Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

Bi Fang wandered through the forest with a spear on his shoulder, the beast tooth necklace around his neck clinking with a metallic sound.

He scratched the slightly turned-up tips of his hair, looking somewhat listless, opened his mouth wide, and let out a deep yawn.

He didn’t get back until the early hours of yesterday, and today, he started live streaming at 8:30 in the morning. All in all, he hadn’t had a full six hours of sleep and was feeling drowsy.

[Dude, did Old Fang secretly treat himself on his day off yesterday?]

[You need to show some restraint!]

[I heard Japan has official pleasure districts (smirk)]

[Old Fang is young and strong; he must not have been able to control himself]

[Handsome Fang: Just hunted down a bear, I’m fuming mad]

"Cough cough."

Bi Fang coughed into his fist, took out his water bottle for a drink, and after taking a few deep breaths, his spirits lifted, and he quickly recovered.

Being Batman is really not easy, not even enough rest time, I could barely get up this morning.

"When I woke up this morning and checked the rankings, I found that I had fallen to third place. It seems the others are really making an effort."

The current first place belonged to a pair of Yōki Hunters. Although they hadn’t made any significant gains in the first few days, they rose through the ranks by skillfully using traps and large knives to hunt three Black Bears in just three days.

Both hunters have 13.2 points each now; the scores for the three bears are all around ten.

The second-place contestant was quite unexpected.

Turns out it was an old man from Ugly Country named Gary Benson.

Well...

Calling him old might not be entirely accurate, but he indeed was the oldest among the competitors, at fifty-two years old. Amongst a crowd of competing hunters, he was at a significant physical disadvantage.

What’s key is that, after learning about this guy’s background, I couldn’t help but admire him.

What a wild imagination.

Because this old hunter assembled a contraption akin to a heavy crossbow.

Cheating?

Hard to say.

The show doesn’t allow hunting with heavy crossbows because that would be too much of an unfair advantage.

The earliest crossbows emerged more than two thousand years ago in Huaxia.

In the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, a large number of bronze crossbow bolts and bronze parts of crossbows were unearthed.

From that time, the might of the crossbow began to show, gradually becoming the true king of cold weapons.

If that was the case in antiquity, modern times with advanced material science are a whole different story.

Compared to ancient crossbows, modern crossbows are basically a different thing altogether.

Modern crossbows use synthetic materials; the bow of the crossbow is usually made of carbon fiber or polymer composites. These materials are lighter and have a stronger energy capacity than the bamboo, wood, or steel used in the past, and they are far ahead in terms of strength and durability.

Especially, modern crossbows incorporate a pulley system. The eccentric wheel design makes it easier to draw the string, and, on the other hand, the rebound speed of the bowstring is faster. Many crossbows have an initial speed that exceeds 100 meters per second, which is unimaginable for traditional crossbows.

Take medieval steel crossbows as an example, a 740-pound pull crossbow only had a bolt speed of about 42 meters per second, because the elastic quality of the crossbow arms was poor, they couldn’t be drawn too tightly, and the bowstring provided a very short acceleration distance to the bolt.

Under the action of the pulley system, modern crossbow limbs can undergo significant deformation, giving a longer acceleration distance to the bolt and therefore a much higher final velocity.

Further, at closer ranges, the accuracy of modern crossbows with sniper scopes is even comparable to that of sniper rifles.

An international weapons blogger once demonstrated the shooting accuracy of a modern crossbow at a range of 25 yards. How precise was it? Almost every arrow stuck close to the previous one, and arrows fired later repeatedly hit the same hole as the arrow before.

The overall margin of error was less than the size of a coin; using a rifle without a scope at that distance would be very difficult to achieve such precision.

And arrows, needless to say, the mass production lines of modern industry ensure that nearly every arrow is completely identical, something unimaginable in ancient times. Being identical means that there’s almost no significant errors due to differences in the quality of the arrows.

With so many advantages, it’s no wonder that modern special forces and some armed police units, both domestic and international, still reserve a place for crossbows in their arsenal.

