Chapter 139: Ballistae Enter the Fray

Startled, the bandit commander turned toward the source of the sound, only to see a blurred figure wielding an iron sword and leading a group of "government soldiers" as they rushed out of the brush to charge onto the path.

The infantrymen holding wooden shields were still fending off the arrows from the opposite bank when the ambushing "government soldiers" charged from behind. It was only then that the bandit commander and his subordinates realized they had severely underestimated this force, but it was already too late.

Parting the spears before them, Li Zhan and Zhao Ming led the players and NPC soldiers into an instantaneous collision with the bandits. Sword flashes swept through the air, sending up sprays of crimson blood as damage numbers rapidly fluttered upward.

A bandit spearmen thrust his spear forward into a dense cluster of shadows. Realizing his thrust had met only empty air, he attempted to retract the weapon, only to find the shaft immovable. Before he could even register his astonishment, a swordsman from Yanhuang Village grabbed hold of the spear shaft, shoved his superior-grade iron sword straight along it, and drove it squarely into the two hands the bandit had clamped around the pole. Overwhelmed by the agony, the bandit dropped the spear and wailed at the top of his lungs. Following the noise, the swordsman delivered a second slash that abruptly ended the racket and dropped him to the ground.

Shielded by four player leaders, Li Zhan charged at the very forefront of the formation. Although his own level was relatively low, the four player leaders possessed formidable strength, living up to their reputations as the elite among players. All of them were above level twenty-five, and "Chatting and Laughing" had even reached level thirty. Wielding an iron sword at the vanguard of the group, his fierce and ruthless battle cries contrasted sharply with his usual scholarly demeanor.

Behind the five of them followed twenty players, each fighting valiantly to earn more village contribution points while seizing the opportunity to grind their levels.

Before setting out yesterday, Li Zhan had already used his mayor's authority to temporarily establish a merit quest: during this bandit suppression operation, every bandit killed by a player would grant two merit points, continuing until all of the merit points available for Li Zhan to distribute were entirely exhausted. (At the start of each month, the mayor possesses 500 merit points to issue village quests. Unused points from the previous month do not carry over to the next.)

With a barrage of random arrows in front and an ambush from behind, the bandit commander knew the battle was lost. Steeling his heart with a strange cry, he flipped the broadsword in his hand and lunged toward the sparser area of figures, attempting to break through the encirclement and flee back to the stronghold to fetch reinforcements.

The area with sparse figures was defended by Zhao Ming and several swordsmen from Ejiacap.

The soldiers of Ejiacap had very low defense, and their levels differed too drastically from the bandits. Following the initial exchange, they had all suffered severe injuries. For this second clash, Zhao Ming deliberately led them in hit-and-run attacks, concentrating their force to avoid dispersion.

Having just led several swordsmen to cut down two bandit spearmen, the bandit commander let out a wild howl and charged fiercely in their direction, brandishing his broadsword. Zhao Ming hurriedly stepped forward, bracing his wooden shield with his left hand while thrusting his superior-grade iron sword toward the howling foe with his right.

"Thud!" The iron sword pierced the belly of the bandit commander, and a bright red "-20" floated into the air. Simultaneously, with a sharp "Clang!", the bandit commander's broadsword heavily struck the braced wooden shield. The shield's durability instantly plummeted by 4 points, fracturing visibly, and the shock knocked the merely level-fifteen Zhao Ming back several paces until he was caught by several Ejiacap swordsmen behind him.

Desperate to break through, the bandit commander kept pressing forward, swinging his broadsword savagely. Seeing this, several Ejiacap swordsmen hurriedly raised their wooden shields and thrust their iron swords together toward the bandit commander. Three of the four iron swords struck home, yet they shaved off less than twenty health points before the bandit commander hacked one of the wooden shields apart with a single blow. The force of the strike forced that swordsman to sit down hard on the ground. With another kick, he knocked aside a second swordsman blocking his path, opening up a gap through which the bandit commander eagerly lunged.

