It was as Baron had said, Madam Zheng long ago received the report of what had happened to Baron. The reason that she did not send any reinforcements their way was that she was fairly certain that even if baron and his crew got out of that entanglement, it would be some time before the Vesper factions would make their move further encroaching into her lands. Though Baron was technically the temporary ruler of these lands, they were still the Zi siblings to begin with, and they were all under Madam Zheng so none of that mattered in the first place.

Instead, what she had done was to send a small detachment to a very remote island to monitor the situation even more closely and to guard the area to see if there were any more fleets that would encroach upon her lands. Additionally, she sent a small fleet to defend a small pass behind Baron that the enemy would have to pass through if they wished to pierce further into her territory.

Madam Zheng very much wanted to aid Baron, but that would not be the wisest action to take considering all of the different directions that she could be attacked from. Nearly everyone on planet 4 knew that if feelings were put first rather than strategy, the ending result could only be disastrous.

By midday, Baron could already guess as to what Madam Zheng had planned when he got word of ships defending a pass that lay just a few kilometers behind them. Soon after they finished reorganizing their troops, the enemy once again approached them ready for battle. It was not a good sign that Ho Yang and Gou Shi teamed up with Wu San Gui, and even less so when you take into account that if the two sides were equal before, now it was heavily in the Vesper faction’s favor. For Baron, this changed nothing as he still had only one objective that he needed to fulfill at all costs. To defend.

Baron and Yue Fei needed to be extremely careful with their movements right now, especially with what had happened the night before and considering that they were severely outmatched. Any mistakes on their part would be catastrophic in every sense of the word. Baron knew that there was no way for him to beat this combined army that outgunned him, outclassed him, out-everythinged him, and on top of all of that, they most likely have thousands of years more experience than he did individually in naval warfare.

This could only end in failure for Baron, everyone knew it, it was only a matter of time before the inevitable. What was Baron to do? Well, there wasn’t much that he could do, except to defend this island for as long as he possibly could until he was captured and killed or his enemies decided to retreat. The former was a depressing thought, and the latter was nothing more than a dream.

Though it wasn’t exactly like he didn’t have any support on his side, there were a few strategists that could hold their own, but they weren’t too much better at naval warfare than Baron and the ones who were killed already trying to save Baron, Yue Fei, and Guan Yu on that fateful night of the night raid. Those strategists knew the importance of Baron to Madam Zheng and being ignorant of this fact especially when such a larger than life personality was staring at them from afar was a terrifying thought. So, they went in to try and salvage the situation, but with their skills coupled with the fact that they had much inferior ships compared to their enemies only spelled tragedy and indeed that was what had happened.

It was quite lucky for Baron that this combined group did not take him too seriously since if they did want to kill him immediately, he would not even last a day. If Baron was to achieve anything, he would need to make a big move. Unfortunately, he did not know what to do. What could he even do with the situation as it was? He did not know where Guan Yu was, Yue Fei and himself were no masters of naval warfare, they were barely novices.

How were they supposed to accomplish something against a mainly naval warfare based faction like the Vespers? For now, Baron and Yue Fei could only fight the fight that was in front of them and continued to concentrate on that aspect of their current situation.

This kind of fighting dragged on for a few more days until the 8th day when something unexpected happened. Baron and Yue Fei completely disappeared from everyone’s radar. The Vesper faction did not know where they were, the allies that they had been fighting with the last couple of days did not know, and surprisingly, not even Madam Zheng with all of her extensive spy network did not have a clue either. The two of them just up and were gone by daybreak. The Vesper faction took this chance upon themselves to

Everyone outside the sim who was watching this battle was silent for a moment before they did what they did best and that was to gossip and talk about their predictions on what the disappearance of these two meant.

“I bet those two ran away in fear of being a failure to Madam Zheng.”

“Heh, I sure wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of Madam Zheng, I mean have you heard of what happened to Li Ming after he did not live up to her standards? Such a beautiful and cold-hearted lady like her is sure the scary combination.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions everyone, I’m sure that the two of them have some sort of plan in mind and they are just waiting for the perfect time to put it into action. I’ve seen them on the stage before in person and these are not people who strike me as those who abandon a battlefield just because it is unwinnable. Trust me.”