The long, winding stone staircase gave Li Fan ample time to examine the furnishings along the corridor.
“Elegant posture, but the angle of force at the ankle is wrong,” he said flatly, looking up at the first stone statue drawn to full draw.
“In real combat, this stance delays your first step by 0.3 seconds.” Walking beside him, Karan didn’t respond.
“The second statue—” “Shut up.” Alleria, walking in the lead, didn’t turn back, throwing the two harsh words onto the stone steps.
“I’m just offering a professional critique.” “Shut up.” Aiming, walking to Li Fan’s right, glanced at him before silently looking away.
Alleria’s fingers, hanging by her side, lightly brushed the edge of her quiver before coming to a stop in midair.
Li Fan’s eyes followed her finger for half a second, and he wisely shut his mouth.
The heavy ginkgo-wood doors swung open.
Behind a curved long table sat a man.
He wore dark gold light armor with a snow leopard pelt draped over his shoulder, and a strategic map lay near his hand.
His gaze was even more reserved than Alleria’s, deeper and far harder to read.
Li Fan’s footsteps faltered for a moment.
*Isn’t the Ranger-General Lireesa Windrunner?
Who is this man?
What happened to this world?* Li Fan’s eyes swept over the hands resting on the table.
The webs of his thumbs were covered in thick, layered calluses.
These were hands that had truly harvested lives with a bow on the battlefield.
He looked away without bowing.
It wasn’t an intentional slight, but a hunter’s physical instinct that had yet to adapt to such strict hierarchical etiquette.
Aralil sharply caught this detail, though he made no sound.
His gaze swept over Li Fan before turning to his eldest daughter.
Alleria’s report was brief and efficient: the border crossing, the troll corpse, the Amani scout lurking in the canopy, and the longbow that had snapped on the training grounds yesterday.
When she mentioned that last detail, her voice faltered for a brief second before regaining its cold, unruffled edge.
A brief, dead silence fell over the council chamber.
Aralil pushed back his chair, his tall frame rising, and walked straight up to Li Fan.
They were similar in height, but the pressure radiating from a long-time superior made the air thick and heavy.
“The hidden flaw in Firas’s bow required arcane instruments even for Silvermoon City’s veteran artisans to detect,” Aralil said in a deep, oppressive voice.
“How did you spot it?” “Because I didn’t want to die.” Aralil stared at him silently, waiting for him to continue.
Li Fan opened his mouth, then closed it.
How could he explain?
Say he had “heard” it?
Would they believe such a mystical explanation?
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Alleria.
Her hand rested on the hilt of the dagger at her waist, her thumb pressing tightly against the pommel.
She was nervous.
Nervous about what?
Afraid he would offend her father with insolent words?
Afraid her father might actually appreciate this human?
Or…
something else?
Li Fan pulled back his gaze and looked Aralil straight in the eye, speaking at a measured pace.
“A hunter’s life hangs on the bowstring.
When the wind passes over the string, if the vibration frequency carries the faintest sound of metallic friction, it means the internal weight balance is loose.
If you can’t even hear that…” He paused briefly.
“…you don’t deserve to survive in the forest.” A sudden flash of cold steel.
The tip of a blade instantly pressed against the side of Li Fan’s neck.
Alleria appeared on his left like a phantom, her voice colder than the edge: “Are you lecturing the Ranger-General of Quel’Thalas?” Li Fan didn’t budge.
The dagger rested snug against his skin, its icy chill seeping through his flesh.
His carotid artery throbbed rhythmically beneath the point.
He could clearly feel the lethal threat, and he knew the person holding the blade could feel it too.
Ignoring the blade at his neck, his eyes never left Aralil’s face.
“If the General doesn’t believe me, feel free to order a proper longbow brought out.
Any distance, any target.
If I miss, you can hang me from the spire of the tower like a wind chime.” Aralil kept his gaze locked on him.
Three seconds.
During those three seconds, a pin drop could be heard in the council hall, and even the sound of the wind outside seemed to freeze.
Then, Aralil raised a hand and flicked it dismissively.
The blade pulled back from his neck.
Alleria’s movement in sheathing the dagger was half a beat slower than drawing it.
In that brief moment, a flash of complex emotion flickered in her eyes before being forcefully suppressed.
Out on the balcony, strong winds from Eversong Woods howled through the coniferous canopy.
A ranger handed over a standard-issue ranger longbow.
Three hundred meters away, a specially made swivel target hung at the edge of Eversong Woods, swaying wildly in an irregular curve.
Alleria’s brows knit tightly, her voice grave.
“The distance is too far.
Even for a high ranger without arcane assistance…” Li Fan ignored her and reached out to take the longbow.
The glib vagrant from the journey seemed to evaporate in an instant.
Bow in hand, he didn’t rush to nock an arrow; instead, he slowly closed his eyes.
