Free Web NovelChapter 153: Chapter 153: Composite Bow
When Edward woke up the next morning, he stretched slightly and yawned, but his body suddenly stiffened.
The softness beneath him right now was completely different from the roughness of the animal skin mattress. Edward couldn’t help but widen his eyes, his entire snake body standing erect, letting out a vigilant "hiss".
"Be good, little one, it’s still early, sleep a bit longer."
A soft hand covered Edward’s cool body, instinctively making him want to take a bite. Fortunately, rationality eventually overcame emotion; Edward’s body softened slightly, pretending to act spoiled as he nuzzled his head against that hand.
The little snake acted spoiled with a soft, milky voice: "My Lord, you finally returned. I missed you to death~"
The Temple Lord chuckled softly, the vibration in his chest making Edward’s ears tingle. He couldn’t resist transforming into human form, snuggling into the Temple Lord’s embrace. Without Wofu here as a prototype, Edward was somewhat unsure of how to cope. He could only put on a maximally dependent appearance, avoiding being exposed by the Temple Lord one day.
Fortunately, the Temple Lord completely didn’t think a cub could have that many schemes, so he didn’t pay much attention to Edward’s flaws.
"I’m not sleepy anymore, Temple Lord, can you take me out to play? I’ve been staying in the room all these past few days, my whole body is itching uncomfortably~"
After acting spoiled, Edward pretended to just remember something, raising his head to look around and asking doubtfully: "Where did that fat tiger go?"
The Temple Lord rubbed Edward’s head, his voice completely unrippled: "He hasn’t finished advancing yet. You on the other hand, not focusing on cultivation, while that tiger cub has leveled up twice in a row, you are still at a standstill."
Edward pouted, saying aggrievedly: "It’s not that I’m unwilling to cultivate, it’s just that no matter what I do, I can’t absorb the spiritual energy."
"Hmm?" The Temple Lord raised an eyebrow: "Why is that? Try absorbing it right here for me to see."
Edward nervously climbed down to the floor, closed his eyes, and absorbed the spiritual energy. However, he secretly transferred the newly absorbed spiritual energy into the resonance space, not leaving a single trace behind.
Watching streams of spiritual energy rolling into the cub’s body, only to vanish without a trace, the Temple Lord slightly frowned. He was an old monster who had lived since the Ancient era; what bizarre case hadn’t he seen? Yet he actually didn’t know the reason behind this phenomenon where spiritual energy entered the body and completely vanished instead of leaking out.
To avoid losing face, the Temple Lord could only cough lightly and say nonchalantly:
"Perhaps normal absorption techniques are not suitable for you. You can go to the library in the Heavenly Temple and choose another technique to try."
Edward embarrassedly scratched his head: "But... I can’t read..."
Only now did the Temple Lord remember that previously he only cared about fattening them up as reserve energy sources, forgetting to teach these beast cubs other basic knowledge. He had no choice but to say:
"Then I will teach you how to read, alright?"
Edward nodded profusely, his eyes shining like stars. Two dimples formed on his cheeks, making the Temple Lord unable to resist reaching out to poke them twice. Being poked, Edward looked a bit dazed, looking at the Temple Lord with deep suspicion.
The Temple Lord coughed lightly, incredibly naturally retracting his hand, then picked the boy up and said:
"Let’s go eat breakfast first, then I will teach you how to write."
However, this fake gentleness of the Temple Lord lasted less than half an hour. After being bombarded with ten thousand "why" questions by the little snake, the Temple Lord’s head had swollen a size larger. Finally, when the little snake asked why this worm lay horizontally instead of vertically or diagonally, the Temple Lord decisively threw the beast cub to a Priest disciple to teach.
The little snake played his old trick again, constantly asking foolish questions. However, the Priest disciple didn’t dare to throw the little snake to someone else and could only bite the bullet to teach him reading. Edward would only learn a little bit before causing a ruckus, demanding to go out to play. The Priest disciple didn’t know what to do; ultimately having to resort to sitting and reading mid-level techniques for Edward to hear.
