Chapter 631: A Showy Archery Practice, An Unexplained Attack

That evening, Jier also organized martial arts training for his subordinate Warriors, which many Villagers who had not yet slept found thrilling and quite enviable.

After all, it was precisely because their village lacked sufficient combat strength that it was breached and captured by those detestable Defeated Soldiers.

If those dozen or so young Warriors under Jier had been present in their village back then, the matter of the Defeated Soldiers attacking Changmai Cunzi would have been hard to say. After all, the soldiers had trekked arduously across the entire Southern Mountains, and the food they carried was simply insufficient to besiege the village for long. Changmai Cunzi had large stores of grain and a well inside the village; even if they had just resisted without leaving the village, it would have been possible to hold out for several years.

Or rather, when the Defeated Soldiers were attacking Changmai Cunzi back then, as long as they could have guarded the village walls well and kept the soldiers from breaking in, if they had just held a stalemate for ten days or so, the soldiers would have retreated on their own, and everything might have turned out differently.

Thinking of this, many Villagers sighed, feeling that they had been far too slack for many years; despite living in an autonomous village on the edge of Human society, they had surprisingly lacked sufficient force within the village to protect everyone.

It was also because these autonomous villages in the south of Sasi County were all developed and built by the Agricultural God Church, so their relationships with each other were very good, they lived scattered without competition for survival resources, and there was the Sasi Baron—an enemy who wasn't an enemy—who collected taxes from everyone, which led them to be far too careless.

The training Jier gave his subordinate Warriors was mainly some basic combat methods. Defensive stances, ways to swing a sword for offense, and ways to dodge—these most basic things were often the most important.

All fancy, flashy moves were built upon these seemingly ordinary basic martial arts.

"Body movements must be fast! Sword swings must be fluid! Blocking must be steady! Between every offensive swing, the connection must be clear. Do not rely on your brain to decide what to do in the next moment of combat; in fast and complex fighting, you won't be able to react in time. So-called long-term martial arts training is the process of turning these things that require the brain to think about how to do them into your body's own subconscious actions. Store these movements in your body's instincts, trust your body, and it will tell you what to do in fast-paced combat."

Jier led Huimao Hu Li, walking constantly among the training Warriors, correcting some people's non-standard movements while telling them his own insights on combat.

As for the few Villagers who had newly joined the Warrior ranks, Jier arranged for them to repair and clean everyone's weapons and equipment.

Their bodies were still too weak; Jier dared not let them do any basic physical training, and under the condition that their bodies were not strong enough, it was not good to let them join the Warriors' training squad. So he had no choice but to let them clean and organize the various weapons and equipment captured.

Wiping, polishing, applying grease to prevent rust, replacing damaged armor plates, filling in damaged areas, and so on and so forth.

These Villagers were somewhat reluctant, but after Jier casually found a subordinate Warrior to arm-wrestle them and easily won completely, these Villagers, realizing their own physical weakness, honestly began to do these odd jobs.

After working until about ten o'clock in the evening, Jier called a halt to all work and let everyone go to rest. Of course, those on night watch still needed to persist for another hour; with several people taking turns standing guard, their sleep time wouldn't be much less.

The entire next day, the Villagers in the Forward Camp were resting; they ate their fill at every meal, and coupled with sufficient rest, their physical states recovered visibly to the naked eye.

Starting tomorrow, Jier and his group would lead about fifty Villagers at a time from the Forward Camp to the Temporary Camp outside the Shulin, where they would board the carriages driven by the drivers to quickly return to Changmai Cunzi in the north.

Because the carriages were limited, and one had to consider the horses' stamina and rotation, it was more appropriate to lead fifty Villagers back at a time.

Since the road to the north was not very dangerous, the entire process would be led by Bata'er Jiaoshi, who would take the first batch of people back to Changmai Cunzi and handle the situation of the currently empty and semi-ruined Changmai Cunzi.

Jier would remain here at the Forward Camp to guard against the Monsters in the mountains and forests that might be attracted after there were too many Humans.

On the road in between, Aoni and the others would be responsible for escorting the Villagers and the carriages.

These were all things that had been discussed beforehand.

Therefore, early on the third morning, Bata'er Jiaoshi set off with the Villagers with a worried look on his face, and Jier was thus left idle.

He would, of course, practice martial arts himself when he had nothing to do, but Jier's practice was very different from that of his subordinate Warriors. In the not-so-large Forward Camp, Jier rode Tianxuecao around the outermost circle of open space inside the camp, constantly jogging in circles within the camp.

