Chapter 402: Qingzhou and Yangzhou Divide Xuzhou
"Rate the Land" is different from other SLG games; you cannot simply relocate your main city at will.
Because the Alliance Leader's city is too important. If the enemy goes through great effort to attack the Alliance Leader's location, only for the Alliance Leader to spend money and teleport the city away, there would be no strategic depth at all.
In "Rate the Land," to relocate your main city, you must first build a sub-city. The main city can only be moved to where the sub-city is located.
This serves as a protective measure for the Alliance Leader, but it also gives the enemy a counter-strategy: if they spot you building a sub-city, they can block it in advance.
By now, [How Could We Be Without Clothes] could no longer capture the Alliance Leader of [Dragon Battle]. Their best chance was during the night raid. If that raid had succeeded, they could have unified Liangzhou. But unfortunately, it failed, and [Dragon Battle] would not give them a second opportunity.
Although [Dragon Battle] was winning battle after battle, the war remained deadlocked.
Because the entire Liangzhou region was enormous, with over a hundred thousand tiles. [How Could We Be Without Clothes] could easily adopt a strategy of trading space for time, playing guerrilla warfare with [Dragon Battle].
You dismantle one of my fortresses, and I'll build another somewhere else.
Members of [How Could We Be Without Clothes] also organized various small squads to launch guerrilla attacks on key players' cities. Deep Clouds Unknown Place almost had his main city captured because his main forces were out in the field.
Although many were exhausted, they clearly couldn't afford to slack off now. Since [How Could We Be Without Clothes] was fighting with such fervor, even if [Dragon Battle] wanted a truce, [How Could We Be Without Clothes] would never agree.
The two sides remained locked in this stalemate, fighting from dawn to dusk every day.
When would this civil war end? A week? A month?
No one knew. It would only end when one side's Alliance Leader was captured, or when all alliance members were too tired to fight and the Alliance Leader was abandoned by everyone.
...
The Liangzhou civil war lasted a full five days. During this time, civil wars also erupted in other provinces one after another.
In Jizhou, the top alliance [Years of Glory and Decay] struck first, and the second-ranked alliance in Jizhou had all its members captured overnight. A few people joined the top alliance, while others either restarted on a new server or fled to Bingzhou. Jizhou was unified.
In Bingzhou, three alliances unified peacefully. Since there was only one major alliance, [Mighty Mansion], and the other two small alliances didn't want a civil war, they merged into [Mighty Mansion] and each received officer positions. At the same time, Bingzhou also took in some refugees fleeing the civil war in Jizhou.
In Yangzhou, the two major alliances were [War Soul] and [Splendid]. For now, they were at peace. It was said that these two alliances had reached an agreement: one would break through the pass into Xuzhou, and the other into Jingzhou, each fighting their own battles without interfering with each other.
Additionally, Jingzhou, Yizhou, Youzhou, Qingzhou, and Xuzhou each had only one major alliance, so no civil wars broke out there. They were all quietly developing.
Only Liangzhou was still locked in fierce combat.
...
Zheng Hongxi had been fighting day and night for the past few days, his head spinning.
Alliance warfare was incredibly exhausting. Every day, without pause, he fought. When his main forces were wiped out, he pulled them back to his main city to recruit new troops. Once they were fully recruited, he sent them back to the front lines to continue fighting.
By now, [Dragon Battle] was winning battle after battle. The area around the Alliance Leader's main city and sub-cities of [How Could We Be Without Clothes] was swarming with [Dragon Battle]'s fortresses.
After all, [How Could We Be Without Clothes] had been purely on the defensive for so many days. It was already remarkable that they had held out this long.
It could be said that the fact their morale hadn't collapsed yet was a miracle.
Because of his brave performance over the past few days, Zheng Hongxi had caught the Alliance Leader's attention and was added to a small group of only about twenty people. This chat group was essentially the core group, where highly confidential information was discussed before being announced to everyone else via mail.
