SWDnovel Chapter 34 This is something that has been done for several years in human military history.
Chapter 34 This is something that has been done for several years in human military history.
The dark brown mane stopped moving, but its presence remained; it just stood there, its nostrils flaring dramatically.
Twenty meters.
This distance is not a safe distance for an adult male lion; it's the starting line.
Chen Fei mentally reviewed the numbers, pressed the heat into his palm, letting the burning sensation sink deeper into his toe bone, and then began to calculate something.
Is it safe to fight here?
He was familiar with the terrain of the place where he landed. It was backed by a shrub belt, covered by grass on three sides, and had a wide view to the east.
This position was initially chosen for defense, not for head-on confrontations.
Defensive positions and decisive battle terrain are two different things.
The question now is not whether we can win.
This terrain simply didn't give him any chance of winning.
The dark brown mane is twenty meters to the east, lightly brushing against the outside of the shrubbery on the west side.
The two creatures, one facing forward and the other on the flank, sandwiched the landing spot in the middle.
Chen Fei had figured out the usual pattern of two heroes working together, but knowing the routine didn't mean he could crack it on this land.
With the enemy attacking from multiple directions across open terrain, the defenders had no terrain advantage whatsoever and relied entirely on the leader's signals for coordination.
If the signal is even slightly delayed, the formation will break apart, and once the formation breaks apart, it will be attacked piecemeal.
If they stay in this situation, they can't win.
Chen Fei solidified this conclusion in his mind, and then thought about the next step.
Let's move to another place!
It's not about fleeing, but about shifting the battlefield to terrain that's more advantageous to oneself. This is something that has been done for thousands of years in human military history, so there's nothing to hesitate about.
He quickly went through the surrounding terrain in his mind.
After eliminating several options one by one, I finally settled on one position—
About 600 meters to the southeast, there is a natural canyon with rocky slopes on both sides, each two to three meters high. The canyon is about 12 meters wide, with one-way traffic, and about 200 meters deep. The exit faces south. The ground is hard sandstone, without soft mud or dense vegetation, and the sound of footsteps is clearly audible.
The significance of canyon terrain for multi-pronged attacks.
In his previous life, Chen Fei had read more than one analysis, and the conclusions were all the same.
The flanking maneuvers in open terrain were completely ineffective in the canyon.
Because the physical structure of the canyon forces multi-line attacks to be compressed into a single point of breakthrough, no matter how many people the attackers have, only the width of the canyon entrance can enter the canyon at the same time.
The cost for the defending side to concentrate its forces drops to near zero in the canyon.
What this means for Chen Fei: A clever feint attack from the west is useless in the canyon. It can't get around to the canyon and can only follow the dark brown mane in line to enter from the valley entrance, where there will be someone guarding the entrance.
Dark brown mane in singles versus dark brown mane with light doubles are two completely different difficulty levels.
He has a chance against the former, but he's not confident about the latter right now.
Chen Fei locked onto this conclusion, and then began to calculate something even more difficult to bring up: Where did the Lion King go?
[Host: Chen Fei]
[Identity: Sub-adult male lion]
[Energy Points: 529↑]
In the canyon layout, a lion of sufficient size and imposing presence is needed to hold the dark brown mane at the canyon entrance, keeping its attention focused and preventing it from lingering at the canyon entrance for too long, otherwise it can easily circle around to the south exit.
There is only one animal that can do this, and it has settled down in the field.
The lion king was below 60% stamina, had an old injury on its right hind leg, and took a half step back when it roared back. Chen Fei remembered all this information, and he knew what it meant.
The Lion King went to the valley entrance to directly restrain Dark Brown Mane. He had calculated the odds of survival at that position, and they weren't good.
The grasslands are not human society. No one can give a lion a safe place just because of what it has done or what it has sacrificed. The place should be the most suitable one, not the one most worthy of protection.
This is the logic of the grasslands; he knew it all along.
Knowing something is one thing; actually using it is another.
He suppressed the thought and began to plan his next move.
To lure the two heroes into the canyon, you can't use sound or direct confrontation; you have to use movement itself.
In a territorial dispute, if the defender actively withdraws from the existing position and moves in a certain direction, the attacker's instinctive reaction will be one of two things.
First, they believed the defenders were fleeing and pursued them.
Secondly, it is believed that the defending party is leading the charge, and a cautious follow-up assessment is warranted.
For a big guy like Dark Brown Mane, the probability of choosing option one is very low, while the probability of choosing option two is high. However, even if he chooses option two, he will still follow, because not following means giving up the initiative on the battlefield.
