Mount and Blade Central Asia

So in the eyes of dark wizards like Ali, they are neither potential believers of the Azure Wind nor resources.

But in order to release this miracle that could cover the entire Mosul, Ali spent several months "poisoning" the water sources in Mosul. It was a slightly psychedelic herb. The main purpose was to mark the people of Mosul so that the power of the blue wind could identify them in dreams.

And sleepless people like Fahr have now become "system loopholes" that are marked but unable to fall asleep.

Ali originally only regarded these sleepless people as a form of entertainment, watching them build a safe haven and surviving in Mosul with a joking attitude, and sometimes even took the initiative to give them some insignificant "help".

Of course, more often than not, he would rather set a trap that they would never see the end of, and then watch them plunge into it, pinning all their hopes on it, and looking forward to the moment when the truth would finally be revealed.

To some extent, this cruelty is also a ritual to please the blue wind.

Unfortunately, Li Rufeng's arrival and the unexpected way he broke the circle caught Ali off guard, making these "little bugs" a big trouble.

Because of these "system loopholes", when Ali planned to sacrifice half of the people of Mosul in exchange for the temporary arrival of the dream kingdom, the ceremony became imperfect. He had to get rid of these little bugs first before the power of the dream could fully descend.

The key to dismantling these sleepless people lies in Fakhr Bawari. He is the only one in the entire sleepless organization who can interest Ali and even the Blue Wind itself.

The Blue Wind likes "smart people" and also takes pleasure in fooling these "smart people". Although Fahr is not considered a smart person, he is a rare good and noble person in this world.

The Azure Wind was obviously very interested in seducing and corrupting such people. Ali was smart, and he keenly noticed the "bad tastes" that the Azure Wind tried hard to hide.

The Four Wind Gods have always been associated with madness and corruption. This is a well-known secret among high-level believers, and it is also the main reason why the belief in the Four Wind Gods, although it has the ability to allow people to access the power of miracles with a lower threshold, cannot be spread quickly to various places.

There will always be people who notice the evil hidden beneath the power, and in the human world, those who have mastered the power of miracles since ancient times are all wise people.

If the city of Mosul and its people were a great gift from Ali to the Azure Wind, opening a larger window for the Azure Wind in this world, allowing more of its power to flow in and ultimately increasing the overall strength of the dark wizard community, then Fakhr al-Bawali was a small gift beneath this gift.

That was a personal gift Ali presented to please Azure Wind. Fakhr Bawari was a "little dessert" that suited Azure Wind's personal taste. This little dessert needed to be repeatedly stewed, simmered, and processed bit by bit, ultimately presenting Azure Wind with a broken and fallen soul.

So what Ali has to do now is to overturn the big pot that has just started to boil for the sake of the overall situation. This makes him feel very frustrated, and then this frustration turns into even stronger anger, anger directed at Li Rufeng.

That Mongolian shaman ruined everything he had planned, something he should have anticipated. This stupidity itself caused him to lose a lot of favor from the Blue Wind.

He seemed to be able to hear the blue wind mocking him mercilessly in the void, just as he had been secretly mocking those fools who were not smart enough to recognize the little trap in the black magic book he left behind over the years and lost everything because of it.

The passage continued to shrink, squeezing the space of the sleepless. Ali watched all this with a somewhat morbid look. The passage shrank very slowly, slowly enough for these sleepless people and Fahir himself to make a choice -

Choose who will go up the stairs that symbolize death first.

This was pretty much the last bit of fun Ali could get from this little game.

Chapter 572 Cannon Knocks on the Door

Li Rufeng reined in his horse and stopped less than two meters in front of the Mosul city gate. The warhorse, which had long been accustomed to his temperament, held its head high and chest out, posing with its hind legs supporting its body as if it were Napoleon's victory.

The next second, Master Li used the inertia of his horse's landing to fiercely insert the Sanyuan flag stained with the blood of soldiers into the ground in front of the city gate. The sharp part of the tail of the flag pierced deeply into the stone-paved road!

