Siege and Reinforcement: A Textbook Case 6

The forty reinforcements from Zhicheng received their orders and hurried toward Fortress Point 1. As expected, they encountered no ambushes along the way. They crossed the river quickly and spotted from a distance the forty-plus people surrounding Fortress Point 1.

All they needed now was for those inside Fortress Point 1 to coordinate with them from within...

But before Jie Luo could even issue the order, the next second, those forty-plus people simply walked away. The Zhicheng reinforcements were dumbfounded, having no idea what kind of play this was. They were about to request instructions from Chief Commander Jie Luo, but in an instant, their faces turned deathly pale—in the channel signal, their Chief Commander Jie Luo's signal had vanished.

Ye Yu was too fast. By the time she arrived, it only took her twenty seconds to tear down the Energy Shield, and the heavy firepower weapons Xu Lingqu had issued them were just right for the job.

When she led her people charging in, Jie Luo was still in a state of utter bewilderment. He had no idea where these people had come from or how they'd gotten there. Ye Yu personally sent a bullet his way, letting him exit the arena and think things over while watching the match replay.

With their Chief Commander gone—and since this match had no Decapitation mechanic—the remaining sixty Zhicheng soldiers scattered like headless flies in a panic, and in the end, they all crammed themselves into Fortress Point 1.

Tansen Meilin was absolutely furious. Jie Luo's sudden death was actually a good thing for him, because it meant he could openly take all of Zhicheng's remaining soldiers for his own use. But those remaining soldiers had stupidly squeezed all the way into Fortress Point 1! Fortress Point 1 was now firmly within Xu Lingqu's sphere of control, like a piece of meat in her bowl, to be eaten whenever she pleased.

Her current force strength meant sixty people posed no obstacle to her, and with those sixty gone and Zhicheng completely annihilated, it was doomed that Tansen Meilin no longer had any means to stop Xu Lingqu.

Even if he gathered all his Lianda soldiers together, or went back to executing the riverside surprise attack plan he'd originally committed to, it was pointless now.

Because Fortress Point 4 was already Xu Lingqu's—she could send people out to reinforce at any time, and if she did, it would be Tansen Meilin caught in a pincer.

"Idiot! Moron! Brain-dead! Dongwen and Zhicheng are a pack of mongrels who don't deserve to set foot in a military academy!" Tansen Meilin continued to rage in impotent fury. The Federation now had only Lianda's eighty-eight people left on the field. In just thirty hours, Xu Lingqu had gone from being besieged at the start to reversing the situation and wiping out Dongwen, while Zhicheng's state was indistinguishable from total annihilation.

There were still eighteen hours left, and night had already fallen. After she let all her forces rest, she'd probably start harvesting the remaining fortress points in the middle of the night or in the early morning.

What Tansen Meilin had to consider now was no longer how to stop Xu Lingqu, but how to preserve points. Hold onto the fortress points as best he could, and if he couldn't hold them, decisively abandon them and at least concentrate his personnel—personnel points mattered far more than fortress points now.

That night, just as Tansen Meilin had anticipated, Xu Lingqu launched an attack on Fortress Point 1, still defended by Zhicheng's sixty men, in the middle of the night.

Beside her, Yun Yao had dozed off for a short while. When she woke, Fortress Point 1 had already been taken under Xu Lingqu's command.

Yun Yao looked at Xu Lingqu, unable to say a word. More than thirty hours had passed since they'd entered the battle map, and Xu Lingqu hadn't closed her eyes once the entire time. Though she hadn't thrown herself into the fighting, she'd been directing and coordinating at high intensity the whole way through, without a single moment's rest.

She was still calculating the remaining headcount after each battle, her head slightly bowed with meticulous precision in the quiet darkness. The wind stirred her hair, and she seemed like a guardian of the night.

Sensing that Yun Yao was awake, she turned her head. "Did you sleep well?"

Yun Yao sat up straight. "Not bad... What about you? Aren't you tired?"

"Tired, but this isn't the time for me to be tired." Xu Lingqu handed Yun Yao the casualty statistics she'd jotted down.

