The Arrow with Serpentine Footwork

The panel has been updated and upgraded?

Is it because I have come into contact with its true function?

As the prompt from the panel appeared, Chen Jue, who had been in a haze of overthinking moments before, abruptly regained clarity.

He tried opening the text box in his field of vision again. The panel still displayed as usual: the three-dimensional attributes, the skill bar, and the character evaluation were all there.

Only now, a new line of text had appeared at the very bottom, reading that it was currently being updated.

In addition to that, a clock-like countdown had been added to the very top of the panel, showing 23:59.

So this panel is somehow related to the information and knowledge I possess?

It can actually evolve to a new version!

Chen Jue looked utterly bewildered. The meaning behind what he had just heard in class about survival of the fittest and natural selection had not only awakened him in an instant, but had somehow excited even this attribute panel he relied on, pushing it toward an upgrade.

He glanced at the classroom, now loud again after the lecture had ended. On the podium, Teacher Wu had already finished assigning the in-class work and was packing up his courseware, preparing to leave.

Before going, though, Wu still cast a meaningful look at Chen Jue in the back row.

This kid actually drifted off in class?

Is he just a daydreaming fool, or did he actually glean something from my lesson?

Wu was muttering to himself inwardly.

Clearly, Chen Jue, as an auditing student with a somewhat special connection to his daughter, had left a very deep first impression on him.

As for Zheng Yuan, after seeing Chen Jue come out of that thoughtful state, he reached out and nudged him, whispering in surprise, "Brother Jue! What was going on with you just now? My uncle saw you zoning out!"

Compared with Chen Jue, who remained calm as ever, Zheng Yuan was obviously much more invested in his cousin's romantic prospects, the sort of eagerness that belonged to someone far more anxious than the person involved.

"I just got absorbed in the lecture. Teacher Wu's genetics class was really good," Chen Jue said with a slight smile. He patted Zheng Yuan on the shoulder, telling him to relax, then got up and packed away his materials, intending to go find a place to test the skill theory he had just come to understand.

"Absorbed in the lecture?"

"Wasn't what my uncle was teaching just the most basic stuff for freshmen?" Zheng Yuan was still a bit stunned, unable to follow Chen Jue's train of thought.

So he could only haul a pile of handouts and chase after him, explaining that his bizarre research project was set to begin testing this coming Saturday.

When Chen Jue heard that, he was somewhat tempted. "Will Saturday be in time? Didn't your sister catch a cold and fever?"

"Hey, Brother Jue, don't worry! My sister's build is solid. Something as minor as a cold or a fever will clear up in two or three days. She'll definitely be able to come on Saturday."

Zheng Yuan thumped his chest and made a solemn promise, selling out his cousin in just a few words. He really was the definition of an annoying younger brother.

...

After leaving the teaching building, Chen Jue said goodbye to Zheng Yuan.

The other had to go help his uncle deal with class affairs, and Chen Jue did not linger. He hurried off to try the new line of thought he had gained.

If the prerequisite for the panel to record a skill is based on Darwin's ideas in On the Origin of Species, then the purpose of a skill's appearance is to make the human body better adapt to a harsh environment.

Whether confronting beasts, one's own kind, or cruel conditions, these skills ought to qualify for inclusion!

Thoughts raced through Chen Jue's mind.

He still had a clinical medicine class in the morning, but he could no longer care about those knowledge points. First he would verify his guess.

With a small backpack on his shoulders, he left the school and ran back to the apartment along the long road.

Since he could no longer climb over the wall, returning to the apartment now took him fifteen extra minutes.

Fortunately, his stamina was abundant at present, and this slow run was little more than a warm-up.

He tossed the backpack full of textbooks into the car, ignored the sweat on his body, and drove straight to the same sports commercial district he had visited before.

Darts, rock climbing, golf... there!

After searching the district for a while, Chen Jue finally found an archery hall still open in a corner.

The sign at the door read Skyward Archery. The indoor venue was not large, only a little over five hundred square meters.

It could not compare with the grandeur of the dart club Zhu Hongbin had invested in, but the equipment inside was comprehensive, with everything from compound bows to traditional bows, and at the far end there was even a sizable indoor target range.