The words on the flag seemed to come alive at this moment, shining on the city gate. The city gate, which had not been opened by the cannons, opened by itself in front of Li Rufeng.

puff!

With a sound like a soap bubble bursting, the fog of war shrouding Mosul was once again mostly dispelled.

Only a small amount of fog shrouded the four wizard towers, forming a diamond-shaped area in the center of the city, which still remained invisible from the strategic map perspective.

"A mere trifle." Li Rufeng showed a perfect smile on his face. He seemed to be able to hear the angry curses of the black wizards in the city. No one could remain calm after being provoked and having his cards revealed again and again like this.

In fact, it is indeed similar, but there is not a group of furious dark wizards but only one, and that is Ali.

As a dark wizard, Ali was generous. He shared the knowledge he obtained from the Blue Wind "free of charge" with those who came after him, guiding many scholars onto the path of dark wizards.

But as a dark wizard, Ali was also stingy. He left too many traps in the knowledge he left behind, so that all the dark wizards who were promoted through his path were essentially slaves working for him.

It's just that most slave dark wizards were not aware of their status. They had never anticipated that there were various traps in that knowledge. Although a few smart people realized the problem, they could not find a solution and could only bite the bullet and reduce the price they paid as much as possible.

Eventually, these smart enough dark wizards, instigated by Ali, became suspicious of each other, wary of each other, and the fittest survived, leaving only a few who became the masters of the other three wizard towers.

Ali probably had not heard of the Eastern proverb "two peaches kill three warriors", but he played this trick very skillfully.

His public identity is that Shawai is the biggest beneficiary in this wizard war, and the other three dark wizard tower masters are very wary of him.

In order to avoid becoming the next victim, the other three dark wizards have been forming alliances. The three of them constantly switch their positions between the three combinations of ab, ac, and bc, and are constantly hatching conspiracies against the other two.

Of course, the most planned plan of these three dark wizards is how to kill the pseudonym Savai.

Even though Li Rufeng had already reached Mosul during the day, the black wizards would rather pretend not to see it. They did not dare to take any risks because they all believed that once their strength was damaged, the fragile balance would be broken, and the terrifying Shawai or the other two vultures would devour them without mercy.

Therefore, since the beginning of the war, only Ali has been fighting against Li Rufeng. The wizard tower where he is located is the one closest to the south of the city. The other three tower masters would rather watch him fight to the death with those outsiders, and finally his strength will be greatly reduced and he will be the one to be swallowed up.

Li Rufeng was not aware of this, nor did he care. He looked at the wide-open city gate in front of him and the soldiers in the city who were originally engaged in a tough battle and were now a little confused because the enemy suddenly disappeared. He pulled the flag out of the mud and rode his horse slowly into the city of Mosul.

The black wizard Ali angrily strangled a crow he used to monitor the battlefield in his unfinished wizard tower. He didn't understand why the miraculous power he obtained from the blue wind could be broken so easily by the other party.

But at least he knew that he was in big trouble now. If that damned Changshengtian Shaman didn't have the shadow of those organizations that had been resisting the arrival of the power of the Four Wind Gods, he would have exchanged all his wisdom for muscles and converted to the Scarlet Wind.

The filthiness and viciousness of this metaphor could probably only be fully understood by the followers of the Azure Wind themselves, but Ali's resentment could not stop Li Rufeng.

Li Rufeng, riding a white horse and holding a banner high, looked out at the Golden Arrow Mercenaries, who had suffered heavy casualties in the distance, and Piano, who was screaming desperately after being pierced through the foot by a spear. He said, "From now on, no one will interfere with your work. Go wake those who have been sleeping for a long time, and remember to send someone to count the number of people who have successfully left the city."

"Two florins for every hundred men. That should be enough to cover your losses." Li Rufeng glanced at the corpses and wounded mercenaries on the battlefield, as well as the bodies of blue-robed enemy soldiers not far away, and nodded slightly to Piano. "I'm very satisfied with your service."

After hearing Li Rufeng's offer, Piano, who had been dejected just now, instantly perked up. "Did you hear that? Two florins for every hundred people! Get moving! Wake up those who are sleeping and make them get out of here!"

