Chapter 183 Casefile 6: Twin Kings' Tombs (4)
Hearing this, Jiang You breathed a sigh of relief, but Andrei looked confident, as if he had expected this.
Seeing this, Jiang You couldn't help but poke his waist curiously.
Andrei explained, "Another large force is coming on horseback, at least half a day ahead of us. While we were still navigating the underground passage, they should have already surrounded East City. If you were one of Evil Eye Moon's men, where would you flee first?"
"Where to escape... the tunnel?" Jiang You's eyes flashed with fire, and an exclamation mark appeared in his eyes.
Even if the people of Evil Eye Moon use East City of Eston as their base camp, their manpower cannot exceed the troops sent by Andre this time.
The Kingdom Knights of West Eston were no longer merely the incompetent brood of Baron Neumann. With the regular troops Andrei had requested from his father, along with a few veterans whose disabilities remained intact, this elite force of several hundred men could be considered a top-tier field unit of the era.
If they were attacking a well-defended city, a few hundred fully-equipped knights might not be able to breach the thick walls. But facing the East City of Eston, which had been abandoned for nearly two hundred years, with only ruins left, comparable to a desolate wilderness overgrown with weeds and trees, these knights were the most powerful elite force at the moment.
They were regular troops, having undergone formal and rigorous training. The vast majority had seen action on real frontier battlefields. Equipped with incredibly fast warhorses, they also regularly underwent field training on hunting grounds, possessing the ability to swiftly pursue even in hilly and forested terrain...
This means that if they find the people of Evil Eye Moon in this deserted city and surround and pursue them, the people of Evil Eye Moon will have only one way to escape except to hide in the ruins of the abandoned city.
——Underground passage.
The area around East Eston was entirely plain. Once outside this city of the dead, inhabited by the undead, the landscape was unobstructed. Once on the open road, no one could escape the knights' rapid pursuit. The tunnels were narrow, making it impossible for horses to fit through, and the knights' heavy armor would become an obstacle to pursuit.
Although the tunnel leads to the West City of Eston and is full of traps set by Evil Eye Moon himself, the people of Evil Eye Moon are still unaware that Andre and his men have discovered the tunnel. Once they find that pursuers are surrounding the city, the most likely thing they will do is to enter the tunnel to temporarily avoid the attack. They can even take advantage of the darkness under the lamp and turn the "most dangerous West City of Eston" into the safest hiding place!
As for the traps in the tunnel, those were all installed by Evil Eye Moon himself, so their people naturally had the confidence to pass freely without being hurt by the traps.
"So we have to go through the tunnel!" Jiang You suddenly realized, "That way we can dismantle the traps as we go, and we can also block the Evil Eye Moon's people and catch them right in the jar!"
"Well... I was thinking of digging a rabbit hole to block the rabbit... but it's pretty much the same thing." Andre nodded.
Jiang You continued thinking along this line of thought. Since they didn't encounter any fleeing bandits in the tunnel, and there were no sounds of swords, magic, or fighting coming from above, it meant that either the knights had already arrested all the members of Evil Eye Moon, or there were too few people left of Evil Eye Moon, and they were still hiding, and there was no fighting between the two sides... In short, no matter which case, it would be safe for them to go out now.
Andre left a team of elites to continue guarding the tunnel to prevent the Evil Moon's people from trying to escape, and he took Jiangyou, the dwarf, and the remaining people to the surface. They soon successfully met up with another large force, but the situation on the ground was slightly different from what Jiangyou had guessed.
"Lord Andre." The person leading the large army was Andre's other adjutant, Nolan H. Hoffman. When he saw several figures emerging from the ground, he immediately came forward and quickly reported the current situation to Andre.
"We've followed your instructions and surrounded East City. We've begun gradually tightening the siege from the outside inward, searching for Evil Eye Moon's people... but as you can see, this isn't going smoothly." Nolan touched his nose with a guilty conscience and looked up at the distance. "...There are simply too many undead here."
"So gloomy..." Jiangyou looked around and couldn't help but shrink closer to Andre. Even though she was an undead lich, she could feel the unique chill in this deserted city.
It was still late summer, and even after the sun went down, the ground would continue to release heat, so the chill wouldn't be felt until late at night. But it was only dusk, and Jiang You felt a bone-chilling chill—and she was even wearing clothes and shoes!
"It can't be helped," Nolan said with a wry smile. He pointed to the blue, green, and black shadows drifting in the distance, like will-o'-the-wisp. "Those undead spirits absorb the energy of living things. They seem to have been hungry for a very, very long time. That's why the grass and trees here are withered and yellow, and even the temperature has dropped abnormally."
"Our soldiers dare not move any closer. If we do, the undead will sense our presence and quickly surround us to absorb our energy, making it extremely difficult to escape. Even divine arts can only temporarily cause them to fall into chaos and lose their target. They are extremely difficult to deal with!
"Fortunately, they seem to be able to only circle within a fixed range. Once our people escape that area, they won't chase us out." Nolan pointed to a long 'border line' made of discarded bricks and stones on the ground. "Look, this is the result of our afternoon's work. This border is square and encloses most of the city. The undead only move here.
"We've searched the area outside and found some signs of Evil Eye Moon's presence, but they're not fresh. The fires have been kicked out long ago, even the black ashes have been blown away by the wind. The bloodstains on the discarded bandages have completely changed color, and the wind and rain have left them stained, indicating they've been there for at least a week. We followed the traces left by the living for a while and found that they gradually led into the city... which is where the undead are."
"In other words," Andrei pondered, "if Evil Eye Moon has left some people here, then they've most likely escaped deep into the deserted city, surrounded by the undead. But if we want to capture those bandits, we have to get through these undead who suck the energy of the living."
"Yes," Nolan said with a wry smile, "Unfortunately, the Nether Festival just passed, and the power of the Blood Moon hasn't completely dissipated yet. Now is the time when these undead are most active, most hungry, and most violent. So I dare not go deeper, and can only wait for you to come and make the decision."
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