In taking Fortress Point 2 and Fortress Point 3, Cimei Academy had lost a total of four, and Moye a total of four. After Situke joined, though Xu Lingqu had pumped them up, their combat ability was what it was—they just weren't very good.

Ye Yu had led thirty Situke and twenty Cimei-Moye soldiers to attack Fortress Point 4, which had only fifteen defenders. Situke lost ten outright, while Cimei and Moye each lost only one. When they took Fortress Point 1, Situke lost twenty, Moye three, and Cimei five.

In the end, Xu Lingqu tallied the current personnel points on the field: Moye 76, Cimei 82, Situke 70, Lianda 88.

"You're tallying now?" Yun Yao glanced at the time. There were still ten hours until the match ended. "There should still be high-intensity point-taking ahead, right?"

Xu Lingqu shook her head. "Tansen Meilin should be well aware by now that he can't hold all five points. He'll probably concentrate everyone on Fortress Point 7, the one worth twenty points. He'll leave the other fortress points empty, and we can just go check them one by one."

Lianda had enough of a personnel-point advantage right now. Even if they added the occupation points at the end and still couldn't beat Moye and Cimei, they could at least secure third place.

If he tried to hold points and fight, and the personnel points shifted again, Tansen Meilin was afraid his score would drop below even Situke's—now that would be truly embarrassing.

The man was proud and quick-tempered, erratic and moody, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what would maximize his own benefit right now.

When dawn came, the Empire's three-way coalition went to check the situation one by one. Yun Yao found that Xu Lingqu's prediction about Tansen Meilin was completely accurate. Apart from Fortress Point 7 and the nearby Fortress Point 9, all the other fortress points had been abandoned, and they were taken with ease.

Tansen Meilin had done his own accounting. Giving away those points for free meant surrendering forty points, but if he tried to hold them, he didn't have enough troops. If Xu Lingqu forcibly took a fifteen-point point defended by forty men, it would be a guaranteed loss, and what followed would absolutely be total annihilation.

So in the end, he chose to gather his eighty-eight men and hold the twenty-point point instead.

By noon that day, the final moments had arrived, and they were divvying up the fortress points. Xu Lingqu kept her word and gave Lei Nuo a ten-point point. He was overjoyed.

As for Cimei and Moye—

"Fortress Points 1, 3, and 5 go to Moye, fifty points total. Fortress Points 4, 8, and 10 go to Cimei, forty points total." Xu Lingqu laid out the distribution. "Current occupation points plus headcount points: Situke 85, Lianda 118, Cimei 122, Moye 126."

Yun Yao and Ye Yu had no major objections to this split. Though Cimei had proactively supported Moye first, the entire battle had been commanded by Xu Lingqu alone for the most part.

But then Xu Lingqu spoke up. "Fortress Point 9, the five-point point—Lianda probably didn't station anyone there. It's just close to Fortress Point 7, so if we send people over, Tansen Meilin will inevitably notice and take action."

She looked at Ye Yu and Yun Yao. "To put it plainly—if you can take it without losses, first place is yours."

Without Cimei's proactive support at the start, and without Ye Yu, Yun Yao, and all of Cimei's people obeying her commands without question and executing them rigorously, the current situation wouldn't exist—Xu Lingqu knew that well. But she wasn't the type to hand first place to someone else. She chose to offer an opportunity and let Cimei fight for it themselves.

Yun Yao was shamefully tempted. They were genuinely convinced by Xu Lingqu, but who didn't want first place?

Ye Yu organized forty Cimei soldiers and hurried toward Fortress Point 9. Unfortunately, Tansen Meilin had sent people to ambush them after all. The ambush wasn't successful—it only took out three Cimei soldiers, and the five-point point was snatched away by Cimei—but it had essentially declared that their only chance at first place was lost.

Yun Yao sighed, shaking her head helplessly. This was on them for not seizing the opportunity. As the battle map's timer entered its final ten-second countdown, she extended her fist toward Xu Lingqu.

Xu Lingqu reached out and bumped it.

"Pleasure working with you."