Chapter 11: Retaliatory Attack

I have business to attend to today and was afraid I might not make it back in time to upload, so I’m posting tonight’s chapter in advance. Please continue to support me.

“This is unfair. We conquered those cities ourselves.” The moment Toudina heard this, she sprang to her feet. The same look flashed in the eyes of the other heroes.

Li Bin nodded. “That’s true. You took those cities by force. But after you occupy them, can the cities develop rapidly? No, they can’t.”

“But haven’t we done a fine job these past days?” Lydas said, displeasure clear in her voice.

“Of course you have. You’ve done very well. But a single administrative hero can increase a city’s rate of development by ten percent. How could that not tempt me?” Li Bin said slowly. “Naturally, I won’t forget your interests. After each city is taken, the administrative hero will control fifty percent of its development. The hero who conquered it gets thirty percent for recruitment, and the remaining twenty percent will be sent to Ghost Butterfly City. That should satisfy you, shouldn’t it?”

“And if several heroes capture a city together?” Dildrey asked. “Or if they take it through joint cooperation?”

“You can decide among yourselves how to divide that thirty percent,” Li Bin replied. “Or distribute it according to battle merit. I won’t interfere.”

“And what about troop recruitment?” Gru asked from the side. “Even if we have money, we still need sources of soldiers.”

“In cities you conquer yourselves, recruitment rights are fully open. In cities taken by others, you get access to eighty percent. As for the four cities we already possess, I’ll grant you sixty percent recruitment rights there.” Li Bin hardened his heart as he said it.

“Fine. We’ll do it.” Ted slapped the table and stood up.

Li Bin immediately smiled. “Good. Then let’s arrange the objectives of this campaign.”

His plan for this operation was to divide the forces at hand into two parts. Toudina, Dildrey, Lydas, and Divine Bell would form the first army. Because their troops were all mixed units, they would organize themselves freely, using Ghost Butterfly City as their base and launching attacks from the center outward.

Li Bin himself would lead his personal guard, Reed, Ted, Gru, and Jessica aboard the Blood Clan Fortress, flying to the outermost target and attacking from the outside inward.

After all the troops had departed, routine affairs within the territory would be handled by San Nei. The Hill Stone Mine would still remain under Wine Cask’s management, though Watermoon Sky would also have the authority to mobilize the dwarven miners there. Their task would be, after each city was taken, to seize control of all its mines and roads with the utmost speed.

Once every task had been assigned, Li Bin swiftly led the troops that had long since been assembled and boarded the Blood Clan Fortress. Soon afterward, it sped through the air toward Naraku’s undead city.

This undead city was the highest-level one among all the cities in Li Bin’s campaign, though its location was less than ideal. He had already decided that once he seized the City Heart, he would immediately place it in Ghost Butterfly City. With just two more level-four City Hearts, Ghost Butterfly City would be able to advance to a level-six town.

Naturally, this also meant that the undead city’s defenses were likely the strongest of them all. Li Bin had also heard that Naraku’s special ability allowed him to recruit wandering wild undead troops in the field. By Li Bin’s conservative estimate, this city would contain at least more than a battalion’s worth of forces. To deal with such a situation, he had made special preparations.

Before long, Li Bin arrived near the undead city. It gave off a feeling entirely different from that of Ghost Butterfly City. Naraku’s city was steeped in decay; from afar, even its walls seemed to have been built from bricks and stone on the verge of rotting away.

Yet Li Bin did not underestimate it because of its dilapidated appearance. In his eyes, the city before him concealed countless mortal dangers.

He brought his troops beneath the walls, and before Li Bin could do anything, Naraku appeared atop the battlements.

Behind him stood roughly five squads of vampire warriors. Elsewhere along the walls, skeleton soldiers, corpse soldiers, and ghost troops had already made their preparations for battle.

“Isn’t this the lord of Ghost Butterfly City?” Naraku looked at the troops Li Bin had brought and burst into laughter. “How did you end up here with such a force? Surely Ghost Butterfly City hasn’t been taken and left you with nowhere else to go?”

In order to capture this city more smoothly, Li Bin had deliberately brought only a portion of his troops as bait, to draw Naraku’s attention. Of course, he had never expected Naraku to fail to notice the other forces. He was gambling instead on Naraku’s greed—hoping that after killing him, Naraku would want to use his special ability to take over Li Bin’s troops after they became wild units.

Judging from the current situation, Li Bin had won the wager. Though Naraku had not transferred every last defending unit here, all of his attention had fallen upon Li Bin.

So Li Bin smiled and said, “Aren’t you the one who goes everywhere calling yourself other people’s ally? Why have you stopped mentioning the word ‘ally’ now?”

“You’re courting death.” Naraku flew into a rage at once.

The only answer he received was the heavy bolt of a death ballista.

Naraku waved a hand, and the vampire warriors behind him leapt swiftly from the walls, like more than sixty streaks of crimson cloud swooping down upon Li Bin.

Li Bin merely took a slight step back. Three squads of mummies that had been stationed at his side immediately charged forward, accompanied by the negative magic released from the Nether God Lamp.

“I’ve actually wanted to see this for a long time,” Li Bin said calmly, watching the battle unfold before him. “Between mummies and vampires, which one is truly the strongest level-seven undead unit?”

But Naraku on the walls could not remain calm. He had decided to strike proactively only because he had seen that Li Bin had brought nothing but his personal guard. His aim had been to defeat Li Bin in the shortest possible time. Yet now he had the distinct feeling that he had fallen into Li Bin’s calculations.

His five squads of vampire warriors had actually been forcibly pinned down by just three squads of mummies. How could he believe such a thing? Pacing twice along the wall, he seized a skeleton archer at random and shouted, “Shoot! Kill them for me!”

“But Master, if we fire now, we’ll easily become targets for the ballistae below the walls,” the skeleton archer explained.

“What is there to fear?” Naraku shouted. “You’re on the walls now—you have the height advantage when firing at them. Move, quickly, or my vampire troops will be finished!”

Seeing this, Li Bin could not help but smile. In truth, the reason he had been able to use three squads of mummies to battle five squads of vampires was because he had relied on a clever trick.

Among undead troops, vampires—who could continuously feed on blood and regenerate—were the most sensitive to holy water and silver. Mummies, on the other hand, were the least affected by such things because their bodies were wrapped from head to toe in bandages. So Li Bin had specifically obtained from Jessica several methods for making holy water, along with a large number of silver scepters.

With these in hand, Naraku’s vampire troops fought with extreme restraint, never once able to display their full strength.