"You, Milovan, come here! Go to the city gate and count them for me. Don't leave anyone behind. Do you understand?" Piano looked around, picked out a clever young man, and pulled his ear, instructing him, "Whether they are disabled or children, they must be counted separately!"

After Piano finished speaking, he turned his head and gave Li Rufeng a simple smile: "I'm sure I won't overestimate it, sir. I guarantee it with my reputation."

Li Rufeng shrugged. He didn't care about Piano's credibility or the promised compensation. Now a whole city was in front of him. This was the greatest wealth, and the only obstacle blocking his way to this wealth was those wizard towers.

Following Master Li's order, the Badak Thousand-Man Team and the slightly tired Armenian Thousand-Man Team followed him into the city. Marcelino hurried down the city wall and followed Li Rufeng.

In the middle of the team was a well-protected artillery unit. Master Li failed to blow down the walls of Mosul, which made him feel a little regretful, so he planned to bring this retribution on those wizard towers.

The huge team was lined up on the long street, like a river with no end in sight. The torches held in the hands of the soldiers gathered into a light source brighter than the moonlight.

Li Rufeng had just lost contact with the personal guard who had sneaked in earlier, so he knew that the dark wizards were also constantly adjusting their deployment.

There were no shouts or screams in this war under the cover of night. The dark wizards' schemes and tricks were meaningless in the face of Li Rufeng's unreasonable rituals. The glittering flag opened up a passage in the fog that was unaffected by anything.

Wherever Li Rufeng went, the fog was dispelled without any residue.

The blue raven guards, whom the dark wizards truly relied on, finally began to surface. Without the cover of the nightmare demon, these raven guards could no longer appear and disappear in the city as they did before. Now they were just a group of "well-equipped" ordinary soldiers.

From Li Rufeng's strategic map perspective, these Raven Guards always suddenly appeared at the edge of the fog, and their total number was actually more than a thousand people. However, they all acted individually in teams of thirty or fifty people, and did not form a dense formation.

These Raven Guards were obviously very familiar with the city of Mosul. They would cleverly take advantage of the terrain, using spears and bows and arrows on rooftops and around corners to surprise Li Rufeng's army, and then retreat quickly and orderly.

The entire attack was agile and methodical, completely beyond the times, and closer to the street fighting tactics of later CQB tactics.

If Li Rufeng didn't have an equally out-of-specification cheat, these Blue Raven Guards could have easily relied on the city's terrain to block enemies that outnumbered them several times over.

Especially in the dark, it was obvious that there were key figures among the Raven Guards who were like Li Rufeng's personal guards. They could not only identify directions in the dark, but also know the enemy's position in advance.

Li Rufeng knew that there must be crows controlled by black wizards in the darkness, secretly monitoring him, but even the Mongolian archer could not accurately find the pitch-black crows in the night.

They did manage to kill a few crows by luck, but it was a pity that it did not help the overall situation.

Thanks to the personal guards mixed in with the ordinary soldiers, Li Rufeng's army was able to cope with the harassment of these blue crow guards. Most of the time, they had the opportunity to make a defensive response before the enemy attacked them, or directly launch a counterattack.

But obviously, the reaction speed of those blue-clothed Raven Guards hiding in the darkness was not inferior to that of Li Rufeng's personal guards, so both sides won and lost, and overall, the blue-clothed Raven Guards had the advantage.

Before reaching the nearest wizard tower, Li Rufeng suffered more than a hundred casualties, while the Blue Raven Guards only suffered sixty or seventy casualties.

Li Rufeng's personal guards were not enough to provide all-round coverage for such a large army. There would always be weak links that lacked early warning from personal guards, and those blue-robed crow guards could always quickly gather around such weak links.

Perhaps any other army would have collapsed under such intensive attacks long ago, Muheya, who was following Li Rufeng, silently commented that even the guards around the great conqueror could not do this.

But the great conqueror would never waste time and effort entering a city and engaging in street fighting. If there was a city that went against his will, he would have ordered a massacre or even burned it down.