Three hundred meters.
Strong crosswind.
Irregular moving target.
In Lordaeron, he had never attempted a shot at such an extreme distance.
So what?
His eyes snapped open, sharp as an eagle’s.
Nock, draw, pull.
No superfluous preparatory stance, no deliberate aiming motion.
His left hand pushed the bow steadily forward, while his right smoothly drew the string into a full moon.
The movements were clean and crisp, as if practiced a thousand times.
Once at full draw, he held position.
He didn’t even look at the target spinning in the gale.
He tilted his head slightly and closed his eyes, focusing intently on the sound of the wind.
The balcony fell deathly quiet, everyone unconsciously holding their breath.
Wind from the left.
Wind speed dropping.
Within three seconds, a window of steady airflow would open.
The target completed a full alignment reset every twelve seconds.
He was waiting.
One second.
Two seconds.
The gale bore down from the left, the rustle of foliage approaching from afar.
In his mind, Li Fan swiftly deconstructed the noise: the base layer was the massive canopy swaying as one; the middle layer was the sharp friction of airflow pushing through dense leaves; the upper layer was the pure velocity of the howling wind.
The moment had come.
The bowstring gave a dull, heavy twang.
The arrow flew from the bow like a shooting star.
No dazzling arcane trails, no magical enchantments—just an ordinary arrow tracing an unadorned arc through the air, traversing a distance of three hundred meters.
Under the force of the crosswind, the arrow’s trajectory drifted subtly.
To the left, drifting left…
Just then, the wildly spinning target snapped into alignment.
The arrow arrived.
*Thwack!* A heavy, powerful impact resounded.
The bullseye was cleanly pierced, wooden splinters detonating into the air.
For three whole seconds, absolute silence gripped the balcony.
Li Fan casually handed the bow back to the ranger beside him, straightened up, put his hands in his pockets, and stepped back two paces.
Still, no one spoke.
Karan’s mouth hung wide open, unable to close for a long moment.
Aiming turned his head, staring intently at the shattered target, before looking back at Li Fan.
His expression was tight, but this silence was the highest praise the proud elven ranger could offer.
Alleria stood motionless, her combat boots planted firmly on the stone floor.
Her chest heaved twice as she forced her breathing back into rhythm.
Aralil walked slowly to the balcony’s edge, his deep gaze fixed on the shattered target, remaining motionless for a long time.
Finally, he turned around.
“Alleria.” “Father.” “Take him to bathe.
Then get him into a ranger apprentice uniform.” Alleria’s voice rose involuntarily with a hint of disbelief.
“Father?” Aralil was already turning back toward the council hall, his cloak dragging soft rustles across the stone.
His voice was quiet, yet it reached every ear clearly: “The boy is a born hunter.” He walked into the council hall, leaving the doors unclosed.
Alleria stood frozen in place like a cold statue.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Her heaving chest gradually settled, not because her emotions had calmed, but because she was desperately reining in something on the verge of boiling over.
Finally, she turned her head and glared coldly at Li Fan.
Li Fan was leaning down to hand the longbow back to the ranger.
Straightening up, he casually brushed the dust off his hands, just in time to meet her complex gaze.
“Officer, can I get a black uniform?
Green makes my skin look washed out,” Li Fan suggested in all seriousness.
Alleria’s hand at her side shot toward her hip quiver.
But the moment her fingers touched the fletching, she stopped.
Taking a deep breath, she turned and marched away resolutely.
Her boots stomped heavily on the stone, her strides growing wider and faster.
The hurried footsteps resounding from down the hall sounded as if some terrible beast were chasing her.
Li Fan watched silently until her figure disappeared around the corner.
Karan and Aiming exchanged a complex look before dispersing without a word.
Li Fan was left alone at the balcony’s edge.
He fished out the half-empty pouch of shriveled cured meat from his pocket, tore off a small piece, and chewed slowly, his eyes wandering toward the depths of Eversong Woods.
Under the slanted afternoon sunlight, the canopy presented a rich, deep bronze hue, radiating a suffocating stillness.
“A born hunter.” The words echoed in his mind, feeling strangely heavy.
He looked down at the hand that had held the bow.
The moment he released the string, the vibration transmitted from the bow limbs to his palm had traveled up his wrist and shoulder, reverberating all the way into his chest.
That strange sense of resonance lingered inside him even now.
When Aralil gave that assessment, his eyes hadn’t been on Li Fan.
He had been looking at the shattered target the entire time.
What had he been looking at?
Li Fan stuffed the meat pouch back into his pocket and turned to walk down the corridor.
Alleria’s footsteps had faded, but he remembered their rushed rhythm.
She hadn’t fully digested everything that had happened today and was using that near-evasive pace to cope with her feelings.
He stepped forward to follow, his pace neither rushed nor sluggish.