In other words, as long as Chen Fei starts moving towards the canyon, the dark brown mane will most likely follow. It doesn't know what's ahead, but it won't let the defender escape.
This is what Chen Fei wanted.
He stepped on the ground to check its hardness, then sent out a movement signal with a tiny movement, almost imperceptible only to members of his group.
The weight was evenly distributed between the two forefeet, shifting slightly to the right, causing the entire body to rotate slightly in the southeast direction, at an angle of no more than twenty degrees. The head did not move, but the ears stood up for a moment in the southeast before retracting.
Sel was the first to sense it.
She was to Chen Fei's right rear, her head still, but she took a tentative half-step southeast. Sensing that Chen Fei's signal was continuing, she continued walking in that direction without making a sound, as if she had made the decision herself.
Meimei reacted about four seconds slower, and then she began to move diagonally from the edge of the western bushes, her arc pointing southeast, gradually loosening her footing on the western side.
Big Head glanced in Chen Fei's direction, tilted its head, and followed Sail. Its steps were heavier than Sail's, making a few noticeable sounds as it stepped on the dry grass. Then it realized this and lightened its steps for the last two steps. The effect was still limited, but at least it was trying.
As it passed by the stray carapace, it lowered its head and sniffed it.
The wanderer instinctively moved half a step to the side, while Big Head stood there for about two seconds, looking around in confusion. After confirming that he was on the right track, he continued forward.
Wanderer A and Wanderer B followed on the outside, blocking the retreat route.
No one told them how to get there, but they followed the scent and movement signals from the defensive position in the northeast corner.
The entire team.
It began to move silently in a southeast direction.
The dark brown mane sensed the movements of the defenders from twenty meters away.
It paused for about five seconds, its nostrils flaring rapidly as it processed all the new olfactory information, then turned its head slightly to the southeast before taking two steps forward.
They're catching up!
Chen Fei didn't turn around. He extracted the information from the footsteps behind him, confirming that the dark brown mane was following. At the same time, he turned his left ear to the west to confirm the change in the concentration of the light scent after the defender moved.
The fact that the concentration didn't rise sharply indicates that Lightweight is still waiting, still rubbing against the ground, and hasn't switched to charge mode yet; it's waiting for a signal from Dark Brown Mane.
Very good, both of them are on the trajectory he predicted.
Six hundred meters is not a short distance.
Throughout the entire movement, he kept track of the scent concentration and footstep rhythm of the two large creatures in real time. The dark brown mane followed steadily, maintaining a distance of about forty meters, neither hurried nor slow, like a rope tied to the ground, hanging down behind without being too tight or too loose.
The faint scent began to drift from the west, adjusting its direction of movement according to the team's movements, but the rate of increase in concentration remained slow; its movement rhythm had not yet switched from reconnaissance to advance.
The scent of stray animals from the northeast corner drifted into the direction of Qingqiao once again, and Chen Fei mentally noted down the names of the two stray animals.
The interference was more stable than he had expected.
When the canyon entrance was about 100 meters ahead, Chen Fei began to split the queue.
Sel and the miser circled around to the south exit of the valley, found cover, and avoided direct confrontation.
Meimei and Datou entered the valley and guarded the area below the western rocky slope. If they cleverly circled around to the south, they would be pressured from that direction.
Wandering A and B, on both sides of the valley entrance, blocked the entrance, and after the dark brown mane entered, the retreat route narrowed.
Chen Fei himself, in the middle of his anus, was facing the dark brown mane.
The Lion King was not given a separate position in this seating arrangement.
It's not that I forgot, it's that there can only be one Lion King.
At the valley entrance, the frontal restraint draws the attention of the Dark Brown Mane from the flanks, creating an opening for Chen Fei to reach his position before the Dark Brown Mane can launch a full-scale attack.
Chen Fei glanced to his right rear, his gaze lingering on the Lion King for a second, before he pointed towards the valley entrance with a very subtle head movement.
The lion raised its head, received the signal, paused for two seconds, and then walked towards the valley entrance. Its steps were unsteady, and the limp in its right hind leg was clearly visible as it moved.
But he walked over without hesitation, stopped beside the rocks on the right side of the valley entrance, and raised his head in the direction from which the dark brown mane had come.
Chen Fei looked away and didn't look at it a second time.
The rocky ground in the canyon exuded a coolness in the night breeze. The smell of sandstone was completely different from that of the grass outside. The enclosed terrain concentrated the scent, making each aroma more than three times clearer here than in the open.
