Bow Making

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The sounds of axes chopping into tree trunks rose and fell in succession.

The axes were swung with tremendous force, biting deep into the trunks. After sending splinters flying, the Exploration Team members shook the handles and wrenched them free.

Once the trunks had been chopped with sufficiently large notches, the entire trees began to sway precariously.

The members assigned to logging shouted warnings. Then several of them exerted themselves together, bracing their feet against the trunks.

The trunks creaked, then crashed to the ground. Amid the fine, incessant sounds of countless branches snapping, leaves scattered in every direction.

Though the Exploration Team had brought only a few axes, they greatly improved efficiency and spared the team members much of their stamina.

Next, they needed to saw the trunks into sections for easier transport.

The logs would be rolled back to camp, where they would undergo further processing.

The Exploration Team had not brought any saws.

However, Zhen Jin lent them some.

Zhen Jin's "saws" came from Blade Spiders. A spider's hind legs were long and straight, with a dense row of sharp spines—natural saws.

Blade Spiders were Silver-level magic beasts. From another angle, the Exploration Team members swiftly experienced the might of Silver-level magic beasts.

Working in pairs, they used Blade Spider legs to saw apart thick trunks as easily as using a sharp dinner knife to cut through white bread.

The old scholar Cang Xu possessed abundant experience in leadership and command.

With Zhen Jin overseeing things, he divided the people at hand into two groups.

One group felled trees, while the other stripped bark, tearing the inner layer into thin strands.

At regular intervals, the two groups switched tasks. This allowed the members to conserve their strength, get some rest, and keep the work progressing.

In a single morning, the Logging Team exceeded its task.

Large quantities of timber were rolled to camp piece by piece and temporarily piled in a corner.

The fine strands torn from the bark had all been coated with medicine.

Lunch portions were increased, and almost everyone was starving.

Bai Ya and Huang Zao also returned around mealtime.

They had not gained much—only a few scattered birds and a wild chicken. The haul was clearly disproportionate to the manpower and time expended, but at least they had once again cleared out the mountain forest around the camp.

To everyone's delight, Zhen Jin also announced that there would be a short nap after lunch. They had never had that before.

This had actually been Cang Xu's suggestion. A midday rest would ensure the members' work efficiency in the afternoon.

Although the logging was over, there was still an immense amount of work ahead.

Large numbers of logs were split into planks, the rough beginnings of Short Bow limbs.

Therefore, the planks had requirements for both length and thickness.

Ideally, the planks also needed to come from the heartwood at the center of the original trunks.

This was fine woodworking.

It would have been wonderful if they had a carpenter, but the Exploration Team members were all amateurs. Their amateurish nature immediately showed—many logs were ruined, and though many planks were split out, Bai Ya deemed them all unqualified after inspection.

Unqualified planks could be used to set hunter traps.

Even the most battered wood could, at worst, be used as firewood. After it burned, the charcoal and wood ash left behind were also valuable resources with great practical use.

Having reached this point, the Exploration Team needed every resource. They would never lightly let go of any resource they could obtain.

The slow progress of the woodworking made the worry and impatience in Zhen Jin's heart pile ever higher.

Though he knew that being anxious would get him nowhere.

To be honest, Zi Di's medicine had indeed helped him enormously. It had bought him the most crucial time.

Furthermore, Cang Xu's arrangements were reasonable and thorough. The old scholar had long anticipated the issue of substandard pieces.

As the Exploration Team members gradually became more familiar with the work, the waste of timber began to decrease sharply.

Qualified planks began to appear one after another, and their numbers steadily grew.

Once the number of planks reached a certain point, Cang Xu directed everyone to use them to make Short Bow limbs.

The process was actually quite simple.

They only needed to shave the planks into narrower strips, making them slightly thicker in the middle and thinner at both ends, then carve notches into the ends for attaching bowstrings later.

After Bai Ya inspected and approved the finished Short Bow limbs, they were coated with medicine and placed in a dark corner to dry.

Once this work was done, many people began shouting that they could become bowyers.

More people kept flexing their fingers or kneading the muscles in their shoulders, arms, thighs, and elsewhere. The pain and tingling numbness made them bare their teeth in grimaces.

Their bodies were already nearing their limits, yet other work still awaited them.

They needed to make a large number of arrows.

There was generally a standard for selecting arrow-shaft wood. Suitable wood was processed, shaved into long cylindrical rods, and then polished smooth.

The Exploration Team, of course, had no mature processing methods.

The main material they used to make arrows was branches—branches as straight as possible, close to the length and thickness of normal arrows.

Bai Ya guided everyone in making arrows. First, they stripped the bark from the branches to make arrow shafts. Then they carefully sliced feathers apart with blades and glued them on with a medicinal adhesive to make fletching. Finally, they lightly baked the arrowheads, carbonizing and hardening the wood before whittling them sharp and slender.