Everything seemed to be going well, but what made Muheya a little uneasy was that as the team continued to go deeper into the city and approached the wizard tower, he saw the mendicant monk he had sent into the city before at a crossroads.

The man, with a bewildered smile, was stripped naked and nailed to the wall. Aside from the nails that had penetrated his body, there were no wounds on his body. And that man was the most devout and powerful mendicant monk he could find...

Now, Muheya was still curious. What kind of power did this Mongolian shaman possess? How could he easily suppress those dark wizards?

Muheya, who originally wanted to show off his strength in front of Li Rufeng, was now shocked by Li Rufeng and behaved more humblely.

Of course, Li Rufeng couldn't care less about the changes in the people around him. He was frowning and looking at the wizard tower that was vaguely visible in the distance.

This tower-like building, which combines two worlds, two forces, and is built by thousands of people working day and night, cannot be seen in its grandeur from the perspective of a strategic map. Only when you get close can you see its full picture.

Not far from the Wizard's Tower is the minaret of the Noor Mosque, known as the Camel. The minaret is 45 meters high, a rare high-rise building in this era.

Judging from its architectural structure, the wizard tower next door is only about half built at most, and its height is almost the same as the minaret next to it.

In other words, if the tower is completely completed, the overall height may be around 100 meters. This is definitely something that is ahead of its time, and it is impossible to support its completion with the existing technology and manpower and material resources.

Or to be more precise, Li Rufeng couldn't figure out how these workers built such a tall unfinished building in just a few months. You know, the minaret was a large building that took two years to complete during the heyday of the Zengid Dynasty.

Moreover, the minaret itself is just a simple structure with a diameter of four or five meters, which converges upwards. The structure of the Wizard Tower is closer to that of the Bunker Building. It is a prototype building that spirals upward, and its base is about 200*150 meters in size.

It can be seen that in order to make room for this wizard tower, the dark wizards forcibly demolished almost an entire street of buildings.

Li Rufeng decided to retract his previous evaluation of these dark wizards. Apart from the possible existence of "super-efficient nutrient solution of unknown substance", these dark wizards at least mastered some advanced construction technology.

The good news is that there are no sleepers near the wizard tower. These construction workers had been awake all along, so they all ran away during the day and are now almost all staying in the refugee camp outside the city.

If everything goes well, the workers will at least remember the technology involved in building this wizard tower. All Li Rufeng needs to do is to recruit a few more supervisors and a few dark wizards to record various aspects to ensure that this technology will not be discontinued.

The bad news is that the construction technology of this thing probably contains a lot of "witchcraft", because normal buildings must at least leave an entrance and exit, instead of building the surface of this wizard tower like an eggshell without even a gap.

"Diobbia..." Li Rufeng just called out the name and then he remembered that the old fox had suffered a mental shock before and was still lying in the wounded camp. Fortunately, the other artillerymen could also shoot accurately as long as the distance was close enough.

"Knock on the door and tell the turtle inside that a guest has arrived." Li Rufeng waved his hand and turned over. A personal guard moved a stool behind him at the right time so that he could sit down.

Chapter 573 Accident

Misia Meyers, one of the final survivors of the Dark Wizard Battle Royale and the master of the North Tower.

If judged by the standards of the battle royale game in Li Rufeng's previous life, this Missia could definitely cheer, as she had already managed to make it into the top four and had nominally won the game.

Of course, this does not mean that there are only four dark wizards left in Mosul. If calculated strictly, the number of dark wizards currently in the city should be around thirty to forty, but most of them are apprentice-level novices.

Moreover, many new apprentices are natives of Mosul. Inspired by the blue wind in the dreamland, they become the "academic slaves" of other dark wizards. Their status is only slightly better than those workers doing manual labor.

The reason why Misia carefully hid in her own wizard tower was that among all the dark wizards who had once set out from this city to escort the wealth to the city of Martin, only four were still alive, and Misia was one of them.

At the same time, these four people are also the masters of the four wizard towers. Among these four wizard towers, the master of the South Tower, Shawai, is the most powerful. He almost single-handedly dominates the construction plan of the entire wizard tower.