Just as the bandit commander believed his breakthrough had succeeded and felt a surge of secret triumph, several points of cold, starlight-like brilliance suddenly materialized behind him, enveloping his entire body like flickering fireflies. For a split second, the bandit commander's movements abruptly halted, and the fireflies vanished into his body. A rapid sequence of damage numbers suddenly surged above his head: "-36".

Wild Dance [Sword Technique], First Form: Meteor Flying Rain.

Until the moment of his death, the bandit commander never figured out why, with hardly any government soldiers left around him, he had suddenly taken seven or eight stabs to his back—and judging solely by the attack power, his opponent's level was clearly not low, at least matching his own.

His eyes wide with shock and utter bewilderment, the bandit leader collapsed to the ground, dropping a dozen glistening copper coins.

Zhao Ming was somewhat surprised by the potency of his own Meteor Flying Rain technique as well. Earlier, seeing that the bandit commander was about to escape, he had executed the Wild Dance skill out of sheer urgency, never expecting the results to be quite so remarkable. Not only did the attack power exceed his expectations (as Meteor Flying Rain possessed the lowest single-sword attack power), but it had also managed to execute seven strikes in an instant, every single one of which hit the target.

After a brief moment of astonishment, Zhao Ming hurriedly checked his level. Li Zhan had previously admonished him: upon reaching level fifteen, he must master the naval combat and shield techniques before continuing to level up. Although Zhao Ming could not fathom why it was imperative to learn those two skills at level fifteen, or what difference it would make if he learned them at level sixteen or seventeen, Mayor's orders were absolute and infallible; he simply needed to obey without question. (NPCs lacked the sensitive awareness regarding level progression that players possessed.)

Seeing that his level remained firmly at fifteen and his experience had only increased by 20%, Zhao Ming breathed a sigh of relief and resumed leading the Ejiacap swordsmen to assist the main force in assaulting the bandits.

With bulging muscles and a ferocious expression, the bandit chieftain Wan Hu roared angrily to restore order among the chaotic bandits. Spotting a panicked underling, Wan Hu immediately swept his calf-thick staff horizontally, killing him in a single blow.

Wan Hu had originally been an ordinary bandit leader.

By chance, during a severe food shortage, Wan Hu had led a band of bandits to raid an NPC village named Murong Village in Yingchuan County. Along with a massive haul of grain, they captured seven fair maidens and rummaged through a young man's home to unearth the very staff he now carried.

The staff was as thick as a calf's leg, and even two bandits together found it quite cumbersome to lift. Wan Hu, who had always possessed brute strength, weighed the staff in his hand and felt that although it was somewhat heavy, he could still wield it effectively. Seeing his staff snatched away, the young man wept and pleaded, hugging Wan Hu's legs in an attempt to get it back. Naturally, Wan Hu ignored him entirely, kicking the young man away with such force that he crashed squarely into the wall and lost consciousness on the spot.

After the young man passed out, the bandits rummaged through the inner room to discover a skill book covered in bizarre diagrams and a blueprint. Wan Hu was illiterate; after staring at the skill book for a long time, he could not figure out what it taught, but since it was a skill book, he kept it—perhaps it would prove useful one day. As for the blueprint, he would simply capture a craftsman later to decipher it.

Wan Hu intended to keep the seven beauties in the stronghold until they captured the counties of Yang'an and Yingchuan, planning to use their bodies to celebrate his victory that very night and enjoy them thoroughly before discarding them to his subordinates once he grew tired of them. Frustratingly, one of them had managed to escape later on, leaving only six behind—a fact that filled Wan Hu with lingering irritation whenever he thought of it.

Ever since acquiring this staff, Wan Hu felt as though his abilities had abruptly ascended to a whole new tier. He had actually managed to master tactical formations; although he only knew a single formation, it had still caused the government forces no end of misery. Moreover, the staff itself possessed numerous wondrous properties, frequently and unintentionally unleashing auxiliary statuses that inflicted abnormal conditions upon both friend and foe alike. Aided by this staff, Wan Hu had rapidly conquered several villages, gathered a faction of bandits, and entrenched himself in Niutou Mountain to openly defy the imperial court.