General Jianping Tu said: "Tonight at 10 PM, launch the final assault! If you can't make it due to circumstances, send a mail to request leave. I'll send a mass mail at 6 PM tonight to get everyone ready. We've been deadlocked for so long; success or failure hinges on this move. Capture the Alliance Leader of [How Could We Be Without Clothes], and we'll unify Liangzhou!"
Everyone was excited. After fighting for so long, they were finally about to achieve their revenge.
"Awesome! Tonight, let's capture that idiot Alliance Leader and make him regret his sneak attack!"
"Fight, fight, fight! Even if we don't sleep tonight, we have to drive [How Could We Be Without Clothes] out of Liangzhou!"
"Damn, a civil war lasting almost a week. I'm so sick of it. Fighting every day, no time to develop. It's too damaging."
"Same here. I just hope the civil war ends soon so I can rest and grab some land."
"Hopefully, the civil war ends tonight, and I can get a good night's sleep."
Zheng Hongxi was also excited. After fighting for so long, he could finally get a good night's sleep. Once Liangzhou was unified, he could rest properly, take a few tiles, and replenish his resources.
Just as they were discussing, someone posted a screenshot: "Quick, look at the two passes on the Xuzhou border, Mengyin and Huai'an!"
Everyone was puzzled. What did Xuzhou's passes have to do with them?
Zheng Hongxi checked the map and was shocked to see that outside both of Xuzhou's passes, there were dense clusters of fortresses!
"What the hell? What's going on?"
"What does this mean? Why did Qingzhou and Yangzhou build fortresses?"
"Why does Xuzhou have so few fortresses? Aren't they going to resist?"
The people in the chat group were dumbfounded. Was a war about to start?
Mengyin was the border pass between Qingzhou and Xuzhou, and Huai'an was the pass between Yangzhou and Xuzhou. At that moment, outside both passes, Qingzhou and Yangzhou had already built large numbers of fortresses, seemingly ready to attack the cities at any moment!
Not only had the players in Liangzhou noticed, but players in other provinces had also discovered it.
In fact, it was because the world channel had erupted into chaos that the Liangzhou players noticed these fortress clusters.
The world channel was already filled with furious arguments, but the players from Qingzhou and Yangzhou weren't saying a word. It was entirely the Xuzhou players who were cursing.
"The Xuzhou Alliance Leader, Heavenly Eclipse, is quite the schemer, isn't he? Are you Qingzhou's dog or Yangzhou's dog? How much did you sell the entire province for? Enough to buy coffins for your whole family?"
"Obviously, he's Qingzhou's dog. Heavenly Eclipse said in the group chat that all of us in Xuzhou should merge into Qingzhou. Hahahahaha!"
"An Alliance Leader of a top-ten alliance in the entire server, and he just sells the whole alliance to Qingzhou and Yangzhou without any resistance. Disgusting!"
"A piece of trash who sells his province for glory. I hope you get hit by a car and die!"
After scrolling through the world channel's chat history for a while, Zheng Hongxi finally understood what was happening.
Qingzhou and Yangzhou had almost simultaneously built fortress clusters at the two passes, Mengyin and Huai'an, clearly intending to break through and invade Xuzhou. But the Xuzhou Alliance Leader wasn't planning any resistance at all. Instead, he was asking all members to merge into Qingzhou.
Clearly, this Heavenly Eclipse had been a spy planted in Xuzhou by Qingzhou from the very beginning. He had painstakingly built the alliance and unified Xuzhou just to make it easier for Qingzhou to swallow the entire province!
As for Yangzhou's military action, it was easy to understand. They wanted to carve up Xuzhou.
If Yangzhou didn't act, Qingzhou would swallow all of Xuzhou, greatly increasing its strength. Obviously, Yangzhou couldn't allow that to happen, so they broke through the pass immediately, both to grab resources and to take in those Xuzhou players who didn't want to join Qingzhou.
No one had expected the server's first inter-province war to begin in such a manner!