 25% of the wallwalk had been occupied by our players, and they were more or less going even against the Purple Grape City players right now. Red Maple and G.o.d"s Domain were undoubtedly powerful, but they couldn"t win a war of attrition because we drastically outnumbered them. If anything, it was impressive that they were able to hold back our tens of millions of troops with around ten million troops for over 10 hours.
Creak… creak...
Many battering rams were smas.h.i.+ng into the wall as well. Hanging at the front of the siege weapons was a giant pillar of rock, and every time it moved, it dealt incredible damage to the fortified armor of the wall. The battering rams were protected from arrows and ballista bolts by a thick circle of magic knights.
Hot and Sour Noodles himself was climbing up a cloud ladder and ordering loudly, "Anyone who has nothing to do should climb up the wall, seize the high ground from the enemy, or cover for our siege weapons! Motherf.u.c.ker, we"ve been delayed by this wall for too G.o.dd.a.m.n long already! I swear I"m going to take out this fortification in one hour at most!"
I unsheathed my sword and canceled my mount. I climbed after I launched myself off the Armored Ice Qilin Horse"s back and landed right on top of a cloud ladder. It was around this time Hot and Sour Noodles saw me and guffawed. "Ancient Sword and Snowy Cathaya are back! This is perfect!"
I nodded in acknowledgement before ordering my players, "Dragonlight Cavalry, dismount for now and get up there with our comrades! Don"t attract the enemy"s attention until you"ve mounted up again! Also, once you"ve reached the top, release your Ghost Chariots and take out the enemy with Ghost Chariot Slas.h.!.+ We"re going to seize all the high ground there is to seize in twenty minutes! Siege engine team, take out that f.u.c.king gate already!"
Gui Guzi, Li Chengfeng, He Yi, Chaos Moon and the rest of the Dragonlight Cavalry immediately started climbing. In just a couple of minutes, a couple thousand Dragonlight Cavalrymen were on the wallwalk and engaging the enemy. A few minutes later, once their mount cooldowns were up, the Dragonlight Cavalry resummoned their mounts and resumed fighting as mounted riders.
Red Maple"s face almost turned purple when he saw our Dragonscale Beasts being summoned from about a hundred meters away. He roared angrily, "s.h.i.+t! We let Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand"s Dragonlight Cavalry up our walls? What the f.u.c.k should we do? Cyan Frost, how many Wildfire Riders do we have left?"
Cyan Frost plunged her sword into a Righteousness knight"s neck before pulling it out and drenching her own clothes in blood. Without blinking, she answered, "We had almost 210k Wildfire Riders at the beginning, but at least half of them had died defending the walls, so…"
Red Maple gritted his teeth and ordered, "Tell them to get up the wallwalk and fight the Dragonlight Cavalry to the death!"
"No, you cannot!"
Cyan Frost pleaded earnestly, "Calm down, Red Maple! The Impa.s.sable Great Wall is just a pa.s.s; a pa.s.s that we retake afterward. Right now, we are at a disadvantage, and we are under attack by many Divine Generals. The chances that the Wildfire Riders would be able to defeat the enemy is minimal at best, and we still need them to protect Purple Grape City! If we gamble it all here and fail, it will truly be over for us!"
Red Maple"s face was grim, but he nodded slowly. "Okay, you"re right!"
He abruptly raised his sword and shouted, "All Wildfire Riders, pull back from the wallwalk and withdraw to Undead Hills of Swallow Ear Canton! Do not be disheartened, for the loss of a territory or a land is commonplace in a war! A better opportunity than this will reveal itself to us eventually, and don"t forget that our ultimate objective is to chase out the Chinese from the Center and occupy its fertile lands completely! Its rich resources belong to us j.a.panese!"
……
A great number of G.o.d"s Domain"s players withdrew from the wallwalk immediately after Red Maple gave the order, meaning that the only ones left to face us were the second and third-rate players of Purple Grape City. The battle was already tilting slightly in our favor, but now it became a one-sided slaughter.They could barely even wound us with their weak resistance.
The Purple Ying Sword was covered in blood. I didn"t know how many people I killed, only that I was still the number one player on the contribution point leaderboard and that even a mage like Lian Xin couldn"t catch up to me. Well, it was the natural result since I always fought at the forefront, and always killed specifically those players who were giving our troops trouble. Now that the rules had been updated to give the killer 10% of their victim"s contribution points, it was only natural that I was acc.u.mulating contribution points at an insane rate!
The battle on the wallwalk had devolved into a complete ma.s.sacre, and the number of Purple Grape City on the Impa.s.sable Great Wall had dropped drastically from 12 to 4.8 million. Of course, part of the reason was due to top guilds such as G.o.d"s Domain and Tail Feather Palace teleporting back to their city and giving up the fight.
On the ground, the battering rams continued to ram against the crumbling structure until finally, a hundred-meter-long section of a wall directly in front of us abruptly collapsed. The Dragonlight Cavalrymen who happened to be standing on top of it as it came cras.h.i.+ng down tried their best to stay on their feet, and, thankfully, no one died to fall damage.
Rumble rumble rumble…
More and more parts of the Impa.s.sable Great Wall crumbled until finally, the entire place fell into ruins.
……
The millions of Purple Grape City players still standing atop the ruins stared at us in shock. It was as if they couldn"t believe that the so-called greatest wall on the entire Heavenblessed Continent would collapse one day. We didn"t wait for them to recover and charge them.
Chiang!
I unsheathed my sword and shouted, "Kill to your heart"s content, brothers and sisters! The time to earn contribution points is now! Once we overcome Undead Hills and Swallow Ear Canton, we"ll flatten Purple Grape City beneath our boots!"