Half a year ago, Misia didn't even know the existence of the Wizard Tower. He was just careful enough and lucky enough to have persisted until now.

Among all the dark wizards, Mysia was neither the smartest nor the craziest, but he was almost the most cautious. From the death of Azadirim, he realized that the wealth was a bait.

Misiah was born into a noble family. Before becoming a dark wizard, he no longer had much desire for money. It was true that studying magic and analyzing witchcraft to reproduce the power of miracles did require a lot of effort, which almost exhausted Misiah's wealth.

But this would not make him completely obsessed with the huge wealth, or even fight for it, unless someone secretly tempted them to do so.

So from then on, Misiah was always careful. He only ate food that he cooked himself and drank water from his water bag.

Misia himself is a dark wizard. He knows that there are many cunning witchcrafts in this world that can achieve similar goals without touching him, so he checks his mental state every day.

These precautions eventually paid off for Misia. He successfully emerged from the chaos in Mosul and took control of the North Tower. However, he only had six dark wizard apprentices who contributed their wisdom and talents to his witchcraft research, which was far less than his other three peers.

This made Misia very anxious. He now understood that if you fall behind, you will be beaten. Moreover, after careful calculation, he found that the existing building materials in Mosvol City were not enough to meet the standard of starting construction of four black stone towers at the same time and completing them all successfully.

Even without considering the lack of labor, and adding the potential factor of the dream kingdom's increasing influence on the real world, there should be only two wizard towers that can be successfully built in the end.

Misia knew that the mysterious Shavay would definitely get what he wanted, but would he be the other lucky person? He didn't have such big ambitions. He just wanted to continue to survive. If he could find a chance to leave the city, it would be even better.

The main reason why he is still "playing chess" on the table is that he has been providing the city with enough "fermented slurry".

It is a liquid mixed with witchcraft power, which can undergo a series of complex fermentations and processing in the dreamland of substances defined as food, and eventually become a technology for edible liquid food.

When Shavay first proposed this requirement, all the dark wizards felt that such work was a demeaning to their status. Only Misia felt that this was a suitable safe haven, so she took the job and achieved results in a short period of time.

In the end, this job became Misia's amulet. About a dozen dark wizards had evil intentions towards Misia, but more dark wizards felt that without Misia they would add a lot of unnecessary trouble.

This tendency helped Misia survive the most dangerous period.

Of course, he himself is not completely useless. By cleverly adjusting the ration of "fermentation water", he secretly arranged the development of the situation in the most favorable way for himself.

The great Azure Wind even rewarded him for his brilliant ideas, but this reward made Mysia somewhat uneasy.

It is true that he is a dark wizard, but the main reason why he chose the path of a dark wizard is because of his strong curiosity and desire to explore knowledge.

Misia felt that she might never be able to accept the idea of ​​blood sacrifice, and at the same time, she didn't want to get involved in too many intrigues and assassinations.

However, he very much agreed with the new hierarchy of dark wizards established by Savai. Those obedient "academic slaves" saved him a great deal of time, allowing him to have more time to surf in the vortex of wisdom of the blue wind and gain more brilliant ideas.

For example, this wizard tower in front of us, the least valued North Tower, Misia has been studying how to build a wizard tower that can maintain the normal operation of all functions while saving the most materials.

If he succeeded, perhaps the number of wizard towers that could be successfully built would increase from two to three. He couldn't convince Shawai to use a structure that saved more materials, but perhaps he could reach an agreement with the other two allies.

From a one in two chance to a two in three chance, I'm sure they will be interested. On this basis, even if Misia, who contributed important technology, fails to become one of the tower masters, she should still have a chance to leave the city smoothly... right?

In general, Misia feels that she is a very "peaceful" dark wizard, and only uses human life as material to exchange new witchcraft and power from the Blue Wind when necessary.

He felt that he should be like the dark wizards of the past, lurking beside the royal family of a certain country and acting as his magical advisor, occasionally showing his fangs to let people know that he is not someone to be trifled with.