At ordinary times, Wan Hu also found the staff rather peculiar, and he had half a mind to have it appraised (NPCs did not strictly require appraisals to use weapons, though they remained blind to their attributes), but the fear of being recognized by government soldiers within the county town ultimately forced him to abandon the idea.

The fires surrounding the stronghold burned ever larger, radiating heat throughout the encampment until it resembled a blazing furnace. Even standing motionless left one drenched in sweat. Several wooden palisades had already caught fire, the dry timber crackling loudly. Lacking water, the lackeys had no choice but to push over the burning sections to prevent the flames from spreading into a single continuous blaze. However, with the inferno drawing steadily closer, tongues of flame were already licking at the rooftops, threatening to engulf the entire stronghold at any moment.

Frantic as an ant on a hot pan, Wan Hu cursed the bandit commander for taking so long to bring water back, denouncing him as a complete good-for-nothing.

At the main gate of the stronghold, government forces and players had just been beaten back by a barrage of rolling logs, and the bandits guarding the gate had barely caught their breath when they saw the government troops and players at the foot of the mountain steadily advancing once more, seemingly clustering around some kind of bulky apparatus. The bandits hurriedly reported this to Wan Hu, who swore profusely as he strode up to the parapet beside the gate, peering down the mountain through the glow of the flames.

By now, nearly all the trees along the mountain path had burned away, widening the track considerably and allowing over a dozen men to march abreast. Shen Kuo and the military magistrate of Yingchuan had conferred and initiated a second assault, this time pushing up the four ballistae brought from Yanhuang Village so the bandits could experience the might of modern ordnance firsthand.

Shielded by five successive walls of swordsmen, the four ballistae were steadily pushed along the mountain path side by side by eight Ejiacap soldiers. Behind the ballistae, a dozen enthusiastic players from Ejiacap joyfully clutched sixty ballista bolts, trailing closely behind to be the first to witness the ballistae in action; they had already activated their gaming recording software to capture every single detail.

When the ballistae were pushed to a distance of roughly four hundred meters from the stronghold gate, "Bouncing Fish" signaled a halt. The crowd immediately stopped as the swordsmen raised their wooden shields to block the arrows flying from the stronghold's watchtowers. Bouncing Fish and Ocean Girl hurriedly instructed the eight Ejiacap soldiers to pull the bowstrings, load the bolts, and take aim!

From the parapet, Wan Hu gazed through the mountain-wide blaze at the government soldiers lingering on the road, thoroughly perplexed. The bandits beside him wedged their rolling logs in place, waiting for the troops to close the distance before releasing them. At such a range, even if the logs were rolled out, the government forces would have ample time to flee and avoid injury entirely, especially since the surrounding forest had already been razed by fire, leaving nowhere to hide.

The players pulled out four ballista bolts and handed them to four of the eight soldiers, while the other four soldiers braced the stocks with their feet, laboriously hauling back the ox-tendon bowstrings until they locked into the triggers, then loading the bolts.

Bouncing Fish had the first five rows of swordsmen part into four pathways to clear the trajectories of the ballista bolts. The eight soldiers adjusted their ballistae behind the pathways, taking aim at the stronghold's wooden gates. Having completed their targeting, they reported one after another to Bouncing Fish: "Aiming complete!" "Aiming complete!"...

Bouncing Fish had torn a strip of linen from somewhere, binding it to a withered branch to fashion a triangular flag. Seeing that all the ballistae were aimed and ready, Bouncing Fish excitedly spat, rubbed his hands together, and earned a disgusted look from Ocean Girl standing nearby.

Having finished rubbing his hands, Bouncing Fish drew a deep breath and, waving the flag toward the stronghold's wooden gate like an artillery commander, roared:

"Fire!"