Zhan Long

Chapter 386 Change in Tactics

After logging off, I began feeling hot all over. I sat up on the bed and numbly looked at my arm. Using my Yi Hai, I could see the aura surging through my arteries, but I kept feeling as though I couldn’t control this energy, a feeling that I never had before. Could it be that relentlessly battling in the game caused my energy to go out of control.

My arm suddenly shook fiercely as the white aura swirled around and scattered. I took a deep breath and forcefully suppressed the violent aura, allowing my body to calm down. I turned around and looked at the other bed. Glasses Bro was still in the game twitching. He should be in a very intense battle right now, but with his skills, he probably wouldn’t last the first 24 hours before he’s gets killed. That thought made me feel a little better.

After taking a quick cold shower, I called Wan Er. She was currently in the game and her voice sounded rushed: “Li Xiao Yao, you’re offline?”

“Yeah, Zhan Long is currently regrouping. Wan Er, do you and Dong Cheng have time to get offline and get something to eat?”

“Wait for me, the Fort Yuan Ling BOSS is really strong. Give us 5 minutes. We’ll log off when we finish the BOSS.

“Okay, I’ll wait at the entrance.”

“Okay!”

……

After waiting outside the girl’s dorms for awhile, Wan Er and Dong Cheng finally came down. Tang Qi also meandered over from the boy’s dorm in the 7th building. He was carrying four cups of milk tea over and he laughed, saying, “Here, drink some first! Everyone has been working hard!”

I took the milk tea cups and distributed them amongst the two girls, then asked, “What’s the situation like in Fan Shu City? It’s pretty fun battling against the NPC army right?”

Wan Er nodded and said, “In terms of obtaining equipments, Fan Shu players are getting it easy. There are at least 10 Valkyrie Tier BOSSES in Fort Yuan Ling, and over 30 Emperor Tier BOSSes. It’s only been 7 hours, and we’ve already killed five Emperor Tier BOSSes and two Valkyrie Tier ones. The only problem is that we’ve also suffered great losses. The NPCs’ levels are just too high. Sometimes, they’re practically crushing us. If it wasn’t for the Fan Shu City NPC army helping us battle, we might’ve already been annihilated….”

I was stunned, “You’ve already killed two Valkyrie Tier BOSSes? How come you’re so lucky…. You must’ve gotten quite a few high quality equipment right?”

Dong Cheng giggled, “Actually, Q-Sword only got a Valkyrie Tier armor and Wan Er got a Superior Valkyrie Tier dagger that has an attack that’s a little higher than your Cold Iron Sword. Now, all of her normal attacks deal at least 3000 damage. It’s so overpowering it’s scary…”

I was speechless. When I finally recovered I said, “Wow, I should hide whenever I see Wan Er from now on…..”

Wan Er shook her fist and said, “Why do you need to hide from me!”

I laughed and took a step back before asking, “Wan Er, what should we eat?”

“Let’s eat some western food, it’ll be faster.”

“Alright! Dong Cheng’s paying!”

Stunned, Dong Cheng opened her small mouth, “Why am I paying? Isn’t Sister* the one who usually freeloads?”

TL Note: She referring to herself

I pointed at Tang Qi, “Because you’re bringing this one!”

Dong Cheng gritted her teeth, “Tang Qi! You…”

Tang Qi quickly smiled apologetically, “Miss, I’ll do anything to pay you back. Just don’t get angry. I can’t win against Li Xiao Yao, so we can’t offend him right now…..”

Dong Cheng glared at me with her beautiful eyes, then grabbed my arm and said, “What do you mean by ‘we’? I’m with Brother Xiao Yao, you’re on your own…..”

Tang Qi facepalmed, “Damn, why do I get this urge to kill myself. Why don’t we go eat already. Otherwise, I’m afraid a poisonous energy will attack my heart and kill me.”

……

Going into the school dining hall, we filled the table up with steaks and salads amongst other things.

Tang Qi stared at me as I sat next to Wan Er. I couldn’t help but smile, “Tang Qi, you bastard, what are you looking at? Do you want to eat me up or something?”

Tang Qi was speechless. Finally, he said, “No way, I can’t even defeat you…”

Wan Er rubbed her lips and smiled, “I heard that the Tang sect in Si Chuan is an expert in poisons. You wouldn’t feed Li Xiao Yao any poison to kill him, would you?”

Tang Qi’s face turned green, “No way……. Definitely not? I’m not that kind of person….”

I smiled, “Wan Er, don’t worry. Using poison is enough to land him 50 years in prison!”

“That…..” Tang Qi grinned and said, “Why don’t we just happily eat. All this talk is making me sweat. Look, I was born under the red flag and I’m a beautiful young man who lived a happy childhood, how could I ever do something like that? Unless Li Xiao Yao does something to miss Dong Cheng, I would never do something like that….”

Dong Cheng squinted her eyes, “Oh? What could Li Xiao Yao do to me?”

Tang Qi suddenly became awkward and rubbed his nose, “For example, if Xiao Yao were to take miss Dong Cheng to a hotel outside of the school behind Wan Er’s back, and thus sully the mistress, then I would definitely not let him get away with that!”

Dong Cheng exclaimed, “Would he?”

Wan Er also stared at me, “Yea, Xiao Yao, would you?”

I calmly cut into the steak and looked up at the three of them as I grinned, “I would’ve done it earlier if I wanted to….”

Tang Qi was speechless.

In a few seconds, Dong Cheng’s face grew red from the embarrassment as she finally said, “Then exactly when would you do it?”

“噗……”林婉儿喝着的果汁喷了。

“Pu….” Wan Er gulped down some juice after choking on her food.

……

After we quickly ate our dinner, it was getting close to end of the 2 hours rest period. I recovered in my bed for a bit, and quietly raised my qi as I silently chanted the incantation for Flying Swordplay. Only when I felt that strange wild energy in my heart calm down did I finally log on. It must have been from battling so fiercely for such a long time that I lost control over the flow of my qi, otherwise, something like this would never had happened. In actuality, whether or not a game like [Destiny] would increase the mind’s mental capabilities was up for debate. Either way, I wouldn’t understand the esoteric effects of the psychology, but, there had to be some reason the old geezer decided to participate in making this game. I know him too well. If there wasn’t a good enough reason for him to do so, the geezer would never lift a finger. If he worked on this game then I would have to truly work hard in order to get the true benefits from playing it.

Game Start!

“Shua!”

I appeared on the southern side of Fort Zi Feng. The armies that came from Ba Huang City were currently fiercely attacking the wall. The axe bearer at the front was General Luo Jian. With one hand, he swung his Frost Battle Axe, and massacred several barbarians under the wall. The battle axe emanated frost as it danced on the battlefield. With one look and I could tell it wasn’t any old normal equipment. In the character introduction, this Luo Qian was Ba Huang City’s Duke Luo Lei’s twin, and the battle axe in his hand was a godly weapon – Ice Demon. It was the only other godly weapon in the seven great armies of Ba Huang City besides Angela’s own weapon. The two of them made up Ba Huang City’s Two Godly Weapons.

The NPC army continued their siege for a while longer and it seemed pointless to keep watching. The sky began turning white in the east as dawn approached. I slowly pulled out the Emperor Qin’s sword from my back. Just as I was about to join in the battle, I suddenly saw Li Mu, Wang Jian and a few other players come dashing over from the west. Li Mu shouted as he was sprinting at me, “Xiao Yao, we’ve got a problem! The players in Ba Huang City are being massacred!”

“What’s the situation?”

“Look at the battlefield in the east!”

With lightning speed, I leapt up and climbed a large tree. As I looked into the distance from the high branches, I noticed that in the East, the Hell’s Core Plains were basically painted in blood. Corpses littered the ground as dust blew into the air. You could tell that someone laid destruction upon the field, and at least 70% of the bodies on the ground were players from Ba Huang City and many of them were from [Prague] and [Vanguard]!

“Exactly what happened?” I hesitantly asked as I pointed to the East.

Li Mu gritted his teeth and raised his longsword, “In the 2 hours that we had been offline, [Hero’s Mound: First Division] and [Thousand Burial] went against everyone’s objections and rashly provoked all of the small Ba Huang City guilds. They gathered together 300,000 men to form a square formation, and ambushed the Jiu Li City army on the northern side of the fort. However, they were discovered by [Legend], [House of Prestige], [Judgement] and [Appearance Alliance]. Those guilds then got together, and crushed the force. It was as easy as crushing ants. Unable to take the injustice, [Vanguard], [Prague] and [Flying Dragon] sent reinforcements to help, but ended up falling for a trap and were annihilated in a forest near Moonlight Forest. They were ambushed in a low basin. The big guilds suffered losses of 50% and up. Motherf*cker, it’s rumored that even Simple was killed!”

*Editor note If Simple was massacred also you know you suck at strategizing

“What? Simple, she…she was killed?” I was shocked. I looked at the score rankings. Indeed, Simple’s points hadn’t risen in a long time. She really had been killed!