However, since it was a weekday morning, there were not many visitors. A sales consultant who looked fairly professional was chatting idly with the girl at the front desk.

Seeing Chen Jue, an unfamiliar customer, come in, the consultant quickly came forward. "Sir, are you one of our members?"

"No, this is my first time here. I want to take a trial lesson and see how it feels," Chen Jue said, shaking his head. He looked around the interior as he spoke directly and to the point.

Then he glanced at the price list, then at the clock on the wall. An hour would take him right to lunchtime.

Still, the trial price of eighty-eight yuan for one hour was a little startling.

As expected of a niche sport; this was far more expensive than a trial class at the gym.

...

"Please pick a practice bow that feels comfortable for you. I'll go call the coach!"

After seeing Chen Jue scan and pay, the sales consultant eagerly brought over a stopwatch and had him put it on.

The watch, he said, would vibrate on its own when time was up. Even the timing was tighter than the spa service at the Jingtang Exchange.

As for the girl at the front desk, she introduced the row of bows hanging on the wall to Chen Jue.

"Mr. Chen, we have traditional bows and compound bows here. If this is your first time, you might want to choose this recurve bow, which is good for beginners."

"For members coming in for a trial lesson, this is the one we recommend. It's easier to get the hang of, and drawing it won't be too strenuous."

After the explanation, the girl fetched several beginner recurve bows.

Chen Jue tried pulling the string with his hand and felt they were all a bit light.

But after hearing the girl say that archery did not rely on brute strength, and that it was best to choose a bow with the appropriate draw weight, he thought it made sense. Training that way would be easier and less likely to injure himself, much like starting fitness training, which had to be gradual and not too aggressive at the beginning.

So he simply chose the heaviest one among them, a fifty-five-pound recurve bow.

With the bow and a quiver full of arrows, he went into the target range at the back, where the coach was already waiting.

To his surprise, the coach was a woman.

Her looks were quite ordinary and her height not impressive, but the way she carried the bow and arrows had a certain air reminiscent of a female general of old.

"Mr. Chen, this is Coach Zhang Ning from our shop. She used to be a member of the Jiang Province archery team and even represented Jiang Province at the National Games. Her skill is very high," the sales consultant said with a hint of boastfulness, before tactfully slipping away.

"Since the consultant said this is your first time with a bow, you'd best wear an arm guard and finger tabs. The force released by the string is not small, and it could hurt you otherwise," Zhang Ning said as she took two pieces of protective gear from a large box in the range.

Chen Jue did not refuse. He really was a beginner, so there was no need to posture in front of a professional.

After putting on the arm guard and finger tabs, he followed Zhang Ning in checking the recurve bow's string. Once she confirmed there was no looseness, he did warm-up movements for drawing the bow alongside her.

Archery looked simple enough, but in fact the movement requirements were very numerous.

From holding the bow to drawing the string, then nocking the arrow, aiming, and releasing, there were countless details to pay attention to. If one shot carelessly, not only could the string snap back and hit the archer, but the arrow might also scrape the fingers on the way out.

"Your arms look pretty strong. You must exercise quite a bit, right?"

"No wonder you chose a fifty-five-pound bow right from the start!"

As Zhang Ning guided his grip on the bow and helped correct his posture for holding and drawing, she also casually squeezed the muscles under the sleeves of his arms and elbows and asked.

The solid feel of the muscle beneath her hand, together with Chen Jue's steady posture while holding the bow, made her eyes light up.

Coaching a client with a body this good was much better than dealing with those limp, half-hearted white-collar beginners.

"I've done some training," Chen Jue said, nodding as he imitated her and set a practice arrow on the string.

Then he aimed at the training target four meters away, drew the bow, and released. The moment the string left his fingers, it quivered sharply, sending the practice arrow flying.

Yet in the instant the arrow flew out, Chen Jue noticed something astonishing: the black shaft did not travel in a straight line the whole way. Instead, it trembled in flight, as though it were weaving a serpentine path through the air, before thudding into the target wall.

If his eyesight had not recently improved, he truly would not have been able to make out that erratic flight.

At that very moment, the panel also displayed a new prompt, just as Chen Jue had predicted:

-------

Ding.

