"At that time, it will either choose to withdraw or have you secretly sabotage the Nuclear Bomb strike. But under no circumstances will it continue to watch from the sidelines, slacking off as it is now."
Judging from the afternoon’s raid on the Underground Hive tunnel, it was obvious this Eastern Perfection Mother Empress wasn’t taking the assault on Yunxia Ridge very seriously.
In other words, she was well aware that the Yunxia Ridge defenders, who were capable of ruining the plan to sacrifice Capital City, were a tough nut to crack.
Rather than suffer heavy losses in a frontal assault, she’d let the Southern Mother Empress, who was chomping at the bit to attack, test the Salvation Army’s true strength first.
Therefore, to sabotage the Multi-Emperor Alliance, the easiest target was the Eastern Mother Empress.
As for the Southern Mother Empress, she’d already had two run-ins with Lin Feng, both of which ended in her utter humiliation. Now, she was dead set on conquering Yunxia Ridge to break through the final barrier to the continental interior and the Human Safety Zone...
In truth, the Southern Mother Empress’s persistence wasn’t unfounded.
If she were to head west in pursuit of the retreating Federation Army, she would have to compete with three other Mid-stage Mother Empresses.
Moreover, that route of attack meant making a wide, semicircular detour to the north, adding another five hundred kilometers to the journey before reaching the continental heartland.
This would grant the Federation defenders a strategic depth of over a thousand kilometers, allowing them to perfectly leverage humanity’s advantage in mobility. They could fight while retreating, steadily and easily wearing down the Zerg Race’s effective strength...
Of course, a Mother Empress could also choose a more methodical advance, consolidating newly conquered territory and consuming all resources before pushing forward again.
The problem was that the North was resource-poor, especially the grasslands and deserts of the Northwest, which were extremely arid.
The Zerg Race’s expansion might not even cover the costs of its advance, forcing them to harvest flesh-and-blood Biomass from humans.
If that happened, their speed of resource collection and accumulation would undoubtedly fall far behind other parts of the world. This was especially true for the tropical regions near the equator, where Mother Empresses were already evolving much faster than those in the North.
Any further delay, and they might not get their ticket to the Tier Three Late Stage finals.
However, if they could conquer Yunxia Ridge, a straight push of four to five hundred kilometers would bring them into the plains of the continental interior.
The safety zones across the North held over two to three hundred million human survivors, all clustered in major cities.
By devouring just one of those large base cities with a million-strong population, the Southern Mother Empress could evolve to Tier Three Late Stage on the spot.
This temptation was so great that even the calculating Eastern Mother Empress coveted it, which is why she had agreed to the Southern Mother Empress’s invitation to form an alliance and jointly attack Yunxia Ridge.
Then, the two of them wouldn’t need to compete at all; the abundant resources from human survivors would be more than enough to feed two Mid-stage Mother Empresses and the remaining Early-stage ones.
The problem, however, was that the prolonged siege on Yunxia Ridge was failing. The longer it dragged on, the stronger the human defenders became, evolving through their victories against the Early-stage Mother Empresses.
They were even gradually gaining the power to threaten Mid-stage Mother Empresses!
Since a breakthrough on the main battlefield seemed impossible, the ever-scheming Eastern Mother Empress naturally had to find another path...
Take now, for example.
At two in the morning, on a dark and windy night at the foot of Yunxia Ridge, a figure moved swiftly along the edge of the urban ruins.
Jiang Yun’er, piloting the Mother Empress, came to a stop on the reverse slope of a small hill. She watched as a Zerg mother-body appeared before her, then opened the hatch, her gaze flickering:
"At twelve o’clock midnight, they headed north to launch a surprise attack on the Mother Empress Swarm outside Beihai Town..."
"I was by the garrison commander’s side the entire time. I couldn’t get a message out..."
The mother-body, whose upper half was draped in human skin while its lower half was a tangle of insectoid legs and feelers, slowly spoke:
"They don’t fully trust you yet?"