Free Web NovelChapter 220: Chapter 192: A World-Shocking Arrow, Archery Reaches Great Accomplishment
While those two angles seemed to offer a clear shot through the window, they risked the arrow’s fletching brushing against the frame. That would not only affect its accuracy but also drastically reduce its power.
"Have you been in that room before? Where does this Pan Wei usually sit when he works?" Wu Liangchen suddenly asked.
"I was there once, before Pan Wei moved in, but the layout shouldn’t have changed much. There’s a desk against the wall by the window. Pan Wei would usually be sitting there to work."
Hearing this, Wu Liangchen closed his eyes and began to think.
Chen Baimei held her breath and waited, her heart still full of disbelief.
As a fellow archer who had dedicated herself to the craft, she knew just how difficult Wu Liangchen’s next move would be.
So much so that when she first heard his plan, she thought Wu Liangchen was joking.
’This is just too crazy.’
But then, unexpectedly, Wu Liangchen’s eyes snapped open, and he declared in a low voice,
"It’s possible!"
With that, Wu Liangchen took off, dashing into the distance.
Chen Baimei followed close behind, desperate to see what Wu Liangchen was planning to do.
Soon, she followed Wu Liangchen to another corner of the area.
It was an abandoned pond, its murky water emitting a foul stench. Because of the smell, no one ever came here, making it a very secluded spot.
Once they arrived, Wu Liangchen first mentally calculated the distance. He then picked up his Wind Shock Bow, drew an arrow, and aimed it steeply toward the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.
Beside him, Chen Baimei was stunned. She stared at Wu Liangchen with a look of utter disbelief.
She was all too familiar with the drawbacks of aiming like this.
While it was true that such an angle maximized an arrow’s effective range, it also made one’s aim extremely unstable.
In fact, with this method, even the slightest tremor in one’s arm would cause the arrow to land several meters off target.
The farther the distance, the greater the margin of error.
And now, Wu Liangchen was aiming at a target a full five hundred meters away.
What did that even mean?
To put it in perspective, if you placed an elephant five hundred meters away in an open field, it would look like nothing more than a blurry dot to the naked eye.
One could only imagine the precision required for such a shot.
Moreover, the environment Wu Liangchen faced was far more complex. The arrow not only had to pass through layers of guards but also had to skim over the courtyard wall at the perfect angle before it could go through the window and hit Pan Wei.
The sheer difficulty of it was terrifying to even contemplate.
Chen Baimei knew she couldn’t do it, and she didn’t believe anyone in the world could.
After studying archery for so long, she knew the bow and arrow all too well.
In her view, the effective range of a bow was about two hundred meters.
And that was a range she had only achieved through her exceptional talent and relentless practice.
For an average archer, the effective range was typically only fifty or sixty meters, a hundred at the absolute most.
Of course, this wasn’t to say a bow could only shoot two hundred meters, but rather that it was only controllable within that range.
Once you exceeded that distance, the arrow’s trajectory would become unpredictable due to wind, velocity, and a myriad of other factors.
Chen Baimei knew this wasn’t a failing of her own skill; it was simply the inherent limit of the weapon itself.
Even if this Wu Liangchen was a better archer than her, the most he could hope for was a controllable range of three hundred meters.
But now he was attempting a shot from five hundred meters. That was something beyond human capability.
Therefore, Chen Baimei was not optimistic about Wu Liangchen’s chances.
But just then, Wu Liangchen took a deep breath.
It was an impossibly long inhale, the air reaching the deepest parts of his lungs and, carried by his blood, nourishing every cell in his body.
Immediately, Wu Liangchen entered an extremely ethereal state.
In this state, Wu Liangchen could feel the ceaseless flow of blood in his veins, the slow churning of his organs, and the tightening and relaxing of his muscle fibers.
It was an incredibly strange and profound sensation.
In that instant, Wu Liangchen felt as though he could see the scene hundreds of meters away, a scene obstructed by layers of trees.