Furthermore, he held a Dwarf Soldier Spear and constantly attacked the wooden pillars that the Warriors had specially erected for him on the side.

Some of these wooden pillars were arranged closely, requiring Jier to let Tianxuecao slow down to swing the Long Spear and hit them one by one; others were arranged loosely, requiring Jier to speed up to smoothly hit the dozens of wooden pillars in this circle in the shortest possible time.

Every time he hit a wooden pillar with the Long Spear, he would reap a small cheer from the surrounding Villagers; everyone was watching very happily, clearly treating Jier's training as a rare Knight martial arts performance.

Although riding a horse and swinging a Long Spear indeed had a sense of power, a sense of speed, and a certain aesthetic appeal.

Tianxuecao hadn't galloped so freely for several days, so it ran quite happily, while Jier had been frowning ever since the training started, feeling that this training was lacking something.

Because he discovered that when he fought using Life Energy, his short-distance sprinting speed was actually faster than Tianxuecao's running speed!

And his quick turns during combat were also far more agile than when riding a horse.

What did this mean? It meant that if it wasn't combat in an open area, Jier's combat effectiveness without riding a horse was higher than his combat effectiveness when riding a horse.

This made him realize that Tianxuecao seemed to be unable to keep up with his progress at this moment?

Was it time to give it some enhancements?

Jier still remembered that last winter, Lanisha Knight gave him an introduction letter, asking him to go to the capital of the Northwest Province to find a professional who could provide corresponding enhancements for warhorses to help.

But he was currently in the Southern Province, at least a thousand kilometers away from the Northwest Province, so it was clearly impossible to do this in a short time.

"Let's just leave it at that for now." Jier stroked Tianxuecao's fur and muttered helplessly.

Afterward, he picked up a Soldier Bow, intending to use arrows to shoot at the wooden pillars opposite.

This was almost impossible, because the entire small Forward Camp was packed with various tents, and the large and small tents greatly hindered the shooting route and angle.

Not to mention that Jier himself was riding on a warhorse, and the tops of the wooden pillars that needed to be shot were only the size of a human head; shooting such a small thing on the back of a jolting warhorse, while also having to avoid the various tents in the camp, was almost impossible.

At least among the Warriors under Jier, those few archers thought it was impossible.

But Jier did it; he didn't choose the fleeting shooting opportunities amidst the high and low tents, but instead raised the bow and used a high-trajectory method to shoot the arrow into the top of the wooden pillar on the other side of the camp.

"How is this possible? How did the Lord manage to ensure accuracy with a parabolic shot?"

"It must be luck; Lord Jier's luck is good, so this first arrow luckily hit the target! Yes, it must be that."

"But looking at the confident expression on Jier's face, this doesn't look like luck? Lord Jier, please, fire another arrow!"

The three archers spoke one after another, and Jier responded, raising his bow again, nocking an arrow, pulling the string, and releasing.

Whoosh—

The arrow shot diagonally toward the sky, visibly changing direction high in the air and plunging downward at a nearly straight angle.

Thud!

The arrowhead pierced into the top of another wooden pillar, and the feathers at the tail of the arrow were still trembling incessantly.

This scene surprised many people, because when the first arrow hit the target, everyone could still comfort themselves by saying it was good luck, but when Jier hit the target again with the second arrow, it was hard to say.

"That's not very likely, is it?"

"Are you blind? Isn't it obvious? Lord Jier hit the top of the wooden pillar again with the second arrow; this shows that it's not luck, he truly has the skill!"

"Lord, Lord, fire another arrow, I beg you, fire another one!"

Hearing the shouts of his subordinate archers, Jier chuckled; he didn't know how it was either, but he was just very gifted in things like shooting; he could easily hit the target by just pulling the bow and shooting casually.

He himself couldn't explain how it was; it was just that when he was shooting, his heart subconsciously laid out the angle, the force, the flight trajectory of the arrow, and the air disturbance, etc., all in his mind, and then combined them, and he almost instinctively got the feeling of what he should do.

Is this a talent?

This should be a talent.

It was just that compared to shooting or something, Jier preferred close-quarters combat with enemies; that kind of thrill of seeing blood with every strike and fighting for his life on the edge of death actually gave Jier a feeling that he was alive.