You have completed one qualifying physical movement.

Skill activated: Archery

-------

Wonderful!

Just as I thought!

Looking at the new skill block, Archery Lv0 (1/100), now appearing in the skill section of the panel, Chen Jue could not help clenching his fist with excitement.

Before this, the strange skills had only ever been triggered in highly coincidental circumstances.

But now, after professional instruction and with the panel's own hints, he had finally grasped a certain pattern in how these skills formed.

Any physical activity related to human evolution and adaptation to the environment might be recorded by the panel.

Just like Hunting Throw, which Chen Jue had activated earlier, archery, from the moment it was born, had originally been used by human ancestors to hunt wild animals for food.

Only after generation upon generation of development did archery move from hunting into widespread use in human warfare, and only then was it eventually swept aside by the rise of firearms in the tide of history, becoming in the present peaceful age a recreational competitive sport.

...

Probably because he had grasped part of the pattern behind the panel's skill activation, Chen Jue was in a splendid mood, and his archery practice became especially enthusiastic.

Watching the +1, +1 proficiency prompts constantly jump on the panel made him all the more excited.

As if he had found something fun, he drew the string with great vigor, leaving even coach Zhang Ning beside him momentarily stunned.

"He can draw the bow over fifty times in one go without even panting. This guy's physical condition is incredible!" Zhang Ning muttered inwardly. For professional archers like them, a full day's training usually amounted to only one or two hundred arrows at most.

Only in the intense buildup before a real competition would they raise the number of practice shots to over three hundred.

After all, completing a full set of standard archery movements consumed a great deal of stamina.

Although Chen Jue had only been practicing for a short while and his form was still somewhat unstandardized, he could draw the bow fully every time, which was well beyond what a beginner ought to manage.

So, at Zhang Ning's suggestion, Chen Jue, after warming up, went to try the fixed long-range target beside them.

In formal archery, the recurve bow target distance is the standard seventy meters, while compound bows use fifty meters, and the Olympics feature only the recurve bow event. The target face has concentric rings corresponding to different point values.

However, considering that most of the customers coming for trial lessons were beginners and hobbyists, the fixed targets at Skyward Archery were all set within fifty meters, with only one professional seventy-meter target placed in the farthest corner.

"It looks a bit like the dartboard at the international darts club," Chen Jue murmured to himself. "But this distance is really something."

If not for his improved eyesight, he would not have been able to make out the ring markings on the farthest seventy-meter target at this point.

Seeing Chen Jue choose the furthest competition-standard target right away, Zhang Ning was also a little surprised.

"You want to shoot that one?"

"I'll try it first. If I miss, I'll switch to a closer one," Chen Jue said with a nod. He lifted the recurve bow and used the sight on it to roughly estimate the position of the bull's-eye.

Once the string was drawn and the fifty-five-pound recurve bow was stretched to a full moon in his hands, Zhang Ning's eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Full draw!

How could his arm strength be that great? Wasn't that already beyond his limit just now?

Zhang Ning stared wide-eyed, feeling as though her vision had gone blurry. She could not believe she was seeing the level of a professional athlete in a beginner.

Meanwhile, after Chen Jue pulled the string fully to the side, he relied on the instinctive aim provided by his max-level throwing skill and suddenly released.

With a bang, the string trembled, the black arrow flew out, crossed the seventy-meter distance, and struck the target with a thud.

Although it failed to hit the bull's-eye and earn a ten, the nine-ring result that appeared on the electronic scoreboard still caused Zhang Ning, who was guiding him from the side, to inhale sharply.

"He's really a beginner here for a trial lesson?"

Chen Jue, on the other hand, looked at the score and was somewhat dissatisfied, muttering with a touch of mock humility, "It didn't even hit the bull's-eye?"

At the same time, the attribute panel in his line of sight also flashed a prompt upon the arrow striking the target:

-------

Ding.

You have completed an excellent archery training session. Your upper-body muscle groups have been effectively exercised, and your muscular endurance and explosive power have improved.

Archery proficiency +5

Strength attribute +0.01

First update of the day~

Yesterday's coughing had just started to ease up, but this afternoon it somehow became severe again. It keeps coming back on and off. This virus is really shameless.

End of chapter.