Three Kingdoms: I rely on system loopholes to survive

At three quarters after the twilight hour, rain fell like arrows, and the Yu River surged out in white waves. The soldiers who measured the water level every day climbed up the city wall and told Zhong Ping whether the water level and flow rate of the river today had increased or decreased compared to yesterday.

"The rain is so heavy, but the water level is decreasing instead of increasing?" Zhong Ping frowned slightly and hurried to the riverside. As soon as he saw the rise and fall of the bamboo tube measuring the flow rate in the river, he realized something was wrong.

He stood up suddenly and looked upstream along the waves. Apart from the rain and white waves, there was nothing else. Zhong Ping thought of Shi Xie's move to move the camp today. Could it be...

If he could use this water attack strategy, could Shi Xie not use it? I'm afraid Shi Xie was blocking the river upstream to store flood water!
Zhong Ping subconsciously touched the city wall. In the past two days, Shi Xie had sent troops to attack the city at night, and withdrew his troops after causing any noise. He had probably already started building a dike upstream at that time. Most of the soldiers in the city were already tired. Even if Zhong Ping himself could still hold on, he was not sure that the wall could withstand the flood peak that had been accumulating for three days.

After hearing Zhong Ping's speculation, Li Meng immediately volunteered: "I am willing to lead a hundred Bai Li soldiers up the river to destroy the dike!"

"Brother, look." Zhong Ping used an iron awl to draw three water marks on the brick surface. "The Yu River turns here. The current is the fastest here. If we intercept the river upstream, we will never be able to do it in three days."

He rubbed his brows, calmed down and analyzed the situation. He then realized that he had been panicked for a moment and exaggerated Shi Xie's ability. He pinched his palms secretly.

After enduring for five consecutive days, he was beginning to feel unable to hold on any longer.

Zhong Pingding calmed down and still looked confident: "In less than two days, Shi Xie will open the floodgates to flood Mengling."

He paused for a moment, thinking of a solution: "Let the soldiers dismantle the cowhide and wooden planks on those warships, tie them into rafts and hide them in the reed marshes before the morning."

The county magistrate suddenly had an idea: "Sir, are you going to use the flood to attack the enemy camp? But how can the raft control its direction?"

"How is this possible?" Zhong Ping shook his head, a bit amused on his face. "No matter how heavy the raft is, it can't change the course of the flood. Could it be that the county magistrate thinks that Ping knows some magic that can turn wood into stone?"

The county magistrate also realized that he was daydreaming. It was really Zhong Ping's ability to turn decay into magic that made him feel that no matter how unrealistic the idea was, Zhong Ping had the ability to make it come true.

"Tonight I will lead the two hundred defenders in the city to attack Shi Xie's camp. My brother will lead a hundred Bai Li soldiers to enter the river from the east gate and destroy the dike upstream."

"Let thirty Bai Li soldiers lie under the raft, each holding a hollow bamboo stick to breathe. The raft will go downstream and head straight for Shi Xie's water fort, and the iron spikes will drill through the bottom of the boat from bottom to top."

As Zhong Ping spoke, he glanced at Fan A beside him.

Fan A understood and took out a cloth bag from his back, in which three poisoned copper arrowheads were placed. "Although the kudzu juice is small, it is enough to paralyze the oarsmen of three warships."

"Has the corn in the city been soaked in wolfsbane?"

Zhong Ping asked, and Fan A felt sorry for the food, but he still prepared it according to what he said: "It's all soaked."

The county magistrate took the initiative to avoid Fan A's sight. When he impulsively agreed to Zhong Ping to use up all the food reserves in the city, he still felt that he was invincible. Now that he has calmed down, he can't help but worry that Zhong Ping's plan will fail and Mengling will be difficult to hold on to. But now that things have come to this, he can only believe that Zhong Ping has the ability to turn the tide.

Zhong Ping walked down the city wall in two or three steps to check on Chi Wu's preparations. He was pouring the last half bag of cinnabar into a pottery jar. Rainwater flowed in through the gap in the battlements and formed a dark red vortex at the bottom of the jar.

