Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 304 - 220 The Intersection of Two Lines_4

Chapter 304: Chapter 220 The Intersection of Two Lines_4

In Dark Sand’s mind, a plan gradually took shape.

He hadn’t had time to implement it when the fog before his eyes thickened again, signaling that today’s game time was about to end.

Dark Sand felt somewhat regretful, but upon reflection, he realized that tonight he had made significant progress in the storyline of his character, Wang Wenchuan. Especially since he had successfully navigated the route of being a powerful minister, the difficulty of the entire historical segment had suddenly decreased, greatly boosting his confidence.

...

At this moment, other players were also waking up from their sleep.

The official forum of "Dark Sand" was soon flooded with discussions by players.

"Damn! The second stage of this instance is just too hard!"

"Yeah, both paths feel like MAX difficulty."

"It’s not exactly that it’s super hard, but rather, it’s frustrating! Compared to the instance with Emperor Taizu of Sheng, it’s too frustrating."

"Yes, the key issue is that both Yu Jiaxuan and Wang Wenchuan are ministers. Even if they have grand ambitions, it’s all in vain without the emperor’s support!"

The forum echoed with the grievances of players.

Some players had already further clarified the detailed way to clear the "Deferred Speech" instance.

As many players had anticipated, the ultimate goal of this instance was to win the Battle of Niuzhu without the key character Zhao Binfu, defeating an enhanced version of the Jin soldiers.

Initially, players were somewhat unclear about how exactly to achieve this, speculating that Yu Jiaxuan would most likely need to take on the role of leading the troops.

However, as players made further progress, everything gradually became clearer.

Yu Jiaxuan and Wang Wenchuan could be considered as representing two approaches, scholarly and military.

Yu Jiaxuan represented the military aspect. Although he was a scholar, his combat power was off the charts and he possessed a remarkable military talent.

Currently, the player making the fastest progress on Yu Jiaxuan’s path was Zhao Haiping. According to his strategy, Yu Jiaxuan’s path had at least three stages.

The first stage was raiding camps, the second was exterminating bandits, and the third was training troops.

The players had perfected the two solutions to raiding the camps, but the second stage, exterminating bandits, stumped many.

The difficulty lay not in whether they could defeat them, but in the fact that they couldn’t even catch the bandits!

Every time they led a large force to eradicate the bandits, these bandits always managed to receive advance warnings and slipped away.

The players felt like they were hitting cotton; their efforts were futile.

After failing twice, Zhao Haiping analyzed the current situation seriously and finally came up with a solution.

That was to carefully select five hundred soldiers from the army and charge fiercely!

And indeed, his bold move paid off.

The reason could be traced back to how the bandits always managed to evade encirclement by the government forces.

The bandits had the support of locals nearby, so whenever the government forces assembled in large numbers, there would always be locals who informed the bandits. With superior information, the bandits naturally always managed to escape unscathed.

Therefore, Zhao Haiping deliberately stayed in the town for a few more days, letting the army train and rest in the city to create a false sense of security for the bandits.

During this training, Zhao Haiping selected the best five hundred soldiers in secret and sneaked into the mountains when no one was paying attention.

Of course, this meant that the government forces were no longer numerically superior.

The bandits numbered in the thousands, and Zhao Haiping’s mere five hundred men were at a definite disadvantage.

However, after two attempts, Zhao Haiping discovered that these bandits were merely a disorganized mob. Facing the formidable Yu Jiaxuan and the suddenly appearing government soldiers, the morale of the bandits quickly collapsed, and they scattered in all directions.

Zhao Haiping seized the opportunity to kill several of their leaders, thus naturally resolving the bandit problem.

Following this, he entered the third stage of Yu Jiaxuan’s path.

The main goal of the third stage was to train troops.

After quelling the bandits, Yu Jiaxuan moved on to suppress uprisings in various places, acting as a firefighter.

However, the combat effectiveness of the local government forces was low and their military readiness poor. Even dealing with bandits was somewhat challenging.

Moreover, Yu Jiaxuan’s targets were never these bandits, but the Jin people.

He knew very well that many of these bandits were impoverished peasants who could no longer survive, much like the earlier tea merchants who were forced to turn to banditry. As an official of the Qi Dynasty, it was his duty to eradicate bandits and maintain peace.

But he never forgot that the Jin were his greatest enemies in this life.

Thus, Yu Jiaxuan petitioned the emperor to create a capable local army, and received the emperor’s approval.

Zhao Haiping had initially thought that training troops wouldn’t be difficult, but he soon realized that there were pitfalls!

Because the emperor’s thoughts on this matter were not exactly diametrically opposed to Yu Jiaxuan’s, but they were completely unrelated.

The emperor’s idea was merely to establish a local militia to deal with frequent uprisings and maintain local security.

In other words, the emperor only wanted a fire brigade.

But Yu Jiaxuan’s ambition was definitely not limited to this; he wanted to mold the Flying Tiger Army into a truly capable force that could be deployed to the frontline to confront the Jin soldiers head-on whenever there were changes at the borders!

As such, players faced a significant difficulty while forming the Flying Tiger Army: lack of funds!

After all, in the emperor’s view, the Flying Tiger Army was just a security force intended to suppress local rebellions, so the military funding provided was extremely limited.