The Difficulty of Keeping a Low Profile

He had clearly made up his mind to keep a low profile and lie low for a while, yet on his very first day in camp, he had caught his immediate superior's attention... Wang Qi felt thoroughly troubled.

He had already taken great care to hide his abilities, but he had never expected to remain so out of place here.

But now both the squad leader and the Team Commander were here. What was he supposed to do?

He knew any further attempt to conceal things would be wrong, so he simply kept his worried expression and said, "I'm worried I'll go hungry..."

Quite a few of the recruits around him burst out laughing when they heard that. This fellow named Wang Qi was really something, saying such a thing right in front of the squad leader and Team Commander.

Honestly, the Divine Archer Battalion's food was already quite good.

The flatbreads were big enough, the scallions served alongside them were plentiful, and the vegetable soup had plenty of salt.

Many recruits had eaten until their bellies were round and were thoroughly satisfied... Plenty of them had never eaten their fill like this in their entire lives.

The Team Commander also asked in some surprise, "That flatbread wasn't enough for you?"

Wang Qi shook his head and answered honestly, "I'm full, but I didn't get any meat. By the second half of the night, I'll be miserably hungry."

The squad leader beside the Team Commander was so annoyed he laughed. "Are you some rich family's son? You get to eat meat every day?"

Wang Qi shook his head again and answered with an air of honesty, "I'm a hunter's son... I do get to eat meat every day."

The squad leader froze on the spot, then said speechlessly, "You really grew up eating meat every day? No wonder you're built with those broad shoulders and that thick waist."

Wang Qi felt rather wronged by that. His shoulders were merely broad, his arms long, and his waist not particularly slender. Did that really warrant calling him "broad-shouldered and thick-waisted"?

Meanwhile, some of the young men who came from hunting families like Wang Qi began questioning their lives... They were all hunters' sons. Had theirs somehow been counterfeit?

Still, this made it clear that the well-nourished Wang Qi truly stood like a crane among chickens, even among these carefully selected soldiers.

He was around a hundred and seventy centimeters tall now, and at only sixteen, he still had room to shoot up. Growing another ten centimeters and becoming a genuine "eight-foot giant" was entirely possible.

And the people around him?

Most were under a hundred and sixty centimeters...

He really was a vivid example of a crane standing among chickens.

His successful enlistment, which had practically been a foregone conclusion, had a great deal to do with his physique: he stood a full head taller than those around him.

Someone built like that, with a pair of ape-long arms to match, could easily amount to something after a little seasoning on the battlefield.

In fact, one look at Wang Qi's build explained why he worried about going hungry... This was clearly a body spoiled on meat.

The Team Commander grew interested at the sight and simply led everyone back toward the training ground.

The fifty recruits in this company moved together, clustered around several lower-ranking officers, and naturally stirred up the camp, where there was little to do at night. The men in the other barracks grew curious too. What were they up to?

Even Military Marquis Xu, the highest-ranking officer present, was alerted.

But he merely watched from a distance without betraying anything. Whatever they said or did over there, he could hear and see clearly just by standing far away.

The Team Commander's surname was Wu. After leading everyone to the training ground, he looked up at the sky...

It was just after dusk, and late autumn. Flocks of birds passed overhead from time to time... North of Jiqiu County lay the Yi River, with broad stretches of waterbird habitat along its banks. Now was precisely the season when those birds flew south for the winter.

Seeing this, Team Commander Wu asked, "Since you've eaten meat from childhood, can you see at night?"

He was asking whether Wang Qi suffered from night blindness.

Wang Qi nodded... Ever since First Yang Arises had occurred within his body, he could actually see very clearly even on pitch-black nights. His vision already qualified as night vision in the truest sense.

Team Commander Wu nodded in satisfaction. Wang Qi's basic qualifications were already outstanding in every respect.