The arrows made this way were nowhere near comparable to standard military equipment.

To begin with, the arrow shafts were made from inferior materials, and the feathers were hardly premium either. They were utterly crude and shoddy—but no one could afford to be picky.

There were too few feathers in the Exploration Team. Most had come from the chicken feathers and bird plumage Bai Ya had gathered while hunting that day, so every single one had to be treasured.

The one comforting thing was the medicine Zi Di had improvised—the glue held incredibly firm!

As for the arrowheads, they were downright pitiful.

They did not even have iron arrowheads.

In actual use, they would be ruined after only a few shots.

Their killing power was naturally very low, but they still posed a threat to ordinary wild beasts.

Besides making arrows, there was other work to do.

For instance, they made large wooden shields, as tall as a person and fairly broad. Assembled from trunks and vines, they could be planted into the ground to form an exceedingly simple, low curtain wall.

These were also called arrow shields.

Long ago, when humans attacked castles, they had used such defensive works.

By now, this kind of fortification had long been phased out.

Even if anyone still used them, they would at least cover the surface with a layer of iron plating.

Besides arrow shields, there were wooden spears.

The Exploration Team members could grip the spears with both hands and stab at Flying Squirrels from a reasonably safe distance.

But this tactic was little better than nothing, because everyone knew the squirrels were extremely fast. They could glide through the air, use their tails to change direction midair, and move with astonishing agility.

What everyone truly looked forward to were the short bows.

By evening, the stripped bark had completely dried in the shade. As people marveled at Zi Di's methods, they began twisting hemp rope.

They had learned the technique of twisting rope from Bai Ya as well.

There were some tricks to it.

First, one strand of fine fibers had to be divided into two bundles. Each bundle was twisted counterclockwise, but when the two were combined, they were twisted clockwise. This made the finished rope tight and solid, not easily coming apart.

The hemp rope served as bowstrings. Each short bow was equipped with at least two strings—one for regular use and one spare.

By the time they ate dinner, they had made more than enough bowstrings.

Like lunch, dinner was lavish. There was even game meat among it, a rare change of flavor for everyone.

Early the next morning.

Zhen Jin and the others rose early, for they had something important to do—

Test the bows.

After sitting overnight, and with Zi Di's medicine, the bows had dried.

Bai Ya tried gripping both ends of the bow limb with his hands and bending it hard. When he saw it curve into a considerable arc, he grinned. "Excellent. Better than I imagined."

Cang Xu pondered for a moment. "Huang Zao, I have a task for you. Break this bow limb—but apply force slowly."

Huang Zao understood Cang Xu's intent and immediately set to work. When the bow limb reached its limit, it snapped with a crack, breaking cleanly into two pieces.

Seeing it with their own eyes, everyone immediately understood the load-bearing limit of these crude bow limbs.

Cang Xu estimated, "It seems we can only use one hemp rope as the bowstring."

No one objected.

Sometimes, several hemp ropes could be combined to form a bowstring. But after testing, it was clear that, given the toughness and limits of these short-bow limbs, a single hemp rope was more appropriate.

Bai Ya tied on the bowstring. He used a slipknot, clever and secure.

Then the hunter's son nocked an arrow, aimed at the distant target, and sent it flying with a whoosh.

Everyone stared wide-eyed.

Clearly, the arrow that had originally been headed straight ahead shot off toward the upper left before slanting down to the ground.

Its range exceeded fifty paces.

It was far from the target—who knew how far off course it had gone.

Yet no one showed disappointment. Zhen Jin even gave a slight nod—he knew this was only the beginning.

A bow needed tuning.

The bow limbs they had made were rough and required continual shaping with daggers and other tools. At the same time, the bowstring and arrows had to be adjusted. Through this process, the short bow's accuracy would gradually stabilize, and its range would increase greatly.

In the end, after Bai Ya finished tuning it, an arrow successfully struck the target a hundred paces away, its arrowhead sinking in to a depth of two fingers.

Zhen Jin was already very satisfied with this result.

For one thing, this was not a composite bow, only a simple bow. The limbs and string had been gathered on the spot, not carefully selected. For another, the arrows had no iron arrowheads, only carbonized tips ground sharp, crudely worked.

To achieve this kind of performance was already quite good.

Because Zhen Jin was not asking for much.

They were in a forest now, not on the vast, open terrain of the plains. Longbows were unsuitable.

The Exploration Team members were not expert archers. Most had been pushed into it like ducks onto a perch—do not expect them to have any accuracy from a hundred paces away.

"Limited by the environment and our personnel, an effective range of a hundred paces for the short bow is already enough."

"The key is how many arrows we can shoot within those hundred paces. If we can fire more than three arrows with a certain degree of accuracy, then the short bow plan can be considered a success."