……

“Boss, what should we do?” General Wang Jian clenched his fist, “If we let them keep this up, then all of Ba Huang City’s players will be killed. How…. how are we supposed to fight the City Battle like that?!”

I furrowed my brows and stared at Hell’s Core for a long time. Finally, I jumped off the big tree and looked up before saying, “Let’s draw up some battle plans first. We have to destroy some of the big guilds in Jiu Li City, or else everything really will be over for us!”

“How do we crush them?” Li Mu asked.

In a somber voice I said, “Like this. I’ll make a 10 man party, and invite all of the Guild Masters of each of Ba Huang City major guilds. From there, we’ll make our battle plans!”

“Okay!”

After creating the team, I immediately sent out the invitations, asking all of the Guild Masters of Ba Huang City’s major guilds to join. Jian Feng Han, Yan Zhao Warrior, Misty Clouds, Soaring Dragon, Tyrant of Western Chu, and Han Bei Song were among the ones I invited.

……

“Shua shua shua” the system sounded each time a Guild Master joined the party. A group of Guild Master ranked players joined into my party. At that moment, none of the Guild Masters could refuse my invitation. The battle situation had fallen to such a terrible state. Ba Huang City had suffered such harsh losses that our forces only equaled to 50% of Jiu Li City’s forces. If we kept going down this path then we would definitely be annihilated. The other Guild Masters began the discussion——

Yan Zhao, “Damn, that was terrible. Whoever is commanding Jiu Li City is despicable. To think that they’d even use a baiting tactic. When the hell did they hide in the forest, how come we didn’t get any information about them? What the hell were our scouts doing!”

Jian Feng Han, “Sigh, even Big Sister died….”

TL Note: I almost feel sad for JFH lol

Tyrant of the Western Chu, “Our [Wrath of the Heroes] only has 2000+ people left. Li Xiao Yao, you didn’t come until after the battle was over, it’s too late….”

I sincerely said, “At least you all haven’t died yet. That means it’s not over just yet. Why don’t you all report your remaining number?”

Yan Zhao said, “[Prague] has around 5500 men who can still fight!”

Jian Feng Han, “[Vanguard] still has 7000….”

Soaring Dragon, “[Flying Dragon] has 9000 left….”

Misty Cloud, “Our [Enemies at the Gate] managed to stay fairly complete.We still have 11000+ men left. [Blood Contract] still had 3000+ people, same as [Zhan Long]. All together, we have around 50,000 men. That should be enough to fight, right?”

Tyrant of Western Chu miserably said, “We had around 400,000 men before, and we were still defeated. What can 50,000 do?”

Yan Zhao said, “Li Xiao Yao, you brought us all over, does this mean you have some kind of a plan?”

I nodded, “Yup!”

Jian Feng Han, “What plan? Out with it!”

I smiled, “A strange man’s methods can bite a strange man back. We’ll also use a baiting tactic. I looked at the geography of the map and to the south of Hell’s Core there’s a Bowl Valley. All of your guilds that are being chased after, why don’t you bring the Jiu Li armies to that map. [Zhan Long], [Enemies at the Gate] and [Blood Contract] will bring a group of other small guilds to ambush them there, and destroy some of the main forces of Jiu Li City first!”

Soaring Dragon gave a cold smile, “The people of Jiu Li City aren’t fools. They have spies in all of our guilds. That baiting tactic is much easier said than done. Can you even trick a deadman with this clumsy tactic?”

I couldn’t help but smile, “Strategies aren’t alive, but men are. The art of war is based on tricks. Did I said that we were just baiting the enemy? Listen to me so we still have a chance of recovering this battle! [Vanguard], have the people who are chasing after you go along the border of Hell’s Core, and head towards Bowl Valley. [Prague], bring the people chasing after you through Pear Blossom Mountain, and retreat into the north. [Blood Contract] will meet you at 38177, 13883 and ambush them from there. [Zhan Long] and [Enemies at the Gate] will flank them from both sides. If we time this correctly, then at five o’clock sharp we’ll turn around and strike. You’ll notice that the meeting places are all in Bowl Valley. We can surround the enemy when they least expect it. We’ll use these maneuvers to confuse the enemy, that way, we might be able to fight a winning battle!”

“F*ck…..”

Yan Zhao took a deep breath and softly muttered, “Li Xiao Yao, what the hell do you do normally?”

I couldn’t help but smile, “I play strategy games. My old ID was Brother Xiao Yao in Country Battles. If you don’t believe me then just check it out!”