novellhall Chapter 677, Part 2: Meng Zhen's Insidiousness
Chapter 677, Part 2: Meng Zhen's Insidiousness
Chapter 677 The Second Meng Zhen is Insidious
If it was Lin Xiaohe who designed it, she would never have given the order but not given the fire token.
This discovery was like a bucket of ice water, dousing everyone from head to toe, leaving them feeling utterly chilled.
Why weren't they designed by Lin Xiaohe?
Has she been discovered?
How is she now? Is she in danger?
Are there any other pitfalls in this dungeon?
The expert team buried themselves in research, occasionally whispering to each other, their eyes serious.
Before they could figure out what was going on, everyone was surprised to find that this instance was different from the last one; the time flow was much faster.
The first day, midnight.
Six hours had passed in real time, but six hours had passed in the instance. The players from the Eastern Kingdom had already encountered every possible pitfall.
The man who dozed off on duty was given twenty strokes of the cane, leaving his buttocks bruised and swollen. He lay at the foot of the city wall, breathing in the cold air, until he was relieved of his shift by his teammates.
I almost got beheaded for asking for half a liter more rice. Luckily I ran fast, or I would have met my maker on the first day.
Even more ruthless was the information rule. Three teams were transferred to the air defense zone outside Andingmen by fake fire tokens. When they arrived, they found that there were no guards on the city wall. Tatar arrows flew from the darkness and took two people away on the spot, eliminating them immediately.
The system coldly displayed a message: [Player has died.]
The deaths of the two soldiers were like a heavy slap in the face to everyone.
The sense of suffocation that had been building up in the command center vanished completely before midnight.
Old Zhou took off his glasses and put them back on, then took them off again, repeating this three or four times. Finally, he held them in his hand and stopped wearing them, leaving his lenses covered in sweaty fingerprints.
Commander Zhang stood in front of the big screen, holding an enamel mug. The tea in the mug had long since gone cold, but he hadn't drunk a drop.
System prompts kept popping up on the screen, each one indicating that a player had triggered a rule trap.
In the data statistics column, the number in the "Number of Survivors" column is dropping at a visible rate.
"Information rules." Old Zhou glared angrily, his chest heaving violently, his voice hoarse. "It's a fake fire card! They forged the transfer order and sent our people to the air defense zone."
"They're entrapping us!" Commander Zhang slammed his enamel mug on the table, spilling tea all over half of it. "They're using fake orders to lure out real orders, using fake military orders to steal lives."
The air in the command center felt like it had been sucked out and replaced entirely with oxygen.
Everyone's hearts were in their throats, their faces extremely grim. The helplessness of being able to watch helplessly as their companions fell into the pit and perished, while they could do nothing about it, was like ants gnawing at their hearts.
In the instance, time relentlessly flows.
Li Qing and others were ordered to climb the city wall and stand guard.
There was no moon outside the city; as far as the eye could see, there were only the campfires of the Tatar tents, scattered like will-o'-the-wisps on a wasteland, stretching from outside Deshengmen to outside Andingmen, burning a dark red outline on the horizon.
Suddenly, the sound of horses' hooves came from afar, and then the villages outside the city lit up, almost illuminating a small patch of sky.
"Tatars raiding the village! Tatars raiding the village!" On the watchtower, an NPC veteran pointed outside the city, his voice trembling.
In the darkness below the city, the cries of women and children rose and fell, interspersed with shouts in Tatar language and the occasional short screams.
In the surrounding villages, not a single blade of grass was left overnight.
Suddenly, a fast horse galloped to the city walls.
Immediately following was a captured Ming army messenger, covered in blood, bound to a saddle by the Tatars, with a Tatar command flag stuck in his back.
A Tatar cavalryman behind him reined in his horse and shouted towards the city wall in broken Chinese, "Where is your emperor?"
The messenger struggled to lift his head and shouted towards the city wall: "Datong has fallen, Zijing Pass is under attack, is there any reinforcement from the capital?"
An arrow flew from the darkness and pierced the back of his neck.
