Chapter 9: Testing the Bow

As Yang Zicang picked up the bow to test the arrow, Mu Xiaoyu, along with Yao Qiming and the others, was cheerfully chatting and turning onto the large balcony on the second floor with some meat jerky.
When the three newcomers glimpsed the piles of minerals and weapons inside the room, Liu Ming let out an admiring gaze.
“These stones glow. Impressive. Wait, could they have radiation?”
Yao Qiming laughed. “Don’t worry, they are precious products of this world. Making many items requires the energy they contain.”
Zhao Xue smiled as she looked at Yang Zicang.
“Mr. Ziang, are you going to try the bow? This type of weapon… isn’t very good.”
Since even the others said it wasn’t good… Yang Zicang had already lowered his expectations for ranged weapons like guns and bows.
“I’ll just give it a try.”
Yang Zicang stepped to the edge of the balcony, drew the bow and nocked the arrow, and aimed at the open terrain in the distance. There, the grass and trees were abandoned, with garbage scattered about.
[Timestream allocation, 300 Years.]
[Because I am the Great Quadrilateral, I can amplify the chrono by four times—1200 years!]
A faint golden phantom flickered at the arrow’s tip, like rippling mist or an ethereal flame.
“Tsk, tsk. A single arrow is a thousand years. Makes one envious.”
Every single member of the Monster Hunter Alliance wore a look of undisguised envy.
Yang Zicang’s fingers tensed.
[Trajectory Dispatch!]
The instant he released his fingers, the golden arrow shaft swiftly streaked across the sky.
Swoosh!
People in nearby buildings seemed to sense something. Peering through their windows at the arrow’s afterimage, which shifted from gold to black, they let out murmurs of awe.
“Who’s that showing off their chrono?”
“That speed is incredible—looks like it’s from someone in the Monster Hunter Alliance.”
……
At that moment, Yang Zicang, who had just fired the arrow from behind the parapet, received a sensory message in his mind.
He turned in surprise to look at the others.
“Truly a crack shot.” Chu Qiang said with a smile: “See? Your chrono’s back already, isn’t it?”
Yang Zicang nodded thoughtfully: “The chrono returned before thirty meters or so along the deployment distance.”
“It should be exactly thirty meters. That’s thanks to this bow. Without it, that chrono-laden arrow shaft would’ve only carried the augmented energy about twenty meters at best.”
“No wonder. So that’s how it is.”
Yang Zicang glanced at the wooden bow in his hand. It could extend his chrono attack range by ten meters.
Meaning, his actual long-range attack range was only twenty meters.
Back in the subway tunnel, he really had been gambling. Especially with the bus monster, it had barely been hit by his over four thousand years of Time Order Strike at the very edge of its range.
“That makes sense. Otherwise, just casually shooting an arrow with tens of thousands of years of Time Order could take out threatening opponents from a distance,” he murmured.
Reluctant as he was, he soon sighed and accepted the reality.
“Haha, don’t be discouraged. Our main tactics still rely on melee weapons. If you ever get your hands on a pistol, it’d be a good supplement—you’d be almost invincible at short range,” Chu Qiang said. “But bullets aren’t easy to come by either.”
Yao Qiming nodded as well. “Come on, let me show you something good.”
He turned and led the group into the house.
After passing through a sliding door, Yang Zicang and the others saw a curved blade placed on a dark metal weapon rack.
He took it down, held it solemnly in his hands, and said, “This is a weapon the headquarters awarded to one of our team members. Go ahead, feel it.”
Yang Zicang took the curved blade, which weighed at least over forty jin, and felt a heaviness in his hands.
Hefting it with both hands, he tried pouring Time Order into the blade but failed.
“Huh?”
[It doesn’t recognize me as its master, damn it.]
Gripping the hilt with both hands, he swung it a couple of times, and a message came through from the psychic feedback—the blade already contained fifty years of Time Order.
Each blow from it would unleash the attack intensity of fifty years of Time Order, with no need for additional Time Order to replenish it!
What a treasure!
“This is truly a treasure.”
Needless to say, Yang Zicang had already recognized its value.
Though he himself possessed thousands of years of chronology, it was all expendable; just a few collisions costing hundreds or thousands of years could drain it to the bottom after just three or four strikes.
But with this blade, things were different.
What did it matter if the opponent had a higher chronology? One slash wasn’t enough, he would just deal ten.
“However, precious as this knife is, it pales considerably compared to the armor you obtained.”
The group turned to look at the damaged armor Yang Zicang had brought, with its torn collar.
“Zhang Fei is a household name, but who’d have thought he’d fall to you. The people from the Heroic Group are probably going crazy by now, Yang Zicang. From now on, you need to watch out for their revenge. That bunch chooses to side with monsters; their natures have already been corrupted by them.”
