57: Syrian tactics

While Ren Hao was still fantasizing about the wonderful prospect of wiping out Li Xiao, the player commanding the forward Assault Group suddenly reported on the squad's command channel: "Commander Ren, the road ahead is a bit strange. It's full of potholes and has many patches. Should we check it out?"

"Potholes?" Ren Hao calmed his mind and thought for a moment before saying, "We're not far from Li Xiao's base now, and the Transit Yard is just ahead. Those patches might just be repairs on a road that has fallen into disrepair over the years."

Ren Hao paused for a moment and then added, "But it's better to be careful. We're close to enemy territory. Keep a constant eye on the woods on both sides. The convoy must not stop or slow down, otherwise, it'll be trouble if we're ambushed."

"Alright! I'll lead the team around from one side first!"

The majority of the unit soon passed through this stretch of bad road. Ren Hao looked at these patches and potholes stretching for hundreds of meters from his vehicle, feeling slightly odd.

Logically speaking, the Black Hawk Unit's forces were stretched thin, forcing them to shorten their defensive lines to protect Xi City. It was impossible for them to find the time to repair roads. As for the Tianyu Republic's forces, they had long been scattered and could barely look after themselves, so where would they find the time to care about whether a road was broken?

That left only the possibility that local players had patched it for easier travel, but these patches looked very new, as if they had been repaired overnight...

"Repaired overnight..." A bad thought suddenly flashed through Ren Hao's mind.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!!!!!

As if to confirm Ren Hao's sixth sense, a series of violent explosions suddenly erupted at the front of the convoy. Waves of fireballs carrying terrifying shockwaves instantly engulfed and flipped one off-road vehicle after another.

The explosions stretched for hundreds of meters along the highway, spreading rapidly like firecrackers. The explosive power was enough to blast a two-ton vehicle several rotations into the air.

The explosions lasted for over ten seconds. Soaring flames and thick smoke quickly covered the entire convoy. The players, who had been full of passion just half a minute ago, were now filled with terror!

"Damn! We've been tricked! Li Xiao was prepared!"

Ren Hao's mind was still sharp, and he immediately realized this was Li Xiao's trap. That Xiao Yao Unit that had headed south this morning had started off walking slowly and ostentatiously before picking up speed later.

Looking at it now, that wasn't a unit going out to fight; it was clearly a performance troupe, putting on a show specifically for the Night God Squad and Wu Chong.

"All vehicles, ignore everything else! Charge through the blockade immediately and attack the target point!"

Ren Hao didn't have time to think about anything else. If the Xiaoyao Squad had moved four thousand men, there couldn't be many troops left. He still had a real chance to force his way into Li Xiao's base.

In truth, this was just Ren Hao's wishful thinking. As a Commander capable of leading a thousand-man operation, how could Ren Hao not realize that if the opponent could send four thousand men as bait, they would certainly have a defensive force to intercept him?

But the explosion just now had only destroyed a quarter of his strength. He still had nearly seven hundred troops. Taking a gamble might give him a chance; if he didn't, he would be slaughtered by Wu Chong upon his return.

Because the Xiaoyao Squad's strength was now faintly overshadowing Night God, Wu Chong would definitely try to exonerate himself by dragging Ren Hao out as a scapegoat.

Wu Chong had once mentioned that the Xiaoyao Squad likely already knew the base locations of every member of the Night God Squad. The only reason they hadn't acted was that they hadn't found a decent excuse to appease the many Solo Players in Xi City.

When Ren Hao's troops charged out of the blast zone, they were down forty to fifty vehicles. At the same time, Ye Ming, who was not far away, reported the results to Li Xiao through a signalman.

That's right, they had used the old Syrian tactic of roadside bombs again. Two hundred C4 explosives distributed in echelons had directly reduced the incoming force by more than twenty percent.

It wasn't that Li Xiao couldn't afford more C4, but rather he was worried that too many patches on the ground would make the enemy wary.

Fortunately, Ye Ming succeeded in one go, drastically reducing Li Xiao's defensive pressure.

"Very good. Zhao Feipeng, you and the sniper team can now cut off the enemy's rear from the side of the Transit Yard!"

"Understood!"

As the words fell, a meng hu off-road vehicle and several all-terrain vehicles drove out of the Transit Yard and headed straight for the highway.

Ren Hao, having broken through, checked his losses. The loss of forty to fifty vehicles was temporarily within his acceptable range, but they soon discovered the road ahead was blocked by the enemy. Five fierce tiger h9s were parked right in the middle of the road.

"Just five vehicles and twenty-five people?!"

Seeing these five vehicles, Ren Hao couldn't help but want to laugh. He was even tempted to overturn his own imagined trap theory.

"Brother Ren, those five vehicles look like military off-roaders, and they have heavy machine guns on them. Their durability definitely isn't low!"

A player beside Ren Hao warned.

"Who cares if they're military vehicles? At most, they'll have ten thousand durability. We can blow them up with one shot each! Charge through and blow up Li Xiao's base!"

With the Commander's order, the entire convoy accelerated. Three vehicles drove abreast, and the soldiers leaned out of the windows, using rifles and machine guns to fire at the leading three fierce tiger h9s.

However, since this national highway was only a two-lane road, only the front twenty or thirty vehicles of Ren Hao's unit could hit Di Yun's First Platoon at once. Even so, Di Yun's vehicles were losing one or two thousand health points every second.

"That's it?"

Di Yun, who had been waiting for Ren Hao's unit to open fire with RPGs or other heavy weapons, saw the enemy just charging in like this and decided not to be polite.

From six or seven hundred meters away, three heavy machine guns and two light machine guns opened fire.

Compared to the thirty or forty points of single-shot damage from rifles and light machine guns hitting the meng hu off-road vehicles, the damage from heavy machine guns hitting civilian off-roaders was as high as ninety points or more.

The dense barrage from the three heavy machine guns blew up over a dozen vehicles in moments.

"Commander Ren! Something's wrong! Those vehicles have been hit by over a thousand bullets combined, and not one has exploded!"

"What! Impossible! The Armored Personnel Carrier we fought at the chemical plant only had thirty thousand health. No matter how military these off-roaders are, they can't be tankier than an Armored Personnel Carrier, right?"

Receiving the news from the front-line Commander, Ren Hao was a bit dazed. Ten or twenty of his own cars had been shredded, yet the opponent hadn't lost a single one. This clearly defied common sense.

Ren Hao's mind raced, and he immediately ordered: "The second group in the front row, keep spraying the vehicles! The third group is responsible for focusing fire on the enemy machine gunners to reduce our losses!"

Before his voice could fade, the troops in dozens of off-road vehicles from the second group of Ren Hao's unit began firing at the machine gunners.

However, because Ren Hao's convoy was being blocked by the constantly exploding scrap vehicles in front, their speed dropped to a dozen kilometers per hour, even coming to a standstill. The distance between the two sides was still over four hundred meters.

In reality, only a small portion of the bullets from Ren Hao's unit hit the machine gunners; the rest either hit the vehicles or hit nothing but air.