Chapter 347
Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/PazjBDkTmW
You can buy coins here to unlock advanced chapters: https://gravitytales.com/coins-purchase-page/
Chapter 347: Breakthrough
The Macedonian Phalanx, once a glorious formation, was even crowned with the name ‘invincible’ at its peak.
However, to a modern person like Luo Ji, this claim was inevitably somewhat exaggerated.
It still had weaknesses.
He could easily list several, and giving examples for each would be tedious, so let’s just focus on the two most obvious ones.
The first weakness was flexibility.
The weapon length of spearmen was already sufficient to strip them of any ‘flexibility.’
And for the Macedonian Phalanx, which required spears to be set up in rows, its lack of flexibility was imaginable.
This made it difficult for them to handle unexpected sudden attacks.
The second weakness came from their formation itself.
This formation was both an advantage and a weakness.
The dense phalanx left little room for movement for each soldier within it.
A single soldier’s mistake in the phalanx could potentially implicate many others.
This resulted in high demands on both the soldiers and the terrain.
At the same time, with such a dense formation, imagine if two waves of arrows rained down from above, ranged units would surely have a field day.
Unfortunately, Li Yuanjie apparently lacked this common military knowledge.
But even if he had it, it would be useless.
With such obvious weaknesses, how could Zhao Pan not take precautions?
The large shield unit that had retreated earlier had already protected both flanks and the rear of the entire phalanx, specifically to guard against various surprise attacks!
Facing the dense and sharp spears, even the Kobolds, who had been exceptionally fierce moments before, inevitably began to panic.
The retreat of the Kobold unit inevitably put some pressure on Li Yuanjie.
However, facing such a spear phalanx, it was indeed difficult to resist without the support of shield-wielding units.
In the current situation, it was not the time to fret over his elite troops.
Thinking this, Li Yuanjie decisively pulled a portion of his wolfman warriors to resist the advance of Zhao Pan’s main force.
Unexpectedly, at this moment, Zhou Yi, who had been watching the movements on this side, also seized the opportunity.
“All troops, assault!”
With a single command, the long-silent army formation revealed its ferocious fangs.
Liu Zheng, who had rested sufficiently, swung his Spring and Autumn Greatblade, once again leading the charge to break through!
With a 5-star fierce general leading the way, a few wolfman warriors were nothing to fear.
As the Spring and Autumn Greatblade swung, the fierce combat prowess of a first-rate general fully erupted.
3 wolfman warriors who tried to block his path suffered one death and two injuries in a single encounter, making Li Yuanjie’s eyelids twitch behind him.
“Li Ke, stop that human for me!”
Receiving the order, Li Ke decisively swung his twin blades and charged forward again.
However, Zhou Yi, who had long been prepared for this move, would not let this wolfman hinder them.
“Stop him!”
With another command, over a dozen bronze halberds simultaneously attacked Li Ke.
Faced with such a formation, even the fiercest general would have to retreat a few steps, and Li Ke was no exception.
However, once he retreated, it would be difficult to charge forward again.
This squad of halberdiers was clearly left by Zhou Yi specifically to counter him.
After a series of charges and kills, as the two units reunited, the entire formation shifted again.
With Liu Zheng as the vanguard, they desperately charged with all their might in one direction.
Several targeted formation changes and the unspoken coordination among the soldiers allowed them to forcefully tear open a gap in the beastman army’s encirclement and charge out!
“Chase, quickly chase them!”
At this moment, Li Yuanjie’s face was undoubtedly extremely grim.
This was truly the first time he had encountered such a situation.
Liu Zheng, having successfully broken through, turned to look at the beastman army relentlessly pursuing them.
The enemy was in close pursuit, and more and more soldiers in the rear were dying.
Someone had to stay behind to cover their retreat and buy time for the others.
At this thought, Liu Zheng decisively slowed down and moved beside Zhao Pan.
“Old Zhao…”
“No!”
Zhao Pan uttered with a grim expression.
Even without hearing, he knew what Liu Zheng wanted to say.
“You should understand this situation better than me.”
“Someone has to stay behind to cover our retreat, otherwise, we’ll all die!”
At this point, Liu Zheng’s tone softened slightly.
“Zhou Yi, Liu Tao, Zhang Lue, and you, none of you are cut out for that role. Staying behind would only lead to certain death.”
“Staying behind is a dead end for you too!”
Zhao Pan, usually composed, now showed clear signs of emotional loss of control, interrupting Liu Zheng’s words twice in a short span.
“But at least I can buy time!”
Liu Zheng retorted, not showing any weakness.
“And don’t forget, the people of Iron Wall City just evacuated before nightfall…”
Those words struck Zhao Pan’s soft spot directly, making his face turn pale.
He was utterly speechless.
With such a large-scale movement, even if they traveled all night, the people of Iron Wall City definitely wouldn’t have gone far in such a short time.
If they were caught by these monsters, their fate was unimaginable.
“The city gate is just ahead. I don’t need to say more about what to do next, do I?”
As he spoke, the other city gate of Iron Wall City was already in sight.
To facilitate their later evacuation, the gate had not been lowered even after nightfall, which saved them some trouble.
With that thought, Liu Zheng turned back to check the position of the pursuers.
Thanks to his familiarity with Iron Wall City’s terrain, they had indeed put some distance between them, but completely shaking them off was a pipe dream.
“Liu Zheng…”
“Go quickly.”
As he spoke, Liu Zheng snatched the torch from Zhao Pan’s hand and pushed him out of the city gate.
Then, he resolutely turned away, unwilling to look at his old comrade’s expression.
He had always hated such scenes.
Walking, he self-consciously pulled out a wineskin from his embrace and took two gulps, satisfying his craving.
Then, with a pained expression, he poured all the remaining wine from the wineskin onto the city gate’s mechanism.
This was tiger bone wine bestowed upon him by His Majesty, ordinarily, he wouldn’t even bear to drink it in large gulps.
Now, it was all wasted on this broken mechanism.
Better a short pain than a long one.
After emptying it completely, Liu Zheng touched the mechanism with his torch.
The entire mechanism was instantly engulfed by fire.
The spreading flames quickly burned through the ropes connected to the city gate, and deprived of support, the formerly raised city gate crashed down with a thud.
At this point, Liu Zheng had calmed down.
He took a deep breath of the wine aroma in the air.
His craving rekindled, he couldn’t help but lick his lips.
“I should have drunk one more mouthful. I wonder if Old Zhao has led the others far away…”
With this thought, Liu Zheng instinctively turned to look at the tightly shut city gate behind him.
The dozens of figures that shouldn’t have been there made him pause in surprise.
His nose suddenly stung, almost bringing tears to his eyes.
Then, he forced himself to shout.
“Damn it! I say, you guys, why aren’t you retreating with the main force? What are you doing staying behind?”
“We brothers were just worried that General you couldn’t hold out alone, so we stayed to join in the fun.”
“Bullshit! I can take on 100 of them like it’s nothing!”
Hearing this, Liu Zheng cursed with a laugh, his voice uncontrollably hoarse.
These were truly his old comrades, his first batch of soldiers.
After so many years of fighting, some had died, some had retired, and now only these few remained with him.
He knew every one of their names.
“Where’s Old Lu? That grandson isn’t here too, is he?”
“No, that grandson wanted to stay, but I gave him a free kick and sent him flying. His son is almost running around, and he still doesn’t know how to think things through. This time, it’s just us old bachelors accompanying you.”
As they spoke, accompanied by a burst of laughter, the beastmen army, rapidly pursuing them from a distance, had already encircled them by the city gate.
