Something wrong with the data?

Qi Yingzhu leaned over to take a look, but there was no Excel in this world, nor any table rules. A lot of data was squeezed together in the form of pure text. The little tiger felt dizzy at the first glance, not to mention that he could tell what was wrong.

Seeing her confused expression, Lu Yan circled a certain data.

Then another one... He drew about ten circles like this and put down the pen without saying anything.

Qi Yingzhu immediately understood, and took this data and the previous data, and specifically compared them with the numbers circled by the master.

Sure enough, after comparing them, I found the problem.

If it was a war between mortals, the number of people would suddenly be reduced by one third, which would be obviously noticeable from the numbers, so military strategists developed many corresponding strategies, such as doubling the number of stoves, adding clothes to the straw men, tying branches to the horses' tails and sweeping them back and forth to create the momentum of thousands of troops, etc.

Since the cultivators' attack methods rely on magic weapons and formations, it is difficult to judge their number intuitively.

The power of a high-level cultivator with a higher level of cultivation may be equal to that of two, three, four, five, or even more low-level cultivators. It is almost impossible to judge the number of people by the effect of the spell alone.

But the data drawn by Lu Yan was the "recovery speed of the war formation" which few people paid attention to.

Although war formations are easy to manipulate, they are still formations after all. In addition to requiring resources to maintain and consume, they also require someone to manipulate the formation equipment and preside over it.

When a spell hits a certain position in the formation and consumes the energy there, resources must be quickly extracted to repair it. Under the condition that the average level of formation attainment per person is average, the more people come to maintain the formation, the faster the formation will recover.

Qi Yingzhu carefully compared the data and realized that if he inferred from this point, then in today's siege, the number of monks in the city responsible for maintaining the defensive formation had declined significantly.

It's only because of the increased resource consumption and formation output that there's no obvious sign of decline.

So the question is: Why are there fewer monks guarding the city?

Considering the bright side, it is possible that these monks have completely lost their fighting spirit under the master's psychological warfare and have no intention of resisting any further.

From a bad perspective, these monks might have already...

"It's hard to say." After listening to Qi Yingzhu's guess, Lu Yan shook his head and said, "But we can't rule out the possibility that they have escaped the encirclement."

"I checked the information from the intelligence department." Qi Yingzhu continued, "If hundreds of cultivators evacuated from Yuanjiang City, it is impossible that they did not leave any clues behind."

"In this world, there are ways to escape without leaving any traces." Lu Yan said slowly, "For example, the teleportation formation."

"Master." Qi Yingzhu said speechlessly, "If the Dragon Clan or the Feather Clan mastered the means of collective teleportation, they would not just use it to rescue the defenders of Yuanjiang City!"

"As long as we send spies to sneak into Zhongzhou and Xizhou, find a deserted place to set up the formation, and then send a large number of Dragon Clan and Feather Clan monks over, our backyard will be on fire! It's impossible to send people to guard every inch of land, right?"

"Is this possible?" Lu Yan fell into deep thought, and Qi Yingzhu's face suddenly turned pale.

Even Master couldn't deny this possibility, could it be that I guessed it right?

Of course, doubting such a possibility was just Lu Yan's habit as a general: to avoid missing any details.

But in the absence of any evidence, if we really treat it as a fact and take precautions against it, that would be too much of a paranoia.

Although the Mao people of Xizhou called him the White Tiger God General, Lu Yan knew that he was still far from reaching the god-level level of "winning every battle".

The war between monks is not like that of ordinary people. There are all kinds of strange and bizarre things that you have never heard of, and there are so many magical things that can suddenly reverse the situation.

It's like the ancient war between demons and humans. The former obviously had the upper hand, but the latter suddenly produced two magical weapons, the sun and the moon, and killed all the demons, with heads rolling and blood flowing like a river...

Thinking of the two immortal weapons, Lu Yan couldn't help but sigh, and lamented more and more the insignificance of human power under the destiny.

If the other party really mastered the mass teleportation formation, as Qi Yingzhu said, then the alliance camp of Zhongzhou and Xizhou would be in immediate danger of defeat and overthrow.

You are conquering cities and territories in front, but the other side sends a few ancestors to your doorstep and replaces your home. How can you still fight?

Although there is no evidence at present, it is not impossible to make a contingency plan in spare time...So Lu Yan thought about how to deal with this teleportation formation while arranging it and asked each team to strengthen the siege and no longer spare the cost.

A formation that can transport so many people at once will definitely leave traces in the city. If we can capture Yuanjiang City sooner, we can confirm this as soon as possible.

In addition, other possibilities besides collective teleportation also need to be ruled out one by one.

Using rivers and streams to escape? Using underground burrowing? Using group invisibility through magic, and then finding a secret route to escape on the battlefield? These were not things that ordinary cultivators could do. But now that they couldn't find the whereabouts of that group of people, they could only try their best to confirm it.

The next day, the former defenders of Jiangcheng had just received the donated materials when they were horrified to find that the siege outside was extremely fierce today: it seemed as if they would not give up until the city was captured.

Lou Ming hurriedly flew back to the City Guard House and urgently reported to Long Long:

"The enemy has intensified their siege!"

"Oh." Long Long was drinking tea. Hearing this, he slowly put down the teacup and said calmly, "Then we should also increase our defense accordingly."

"It has been increased!" Lou Ming's voice was so shrill that he was anxious. "My lord, have you forgotten? There are only one-third of the people left in the city now, and the strength of the defense formation has been increased to four times the original strength!"

The formation that originally required three people to maintain now only has one person left, so the operation will definitely not be as flexible as before. The formation's upper limit needs to be increased to three or even four times. The cost is that the resource consumption rate will also triple or quadruple.

"Tsk." Long Long said with great disdain, "I have just seen your defense formation. It is rotten, really rotten. No wonder it can't withstand the siege from outside."

Lou Ming almost knelt down to him. What time is it now? It's as if the enemy has already bombarded the headquarters, but the commander has not considered strategic retreat, but is still complaining about the poor equipment... Is this the focus now?

"Take it." Long Long picked up a scroll on the table and threw it on the ground.

Lou Ming rushed over to catch it, with the momentum of a goshawk hunting for prey, and opened it anxiously.

What was written on it was not a plan for evacuating the troops, but a formation that had never been seen before.

"According to the chain formation diagram I drew above, all the originally isolated and scattered small defense formations that require a large number of monks to maintain can be connected together." Long Long said lightly.