That day, Shen Zuo sat in the shade of a massive tree, his right hand gripping a sharp knife, his left steadying a long stick he was working hard to shave down. Every pass of the knife left behind thin ribbons of wood curling down in front of him, until a small pile of wood shavings had gathered on the ground, a silent witness to hours of continuous work.
In front of him sat four neatly organized piles:
The first, the pile of finished arrows, the smallest of the four, holding only four arrows so far, straight, smooth, their wooden tips carefully sharpened to a point.
The second, the pile of failures: arrows that had clearly been failed attempts, split shafts, dull tips, uneven balance, set aside quietly, in a silence that felt almost like disappointment.
The third was the pile of raw wood, long sticks of varying lengths, bright in color, cut from Kinaro wood, completely free of any warp, as if they'd all come out of the same mold, like spears waiting to be shaped.
And the fourth, the pile of feathers, long, strong ones he'd plucked from Caligra Eagles, black with a faint silvery sheen, giving off a strange smell, as if still carrying some trace of the birds' carcass.
After a while of shaving, Shen Zuo finally managed to get one arrow perfect. Its wooden tip had become sharp and pointed, as if just waiting for the order to strike.
He reached toward the fourth pile and picked out three feathers from the Caligra Eagles, long, slightly curved, with a strange shimmer under the light.
He sat steady and pulled a piece of dried sap from his small pocket, broke off a small chunk, and began chewing it until it turned soft and sticky. This was the old method for making "Samad," a natural adhesive extracted from the bark of certain trees, used for fixing feathers in place.
He divided the back of the arrow into three equal sections by eye, as if distributing the balance itself. He applied a thin layer of Samad to the first section, then attached the first feather with a slight curve, one that would give the arrow spin in the air and improve its accuracy. He repeated the process with the second and third feathers, keeping equal spacing between each one, until the arrow looked as though it had been born for the wind.
He wound a thin plant-fiber thread around the base of the three feathers, pulling it gently and evenly tight, then sealed the ends with a dab of Samad so it wouldn't come loose.
He ran his fingers over the feathers, smoothing them out gently, then raised the arrow slightly toward the light to check its balance.
He murmured, admiring the finished work:
"Now, I've just got five more to make."
Then, for the next several hours, Shen Zuo stayed in place, barely moving. The motion of his hands repeated steadily: shave, glue, wrap with thread, smooth it out. Like a machine running on nothing but patience. The wind shifted, and the shadows grew longer, until the light turned a warm golden afternoon hue, brushing against the edges of the wood and feathers.
When he finished the tenth arrow, he stretched his back slightly and sighed. He turned toward the fire he'd lit earlier, walked over to it calmly, then picked up each of the ten arrows one by one, passing the wooden tip over the low flame, not enough to burn it, but enough to harden it, just enough heat to make the wood tougher and less likely to snap on impact.
Once he finished, he pulled out a small gray cloth bag, opened it carefully, revealing a dark, sticky substance inside with a sharp, piercing smell, a mix of the old poison he'd extracted from a Craigar that had died weeks earlier, blended with a lethal herbal extract whose formula he'd learned from Zhou Ji.
Using the blade of his knife, he wiped a thin layer of poison onto each arrowhead, from the sharpened tip down to where the wooden shaft began, then left them to dry a little under the sunlight.
Then he stood, gathered up the ten arrows, and went to place each one into the position of one of his active traps, moving with a care and silence that matched the stillness of the trees around him.
As he moved between the traps, he found more than one beast or animal in bad shape, caught somewhere between life and death, suffering from either poison or direct injury. He finished off one of them without hesitation, while another had managed to leave him with a deep gash across his chest, a slanted wound that had nearly torn through his ribs; had the blow landed just a little harder, it would have reached his heart.
He looked down at the blood on his chest in silence, then kept walking without a word.
He made it back to the small cave before sunset and sat down quietly. He pulled a bit of herbal medicine from his cloth pouch, applied it to the wound, then wrapped a piece of hide he'd cleaned earlier around his chest, instead of the usual cloth.
Once night had fully settled in, he stretched out on his simple bedding and slept.
This process repeated for another two weeks, though after the first week, he began making more arrows than the usual ten. These extra arrows weren't for the traps; he kept them for himself, as an emergency reserve.
After the two weeks, Shen Zuo stopped making arrows and began digging a new tunnel. He didn't have the proper tools for it, so he was forced to use his sword to dig instead.
Normally, he'd find a small natural depression in the ground, deepen it a bit, and turn it into a trap, or he'd pick out suitable soil to dig narrow, branching tunnels to use as hiding spots.
But this time, the goal was different.
He wanted to dig a deeper tunnel, one that stretched across a wider area, used not just as a shelter, but as the core of a small underground network: hidden passages, observation points, maybe even traps triggered from below.
"If only I could find a Yabra mole... or one of those other burrowing animals," Shen Zuo muttered, staring at the ground in front of him with visible frustration. There was a natural hollow about half a meter deep, the soil dark and damp, typical of forest ground. He started there, not needing to prepare the site much. He gripped his heavy sword, sturdy enough to take rough use, and began to dig.
He drove the sword into the ground at an angle, then pulled it sideways to break up the soil. Small roots blocking his path, he'd sever with a horizontal swing. He piled the excavated dirt beside him in a small mound, covering it with a few leaves to avoid raising suspicion. Every day, he repeated the same process: widen the tunnel a little, reinforce the ceiling with branches, cut through roots, drag the dirt out.
After a few days, he had a straight passage roughly two meters long, deep enough to let him crawl or sit comfortably. That still wasn't enough, so he decided to start branching out sideways. He began from inside the tunnel itself, opening two side passages in a Y shape. Same digging method, same tools, but with extra support from straight wooden rods he'd gathered beforehand. He was building and reinforcing the ground from within, not just for protection, but to prevent collapse if he ended up staying inside for extended periods.
Later, he carved small alcoves into the side walls of the tunnel, roughly half a meter wide and deep. He started using them to store dried food and some of the spare arrows he'd made over the past few weeks. Ventilation wasn't sufficient, so he opened two small vents angled toward the surface, fitting them with hollow plant stems. This way, he secured some airflow without making the openings obvious.
The tunnel floor started to weaken in a few spots, so he mixed clay with sticks and packed the gaps, especially around the corners. The sword held up, still sturdy, though it had lost some of its edge and had essentially become more of a compacting and breaking tool than a weapon.
By the end of the month, he'd extended a network of connected passages. One of them reached a large rock near a hunting spot. Another branch came out beneath a dead tree, and a third extended toward one of the traps he'd planted earlier. Finally, he dug an emergency exit far from the main entrance, angled sharply enough to make it hard to spot.
He could now move underground along paths no one else knew existed. Every hole looked ordinary on the surface, but underneath, each one connected to a larger hideout, a hidden passage. The ground was no longer just dirt anymore... it had become his defensive network.
Sitting on a high branch in his observation tree, Shen Zuo gazed out toward the horizon, lost in thought, before muttering to himself:
"So far, the area I've fully covered falls well within my control... progress is good. This mission won't end before I've wiped out every beast required, and then some. But... those old bastards, I know full well they won't just let me finish this quietly. It bothers them to watch me clear their ridiculous missions this easily, like my success personally offends them somehow."
He sighed softly and said, his voice lower now:
"But well... I just hope they hold off on stepping
in a little long-"
He stopped abruptly and stared down below.
"Oh, no..."