"Shut the gate now! The enemy must not be allowed to come inside!"

On the wall, Red Maple was growling at the guild leader of another guild. "No time for hesitation! Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls’ cavalry is too strong. If they’re allowed to enter the gate area, there’s a chance they may take control of it and doom us all! And that is before even mentioning Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand, Wind Fantasy and Legendary Brave are among them! Don’t tell me we can deal with it, they’ve more than proven themselves during the WEL!"

However, the guild leader pointed at the Japanese players who were still outside the gate and pleaded, "I can’t, Red Maple! At least thirty thousand people of my guild are still outside the Wall! If we shut it now, none of them will survive! I can’t let them down like this!"

Red Maple pulled out his sword and threatened, "Just tell them to find an opportunity to use a return scroll, and if they fail then so be it! Are you a man or not? Do you know how much resources we put into the Impassable Great Wall during the design stage of Heavenblessed? You cannot possibly expect us to throw all that away for a couple ten thousand people! Shut the gate now!"

"F… fine…" The guild leader replied grimly before yelling, "Shut the gate of the Impassable Great Wall! My brothers and sisters, find an opportunity to use a return scroll! If it is too late, then at least turn around and fight the Chinese to the death!"

The iron cables started rolling, and the ridiculously thick gate of the Impassable Great Wall began closing slowly. The gate was made using some sort of unknown steel, and its surface was covered in spikes that were at least half a meter long. It was very effective against charging riders and siege weapons. Moreover, the arrow loops were crawling with countless archers. They were just waiting for us to get into range to shoot us.

……

The Armored Ice Qilin Horse was fast, but it ultimately wasn’t fast enough to get me through the gate before the gap narrowed to fist size. I could have Sun Wukong’s 72 Earthly Transformations, and I still wouldn’t be able to get inside. Annoyed, I let out an angry cry and launched Burning Blade Slash at the gate!

Bang bang bang…

The giant gate shook under the effects of Mountain Crush, but the resulting damage was less than optimistic—

5990!

7266!

10293!

Even if I did good damage, the gate had over ten million HP, and there were many engineers repairing it from behind. I saw a couple of green numbers around 10k each rising above the gate, and the structure was back to full health in the blink of an eye.

Boom boom boom...

Lin Yixin, He Yi, Li Chengfeng, Gui Guzi, High Fighting Spirits, Chaos Moon and more caught up a second later and hit the gate with their own signature moves, but none of them were able to do too much damage to the structure as well. In fact, they lost a sizable amount of HP running head-first into the spikes on the gate.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Just how high is this fortification’s Defense? How on earth are we going to breach a gate like this?" Li Chengfeng exclaimed in shock.

Lin Yixin tried again and hit the gate with Barrier Break, but the skill only did 6762 damage. She stuck out her tongue and chuckled. "Well, looks like a frontal assault won’t work!"

Meanwhile, the enemy archers on the wall were aiming their bows at us through the machicolations. A Level 190 archer shouted violently, "These players are all famous in the China server, so kill them all! I will pay anyone ten thousand gold on the spot if they can shoot these people to death!"

Swhoosh swhoosh swhoosh!

I hurriedly blocked in front of Lin Yixin and raised my shield when the enemy started shooting. The armor-piercing arrows actually hurt, and I lost almost 50k HP in an instant despite my Dragon God Shield. Clearly, all the archers posted here were top-tier, and I reckoned that there were at least 200 archers guarding this gate alone. Worse, they could shoot us with impunity, but we couldn’t do anything to them.

"Retreat!" I ordered, "The frontal assault has failed! We’ll find another way!"

"Mn!" Eyes Like Water nodded.

Lin Yixin, He Yi, Gui Guzi and the others withdrew as well, but I remained where I was. He Yi looked back at me in puzzlement. "Lu Chen? What are you waiting for?"

I replied vengefully, "No, I was just thinking that it’s not my style to take a slap without retaliation!"

I abruptly aimed the Purple Ying Sword at the machicolation to my right and let out a cry. The Purple Ying Sword immediately shot into the hole like a cyclone and elicited many screams of pain and death. Almost two seconds later, I shouted again, "Return!"

Swhoosh!

The Purple Ying Sword returned to me from the machicolation to my left side. After I grabbed the weapon firmly, I fired one last Thousand Ice Slash at the gate that scared the archers standing above it shitless. I could even see some of them backing away instinctively.

Satisfied, I turned around and rode away. There was no point staying here, and not even I could survive hundreds of archers shooting at me without the support of a priest.

