It was supposed to be a casual game, but the Long March dungeon brought tears to everyone's eye

Not as much as possible, not maybe, and certainly not depending on the situation.

Instead—it is possible!

The official account of Luoan Studio made a promise in the most confident tone.

Crazy Brother stared intently at that word, the blood vessels in his eyes almost bursting open.

The chat room went completely crazy at that moment, with text filling the screen.

"They can save it?! That old scoundrel Luo says they can save it!"

"Even if there's a Gatling gun in front of me, I'm still going for it!"

"My tears are worthless, but my life is valuable in this game! Count me in!"

Looking at the frantically scrolling barrage of comments, Kuang Ge took several deep breaths, and after catching his breath, his voice was slightly choked with emotion.

"Brothers, did you all see that?"

"Although Luo the old scoundrel does inhuman things, he never lies."

Kuang Ge raised his head and looked through the screen at the live chat window between Yingyan and Ruan Ruan.

Hawkeye's fingers were flying across the keyboard, seemingly recording something, but his trembling fingertips betrayed the turmoil in his heart.

Ruan Ruan covered her mouth, but didn't shed tears. Instead, her eyes revealed a fierce determination full of expectation.

"Crazy Brother took another deep breath and said fiercely."

"Since he says he can, then we must be able to!"

"This battle, and the battles to come, are not about getting through the initial hurdle, but about changing our destiny!"

"Even if it only changes the old sergeant's fate!"

Crazy Bro slammed his hand on the table and looked at Eagle Eye and Softie.

"Log off! Go to sleep! Nobody's allowed to stay up late!"

"Tomorrow..." Kuang Ge paused, his eyes fierce like a wolf's.

"Let's go to the Dadu River... to rescue them!"

……

Late at night.

Crazy Brother suddenly woke up from his nightmare.

"call……"

"call……"

He instinctively reached behind him, only to find nothing.

Kuang Ge sat blankly in the darkness, looking at his clean hands, free of any dirt, by the moonlight streaming through the window.

After a long while, he slowly exhaled a breath of stale air and gave a self-deprecating bitter laugh.

"Damn... these aftereffects are pretty serious."

At the same moment, inside a luxury room with a river view, Ruan Ruan wrapped herself up like a rice dumpling.

The underfloor heating in the house was on full blast, but she still felt very cold.

She kept running and running in her dream.

Beneath our feet lay endless mud, and overhead came torrential rain that whipped us like a lash.

The matches in his arms were wet, the old squad leader was gone, and only an empty severed arm remained, bobbing in the mud and water.

"No...don't leave me..."

Ruan Ruan suddenly opened her eyes, tears still clinging to the corners.

She instinctively reached into her clothes and gripped the collar of her pajamas tightly.

It was completely empty there.

Meanwhile, in a study, Hawkeye was still awake.

The light from the table lamp shone on his slightly pale face.

There's clearly no wind here, and it's very quiet outside the window.

But when he closed his eyes, all he could hear was the low roar of thousands of people holding hands and chanting "The pass is as impregnable as iron" in the torrential rain.

It was the "plop" sound of the soles of feet stepping into the mud.

It was the old squad leader pointing ahead and asking that question—

"If I don't leave, what future do you have?"

Hawkeye suddenly opened his eyes, rubbed his temples wearily, realizing he had been suffering from insomnia.

……

The following day, in the afternoon.

After half a day of forced rest, the three of them managed to recover some of their mental state.

As soon as the voice channel was connected, before Kuang Ge could even speak, Ruan Ruan's excited voice exploded.

"Crazy Bro! Hawkeye! Look, it's trending at number one!!"

"Old Qin has posted a video!!"

Kuang Ge was taken aback and quickly looked over.

At the top of the trending search list, a simple two-word term with no fancy title is dominating the list with terrifying popularity.

#Backbone#

Posted by: Qin Zhenguo.

The video was short, only two minutes long, and Kuang Ge clicked to play it.

The scene is filled with the sounds of wind, rain, and the suffocating rumble of thunder.

The camera focuses on a gray swamp.

There, a "human gray dragon" was struggling to writhe in the mud.

They supported each other, hand in hand, like fragile reeds that could be broken by the wind and rain at any moment.

Yet they were entangled together desperately, resisting the oppressive force of heaven and earth.

The scene was so oppressive that it was suffocating.

Just then, a line of powerful white calligraphy characters, accompanied by that hoarse roar, slowly appeared in the center of the screen.

"The west wind is fierce..."

Then, the scene changed.

It was the old squad leader's empty sleeve fluttering wildly in the wind, and the resolute tears on his sallow face.

"Wild geese cry in the frosty morning moon."

"Frosty Morning Moon..."

"The sound of horses' hooves is broken, and the sound of trumpets is choked."

Each word was accompanied by a heavy footstep, striking the heartbeats of both the top players and casual viewers.

Finally, the image freezes on the sunlight tearing through the dark clouds, focusing on the old sergeant's straight, spear-like back.

"The road ahead is long and arduous, but we will start anew and forge ahead!"

boom--!

The video ends.

