Chapter 315: The Overwhelming 5th Wave!

After the besiegers stopped right outside the edge of the catapults’ attack range, their nearly 10,000 troops from all four directions gradually spread out, completely encircling the city. Looking down from above, the enemy and the city resembled an enlarged cash coin1, with the square hole in the middle looking extremely fragile.

However, this ‘cash coin’ didn’t last for long. As a long horn sounded, the besiegers began to charge like mad towards the city, in a completely different manner from the previously messy three waves!

They charged out from the big circle in batches, each batch consisted of spaced groups of two or three soldiers. From between the soldiers that had rushed out from the previous batch, the next batch would rush out, keeping equally spaced as before.

In this way, group after group of soldiers approached while spread out, giving Bai Xiaofei an urge to drag out their leaders and beat them up – Their method was rendering his artillery useless, basically saying ‘Yeah, go ahead and fire, see how many you can smash with this level of fragmentation and the flexibility of our class two soldiers. But if you don’t, once they cross the minimum attack distance of your artillery, you won’t be able to hit them even if you want to!’

Moreover, Bai Xiaofei could imagine that once the soldiers approached the wall, their siege equipment would definitely follow, and then their joint double attack would put him in a dilemma.

“Notify the other three walls, those who control the catapults cannot move! Even if the enemies rush to their sides and cut them down, they cannot move! As long as their catapults enter our attack range, they must be destroyed before our walls are in their attack range! Everyone, stick to your positions, heavy crossbows will not be used for the time being. Archers, your priority is the enemy archers, and the rest, prevent them from climbing up the wall!”

After a series of orders, the soldiers on the wall immediately moved. The advantage of commanding from a higher vantage point allowed the long-range ability of Bai Xiaofei’s side to have a crushing upper hand over the opponent, which was also why siege battles were never easy.

Of course, the basic premise was that they were accurate enough, otherwise, it would just be a waste of arrows.

But reality proved that Bai Xiaofei's soldiers were very reliable! Constant vigilance could stave off evil. The besiegers might have won a small victory by approaching the wall, but Bai Xiaofei quickly won during the wall-climbing battle.

Row after row of ladders were placed against the city wall, and the enemy soldiers began to climb up fearlessly, but in the end, they would still die if even they weren’t afraid of death, they either fell with the flipped ladders or were stoned to death. Bai Xiaofei didn’t allow fire to be used for now, so the death of the besiegers had been of blood and gore so far.

As for the advancing catapults, they were the first to be attacked. However, there were always a few among the five who even managed a couple of decent throws. Although Bai Xiaofei's artillery wasn’t damaged, several soldiers were killed. But that was it. Under Bai Xiaofei’s special care, none of the catapults got a second chance to attack.

The seemingly dangerous 4th wave was finally wiped out at the base of the city wall after two hours, and the day was half over.

One to two o'clock in the afternoon was the hottest period of the day and also the most irritable time, so the besiegers were wise in not choosing this juncture to attack. After all, their morale had hit rock bottom. Four waves of attacks in a row, dozens of forces being sent in, yet they couldn’t even touch the gate. It would be strange if their morale was high.

Therefore, after the 4th wave, Bai Xiaofei and his hundreds of soldiers got a long rest period.

However, the 4th wave also clarified for Bai Xiaofei the reason for their death-seeking behavior.

They had only been probing!

Probing the defensive capabilities of the city, and probing for a method to attack effectively at the same time. In the 4th wave, they had already found a way to limit the artillery. If Bai Xiaofei guessed correctly, their next goal should be to study how to climb the wall.

Bai Xiaofei didn’t know what new measures they’d come up with. All he could do was have a good rest and get ready to fight!

Waiting time always passed slowly. Although not to the point that ‘a day felt like a year,’ it wasn’t exaggerated to use ‘tormenting’ to describe it.

Gradually, Bai Xiaofei could already see his soldiers starting to chat or play something in groups of two and three. Compared to their initial tension, this ease wasn’t a good thing for a battle at all. However, Bai Xiaofei couldn’t stop them, because there was no use in being constantly tense as it would only result in more harm than good.

What Bai Xiaofei didn’t expect, however, was that this wait lasted until the sun went down and the sky was getting dark!

“Light up the whole city wall!” Bai Xiaofei quickly made a decision after smelling a hint of danger. Huge torches were lit one by one.

At the same time, the people watching him in reality sighed at this action.

In fact, Bai Xiaofei would be right to do so if it was reality. However, in the Illusionary Sandboard, this completely defeated the purpose of the 4th level as a ‘benefit level’ and could even lead to defeat!

To carefully consider the conditions for clearance, the criterion for judging whether the city was lost or not actually lay with the civilians. As long as you guaranteed that more than half of the civilians would survive, you would not fail. Meanwhile, the whole ‘benefit’ was attached to the first four waves: each time there were nearly 10,000 enemy troops, and four waves added up to nearly 130,000 troop points! Take it to the next level and it was automatically a pass.

Those who re-challenged the Sandboard to climb the Command Ranking all chose to hide the civilians before the 5th wave and then led their army to abandon the city wall and defend the entrance gate until the end of the night. Even Sima Ye was no exception.

Why? It wasn’t because they didn’t want to make an effort and win it normally, but that the 5th wave was a f*cking BUG! It wasn’t the kind of attack that the challenger’s accumulation from the first three levels could deal with. There were only three words to describe it – Overwhelming in number!

And it was exactly what Bai Xiaofei was seeing now.

Just now, he had suddenly felt that something was very wrong. Looking into the distance, the dark night sky had shrouded everything, so he ordered a wave of fire arrows to be fired…

Then, he saw so many soldiers that his scalp tingled!

After the fire arrows lit the sky, the enemy soldiers simply gave up stealthing and rushed over in the same way as the 4th wave while shouting slogans, but this time their density was nothing that the 4th wave could compare to.

Moreover, their catapults already had the city walls in their range of attack, plus with their terrifying number of 20 on each side, the first wave of boulders came crashing down like a meteor storm!

“Stick to the wall!!!!”

This was the only sentence Bai Xiaofei could shout out.

1. Chinese cash coin: Image↩