……

After I returned to the open field, I discovered that the war had begun in earnest. Our troops swarmed the walls like ants, but arrows, magics, stones, logs, burning oil and more kept pouring down onto our players. People were screaming and dying everywhere.

"Fuck!"

Purple Marquis knocked a rock falling his way to the side before asking Nangong Lexi, "Lexi, can you shoot over the wall?"

Nangong Lexi moved her Dragonscale Beast a couple of steps back before performing a full draw. Then, she let loose a Spiraling Arrow Blade into the sky. Unfortunately, even with the extra attack range from her mount, the Spiraling Arrow Blade began losing power before it even passed the 60-yard mark. By the time it finally went over the 100-yard-tall wall, it barely touched the shields of the fighters standing at the edge of the wall and dealt less than 1000 damage!

"OMG, this isn’t going to work!" Disgruntled, Nangong Lexi looked to Lin Yixin and said, "Guild leader, there’s no way we can hit them from this position!"

A trace of helplessness flashed across Lin Yixin’s expression as she knocked aside a rolling log with her arm. She said to me, "Lu Chen, we need to fall back now!"

I nodded in agreement. "Retreat! Retreat a thousand yards away from the walls!"

"Mn!"

……

The Purple Grape City players laughed and jeered at us loudly as we moved a thousand yards away from the Impassable Great Wall. The guild leader of Tail Feather Palace, Sun-shooting Bow was pointing at us and cackling, "I thought Chinese players were a cut above the others, but nah, you’re still trash before the Wall. Come on, you fucking pussies! Your daddy’s waiting for you!"

At our base, Xu Yang shot Sun-shooting Bow an annoyed look and clenched his fist. "That piece of shit is so annoying!"

Hot and Sour Noodles nodded in agreement before consoling him, "It’s fine, a dog who bites doesn’t bark, and clearly Sun-shooting Bow is no biting dog. Anyway, we need to think of a way to overcome this wall soon. According to the system, there are 9 million enemies on the Wall and 18 million of us. We outnumber them two to one, so this isn’t an impossible siege."

Lin Yixin blinked once and said, "Well, we already know that our archers can’t hit them with their skills. It’s probably easier to lure our partners to bed than it is to siege this wall by force."

Me: "..."

He Yi: "..."

Luo River God of the Capital also said, "Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do to help either. None of my spells can reach that high."

Lian Xin echoed her sentiment. "Yeah, mages are useless in this type of warfare…"

Hot and Sour Noodles said, "Well, even if you can do nothing, you should still be on your guard at all times. Red Maple is directing the defense of the Impassable Great Wall, and he’s already proven himself to be a formidable and intelligent commander."

Stranger of Three Lifetimes joined in the conversation. "Anyway, any ideas on how to siege this fortress? Anyone?"

I thought for a moment before replying, "Well, I have a plan, but it’s going to cost us a lot of men…"

Lin Yixin chuckled. "That goes without saying. We knew from the beginning that it would cost us a great many things to destroy Purple Grape City."

I nodded and began, "Back at Sky City, our engineers researched many useful things such as the cloud ladders, siege weapons and more. One of them is something called the uh… Where’s third uncle? Ah, there you are. Can you give a Cloudpiercing Claw to me? Thanks…"

"Mn!"

An engineer answered my call and walked out of the crowd. He was the number one engineer of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls, and a fifty-years-old uncle who had been laid off from his job. He played Heavenblessed not for the combat, but for the crafting of siege tools and machines. He had been with Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls for a long time.

Third uncle passed a black glove to me. “Here you go!"

"Is this it?" Lin Yixin asked while tilting her head cutely.

I nodded. "Yep. The Cloudpiercing Claw has a max range of 120 yards, so it’s definitely long enough to reach the top of the Impassable Great Wall. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to pull out the hook once it sinks into the rock, and the rope is made of Wild Silkworm Thread that cannot be cut by blades. So yeah, my plan is for us to scale the wall with this…"

Stranger of Three Lifetimes was also tilting her head cutely next to Lin Yixin. "I don’t know… Are you sure this will work?"

"Of course it will. Why wouldn’t it?"

I aimed at a red maple tree some distance away from me and said, "Watch!"

I pressed a button, and the hook in front of the glove flew toward the tree. After it had caught the tree, I pulled and, thanks to my great Strength, snapped the tree trunk in half like a twig. I pressed the button again, and the hook returned back to my hand.

"Hehe, how is it?" I looked at everyone.

A stunned silence later, Dominating Heaven Blade gave me the thumbs-up and said, "You’re crazy!"