The King's Mate - Part 1: Banyue

Chapter 6

First up was archery, so Xie Lian didn't have much time to prepare himself. Despite that, the first round went rather smoothly; Xie Lian hit bullseye with all but two arrows, and entered the quarter finals in 4th place. He wasn't quite happy with that, but he should've expected the competition to be on a high level, and chided himself to do better.

In the quarter finals, Xie Lian excelled again, this time leading by a slightly larger margin; he'd only missed bull's eye with one arrow. The semi final went even better, though Xie Lian felt a bit sorry for his opponent. He was a young boy, probably about 11 or 12 years old, and obviously a natural talent. However, his nerves were visibly starting to get to him, and after one of his arrows had only hit the rim of the inner circle, he'd succumbed to the pressure, and missed the target with his next shot completely.

Xie Lian obviously won against him, but he didn't hesitate to let the boy know that he had great potential once he trained to get his nerves under control.

And then, as expected, Xie Lian's opponent in the final was Feng Xin, who looked rather self-satisfied.

"Xie Lian, I'm impressed you can win against a kid", he smirked, but there was no malice in his teasing.

"You should be careful of that kid once he has more experience", Xie Lian warned him, but they didn't have time to talk any more after that.

For the final, each of them only got one single shot, and whoever shot their arrow into the centre with the most accuracy would win. There would be no second chances.

Feng Xin was announced to go first, and like a true veteran of his craft, he took his time, and didn't let himself be bothered by impatient onlookers, nor anything else, and only focused on his target. And once he was ready and let go, the arrow did indeed hit the dead centre of the inner circle. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of cheers, and several onlookers wondered loudly how in the world Xie Lian would be able to win this, only to receive the answer that it would be impossible; they were only using one target after all.

However, Xie Lian was more optimistic than that. There was an easy solution to the issue after all. If his opponent's arrow had already hit the dead centre and blocked it, he would just have to destroy the arrow that was in his way. But while thinking of the solution was easy, implementing it in practice was quite a bit more difficult. Still, Xie Lian was confident he could do it, and got into position.

"You really think you can top that?", Feng Xin asked, sounding baffled, but Xie Lian ignored him, and Feng Xin took the hint.

He'd remembered the angle at which Feng Xin had shot his arrow, and recreating it to perfection took a few adjustments in his stance. He also needed to consider the fact that he was quite a bit shorter than Feng Xin to get the angle right, as well as the speed he needed to shoot at. After all, if there wasn't enough momentum and power behind his shot, it would be Xie Lian's arrow that would get obstructed by Feng Xin's arrow.

It took Xie Lian quite a while to find the perfect stance he needed to make sure his shot would be successful, and he could tell that the onlookers were getting quite impatient. Still, he was the Senior General of Xian Le, a veteran on the battlefield despite his age, and it would take much more for him to become distracted. Thus, when he finally let go of his arrow, it hit the target as intended, splitting Feng Xin's arrow in half, and taking its place in the dead centre of the inner circle, securing his victory.