Chapter 194 Flanked

Baron recalled a lot of his strategists from the front lines back because he had a feeling that there was something not quite right about the situation that they were in. He couldn't really place his hands on it, but it was just something that he would rather trust his gut instincts on. They got back in a fair amount of time. Meng Wu and the others were in a bit of confusion as to why they were called back, but they knew that Baron wouldn't do anything unless he had a great reason for doing so. The fighting continued on the battlefield for the rest of the day, and onto the next few with not a lot of major developments happening on either side. Both Baron and Xuan Feng seemed to be throwing soldiers at each other hoping that their own would come out on top.

Then came the fifth day, where something that would rock Baron's entire camp into disarray. Xuan Feng had somehow gotten a lot of soldiers behind Baron's camp effectively flanking him without him even knowing it. That sly Xuan Feng. By Baron's best guess, his crafty opponent had brought an army of 150,000 to compete with him directly, as well as another group of soldiers that would take the long way around to get behind Baron and his allies' army. Baron could not believe that he had believed such an obvious lie from an enemy. Embarrassing.

The enemy army that was behind him charged forward in separate groups of vehicles, foot soldiers, and aircraft. Baron had to immediately order 1 thousand or so of his deepstrikes to turn 180 degrees backward so that he could fire at the enemies in the rear. Not long after, the enemies in front of him started to mobilize as well. What was different this time was that they were fully committing to this attack and sent in at least 70,000 soldiers, likely more.

A two-pronged attack like this is a nerve-racking ordeal, but since Baron had a bit of time before the two armies would hit him, he needed to move fast. All of his deepstrikes were ordered to be firing at full speed, with no exceptions. However, it turned out that a few of the deepstrikes had been tampered with the few days that they had not been used and blew up after firing a few shots. Not a whole lot, but enough for Baron to shut most of them down for further investigation. The deepstrikes were mostly located in 3 fields, and two of them had incidents of malfunctioning, therefore, Baron had the remaining one be the only ones firing.

With only one of three deepstrikes in working order, their effectiveness decreased and this was exactly what the enemy needed to get the fight started. Baron estimated that the army in front of him contained at least 70,000 soldiers while the army behind his army contained closer to 50,000. Fighting on two different fronts was not easy, especially considering that it was likely both sides would be extremely hard to deal with. After a quick discussion with Yue Fei, Guan Yu, and Meng Wu, they all decided that it was best to fight each army head-on, away from each other, creating two different battlefields. If the two enemy armies were allowed to group together, it would spell a major disaster.

As it stood now, Baron would lead a group of fewer than 1,000 strategists along with 60,000 soldiers to defend from the army to their rear. On the other hand, Meng Wu, Guan Yu, and Yue Fei would lead another group of a little over 2,000 strategists and 70,000 soldiers to do battle with the army encroaching from their front side. The four of them decided to go with this plan due to them being absolutely sure that the front battlefield would be loads more difficult to push back than the rear. Of course, this decision was based on the fact that they believed that Xuan Feng would be leading the former army. Though it wouldn't be the end of the world were their enemy general to be a part of the latter army.

Both battlefields clashed at nearly the same time with everyone fighting for their lives or waiting to get into the action. The day was just beginning, but the amounts of casualties were climbing higher than every previous day before combined together. Deepstrikes were continuing to fire non stop since there were enough enemies that they could be aimed towards densely populated enemy positions. Just before all of the strategists left to get their fighting on, Baron made doubly sure that the last field would not be able to be tampered with before they got back at the end of the day. If that scenario happened, they would have lost one of their most useful weapons against the enemy.

Fierce battles rang throughout the day if both of Baron's battlefields were able to push back their respective enemies, this would signal that there was a chance to push the all-stars out of their hair. A few hours after midday, the enemy camp had sent another wave of 50,000 to reinforce their soldiers. Once they got there, they were switched out with the soldiers who had been fighting for half a day that deserved some rest. Seeing this, Yue Fei and Guan Yu did the same thing and essentially confirmed that it was likely Xuan Feng who was likely the one behind this move, at least, in their minds.

It was a difficult maneuver to switch out soldiers, especially in the middle of an active warzone. Even with the two of them, Guan Yu and Yue Fei were not experienced enough in this field to pull it off perfectly which resulted in some grievous losses for some of their front line units. The only thing that ran through their minds was that there was no way that anyone other than Xuan Feng would be able to do it on their enemies' side. Or were there?