"Alright, watch closely, this time I will fire three arrows in one breath, hitting three wooden pillars respectively!" Jier said loudly, then drew three arrows from the Quiver on the horse's back and held them separately in his right hand.

Gently nudging with his legs, Jier let Tianxuecao trot in a circle at a relatively steady pace; he did not loose his arrows immediately, but instead took a deep breath, feeling the rise and fall of the warhorse galloping beneath him, as well as the relative distance to the wooden posts ahead.

He even cast his eyes toward a small flag on the roof of his own tent not far away, using that small flag to judge the wind direction in the Yingdi at this moment.

The wind had picked up.

The small flag had been hanging limp just a moment ago, but now, with the wind having risen in the Forest at some unknown time, it began to flap and sway.

Conditions with wind are naturally much more difficult than those without, but Jier felt he could still grasp the current situation. If he waited for the wind to get any stronger, it would be even more troublesome.

So, it was now.

In one fluid motion, Jier raised his hand, lifted the Soldier Bow, nocked an arrow, drew the string, and released. He then made two micro-adjustments without a break in his rhythm, firing all three arrows in the blink of an eye.

The three arrows were like three falcons flying toward the sky, emitting sharp whistles as they pierced the air upward.

As soon as Jier saw their flight trajectory, he knew this shot would definitely be fine, because even taking the rising wind into account, all three would still precisely hit the tops of the wooden posts he intended them to strike.

But Jier miscalculated.

The wind force high in the air suddenly intensified, and the three arrows, which had been on a beautiful flight path, were blown off course by the sudden gust and were about to fall into the surrounding Shulin.

The watching Villagers let out a sigh of disappointment, and the three archers exchanged glances, also feeling it was a pity.

Only Jier shrugged: "Nothing to be done; the complexity and variability of nature are not things we mortals can fully predict. Even if they were going to hit the target, once blown by the wind like this, no one knows where they will land."

But Jier was slapped in the face by his own words extremely quickly; just a moment ago he had said he didn't know where the three arrows would be blown by the strong wind, but as it turned out, the strong wind in the air became strange, and the three arrows that had been blown far away were miraculously blown sideways by the strong wind.

And they headed straight for Jier, who was moving on horseback.

Jier realized this the moment it happened; he raised an eyebrow and kicked the warhorse's belly hard, making Tianxuecao accelerate.

As long as he accelerated even a little, it would be impossible for him to come into contact with the arrows.

But Jier misjudged the situation; he accelerated to dodge, but the three arrows being blown by the strong wind also adjusted their angle and flight trajectory with the shift in the wind, heading straight for the accelerating Jier.

"Not right! There's something strange!"

This kind of situation could no longer be called a random probability occurring in natural conditions; he had already actively dodged, and logically, he should have avoided the trajectory of the arrows blown by the wind no matter what. But now those three arrows were chasing after him—this was an attack!

"Everyone pay attention, there's something strange!" Jier could not confirm where the enemy was or what their goal was, so other than opening his mouth to warn those around him, there was nothing more he could do.

He locked his eyes on the three sharp arrows spinning toward him, casually slung the Soldier Bow on his body, then gripped the Hunting Sword in his right hand, and at the moment the arrows were about to close in, he slashed hard, cutting the three arrows in two.

Crack! Crack! A few sounds rang out, and Jier immediately looked at the Huimao Hu Li he had tied in front of a tent, but this fellow also had an expression of surprise and was sitting honestly in place; it did not look like the detestable fellow who possessed magical abilities and was causing trouble because of it.

It wasn't this one, and Jier then looked at the others in the Yingdi.

Everyone else also had expressions of surprise, and after Jier synchronized his vision with the Shadow Bird to look over, he did not discover anything strange.

It wasn't the others either; this was natural.

Then who could it be?

Jier looked up at the Earth Wall that rose a circle above the ground around the Forward Camp, his gaze quickly scanning the entire circle; besides some small animals common in the mountains and forests, there was nothing strange on the trees that were taller than the wall.

Jier raised his head to look at the sky; the enemy was using the wind to stir up trouble, could it be a Monster flying in the air?

But apart from a few white clouds drifting by, there were no extra large birds present in the sky.

How could this be? The enemy needed to accurately adjust the wind direction so that the arrows controlled by the opponent could catch up to Jier, who was constantly accelerating and decelerating; therefore, the opponent had to be watching him to be able to do this.

But Jier neither felt anyone particularly powerful nearby, nor did he feel the murderous intent of being targeted.

Where is the enemy?

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