Chapter 398: Night Raid
"These... these strongholds?"
Zheng Hongxi instantly snapped to attention. These strongholds were all uniformly built by the [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] alliance, and they were all neatly constructed exactly five tiles away from the [Dragon Battle] alliance leader's main city. Their intention was blatantly obvious.
They were going to conquer the [Dragon Battle] alliance leader!
Clearly, these people had come prepared.
In *The Land of the Rate*, there are vision rules. Within five tiles of a main city and two tiles of a stronghold falls under a player's field of vision. Once an enemy player sets these tiles as a march destination, a conspicuous red line appears, and a UI icon for the enemy troop shows up on the player's interface. Clicking it allows you to jump to the enemy troop's location.
Obviously, the people from [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] had planned this in advance. They deliberately avoided the [Dragon Battle] alliance leader's vision range, choosing to build strongholds five tiles outside his main city so they wouldn't be discovered.
Since building strongholds takes several hours, if they had been spotted, the [Dragon Battle] people would have prepared.
Once the strongholds were built and all troops were fully assembled, the [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] people could directly focus fire to conquer the [Dragon Battle] alliance leader. By then, it would be around 4 or 5 in the morning, and the [Dragon Battle] people wouldn't have time to react.
However, since the current players were all newcomers, two of them still made mistakes. They chose land near the strongholds as their destination, exposing their troop movements.
Thus, [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes]'s plan for a night raid was accidentally discovered by Zheng Hongxi.
Zheng Hongxi sat up abruptly.
The chat group was silent. It was past two in the morning, and most people were asleep. Zheng Hongxi didn't dare delay. He directly found the alliance leader's phone number and called.
"Hello?" A stranger's voice answered, clearly just woken up.
"Alliance leader, get online quickly. The [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] people are building strongholds near your city. They might be coming for you!" Zheng Hongxi said.
"What? Okay, I'll log in right away!"
The alliance leader hung up hastily, obviously logging into the game.
Two minutes later, the alliance chat group exploded.
Jianping Tu General: "Quick, everyone online, come out! Big trouble! The [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] people are trying to conquer me. If you're online, type 1."
Soon, six or seven people typed 1. Clearly, these were night owls who hadn't gone to sleep yet.
"What's wrong, alliance leader?"
"What? The [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] people are trying to conquer you? When?"
"Damn! I just noticed. They've built strongholds right at the alliance leader's doorstep! What do we do, alliance leader?"
Jianping Tu General: "Don't panic. We have an emergency plan. Those of you online now, go to a tile near my main city and build a stronghold. Don't get too close to my city—four or five tiles away is fine."
Zheng Hongxi typed: "Is it too late to build strongholds now?"
Jianping Tu General: "It's not too late. They probably won't conquer me tonight, but starting tomorrow, our two alliances will definitely be at war. If we prepare early, we won't be caught off guard later."
"Also, those of you close to my city, send your main troops to garrison my city. Pay attention to the very center—don't garrison the wrong spot."
Someone asked: "There are too few of us. Should we call Yun Shen and the others over?"
Jianping Tu General: "I'll make the calls. You all just handle your own tasks."
Soon, nearly half of the [Dragon Battle] members were woken up by phone calls.
Since the [Dragon Battle] members had come over from other online games together, several of the top fighters were old acquaintances and had each other's contact information. So the alliance leader directly called and woke up a few top fighters, telling them to send their main troops to help defend.
At the same time, the [Dragon Battle] alliance leader, Jianping Tu General, activated [Hold Fast].
[Hold Fast] is a special feature in *The Land of the Rate*. It requires a 3-hour preparation period, after which the Hold Fast state begins. This state is equivalent to a truce—no enemy can attack, and it lasts for 5 hours before ending.
If he were a veteran player, the alliance leader would activate [Hold Fast] every day before logging off. But since these people were all newcomers, they hadn't anticipated the enemy choosing this time to ambush, so they had been negligent.
Starting the preparation for [Hold Fast] at 2:30 AM, the most dangerous period was from 2:30 to 5:30 AM. If the enemy broke through during this time, the entire alliance would be conquered, and it would be game over. If they held out, they would be in a truce state until 10:30 AM the next morning, giving them a chance to catch their breath.
Fortunately, [Dragon Battle] had an emergency plan and good organizational discipline, so they quickly got into action.
Regardless of distance, all the top fighters pulled their main troops to assist in defending the alliance leader's city, ensuring he wouldn't be conquered before the [Hold Fast] preparation was complete. All other online members began building strongholds near the alliance leader, ready to provide immediate support.
Every second counted.
In reality, the [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] people weren't that many—just over a dozen. After all, most players had to work the next day, and only a minority stayed up late to play games.
These people quickly realized their intentions had been exposed, so they hurried to deploy their troops. A few players nearby simply launched attacks directly, hoping to finish the fight before the [Dragon Battle] alliance's top fighters arrived.
For a moment, the situation became extremely chaotic.
Jianping Tu General's troops were decent in combat power, but he wasn't a whale, so he could at most take on two or three enemy main forces. The key lay in the garrison troops from others.
The enemy troops were already paving roads toward Jianping Tu General's main city, flipping tiles one by one, preparing to attack the city area.
However, since they weren't fully prepared, the few troops that had arrived were mostly cavalry. Though their combat power was decent, a single attack couldn't deplete the city's durability, greatly slowing their progress.
Soon, troops from members closer to the alliance leader arrived and directly garrisoned the center of his city. The troops from [Dragon Battle]'s top fighters were also on the way and would arrive in less than an hour.
Once the garrison was successful, the enemy would have to defeat the garrison troops first to conquer the alliance leader.
More and more people were joining the chat group, all asking about the current battle situation.
"I'm here, just logged in. How's it going now?"
"Have the top fighters arrived? Is the alliance leader okay?"
"I'm sending my troops to garrison right now. They'll be there in half an hour!"
At this moment in the game, it was clearly visible that blue arrows were pointing from all over Liang Province toward the alliance leader's location.
At 3:40 AM, the players from [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes] officially launched their attack!
After an hour of back-and-forth fighting, Jianping Tu General's outer city area had already fallen. Once the innermost main city area fell as well, the entire [Dragon Battle] alliance would become a vassal of [How Could We Say We Have No Clothes].
And the [Hold Fast] state still had nearly two hours before it could be successfully activated.
Everyone was nervously watching the battlefield dynamics. At this stage, it was pure brute force—whoever had the stronger troops would win!
Genius remembers this site's address in one second: