Late Ming Dynasty: Summoning players from Liaodong to support the Ming Dynasty

The guard's body tensed abruptly, and he instinctively straightened his back.

Chu Ze's gaze passed over him, looking at the entire sleeping Guangning City. His voice was not loud, but it seemed to carry a power that could ignite the air.

"Tonight, I will make the sky over Guangning brighter than daytime."

Woo-woo-woo-woo

Three muffled bugle calls, like three dull hammer blows to the frozen ground, brutally tore apart the tranquility of northern Guangning.

Immediately following was a deafening roar of battle cries, mingled with the heavy, chaotic beat of war drums, surging forth from the darkness. Countless torches were lit, forming a restless sea of ​​fire that turned the vast, empty snowfield outside the north gate into a shocking dark red.

"Kill them—!"

"Charge in! The Prince will reward you!"

Hu Yongqiang drew the sword from his waist, a sword that had never truly tasted blood, its tip pointing forward, and roared hoarsely. Behind him, thousands of Han Banner soldiers, like driven livestock, pushed dozens of makeshift siege ladders and rough battering rams, surging haphazardly toward the towering North Gate city wall, which appeared exceptionally tall in the firelight.

Arrows rained down from the city walls, sparse yet always taking a few lives. The soldiers struck by arrows let out a short scream and fell on the path of the charge, quickly trampled into a bloody mess by those behind them.

Hu Yongqiang's heart pounded in his chest. He hid behind a crudely made wooden shield, nervously observing the movements on the city wall.

Contrary to his expectations of a well-prepared and heavily armed force, the defense on the city walls could only be described in two words—chaos.

The number of defenders seemed small, and their firepower was not concentrated. What puzzled him even more was the reaction of the defenders. They seemed to have no idea how to coordinate their attacks, firing haphazardly wherever there were many people, without any strategy whatsoever.

Several defenders even dared to lean out halfway and curse at the people below the city, only to be shot down on the spot by his sharpshooters.

"A bunch of rabble!" Hu Yongqiang sneered inwardly. The resentment of being treated as a pawn was now replaced by a smug sense of impending success.

His chance has come!

"All of you, charge! The first one to get to the top of the city wall will be rewarded with a hundred taels of silver and promoted three ranks!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, using fame and fortune to stimulate the survival instincts of his cannon fodder.

Meanwhile, on the city wall of the north gate of Guangning, a completely different scene unfolded.

[Dominating the Gun and Blocking the Meat] Shi Dali scratched the back of his head in frustration and yelled into the guild channel, "Guild Leader! These bastards are so slow, are they coming or not? I can't hold back my sword any longer!"

Wang Han's calm voice rang in the ears of all the participating players: "Don't rush, Brother Meat, follow the script! If they don't join in, we'll give them a hand!"

He paused, his tone turning somewhat strange: "All archers, listen up! Free fire! But don't be too accurate! Show the skill you use when shooting at moving targets! Create an atmosphere of 'We're trying hard to defend, but we're really bad!'"

A burst of barely suppressed laughter erupted from the channel.

[One Arrow Through the Clouds] replied dejectedly, "Guild Leader, this is harder than getting me to hit the head with every arrow!"

"Execute the order!" Wang Han said without room for argument. "Attention everyone! Extras, prepare! Act One, 'Battle of the City Walls,' Action!"

With Wang Han's command, the scene on the city wall suddenly changed.

A player was grazed on the arm by a stray arrow shot from below the city. He immediately put on a dramatic act, letting out a blood-curdling scream, clutching his arm and rolling exaggeratedly on the ground. He rolled more than a dozen times before crashing into the wall and stopping, then turned into a white light and disappeared.

In Qian Lele's live stream, the chat exploded instantly.

[Holy crap! This is an Oscar! That roll, that movement, that final facial twitch before his death! I give it 9.9! I'm deducting 0.1 to keep him from getting arrogant!]

[The Guangning Film Festival has officially opened! Now marching towards us is our team of "extras"! Their strides are brisk, their expressions exaggerated, perfectly demonstrating what it means to act with your life on the line!]

Holding her "torch selfie stick," Qian Lele aimed the camera at the chaotic city walls and gave a live commentary in an unusually excited tone: "Family members! Do you see that! War is so cruel! Our warriors are using their flesh and blood to hold back the enemy's frenzied attack!"

The camera shifts to another player putting on a show. This player, wounded in the chest by an arrow, hasn't died instantly. Instead, he stubbornly leans against the battlement, stretching out a trembling hand and pointing down at the city walls, roaring, "You...you can forget about it! Our reinforcements...are on their way!"

A minor Han Chinese bannerman standing below the city heard this clearly and instinctively shouted back, "Where are your reinforcements?!"

With his last ounce of strength, the player roared out a line that stunned all the Later Jin soldiers: "A full... 500,000!"

After saying that, he tilted his head to the side and disappeared in a ray of light, completely satisfied.

In the live stream, the screen was flooded with comments of "hahahaha".

[Five hundred thousand?! Good heavens, why didn't he just say five million! This scared Huang Taiji so much that he fled back to Hetu Ala overnight!]

The opposing leader was completely dumbfounded. He was probably thinking, "When did Guangning City hide an army of 500,000? This doesn't make sense!"

This game is so much fun! I'm going to petition the official website! That guy deserves an Oscar!

With the players' various creative "performances," a few siege ladders finally managed to shakily make their way onto the city wall.

"They're here! They're here!"

"Alright! Meat Bro! Your turn!" Wang Han's voice rang out in the channel. "Remember the script? Find two lone Tartars, grab them and jump down! Shout your lines loud and clear!"

"Just you wait and see!" Shi Dali roared excitedly, his two-meter-tall, burly body casting a huge shadow in the firelight.

He spotted a Jurchen soldier who had just poked his head out from a ladder, and without dodging or avoiding, he let the soldier's long sword strike his thick plate armor, sending sparks flying.

Before the Jin soldier could even rejoice, a large, iron-like hand grabbed his neck and yanked him off the ladder. Immediately afterward, Shi Dali grabbed a terrified, unfortunate man standing nearby.

He was carrying an adult weighing over 100 pounds in each hand, as if he were carrying two chicks.

He grinned, revealing a set of white teeth, and, facing the countless horrified eyes below the city, let out a deafening roar with all his might:

"For the General—!!"

After saying that, he grabbed the two struggling Jin soldiers and, without hesitation, leaped off the city wall, which was more than ten meters high!

"boom!"

The three bodies landed with a dull thud that made your teeth ache.

An eerie silence lasting several seconds fell over the entire North Gate battlefield.

All the Later Jin soldiers who were attacking the city instinctively stopped in their tracks, staring blankly at the blurry mass of flesh and blood.

Hu Yongqiang's eyelids twitched uncontrollably as he read this.

madman!

These guys are a bunch of lunatics!

But what's the point of this meaningless, one-for-two suicidal attack, other than proving they're crazy?

His feint attack was a great success!

Thinking this, Hu Yongqiang suppressed his unease and became excited again, brandishing his sword and urging his men to attack even more vigorously. He wanted to make this performance even more convincing!

On a high slope a few miles away from Guangning City.

Amin, draped in a heavy bearskin cloak and holding a captured Ming army monocular telescope, gazed at the towering flames in the direction of the North Gate.

The sounds of battle shouts, war drums, and screams could still be faintly heard even from this distance.

A trusted guard of the Bayara tribe, who had just ridden back from the front lines, was kneeling on one knee, reporting the battle situation to him.

"...Your Highness! Hu Yongqiang's troops are launching a fierce attack, and our warriors have already scaled the city walls several times! But the defenders inside are putting up an exceptionally tenacious resistance, fearless of death, and some have even...some have even jumped off the walls with our warriors in their arms, choosing to perish together with them!"

"The battle... is extremely fierce!"

Amin put down the binoculars, the several hideous scars on his face twitching slightly with excitement.

Fearless of death? Will they perish together?

In his view, this was precisely a case of outward strength masking inner weakness and utter helplessness! It was the only form of impotent rage that the weak could muster when facing an invincible enemy!

He then turned the telescope westward.

There was a deathly silence over there.

Like a forgotten, ink-soaked rag. Pitch black; not a single fire could be heard, not even a dog's bark.

On one side, there was a deafening roar of battle cries, as if they wanted to tear a hole in the sky.

On the other side, however, there was a deathly silence, like that of a graveyard.

Amin put down the binoculars.

This stark contrast, like two large hands, ruthlessly extinguished the last vestige of doubt in his heart, then crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the snow at his feet.

He got it.

He understands everything.

"Chu Ze...you're still just a baby who hasn't been weaned!"

Amin let out a low, menacing sound.

He could almost picture the young commander standing atop the North Gate tower, completely absorbed by the magnificent, blood-soaked battle.

All your soldiers and all your attention have been drained by that farce, haven't they?

Do you think my goal is that city gate you are so proud of?

idiot!

What an utter idiot!

On Amin's face, the several hideous scars twisted as her muscles twitched, pulling out an extremely cruel smile.

He turned around, and in the shadows behind him stood a general clad in pure white armor, his face shield removed, as still as a ghost. That was his white-armored personal guard commander.

"The time has come." Amin's voice was low, but it carried a sense of exhilaration, as if a floodgate was about to be opened.

The commander of the white-armored guards remained silent, only bowing slightly, awaiting the final instructions.

"Tell them to go inside."

"The Eternal Heaven watches over each and every one of them from above."

Amin extended a thick finger, almost poking the commander's visor, emphasizing each word.

"Once inside, ignore those lively puppets! Don't get entangled with them! And definitely don't try to steal any kills!"

"You have only one goal—that high platform!"

"Head straight there, and destroy it as fast as you can!"

He believed that as long as the foundation for the sorcery was destroyed, all the strangeness in the city would vanish. Those fearless madmen would turn back into lambs to the slaughter, and the steel demon city would return to a pile of ordinary bricks.

The commander nodded heavily, without uttering a word of nonsense, and turned to disappear into the deeper darkness, as if he had never been there.

Amin looked back towards Guangning City.

This time, he didn't even bother to lift the binoculars.

In his eyes, the city was already a corpse riddled with fuses, and he had just lit the one leading to its heart.

After tonight, the history books of the Great Jin Dynasty will record how Aisin Gioro Amin used his wisdom to conquer a fortified city shrouded in sorcery.

As for that cannon shot during the day... it was merely a footnote to add a touch of legend to this great victory.

Chu Ze.

You won't see the sun tomorrow morning.

The white-armored general bowed silently, then turned and his figure quickly disappeared into the deeper darkness.

Moments later, two hundred elite Bayara soldiers, also clad in white armor and carrying scimitars, silently assembled from the darkness like phantoms. They were Amin's true trump card, the sharpest spear in the Later Jin army.

Led by their general, they bypassed the bustling battlefield at the North Gate and, like a pack of night wolves drawn by the scent of blood, stealthily made their way towards the desolate western warehouse district, a place that represented hope and revenge.

They quickly found the entrance to the abandoned secret passage mentioned in the letter.

The entrance is hidden beneath the ruins of a collapsed warehouse, covered by withered grass and rubble, and would be impossible to find without a keen eye.

The white-armored officer leading the group gestured to his back, and two soldiers immediately stepped forward and worked together to move a heavy stone slab, revealing a dark, musty-smelling hole in front of them.

A cold, earthy smell mixed with humus wafted in from the cave entrance.

Without the slightest hesitation, the white-armored officer was the first to bend down and crawl into the pipe leading to hell.

Immediately afterwards, two hundred soldiers in white armor filed in, their figures being swallowed up one after another by the bottomless darkness.

Amin waited quietly on the high slope.

He could almost see his warriors descending from the sky, smashing the platform where the sorcery was performed to pieces, seeing the city's defenders' sorcery broken and fleeing in panic, and seeing despair and disbelief written all over Chu Ze's young face.

He clenched his fists, and his knuckles cracked.

Tonight, he will repay the humiliation of being blasted into the sky by the demon cannon a hundredfold!

……

The night wind howled atop the clock tower.

The attack and defense battle at the North Gate, which the players themselves touted as "Oscar-level," was, in Chu Ze's eyes, not even worthy of being called a clumsy silent film.

On the screen of the "Mountains and Rivers" map, that area was simplified into a low-quality pixel game. Green and red dots collided and disappeared chaotically, and every jump in the data stream seemed ridiculous and tedious.

He couldn't even be bothered to distinguish which of the points of light was Shi Dali, who was carrying an enemy and jumping off the city wall.

The actors' hard work was merely to buy the real protagonist a tiny bit of time to take the stage.

His real attention was entirely focused on the west side of the city.

The area marked "PVE instance: Hellpipe".

On the light screen, two hundred red dots, darker in color and brighter in brightness, had silently disappeared into the huge and complex maze that had been converted from a warehouse.

Like a swarm of moths that have strayed into a spider's web, they are following the path he drew himself, step by step, toward the very center of the web.

well.

All the prey are now in the cage.

The clamor of gongs and drums at the North Gate was merely a prelude to the real grand feast.

Chu Ze turned off the light screen.

The world has returned to its cold, hard reality.

He turned to his side.

The young soldier holding the command flag had his face taut in the cold wind, and the fine sweat on his forehead was instantly dried by the wind, leaving a cold, stinging sensation.

His right hand, gripping the flagpole, showed prominent veins on the back of his hand.

The guard's gaze involuntarily drifted toward the north gate. The flames and shouts of battle there made him anxious, but the general's silence was like a mountain, pressing down on him, making him afraid to move or ask questions.

Just then, Chu Ze spoke up.

His voice was soft, yet like a needle, piercing the howling wind atop the clock tower and precisely striking the ears of the guards.

There is only one word.

"ignition."