In the comments section, Lanxing Luren gained countless fans.

"This lyrics...who wrote these lyrics?! They make me want to cry!!"

"‘The road ahead is long and arduous, but as solid as iron’—that's brilliant! This is the kind of romance a man from our Dragon Kingdom should have!!"

"I always thought this game was all about tragedy, but I never expected it to have such a magnificent and awe-inspiring spirit! Is this the Crimson Legion?!"

"Is this something the AIGC-assisted development engine could create? Where on earth did that old bastard Luo dig up these god-level texts?"

What shocked the entire internet even more was that the official accounts of the four military regions appeared neatly and uniformly at the top of the comments section.

Qinglong Military Region: "Unyielding".

White Tiger Military Region: "Unyielding."

Xuanwu Military Region: "We will not fall."

Zhuque Military Region: "This is the backbone."

At the end of the video, Mr. Qin left only one sentence.

"Luo An told me that this poem is called 'Remembering Qin'e: Loushan Pass,' and it reflects the voice of that era."

"I hope you can understand what it means to 'start over'."

"Awesome..." Madman muttered to himself.

Not to mention the passersby, even Kuang Ge and his friends felt that Luo An had brought a real historical event into the game.

Who plays games that constantly include verses like "The Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention" or "Remembering Qin'e: Loushan Pass"?!

"Alright, save your touching words for after you finish the game."

Hawkeye's calm voice interrupted everyone's emotions, though his voice was trembling slightly.

"Since Elder Qin has helped us start this fire, then we must accept it."

"I've already pulled someone into the room; you definitely know him, Brother Kuang."

As soon as he finished speaking, a ding-dong sound came from the voice channel.

Player "Blue Knight" joins the room.

Madman raised an eyebrow. "The Blue Knight? That crazy raid leader who cleared a Mythic+ dungeon in World of Warcraft?"

A steady, slightly weary male voice rang out, "Brother Kuang, it's an honor to meet you."

"I wouldn't call myself crazy, but I'm definitely driven crazy by these casual players."

Blue Knight, one of the skilled commanders who is on good terms with Hawkeye, had previously wanted to join Madman's team in exploring the grassland map.

But Crazy Brother, Eagle Eye, and Softie really do refuse anyone who comes!

"Let's skip the pleasantries."

The Blue Knight got straight to the point, his voice serious.

"This thousand-player dungeon has been explored by me and Ba Ba Da Shun many times. Simply relying on sheer numbers won't get us through."

"This instance has two dead ends."

The Blue Knight posted a tactical map on the public chat, with two points marked in red.

"First, the ship."

"There is only one usable ship in the entire game, which can ideally carry nine combat personnel. If the ship is destroyed, the game is lost."

"But that's not the point. The point is, who will be the assault team? Who will provide cover on shore?"

"Even if players are consciously organizing attacks now, they are still solo players, you know..."

The three of them nodded.

They had researched this before, and it wasn't uncommon for people to try organizing groups of a thousand players, but how easy is it to command randomly matched players?

"Leave this to us," said Crazy Brother on behalf of the three.

As the most popular trio in "Red Expedition", they are the only ones who can most easily organize players to try random matchmaking.

The Blue Knight nodded upon seeing this. "That's not the most fatal thing."

His finger touched the bunker icon on the opposite bank of the river.

"This is the most deadly thing."

"We have calculated the firepower of that bunker. It has at least two heavy machine guns, plus firing ports with no blind spots. A boat in the middle of the river is a sitting duck."

"As long as this bunker doesn't fall silent, however many people we send, that's how many meals we deliver."

Silence fell over the voice channel.

This is a typical example of "asymmetric warfare".

They weren't completely outmatched in terms of equipment; in fact, the Red Legion even had an advantage. However, the terrain was too advantageous for them, preventing them from even utilizing their numerical superiority.

"Then how do you fight?" Ruan Ruan couldn't help but ask. "You can't even fill the bullet holes with your life..."

"There is a variable."

The Blue Knight suddenly took a deep breath, his tone becoming somewhat strange.

He pulled up a character portrait.

He was a soldier who looked to be around thirty years old, thin, with dark skin and high cheekbones.

If you don't look closely, he's no different from the ordinary Red Legion soldiers around him.

But there was something next to him.

A mortar without a gun mount or sight, and with only three shells.

—Even if there were a gun mount and a scope, players still wouldn't understand how to play this old-fashioned relic.

"And this NPC is the only heavy firepower support unit that Luo the Old Thief gave us in the entire dungeon."

"But he... seems to have lost his soul."

"No matter how much we shouted at him, or even shoved shells into his hands, he didn't react at all."

The three men, including Kuang Ge, were taken aback by what they heard, but Ruan Ruan suddenly spoke up.

"He...is not an NPC..."

"Do you know his name?"

The blue knight paused for a moment, then nodded.

"Yes, he's not an NPC."

However, the Blue Knight shook his head slightly again.

"However, all we know is that his surname is Zhao."

【

Hey, I had insomnia. I woke up in the middle of the night, listened to "As You Wish," and wrote an extra chapter...

】