Xuan Hu entered the archery club and signed in like usual. He was leading the club members to practice. As a club associated with the National Archery Organization, the club was treated well by the local archery club. At one point, they had a member ranked on the national list.

As Xuan Hu was guiding the group, he noticed a tall guy in the target lane next to them. The tall guy aimed at a target 15 meters away and then moved both feet in line with the target and spaced apart by a shoulder length. Xuan Hu immediately recognized it as the classical stance. The tall guy continued the stance with his three fingers notched into the center of the bowstring and then pulled the string back near his chin. His body formed a t-shape with the arrow and arms perpendicular to the body. Once the arm was in line with the arrow, he released his fingers and the arrows zipped through the air toward the target.

“Is he an Olympic athlete?” Xuan Hu thought. He was impressed by the stance, and the release was one of the smoothest he had ever seen.

Xuan Hu had developed a bad habit with the release while hunting with his father. He had been trying to correct it for a while. His wrist was always bending inward toward his throat during a release instead of smoothly pulling back. He thought about asking him for help.

"Che! And I thought he was an expert or something!" The other member reacted.

Xuan Hu turned to look at the tall guy’s target, but the arrow landed on a white ring marked with a two. The white ring was near the edge of the round target, the complete opposite where most people wanted to hit, which was the center yellow circle marked with a ten. Xuan Hu sighed in disappointment, but continued watching.

"It is possible that it was just a test shot," Xuan Hu thought, waiting for the next shot. Unfortunately, the following arrow landed on the white ring marked with a one, worse than the previous one.

“You should raise your arm higher,” Xuan Hu advised, noticing that the tall guy was aiming with a low angle.

The tall guy turned toward Xuan Hu and gave a brief salute, “Oh, thanks for the pointer…” He glanced at the name tag, “ Mr. Hu.”

Xuan Hu greeted him back with a polite wave. Since the guy wasn’t in the club, he didn’t have a name tag. Before Xuan Hu could ask, he introduced himself as Li Yun.

Given Li Yun’s reaction, Xuan Hu wondered if he was a newbie. Some regulars or elites didn't like strangers pointing out their mistakes. The guy was much more humble.

On the following attempt, Li Yun followed Xuan Hu’s advice and shifted the angle slightly higher before releasing his arrow. It landed higher, but on the black ring marked 3.

Xuan Hu refocused on his club members, but couldn’t help but watch several of Li Yun’s attempts. Li Yun had been using different arrow weights every time. None of the arrows hit the center. It was rather sporadic. When all the arrows were gone, he retrieved them and then tried again with the recurve bow. Again, none of the arrows were even close to the center yellow ring.

“And I thought he’s some skilled archer coming here to practice,” the other archers were talking amongst themselves.

“His form is very pretty good, he has probably watched a lot of competitions and thought that the bow and arrow would be simple to try out.” The other archers nodded. Archery was often shown as a simple sport, with many skinny archers, but to perform well in archery, a lot of strength was required.

“Probably one of the movie buffs who join the club after watching a movie,” the regulars concluded.

There were all types of people in the archery club, depending on the popular movies released during the season. The regulars called the influx of people hobbyists or casuals. Generally, most people in archery clubs were people serious about the sport.

Li Yun returned to the range every other day to try out different bows. By the end of the week, Li Yun never shot an arrow in the center of the target.

“Someone give the guy some training on how to shoot properly,” the archers were becoming more familiar with Li Yun, but they couldn’t figure out how he was so bad at aiming.

“It’s not like he has bad form or doesn’t even release properly,” they speculated.

“Is his eyesight poor?”

What shocked them even more was that despite being a poor shot, he selected to move the target back to 25 meter range. By the end of the second week, he was trying out the 50 meter range.

“Does he think he’ll improve better by trying out the longer range?” All the regular archers were confused.

Again, Li Yun never hit the center of the target.

“Well, he’s testing out the different bow and arrows, so he’s probably bored and wanted to try out different things.”

Even Xuan Hu who had been randomly giving Li Yun advice had decided to give up. He still didn’t understand why someone with good form couldn’t hit the yellow target area. Even the worst archer had lucky breaks.

After the second week, Li Yun disappeared from the archery range, and everyone assumed that he had gotten bored of missing the target all the time. He was soon forgotten from everyone's memories.

"Captain, that guy got bored already?" asked the member. Although Li Yun wasn't a good archer, he was a pleasant person to have around and chat with.

"Looks like it," Xuan Hu had seen a lot of hobbyists who tried something out for a few weeks and then give up afterward.

"That's a shame, he has really good form!"

"Are you guys talking about the guy with the scar underneath his left eye?" asked a passing archer.

The members nodded.

"That guy is freaking crazy," the archer commented. "I saw him grabbing a 90lb bow on the first day. When I stopped by the counter again, I saw him talking to the manager. I thought he came back to get a lighter bow, but he actually requested a 100lb drawstring!"

"100lb?" Xuan Hu thought he misheard. He had a tough time using a 60lb. drawstring bow, and had been using 50lb during high school until he starting working out in college. Even then, shooting a dozen times with a 60lb bow easily tired him out. He couldn't understand how Li Yun was able to continuously shoot a 100lb bow without putting much of a sweat!

****

Li Yun stood on top of the roof top area. Aside from top administrators, no one had access to the rooftop unless it was specially requested. It was mainly because he had decided to use it for target practice and training.

The roof of the Shennong’s factory was spacious and flat— aside from the noisy mechanical units — so there were plenty of spaces to practice. Next to Li Yun was three different bows and quiver he had ordered; a barebow recurve, a compound bow simple and large longbow.

Behind him was a suitcase was a variety of throwing knives and projectiles. Bows were nice for long distances, but for shorter distances, throwing knives and darts laced with poison were much more flexible and convenient to use. It wasn’t just practical for real life situations, but for entering the other realms. Bow and arrows could shoot down enemies from afar, but if the beasts could dodge or block, it was unlikely that he could outrun them. Close combat was his last line of defense.

As for poison, Li Yun had developed many different types in the laboratory. The poison he liked was a modified version of zolpidem, normally used as a sleeping aid. He needed to make sure that the compound was stable enough to perform its job, but weak enough to break apart within 24-hours, making it difficult to trace back the original compound.

There were also two poisons he was developing based on curare and tetrodotoxin. Curare was used to paralyze the body. Although it was considered a poison, there were medical uses for curare as anesthesia and muscle relaxant.

Tetrodotoxin, commonly found in pufferfish, was another poison that could disable the nerve. There was no known cure for tetrodotoxin. Even with his body's ability to cleanse poison, the slightest trace of tetrodotoxin injected into his body took a day to completely clear out. Even then, he looked sleepy the entire day. Luckily, Rouxi was in school or else he would have had another lecture from her.

Up in the sky, there was a pheasant flying across the factory. It was likely hoping to return home and feed its younglings. Unfortunately, an arrow struck its heart by a villain known to the animal kingdom as a hunter.

"Looks like the workers will have chicken tomorrow," Li Yun said after shooting an arrow from a 100lb. longbow in his hand.