“Ha, at that moment I almost thought I’d time-traveled into some Three Kingdoms world.”
The round-faced girl chuckled and said:
“That group likes using codenames instead of real names. Besides Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, there’s also Lu Zhishen and Little Red Riding Hood. Their leader is called Lü Bu.”
Little Red Riding Hood and Lü Bu… Yang Zicang felt a headache coming on.
“Anyway, be wary of anyone with red models—they don’t listen to headquarters.”
The others looked at Chu Qiang, who had spoken.
“So, how about it? Are you interested in joining us? Once you’re in the Monster Hunter Alliance, any good weapons like this will be prioritized for you.”
Mu Xiaoyu and the other two looked at Yang Zicang expectantly.
“I…”
Seeing the young man’s hesitation, Zhao Xue Mei said nervously, “If you join us, we will give you the best treatment and help you grow.”
“I still don’t understand anything. I want to think it over.”
The three who came with him clearly did not expect Yang Zicang to refuse.
This was a rare opportunity.
Liu Ming wanted to say something, but Zhang Yang gently tapped his wrist, signaling him not to interfere.
It was obvious to anyone that these people valued this kid greatly.
The three of them were lucky to tag along with him. At times like this, it’s best to stay cautious and avoid making decisions for others.
Zhang Yang and the others now realized that the person who could run upside down was actually very formidable.
Yet Yang Zicang had knocked him out cold with a single punch.
They had hit the jackpot—following him would definitely increase their chances of survival.
“Tell you what, stay here temporarily for half a month. Once you understand our matters, then you can decide.” Chu Qiang said.
Yao Qiming thought for a moment and also tried to persuade him to stay:
“These days, we can give you an investment of at least five hundred years of chronological sequence every day. Friend, nowhere else can you get such an easy opportunity to gain life-span investments. You can think it over carefully.”
“Okay. Whether I join or not in the future, I will repay this favor of help eventually.”
“Yeah!” Hearing that Yang Zicang had finally relented, Mu Xiaoyu, who had been running all day, jumped up joyfully.
If they didn’t settle here, she wouldn’t know where to find dinner.
They wandered around a bit more, listening to Yao Qiming explain some common weapons and materials.
Just then, Chu Qiang received a message, his expression turning serious.
“What happened?” Yao Qiming looked over.
“On the way back for Team Two, a powerful nightmare appeared and blocked the path. No one nearby dares to invest in them. It seems the monster carries some residual bloodline.”
Yao Qiming exclaimed, “What?! That nightmare hasn’t awakened its bloodline, has it? I said back then that we should have completely cleared the anomalous space.”
“Probably not; otherwise, they wouldn’t have had time to contact us.”
Chu Qiang frowned and said, “Complaining now is useless.” He turned to Yang Zicang, who was looking at him. “Sorry, Zicang, I need to ask a favor. Right now, you’re probably the only one who can help us.”
“What’s wrong?”
……
He found out soon enough.
A sensory perspective appeared before Yang Zicang.
It was a dark, long cavern, with a towering black stone bridge spanning a bottomless abyss, from which faint, agonizing roars drifted up.
Four people carrying blades and longbows, along with a dozen men, women, and children with panicked expressions, gathered on a circular platform about a hundred square meters in size.
Opposite them on the bridge, a worm-like monster, over ten meters long, climbed up from below. It had a massive maw and sprayed a glob of corrosive green liquid onto their only path forward.
“Where is that?”
This scene didn’t look like anything that should exist in the normal world.
“This is called the ‘superfluous’ world. Before it stabilized, it was known as the ‘Place of Intersections.’ Once the main monsters are cleared out, it’s referred to as an ‘extradimensional space.’”
“Many places in this city feature hidden, special terrains. Over a decade ago, when people first woke up here, they mistook this place for Earth, so they called those locations the ‘superfluous worlds.’”
Chu Qiang smiled slightly, as if in self-deprecation.
“They realized later that it wasn’t those bizarre places that were superfluous, but us.”
“We are the superfluous ones?”
“Perhaps those monster-infested areas are the true face of this world. Our Earth city is merely some kind of simulated image projected here. However, since that’s what we’ve come to call them, we haven’t bothered to change it.”
{Can he handle it? That’s a B-rank extradimensional space.}
Yao Qiming’s telepathic image echoed in Chu Qiang’s mind. He glanced at Yao Qiming, who was right in front of him, and thought to himself:
[This is just the right time to see the true capabilities of Yang Zicang’s model. Aside from its twenty-meter temporal strike range, we know nothing else about it.]
On the balcony, Yao Qiming nodded to himself, then entered the adjacent room, straining to lift a bow as tall as a person.
“I’m really counting on you this time, brother,” he said to Yang Zicang.
The bow seemed covered in scales, exuding an eerie aura.
Just a single glance at it stirred a feeling of resentment in Yang Zicang’s heart.