The messenger died, his eyes wide open, unable to close them in death. The Tatar cavalry released his grip, and the body slid off his horse, crashing into the dust below the city.
In the firelight, the Tatar horns sounded, like the howls of wolves on the wasteland.
The NPC guards on the city wall looked ashen-faced.
An old soldier knelt down, leaning against the battlements, muttering something: "The fourteenth year of the Zhengtong reign... the fourteenth year of the Zhengtong reign has come again..."
System notification: [Phase 1: Fires outside the city, triggered.]
At the same time, the system played a recap of the previous events for the contestants.
In 1449, the Tumu Crisis occurred, resulting in the annihilation of 200,000 Ming troops, the capture of Emperor Yingzong, and the imminent siege of Beijing by the Oirat Mongols. Yu Qian resolutely opposed the proposal to move the capital south, defended the city, decisively defeated the Oirat Mongols, and preserved the Ming dynasty.
101 years later, during the Gengxu Incident, Altan Khan once again besieged the city. This time, who would defend it?
The system included a map of the capital's defenses.
The map shows the locations of the three lines of defense.
Li Qing's eyes lit up. The locations of the three lines of defense on the map corresponded exactly to the hiding place in the deputy register of the grain granary, the defense zone recorded in Ding Rukui's transfer order, and the location of a side hall!
After finishing their shift, Li Qing led his team to move quickly along the city wall's rampart.
He tucked the goose-feather knife behind his waist and dug out a blue brick from the base of the city wall.
The brick was engraved with faint characters, which were highlighted on the screen by the system: [Jiajing 29th Year · Granary · Supplementary Register]
His teammates followed behind, each clutching a map of the capital's defenses copied from the previous recap.
In the command center, a scruffy-bearded researcher suddenly stood up, seemingly frantic, and spoke rapidly: "They've found them! They're saved!"
"The granary has extra reserves, and the defense zone under Ding Rukui's command has a real fire token. The old files in the side hall contain a secret order for exemption from expediency. All three pieces of information are in the previous summary; they are the backup plan that Director Lin left for us!"
The atmosphere in the command center was like riding a roller coaster, rushing from the bottom of the valley to the top.
Old Zhou put his glasses back on, his fingers still trembling, but his voice was steady: "Good! Good! Good! As long as one person finds a loophole in the rules, the warriors in the dungeon are safe!"
He firmly believed that Li Qing would definitely find a way to inform the other soldiers about these three key points.
This is the spirit of unity among the soldiers of the East!
As he predicted, after Li Qing conveyed key information through various means, tens of thousands of contestants were converging on the three key nodes of the city defense map.
The previously scattered formation is being reorganized, and the previously chaotic movement is becoming orderly.
Torches on the city wall flickered in the night wind, their light illuminating the mottled bricks, while short commands occasionally echoed from the foot of the wall.
Everything is moving in a positive direction.
……
"Damn it! Second Meng, you were in charge of the background information, weren't you? What do you mean by this? Why did you leak important rules?! Are you deliberately letting the people of Dongguo off the hook?! I'm going to report you to the city lord, you traitor!" The fox-faced man was furious.
All the killing moves they had painstakingly devised were ruined by the Second Meng!
Now, the players from the East are on the same starting line as them, and they must fight it out in a real battle!
Lin Xiaohe scoffed, her tone extremely irritating: "Is it my fault? Alright, stop talking nonsense. You guys personally went down to the dungeon as NPCs just to get a few more crystals. If you're going to be an NPC, you should have the awareness of an NPC and go fight honestly. Tsk tsk tsk, what if you lose..."
The thirty-two shadows trembled in unison, and Meng's words seemed to cast a shadow over everyone.
I have a feeling that Second Meng, that cunning bastard, isn't up to any good!
But even if she did something underhanded, she couldn't possibly control the outcome of the battle!
In the end, on the battlefield, strength speaks for itself.
The water's been cut off all day, I'm going crazy!
Water is the source of life!
(End of this chapter)