Chen Fei caught a familiar scent drifting from the edge of the territory.
It wasn't the smell of grass, nor the smell of rocks; it was a scent of resin and sap from shrub leaves, belonging to only one animal.
The direction of the isolated island.
He sniffed it a second time and confirmed it.
The leopard is here!
It didn't appear, didn't make a sound, but simply released its scent, letting the aroma drift into the canyon on the night wind, into Chen Fei's nostrils, and then nothing more.
Chen Fei pressed this information into his mind without looking back to find it. He pressed the heat flow through his entire body again, firmly supporting the burning sensation in his toe bones, confirming that he was fully prepared, and then focused his attention back on the direction of the valley entrance.
The sound of footsteps with dark brown mane began to tread deeper into the valley, starting fifty meters outside the entrance.
On the east side, the first rays of dawn broke through the horizon, revealing the outlines of the canyon rocks from the darkness.
The light streamed into the valley, illuminating the rough texture of each rock surface.
The first step into the canyon entrance was marked by the dark brown mane, which was illuminated from the side by the morning light, revealing its thick, dark brown color.
The sheer size of that massive creature, accentuated by the valley, created a sense of oppression that Chen Fei hadn't fully experienced in the open.
At the valley entrance, the Lion King raised its head, concentrated all its strength into its dantian, and let out a roar that was more stable and solid than any of its previous roars. The roar bounced back and forth between the rock walls of the canyon, causing the gravel and sand on the canyon walls to fall down in a flurry.
The dark brown mane stopped, turning its gaze away from the lion king and sweeping it into the depths of the valley.
It smelled Chen Fei.
The two creatures, about forty meters apart, faced each other for the first time in the valley.
The dark brown mane lowered its head, pushed its mane forward, and let out a deep, rolling growl from the depths of its throat as it began to walk into the valley.
On the west side, the concentration of the light scent suddenly spiked at the same moment.
Like a stone thrown into still water, the concentration jumps from reconnaissance level to assault level within two seconds.
The footsteps outside the western shrubbery changed, from a slow, shuffling motion to a continuous advance with the weight pressing firmly into the ground.
It waited until the dark brown mane entered the valley before switching.
Both lines were launched simultaneously.
Chen Fei absorbed the information into his mind. Without any extra movements, he pressed the heat to his fingertips and limbs again to make sure that every toe bone was thoroughly heated. Then he focused his attention on the two lines: he lightly handed over the western line to Mei Mei and Da Tou, while he would handle the eastern line with his dark brown mane.
At the valley entrance, the Lion King caught it first.
After entering the valley, the dark brown mane did not wander or assess the situation, but went straight towards the Lion King. Its steps were heavy, and each step it took crushed the sandstone on the valley floor into fine pebbles that bounced around.
The moment it entered the charging radius, the lion took a step forward, lowered its head, and bristled its mane, facing the attack head-on.
The sound of two lions colliding echoed back and forth between the rocky walls of the canyon.
Chen Fei sensed the surge of adrenaline in the Lion King's aura, and at the same time, he sensed the calm, almost unwavering fighting spirit in the scent of the dark brown mane. The contrast between the two auras was clearly evident in the same breath of air.
The lion king is holding on.
Dark brown bristles are pushing.
This is not a situation that can be sustained for long.
On the west side, light footsteps had already bypassed the bushes and entered the direction of the south exit of the canyon, following the route Chen Fei had predicted.
Cut in from the south exit, bypass the rocky slope, and break through from the flank.
Meimei is already in that position.
Chen Fei focused on tracking the subtle rhythm of the western information into his left ear, while keeping the sounds from the eastern line in his right ear, running both lines through his mind simultaneously.
He could do this kind of parallel information processing in his previous life. In this lion's body, the precision of his hearing and smell is more than an order of magnitude stronger than the human senses in his previous life, and it is actually easier for him.
As she nimbly rushed into the south exit, Meimei came to meet her.
The two lions collided. Mei Mei was almost half the size of Qing Qiao. The impact pushed her back two steps, but she didn't fall. She braced her limbs against the ground and used her wings to block Qing Qiao's advance, forcing it towards the rocky slope.
Big Head is next to him.
After receiving Chen Fei's signal, it had been guarding the inside of the south exit. At this moment, it cut in from the left wing and pounced towards Qingqiao's side. Its posture was a bit hasty, and its landing point was off by half a body length. It did not pounce in the most ideal position, but it blocked Qingqiao's right side movement space.
By working together from both ends, they clamped down on the easy direction of propulsion.