Li Meng and Fan A followed closely behind him. Compared with the blind trust that the county magistrate and Li Meng had in Zhong Ping, he was still somewhat sober: "There are no crossbows in the city, and the arrows have been used up. What can we use to attack the camp?"

Zhong Ping had almost figured it out by now. He broke off a bamboo branch and drew the direction of the Yushui River on the mud. "The gourd mouth in the upper reaches is shaped like a cloth bag. Shi Xie must have chosen this place to build the embankment. The water level dropped during the day, which means that the embankment is already more than seven feet high—" The bamboo branch emphasized the position of "gourd mouth". "With such heavy rain, if he built a embankment, he would probably use the Li people's method of tying stones with rattan ropes, which is just sinking wood and stones to block the waterway. I saw this method a lot in Li villages when I was in Guangxin. The speed of building a embankment is indeed fast, but as for how solid it is... I don't think it is necessarily true."

"He has estimated that our city is here and there is no way to avoid the flood. However, his army of 60,000 has to move camp in the rain and divide its troops to attack the city. How can they leave in one day? If the upstream dam bursts, we still have the city wall to defend. What can Shi Xie do to stop us?"

Li Meng heard something wrong: "If Bo Heng didn't make it back to the city in time, wouldn't he also be trapped by the flood?"

Zhong Ping said calmly: "This is a life-threatening act, so it is bound to be dangerous."

Li Meng was about to speak, but Zhong Ping smiled and said, "Before I left, Mr. Zijiang told me that this trip would be dangerous, but not life-threatening. I guess I still have some luck."

This was of course a lie. After all, Xu Shao could never see through Zhong Ping's face, and of course he had no way to predict it. But Zhong Ping had the system to back him up, and now was definitely not the time for his death. Zhong Ping's words were so sure that Li Meng thought again. There was nothing Zhong Ping couldn't do that he had promised. Blind trust once again took over the high ground of his IQ. He clasped his hands together and decisively took on the important task assigned by Zhong Ping: "I will definitely live up to Bo Heng's trust!"

As the rainstorm stopped and the drumbeats of Shi Xie's army's third feint attack ceased, the west city gate was quietly opened.

Zhong Ping led two hundred defenders wearing rattan armor and dressed the same as Shi Xie's army, and crawled out of the city wall through the drainage ditch. They held thin pieces of wood in their mouths and sneaked along the reeds on the river bank. The soles of their boots were tied with cattails soaked in fish oil - this was a strategy proposed by Chi Wuxian, which could prevent slipping and leave no footprints in the heavy rain.

When they were thirty feet away from the central army camp, they could already see the Li soldiers patrolling outside the tent. If they were closer, their figures would be illuminated by the firelight. Twenty strong men immediately took off their backpacks, which contained pottery jars sealed with wet mud. They took out fire starters and blew them hard - this was a special delayed fuse made by Ping, and the silk soaked in tree oil could also smolder in the mud.

When the cinnabar powder gushed out and the night wind blew the red mist towards the campfire, the people exclaimed "the miasma is coming" and a small-scale riot suddenly broke out in the entire camp.

Zhong Ping had taken a detour with dozens of people. While the Li people were distracted by the cinnabar in the southeast, he came to the rear of the camp. He discovered early in the morning that the defense here was much tighter than that in front of the camp, and there was even a horse trough. He guessed that this might be where the food and grass were stored.

Regardless of whether it was true or not, he shouted, "Fire!" Zhong Ping swung his sword to cut off the cloth belt around his waist, and the hot copper pot wrapped in thick cowhide was thrown into the army. The pot exploded when it encountered fire, and the liquid copper splashed into a blue-white fireball in the rain. The poisonous smoke wrapped in cinnabar flowed into the tent with the wind, and the war horses neighed and knocked over the deer fort.

"Someone is attacking the camp!"

The Shijia soldiers guarding this place shouted loudly. Some tried to pick up the unexploded pottery jars, but they were too burned to hold them. The copper juice poured on their bodies, making their skin and flesh sizzle. The screams were so horrifying that even Zhong Ping, the instigator, couldn't bear to watch any longer.

"There's a fire in the northwest corner!" The Li soldiers had just escaped from the cinnabar fog when they heard that the food tent was attacked, and they hurriedly turned around to provide assistance.

Zhong Ping had brought his men to infiltrate the Jinshi family army. His main purpose was to cause trouble. He would shout from time to time, and when he met the Li people who came to reinforce, he would spit at them. He took advantage of the chaos to knock over many torches in the camp and specifically kicked the flammable camp curtains.

Just at this moment, thunder sounded again. Some of the Li people, who had experienced firecrackers in peacetime, thought it was another enemy attack. They screamed and danced wildly, making the situation even more chaotic.

At this time, Zhong Pingzheng escaped with the 200 defenders. Upstream of the Yu River, Li Meng had already sneaked out from the water gate with his Bai Li soldiers. They carried leather bags inflated with animal bladders on their backs and swam along the rock wall like otters.

When they saw the dam of Hulukou, they dived into the water, using iron spikes to cut the vine ropes between the stones along the way. Li Meng took out a bamboo rain gauge, glanced at the water level scale, and signaled a team of Bai Li soldiers to go ashore and attack the guards. He and dozens of other Bai Li soldiers took a deep breath, dived into the river, groped for the gaps between the wood and stones, and looked for the dislocations between the stones.

The dam, which took only three days to build, was even more fragile than Zhong Ping had estimated. As the piled up wood and stones collapsed, five-meter-high muddy waves rushed down, carrying broken trees. Even though Li Meng had been prepared, he was still unable to avoid it and only barely managed to escape with his life. The dozens of Bai Li soldiers who broke through the dam were almost all killed in the flood.

The county magistrate stood on the top of the city wall, feeling the vibration under his feet, and ordered the defenders to wave torches on the top of the city wall. Thirty rafts were like black dragons emerging from the water, riding on the waves and rushing straight towards the enemy camp.

"Water ghost! There is a water ghost in the river!"

The terrified shouts of Shi Xie's army were drowned by the sound of the waves. After the Bai Li soldiers used iron spikes to drill through the bottom of the boat, they did not fight, but swam back to the city by grabbing the oil-soaked reeds. The warships, which had lost power, spun in the whirlpool, leading the subsequent flood peaks to their own camps.

"Open the gate!"

At the county magistrate's command, the bamboo gates of the moat opened. The water of the moat was washed back into the river by the tide, and the rotten corn was sucked into the whirlpool. The hungry fish scrambled for the poisonous rice, floating on the surface of the river with their bellies turned upside down.

"God Jiang is angry!"

I don't know which Li soldier shouted first, but panic swept in before the flood. Just as Shi Xie was about to kill the misleader, the rushing river water had already roared down, and it hit Mengling City as he expected - but unfortunately the water came too early, and now he had to taste the bitter fruit first.

The food and grass were destroyed, the Li people fled, and under the repeated attacks, the Shi family army completely collapsed, and even the captains supervising the battle were scattered by the fleeing soldiers. When Shi You was escorting Shi Xie to board the ship, there was a sudden sound of chiseling from the bottom of the ship. The Bai Li soldiers climbed up and instantly harvested the lives of the oarsmen on the boat with copper spikes soaked in kudzu juice in their hands.

At the beginning of the Mao hour, the rain stopped and the clouds dispersed. Zhong Ping lay on the driftwood and coughed up a mouthful of river water. He turned around and saw the Bai Li soldiers driving the captured boats. The general flag that was snatched from the enemy camp last night was tied to the bow of the boat. The cinnabar soaked on it was illuminated by the morning sun, and it looked like blood.

"Bo Heng!" Li Meng hurriedly brought Zhong Ping out of the water. Although it was a great victory this time, it was a tragic victory. Even for Zhong Ping, there were only two or three defenders who could be found out of the city.

Zhong Ping looked at the big flag with the Chinese character "Shi" floating downstream, and reached out to catch a ray of sunlight that passed through the clouds: "Tie up Shi Xie, take a few warships, and follow his example by loading dozens of bags of sand and covering them with millet - it's time to send the victory report to Guangxin." (End of this chapter)