Only then was Edward satisfied, attentively listening to every single sentence, then operating the seal-breaking method his younger brother had taught him, carefully memorizing every word and sentence.
At this time, he also no longer hid all the spiritual energy away, but kept a little bit in his body, making the Temple Lord misunderstand that this teaching method was effective. Without any suspicion, the Temple Lord allowed the Priest disciple to read the techniques Edward wanted to learn for him.
When the Temple Lord left the Temple once again, Edward had requested the Priest disciple to read a more diverse variety of cultivation and combat techniques for him. The Priest disciple, completely without suspicion, complied with almost all of the First Holy Son’s requests.
These techniques were entirely engraved into Edward’s sea of consciousness. Later, when meeting his younger brothers in the resonance space, he would pass them on to them.
Oliver’s memorization ability was quite outstanding, while Finnick and Ryder were a bit more foolish, so recently, everyone relied on Oliver to transcribe the techniques.
Oliver had also learned how to hold a pen. Although his handwriting was still quite ugly and occasionally missing strokes, Kaelen could still summarize a complete set of techniques from those scribbled words.
The next step was to improve the techniques, using the old foundation to create a new technique suitable for Divine Energy warriors and beastman warriors with Divine Energy. In total, two techniques were kept intact, and three sets of techniques were improved.
In mid-April, Crimson’s combat power increased significantly. Warriors entering the mid-level accounted for two-thirds of the total warriors in the tribe.
This made the Cipher people red-eyed with jealousy. However, due to their status, even if they stripped away their slave identities, they would still only be ordinary people, completely unallowed to come into contact with these high-level training techniques. Unless they made exceptionally massive contributions or proved absolute loyalty, otherwise, they could forget about standing in the ranks of warrior beastmen in this lifetime.
For a moment, this group of people acted as if they had mistakenly eaten Banshee grass, working more frantically than anyone else.
This was exactly the effect Sane wanted. If a donkey already had tender grass around it, without an apple dangling in front of it, it would just contentedly nibble on the tender grass and refuse to move forward.
The Mid-level warrior cultivation technique was precisely the apple dangling in front of the Cipher donkeys.
Also around this time, the smelting furnace utilizing Divine Energy achieved initial success, smelting the first iron metal on the continent.
When the fired clay furnace door was smashed open, scorching heat billowed out in all directions. Inside the furnace was a glowing red, spongy mass, rough like a giant honeycomb. This metal mass was called sponge iron.
Chemistry books stated that the first smelt from raw ore always contained countless impurities and coal slag. The only way to turn this spongy mass into a usable iron ingot was to use muscle power to hammer it continuously while it was still red-hot to squeeze the impurities out.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
Heavy stone hammers rained down continuously in a rhythm. Sparks and pitch-black slag fragments splattered in all directions.
After more than four hours of continuous flattening, folding, and reheating with the help of Fire-attribute Divine Energy warriors, the water-bucket-sized sponge iron mass was finally compressed into a solid, pitch-black iron ingot the size of a calf.
Waiting for the iron ingot to be cooled by water, Kaelen approached and tapped his finger on the rough metal surface. He smiled and nodded:
"It’s a success. Although this is only wrought iron with a low carbon content, so it doesn’t have the perfect hardness for forging weapons for high-intensity combat, its toughness and sharpness already far exceed stone tools and beast bones."
Having obtained wrought iron, the first thing Kaelen thought of was not making weapons for high-intensity combat, but focusing on improving the weapons originally present in the tribe. Currently, the weapons the tribe used were wooden bows, bone swords, and bone spears. Although primitive, these weapons worked very well.
After many days of tinkering since early spring, Cassian had successfully crafted a composite bow, and Kaelen wanted to use this first batch of iron to test the bow’s power.
A composite bow didn’t use a single material like a normal wooden bow, but was a combination of multiple materials to maximize elastic force.
The bow’s core still used elastic wood pieced together to form the frame. The bow’s belly, meaning the side facing the archer, would be reinforced with smoothed strips of demonic beast horn, as horns had incredibly excellent compressive strength.