He pointed at the various birds flying overhead and said, "One large flatbread, two scallions, a dish of dipping sauce, and a bowl of vegetable soup. That's the standard fare in our Divine Archer Battalion. But as an archer unit, we also enjoy a special privilege..."

"Whatever you want to eat, you can shoot it yourself!"

With that, he pointed at the bow rack on the training ground that had yet to be put away. "Go pick a bow, then shoot whatever you want to eat."

At those words, Wang Qi raised his head and gauged the height at which the waterbirds were flying...

"Huh?" He suddenly spotted a kind of large waterbird that flew fairly low, migrating south in a flock of six...

He no longer bothered choosing a military bow. Instead, he took his own shortbow off his back, nocked an arrow, and drew...

After all, this camp was unfamiliar territory, and fifty men shared his quarters. He was rather unsure what to do with his personal belongings, so he had simply kept carrying them with him.

And now, using his familiar shortbow came much more naturally.

All anyone heard was a continuous thrum of bowstrings...

Within a single breath, he shot, took another arrow, drew, and shot again... Three repetitions, three arrows loosed in one breath.

Then Wang Qi reached into his quiver a fourth time, but his hand paused briefly inside. When he pulled it out, he was holding three arrows.

"Linked Arrows?!"

The veterans watching nearby all felt their hearts tighten.

But then they noticed that Wang Qi's grip on the arrows was nothing like the proper grip for chain shots. The way he held that handful of arrows had an unmistakably self-taught air.

Even so, in the next instant, Wang Qi still sent three arrows out in a chain...

He held the tails of two arrows against his palm, while his thumb and index finger pressed the first into place on the string before he quickly released it.

Then he skipped the step of reaching for another arrow altogether. His ring finger flicked outward, flipping one of the arrows held against his palm neatly into the web between his thumb and index finger.

His arm merely thrust forward and pulled back in one swift movement, and the second arrow was already nocked at full draw.

Thrum~

The second arrow flew, and he repeated the motion with the third. Another arrow pierced the air!

Thus, in that brief instant, Wang Qi had already loosed six arrows. The first three had slightly wider intervals between them, but the last three flew almost tip to tail, like beads on a string...

That string of rapid shots was genuinely intimidating, but Wang Qi kept firmly in mind the "persona" he was supposed to play: a young hunter who shot fast but had only average accuracy.

So although his rapid shooting looked frightening, his accuracy really was average.

Apart from the first arrow striking its target squarely, the next two missed as the waterbirds scattered in alarm.

But the following three chain shots were aimed at a single fleeing waterbird, and he finally landed two consecutive hits, bringing it down as well...

Six arrows fired and two birds hit. That hit rate was hardly outstanding.

But the sight of him unleashing six arrows in one breath was still quite frightening.

He felt he ought to have performed well this time. He had firmly suppressed the urge to "wipe out the whole family" and displayed a roughly thirty-percent hit rate on the birds. Surely that let him keep a low profile while still getting meat to eat...

Indeed, he ate meat that night, while the others could only watch him light a fire and roast the birds, swallowing their saliva.

The sky had already grown dim, and the vast majority of the people here could not make out birds flying overhead in that light.

But while Wang Qi believed he had faithfully upheld his principle of "keeping a low profile," the officers in camp showed delighted surprise after a moment of bewilderment... Those had been Linked Arrows, but not orthodox Linked Arrows.

Wang Qi had clearly achieved that string-of-arrows effect through his own familiar, self-taught methods, which only proved his exceptional potential all the more!

And so the plan he had made that evening to "become a five-man squad leader" was accomplished that very night.

He had indeed become one of the forty five-man squad leaders... He was also the first.

More importantly, no one objected. The recruits all naturally felt that giving him one of those positions was only right.

Wang Qi could only feel that the low profile Wang Dashan had repeatedly insisted upon was far too difficult to maintain...

But he had no regrets. After all, compared with going without meat... stepping a little out of line simply couldn't be helped.