He saw countless soldiers moving back and forth, sealing off a small house until it was watertight.
A man in armor was constantly patrolling, observing the surroundings.
Behind the courtyard walls, numerous martial arts masters lay in ambush.
There were even deep pit traps dug beneath the courtyard grounds. The defenses were as tight as they could possibly be.
And in the northeast corner of the courtyard, a window was lit.
Through the glass pane, he could clearly see a middle-aged man with a beard under his chin, resembling a scholar, sitting behind a desk. His brow was furrowed, as if he were deep in thought.
These scenes flowed through his mind like water. Seizing this fleeting opportunity, Wu Liangchen raised the Wind Shock Bow and aimed at a specific point.
In that instant, Wu Liangchen’s entire body became as steady as a boulder, and his hands achieved an almost freakish level of stability.
Then, following an intuition, he naturally released the bowstring that had been pulled to its absolute limit.
TWANG!
First came the soft sound of the string, followed immediately by a sharp CRACK! The body of the Wind Shock Bow twisted into a horribly unnatural shape.
It turned out the force of this one shot had completely exhausted the Wind Shock Bow’s potential, even snapping its limbs.
But the effect was astonishing. The waiting arrow instantly streaked through the night sky, flying toward the small courtyard five hundred meters away.
The feathered arrow flew past rockeries, trees, and houses...
Two seconds later, it had crossed the several-hundred-meter distance and arrived before the small courtyard.
By this point, however, most of its kinetic energy was spent, and it inevitably began to descend.
Following a graceful parabola, the arrow sailed with immense precision over the group of guards, then grazed the edge of the courtyard wall as it entered.
Its speed had now slowed to the point where it was visible to the naked eye.
Zhang Ming, in particular, who was patrolling outside the courtyard, suddenly heard a whooshing sound and immediately looked up.
He then saw a feathered arrow fly into the courtyard, and alarm bells instantly screamed in his mind.
’Not good!’
The moment the thought occurred, he leaped up, not even bothering with the gate as he vaulted directly over the wall.
And then he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
The feathered arrow was drifting slowly toward the window. It shattered the glass and flew into the room.
Zhang Ming’s whole body trembled as he screamed hoarsely, "Chieftain, look—"
Before he could get the last word out, he saw Pan Wei look up from his desk in confusion. Pan Wei then saw the arrow coming straight for him and, horrified, tried to dodge, but it was too late.
PFFT!
Though its kinetic energy was gone, the arrow, carrying the potential energy from its descent, still easily pierced Pan Wei’s throat.
Blood gushed out instantly.
Pan Wei clamped his hands to his neck, trying to stop the fountain of blood, but it was completely useless.
Blood sprayed through the gaps between his fingers, instantly drenching the desk in front of him.
Out in the courtyard, Zhang Ming’s mind went blank. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
He had poured his heart and soul into protecting his chieftain’s safety, exhausting all his cunning. He believed that while the defenses he had arranged might not be an impenetrable fortress, an ordinary Martial Artist wouldn’t even be able to get close.
But after all those precautions, he had failed to stop a single, softly floating arrow.
And that one arrow, which had come from who knows where, had just turned all his efforts to nothing.
"Chieftain!" Zhang Ming finally snapped back to reality and, after a heart-wrenching scream, dashed inside.
But just as he entered the room, Pan Wei collapsed to the floor and began to convulse violently.
It was a sign of extreme oxygen deprivation.
Zhang Ming fell to his knees in a panic, wanting to save him but not knowing where to begin.
In the blink of an eye, Pan Wei’s face turned from a deep purple to a deathly pale. His eyes were fixed on Zhang Ming as he died, filled with utter terror and resentment.
At the same time, hundreds of meters away, a line of text suddenly appeared before Wu Liangchen’s eyes.
[Sun-Chasing Archery Skill proficiency +76]
[Sun-Chasing Archery Skill has leveled up. Current level: Grand Completion.]
