Chapter Fourteen: The Little Ring Pries Apart Blade and Halberd, the Curved Bow Draws the Path of War

Xu Wenshan had returned home.

What troubled him most was having to face a chorus of chattering aunts. Bringing back a living person—in truth, a little monster—was a painful matter to explain. For every aunt he had, he would have to repeat the story that many times; no sooner had he finished with one than another would come demanding an explanation, and in the end, he still had to account for everything to Xu Changshui and his mother.

In short, after much ado, all his aunts finally accepted the maidservant he brought home. Though she looked thin, small, and a bit slow-witted, she seemed honest enough, and as for manners, those could be taught in due course.

The angriest of all was Xu Changshui. Xu Wenshan had disappeared for several days, and in that time, his father’s heart was weighed down with worry. Now, seeing Xu Wenshan back safe and sound, he flew into a rage and came at him with a ruler, intent on spanking him. Yet, just as he raised the ruler, his heart softened. Wenshan, after all, was too old for such punishments. Instead, he decreed that his son was to remain in his room for a period of reflection.

...

Once he had a chance to be alone with Lu Ze, the first thing Xu Wenshan said was, “Actually, I’m really good at archery.”

A fleeting look of pity passed through Lu Ze’s eyes. “Mm.”

“I really wasn’t lying to you.”

Lu Ze nodded. “Alright.”

“You must think I’m lying.”

“No, I don’t.”

Xu Wenshan felt thoroughly exasperated.

He had meant well, simply trying to meddle in someone else’s business, but now it seemed... he had been shown up by a bunch of hunters feigning expertise.

He could not let this stand.

Xu Wenshan resolved to clear his name with his own hands.

...

Xu Wenshan borrowed a set of bow and arrows from his father—and a pair of elk antlers.

He instructed his servants that no one was to enter his room without his permission, then locked the door behind him, shutting himself and Lu Ze inside.

In the center of the room sat the mountain-shaped elk antlers, resting on the floor. Lu Ze crouched on Xu Wenshan’s bed, hugging his knees.

Lu Ze watched curiously as Xu Wenshan bustled around the antlers, not quite sure what he was up to. At last, unable to contain himself, he asked, “Xu Wenshan, what are you doing?”

Xu Wenshan, with a tape measure in hand, measured and marked the antlers, occasionally glancing up to scribble incomprehensible symbols on a sheet of paper—a truly perplexing sight.

After a while, Xu Wenshan finally looked up and said to Lu Ze, “I’m making something.”

Lu Ze found this even stranger. The antlers were quite large, with many branches; Xu Changshui had bought them from a hunter purely for decoration, to hang on the wall. As far as Lu Ze knew, antlers served no purpose other than, perhaps, being ground into powder for supposed vitality—what could Xu Wenshan possibly be making from them?

At last, Xu Wenshan seemed to make up his mind. He used a hand saw to cut the antlers into several segments, then laid the various pieces out on the table, selecting one to hold in his hand. With hammer and chisel, he struck and tapped, peeling away the outer layer and carving out the milky-white core inside. He washed it, sliced and shaved it down until it formed a cylinder.

Next, he invoked the Stone Skin technique, condensing diamond-hard matter onto his fingertips, forming a twisted bit like a drill.

He used this bit to bore a hole through the antler core, then scalded it with boiling water. He switched to a thicker drill, widened the hole, rinsed it with water, and repeated this process countless times until the antler segment was polished smooth inside, rough on the outside, and shaped into a perfect cylinder.

Xu Wenshan slipped the finished piece onto his thumb—it fit perfectly. He held up his thumb and asked Lu Ze, “What do you think?”

Lu Ze regarded it for a moment, then spoke his mind: “It’s not very pretty.”

Xu Wenshan nearly dropped it in exasperation. “I’m not asking if it looks good. It’s not an ornament.”

“Then what is it?”

“This,” Xu Wenshan replied, “is a thumb ring.”

A thumb ring—as in the trigger of a weapon.

He held up the ring, the hard antler refracting gentle light and blood-red lines under the sunlight.

The light refracted from this ring brought to Xu Wenshan’s mind the image of bowmen singing mournful songs on the borderlands, partisans cradling rifles, and soldiers with machine guns and chewing gum slung over their shoulders…

The thumb ring was like a wedge, hammered into the very prelude of humanity’s history of war.

As a child, Xu Wenshan had often seen Qing dynasty dramas on television, where Manchu nobles strutted about in their horse coats, thumb rings on full display. He had always thought the rings were mere ornaments, until he later took up archery himself and learned the true significance of this small device to those who drew the bowstring.

There are generally two methods of archery: the Mediterranean draw and the Mongolian draw, or, as they were called, the “barbarian method” and the “Han method.”

The “barbarian method” aside, the “Han method” was suited to Asian bows with short limbs and long draw lengths, requiring the archer to hook the string with the thumb and rest the arrow nock against the web of the hand. Without a protective device, one’s fingers could easily be injured by the bowstring.

That was where the thumb ring came in. With its protection, the fingers would not be harmed. Shooting with a thumb ring and without one were two entirely different experiences. In this sense, the thumb ring was as much a part of the bow as any other component.

It was the trigger of the weapon, just like the trigger on a musket.

The hunters of Luhe Valley, with their myriad unorthodox archery techniques, had never encountered a thumb ring before.

The first step in clearing his name, Xu Wenshan decided, was to recreate the thumb ring he had grown accustomed to in his previous life.

The second step was to set up a practice range for archery.