In the People’s Armed Police sequence of Huaxia, many special forces teams are equipped with crossbows, a type of cold weapon.

The reason for choosing it is simple, crossbows launch silently, completely without smoke or light, and produce extremely little noise, making them a naturally sound-suppressing weapon.

Of course, when compared to firearms, there is still a huge gap in terms of power, range, and rate of fire, with the best crossbows being no match for an old-fashioned rifle.

However, crossbows still pack a very considerable punch. Although their initial velocity is merely around 100 meters per second, let’s not forget that arrows are much heavier than bullets.

A 24-gram carbon arrow can reach a kinetic energy of 120 joules, and with a high-damage hunting head, it can easily hunt large animals like deer and bears and penetrate standard soft body armor.

No matter how much fat a bear accumulates, its defense can’t possibly be better than that of body armor.

Therefore, modern crossbows are strictly prohibited in the competition; bringing a modern crossbow is almost the same as carrying a rifle.

It isn’t just plain cheating, it’s like using a cheat code.

The only problem is, this hunter didn’t bring a crossbow directly but brought a whole set of carpentry tools instead...

Apart from some key components that need to be made from alloy due to load-bearing requirements and all other reasons, the rest of the crossbow was painstakingly carved out of the wilderness using his carpentry tools...

Does this really break the rules?

Not to mention the judges, the audience was also confused.

If you say it’s against the rules, it doesn’t seem quite fitting, because except for some small components that wood can’t handle, the rest, including the entire large structure of the wrapped crossbow, was slowly chiseled out by this guy in the forest with a plane.

Otherwise, a pile of small parts is nothing.

If you want to say it’s breaking the rules.

There isn’t a clear regulation on how much less a heavy crossbow should weigh.

The judges tested Bosen’s crossbow and found that it could easily penetrate a large tree within twenty steps and embed halfway into the tree at thirty steps. The power was astonishing, almost no different from that of a Dart.

Modern science structures, combined with the amazing load-bearing alloy parts, just need a decent frame, and the crossbow can perform with astounding power.

In the end, the judges gave Bosen a break, and the audience, quite accustomed to this old man, didn’t rule it as cheating.

After all, Bosen had clearly stated that he would bring these items with him and didn’t hide anything, and being able to craft a crossbow with these initially was his ingenuity.

Bosen took more than two days to make the entire crossbow, and on the third day, with his weapon in hand, he hunted a huge Black Bear almost 1.7 meters in length with only ten arrows by the evening.

The wound caused by the crossbow was small, but the damage was significant, resulting in the high completeness of the hunted Black Bear.

His score jumped to 13.1 points, and Bosen, in his fifties, surpassed Bi Fang’s 10.2 points to become the second-ranked contestant.

He even earned the title of the powerful crossbowman Bosen.

Although Bosen’s performance in both the hunting scene and the level of excitement was not as good as Bi Fang’s, he used experience and methods unique to his age group.

Years taught this old man that a strong body will inevitably decline one day.

Only wisdom is something that can be used for a lifetime.

When facing a desired goal, he wouldn’t hunt in the most primitive way like the brave Bi Fang, engaged in a hearty battle of blood and fire; instead he would hide in the shadows, aiming a lethal shot at the prey’s weak spot.

[I feel the judges must have undermarked, otherwise the current top ranker should be Bosen, not those two Yōki Hunters]

[Old Fang, I told you to rest, and look what’s happened now, you’ve fallen to third place!]

[Stop rewarding yourself and get up and at ’em!]

"Alright, alright, I’ll strive to hunt another one today," Bi Fang replied in quick succession.

After three days of competition, the rankings have once again changed.

Yōki Hunter duo in first place, 13.2 points.

Powerful crossbowman Old Bosen in second, 13.1 points.

Forbidden Zone Hunter Bi Fang in third, 10.2 points.

General Sato with his Naginata in fourth, 9.8 points.

...

Hunter of deers Mugalen in sixth place, 9.4 points.