Chapter Nineteen: The Archery Contest

Li Sixteen did not believe in superstition.

He was determined to see just how well someone who couldn’t even bear the pain of the string striking his arm could possibly shoot.

Xu Wenshan took a small knife and carved a target into the trunk of a thick tree. Pointing to the two rings, he declared, “A hit in the center ring scores three points, the outer ring is worth one, and a miss gets you nothing. Each person shoots five arrows; the one with the highest score wins.”

Li Sixteen snorted. “That’s a novel way to do things,” he remarked.

He took out a few arrows and asked, “Who goes first?”

Xu Wenshan gestured politely. “Please, after you.”

Li Sixteen was not one to stand on ceremony. He stepped forward, picked up an arrow, and was about to shoot when Xu Wenshan suddenly reached out to stop him.

“What now?” By this time, all goodwill Li Sixteen had felt toward Xu Wenshan had vanished, and his tone was anything but courteous.

Xu Wenshan said, “Let’s compete at a hundred paces.”

A hundred paces!

Li Sixteen’s eyes widened in shock. Thirty paces was already a long distance—at fifty, he could barely hit seven out of ten shots. And this young man had the nerve to propose a hundred!

Was he hoping to see Li Sixteen utterly humiliate himself?

But Xu Wenshan had already begun measuring his steps from the target, and stopped at exactly one hundred paces. By modern standards, that was around sixty or seventy meters, not quite up to Olympic standards but close.

Lu Ze squinted at the distant target and said, “It was as big as a cartwheel before, but now it’s no larger than a rice dumpling!”

Standing behind the line, Li Dazhuang also felt the distance was somewhat excessive. Few hunters in Luhe Valley could shoot accurately from so far away, not even his own father.

Standing at the spot marked by Xu Wenshan, Li Sixteen felt a little more at ease; Xu Wenshan’s steps were small, so the distance was less than he’d feared.

Even so, it was still no easy feat. Li Sixteen estimated that at this range, his arrows would already arc in flight—out of ten, he might hit five.

He guessed the young man was only putting on a show to intimidate him; at this distance, Xu Wenshan would be lucky to hit the target once in five tries.

The outer ring was worth a point, the center ring three. If he played it safe and hit four out of five, he could win easily—even if Xu Wenshan got lucky and scored three points, there was nothing to fear.

From the very beginning, Li Sixteen never believed Xu Wenshan had any real skill.

For others, archery might be just a means of making a living.

But for Li Sixteen, archery was everything.

“Juan’er, I will hunt down that old tiger in the mountains and give it to you as a betrothal gift. Then I’ll come in an ox cart to marry you!”

“Juan’er! Why did you leave with that man? Was the rabbit I hunted for you not tasty enough?”

“Bah! All you ever did was bring me rabbit meat. You promised me a tiger, but you never hunted one, and after all these years of marriage, I haven’t even had a decent bowl of millet porridge. Since I followed him into the county, I have millet porridge every day!”

Li Sixteen shook his head, driving away the memories that surged into his mind.

That snowy night was a pain he would never forget.

Yes, his wife—the mother of Li Dazhuang—had run off with a traveling monkey performer from the county.

Li Sixteen had agonized over it for a long time. In the end, he concluded that the root cause was his poor archery.

If he had hunted a tiger, if he hadn’t only been able to catch rabbits, his wife would never have left.

So he trained relentlessly, over and over, until the skill of archery was etched into his very bones.

Don’t fear pain, don’t fear exhaustion—do everything to shoot the best arrow.

Until one day, when he came to his senses, people were calling him:

The greatest archer of Luhe Valley.

No one understood better than he did that archery was a painful art.

Only blood and pain were the true rites of apprenticeship.

Li Sixteen bent his bow and nocked an arrow, telling himself to remain calm. Don’t let anger cloud your mind—perhaps that young man was only trying to provoke him to win.

He must show him that archery was a craft honed through time and dedication, not something that could be mastered with trickery.

Whoosh!

The arrow flew out and thudded into the tree.

Li Dazhuang, standing as referee, checked the target and called out, “One point.”

Li Sixteen smiled a little and glanced at Xu Wenshan—one point in the bag.

Xu Wenshan’s face remained impassive.

Li Sixteen nocked another arrow and loosed it lightly. This time his aim was a bit off—the arrow flew high and missed the target.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, pursed his lips, and shot two more arrows. This time his performance was steadier—one hit the bullseye for three points, another scored a single point.

The final arrow nearly made it into the inner ring, but missed, scoring nothing.

Li Sixteen shook his head, dissatisfied with his performance. Though one arrow hit the bullseye, only three found the target for a total of five points.

At this distance, with the arrows scattering widely, five points under Xu Wenshan’s rules was already quite good, Li Sixteen thought.

But he was Li Sixteen—he should have done better.

“Your turn.”

Even though he hadn’t shot his best, he didn’t believe Xu Wenshan could beat him.

Xu Wenshan stepped forward and, using his unique stance, shot his arrows with meticulous precision.

Thumb hooked around the string, the bowstring locked in the groove of his release ring, index and middle fingers supporting the bow—this was the most orthodox Han style!

“Three points!”

A direct hit to the bullseye!

“Three points!”

Another shot to the center!

Beside him, Li Sixteen’s face had already gone ashen.

Xu Wenshan glanced at him and said, “No need for me to shoot further, is there?”

With just the first two arrows, he’d scored six points—just two shots, and he’d already secured victory by a point.

What Li Sixteen felt now was not anger, nor disappointment.

It was despair.

Despair at the belief he had lived by all his life.

“Could it be that my technique really is as flawed as he said?” Li Sixteen wondered. “Has all my persistence been wrong? Is it really unnecessary for the string to strike the arm, for my fingers to become deformed?”

Li Sixteen found himself doubting his entire life.

What had he been living for all these years?

“No! Continue!” Li Sixteen roared in anger. “That was just luck! You finish shooting!”