The forest air carried the rotting stench of a place untouched by sunlight for years.
Li Fan strode into the woods, his combat boots pressing into green moss with a sickening squelch.
Deep in this dense forest lay Northridge Camp.
Northridge Camp was the staging ground for Alleria’s Shadowwing Squad.
The central training ground was made of rough gravel and yellow clay, packed hard into a firm floor.
The moment Li Fan stepped into the camp, Ranger Instructor Hawksbill was scolding a trainee.
At the edge of the training field stood several full members of the Shadowwing Squad in neat formation.
When these proud High Elves saw the uninvited guest and the ragged transfer order in his hand, their playfully indifferent gazes instantly hardened into palpable hostility and rejection.
A human reeking of soil standing among their crowd of noble, elegant elves looked like a rough piece of grit dropped onto fine velvet.
Hawksbill turned his head slowly.
His eyes scraped over Li Fan without restraint, finally locking onto the black bow slung across the human’s back.
“Are you the piece of trash Alleria picked up from outside?” Hawksbill’s voice was supremely arrogant, laced with unmasked malice.
Li Fan shifted his hand and hoisted the heavy black bow onto his broad shoulder.
Ignoring the stinging glares around him, he strode directly into the center of the ring, stepping through the mud.
He planted his feet, standing straight as a spear.
His eyes met Hawksbill’s gaze without a trace of fear.
“Li Fan, Lordaeron hunter.” A wild, cold smirk touched the corners of his mouth, his voice steady and powerful.
“And I’m not trash.” The vast training ground instantly fell into a dead silence.
The surrounding elf rangers narrowed their eyes slightly, waiting to see how this suicidal human was going to wrap this up.
Hawksbill stared at him without bursting into a rage right away.
Instead, he casually stepped forward, closing the distance.
The space between them shrank to less than two paces.
Hawksbill’s eyes locked onto Li Fan’s face, holding the suffocating glare for a full three seconds.
Then, he turned around, leaving his back completely exposed to the human.
It was the purest form of dismissal.
“Today’s lunch assessment,” Hawksbill said, his back still turned to Li Fan.
“One hundred shots per person.
You must pierce the heavy armored wooden targets.
Any useless trash who fails to penetrate them can voluntarily go into the woods to feed the lynxes tonight.” He completely erased Li Fan’s presence, treating him like nothing more than air.
“Begin.” The moment the command left his mouth, the elf rangers took their positions.
Accompanied by the dense vibration of bowstrings, dozens of arcane arrows glowing with blue light ripped through the air with shrill whistles!
The arrows drew exquisitely lethal arcs through the air, and the vast majority pinned themselves with incredible precision into the bullseye zone a hundred paces away.
Li Fan stood quietly at the very back of the line, his eyes burning like torches as he scrutinized the impact of every single shot.
Pointless.
Those arrowheads sank only halfway into the center of the targets before losing momentum.
Three layers of thick, specially cured leather acted like the toughest shields, stripping away nearly sixty percent of the arcane arrows’ physical kinetic energy.
This wasn’t because the rangers hadn’t trained hard enough; it was because their flashy arcane longbows possessed a natural limit on destructive force when facing heavy armor.
Li Fan was in no rush to show off.
He waited.
He waited for the howling crosswind sweeping through the woods to die down completely, for all the proud elves to finish a full round of shooting, and for the rhythm of the entire training field to settle into a tired inertia.
A soft breeze quietly curled out from the depths of the northern ridge, brushing past his cheek before silently vanishing.
The timing was right.
Li Fan reached behind his back into his quiver and slowly drew a heavy arrow.
The arrowhead of this heavy arrow was a full size larger than the standard elven arrows.
He drew his bow with brutal force.
There was none of the elegant, graceful posture of the elves.
This was pure aesthetic violence!
His hips and waist flared with power like a fully compressed spring, channeling terrifying strength from his heels up through his spine and shoulders, flooding into his arms in an instant.
With this surge of raw strength, the black bow was forced into a full moon, its limbs letting out a deep, gut-wrenching groan!
The bowstring cracked like thunder.
The heavy arrow shot from the riser like a bolt of black lightning!
*BOOM—!* Accompanied by a deafening, violent roar, the target post a hundred paces away was blasted completely apart from the very center by the heavy arrow!
The bustling training ground instantly plunged into a dead, absolute silence.
Every elf ranger stared at the shattered target in utter disbelief, forgetting to breathe.
The contempt on Hawksbill’s face froze completely.
Pushing past the crowd, he walked straight toward the wretched pile of wooden splinters.
His heavy leather boots stepped on the debris scattered across the ground, making a chilling crackling noise.
He dropped to one knee and ran his fingers firmly across the jagged, violent break of the post.
Hawksbill stood up abruptly and whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto Li Fan.
He strode back into the ring, stopping squarely in front of Li Fan.
“The way you generated force when drawing your bow discarded all arcane circuits,” Hawksbill said, his voice carrying a trace of suppressed hoarseness.
“That is an ancient combat technique of pure physical bow hunting.
Before Quel’Thalas established a complete supply of arcane energy from the Sunwell, our ancestors used this very set of skills to hunt and kill in the jungle.
But with the spread of the arcane, this arduous, unrewarding savage art has been lost for five hundred years.” His aggressive gaze scraped across Li Fan’s cheeks like a physical blade.
“Where did a mere human hunter from Lordaeron learn such a thing?” Li Fan calmly slung the heavy black bow back over his shoulder, meeting his gaze head-on.
“When hunting in places without the protection of magic, you’re forced to use unrefined methods.” He lowered his eyelids slightly, his voice quiet yet heavy with unspoken blood and tears.
“This isn’t technique.
This is survival.” Hawksbill glared at him, staring for ten full seconds.
Then, the strict elf instructor suddenly threw his head back and burst into wild laughter.
The laughter stopped abruptly.
Hawksbill stuck out his tongue and flicked it across his dry lips.
“Good!
Very good!” He looked at Li Fan with a ruthless glint in his eyes.
“Since you like playing with these life-risking, wild methods so much, you won’t need to shoot at these dead wooden targets here this afternoon.” He raised his right arm sharply, pointing toward the deepest part of the forest.
“There’s a litter with a young boar in there, and that young boar has four followers with it.
Go.
Before nightfall, pull that young boar’s tusks and bring them back to me.” He slowly lowered his arm.
“If you can’t bring them back, you can sleep in the mud with those beasts tonight.” Without a word, Li Fan turned on his heel and walked alone into the deep, dark sea of trees.