As for the bow’s back, the side facing the target, it would be glued with multiple layers of pounded demonic beast sinew, because sinews possessed astonishing toughness and tensile strength.
Wood as the core pillar, horn to resist compression, sinew to create tensile force...
When drawing the string, the bow limbs would accumulate a massive amount of potential energy. The power unleashed would definitely be many times stronger than an ordinary bow, yet incredibly durable, without fear of snapping when fully drawn.
As for the glue, a very thick glue had to be boiled from demonic beast skin and swim bladders. Normally, it would take six months to a year to wait for the glue to dry and the horn, sinew, and wood layers to completely fuse.
However, with the assistance of Divine Energy, this fusion process only took two days.
With the bow ready, next came the arrow part.
He assigned the blacksmith group another task: forging iron arrowheads.
The blacksmiths broke the wrought iron ingot into small pieces, forging them into razor-sharp triangular prism-shaped arrowheads with hidden barbs, specialized for piercing through animal skin armor or the hard scales of demonic beasts.
To disguise this precious metal, Kaelen had concocted a special mixture of tar sap mixed with bone ash dust. After being forged, the iron arrows would be dipped straight into the boiling pan of sap.
Once cooled, the shiny metal surface was instantly covered by a rough, matte black coating. It now looked no different from an ordinary stone-ground arrow.
After the first arrow was completed, Kaelen immediately brought the composite bow and arrow towards the archer squad’s shooting range.
First, he tested it with a normal beast bone arrow.
The arrow tore through the wind, slamming hard into a shield made from the back scales of an Iron-Armored demonic beast placed more than a hundred paces away.
*Crack!*
A dry crashing sound echoed. Under the terrifying propulsion force of the composite bow limbs, the beast bone arrowhead couldn’t withstand the immense recoil, instantly shattering into countless small fragments that scattered onto the ground. Only a shallow scratch remained on the surface of the beast scale shield.
A few beastman warriors watching couldn’t help but smack their lips in regret. The bow’s elasticity was excellent, the snap force was incredibly strong, but the beast bone material was too brittle to withstand this acceleration.
Kaelen said nothing, the corners of his lips curving up slightly. He leisurely drew the second arrow, which was precisely the triangular prism iron arrow coated in the matte black camouflage sap. At first glance, it looked as crude as a cheap stone-ground arrow.
He closed one eye, his fingers once again pulling the string made of demonic beast sinew taut. The bow limbs bent, accumulating an oppressive potential energy.
*Swish!*
The sound of tearing wind this time was markedly heavier and sharper.
*Thwack!*
No shattering sound echoed. Instead, there was the chilling friction sound of a sharp object tearing through hard armor. The entire crowd on the training ground simultaneously held their breath, their eyes widened as they stared at the target.
The matte black arrow was not shattered at all. It pierced through the rock-hard Iron-Armored scales, punching straight through the thick oak wood layered behind the shield. The sharp prism blade fully protruded from the back of the target, leaving only the feathered tail vibrating violently from the aftershock.
The shooting range fell into a moment of dead silence, followed closely by continuous gasps of cold air.
"This... this is..." A warrior rushed over, his voice trembling as he reached out to touch the arrowhead piercing through the shield. He tried to pull it out with force, but the hidden barbs were deeply embedded into the wood grain, unable to budge at all: "Such terrifying destructive power! If this hit the chest, even wearing three layers of high-level demonic beast skin would result in being riddled with holes!"
Kaelen lowered the bow, smiled, and nodded: "That’s right. This thing is called a composite bow, and its power is incredibly immense. And to coordinate with the composite bow to produce the highest effectiveness, only iron arrows will do. Starting today, our tribe will use metal as a substitute for beast bones."
"Because metal is very precious, everyone remember to carve your names on the arrow shafts. When cleaning up the battlefield, you must retrieve them. If there is any loss in numbers, you must report it to the higher-ups to handle, preventing those lost arrows from causing harm back to the tribe."
"Understood!"
