Chereads / Tear a Path / Chapter 174 - Arrows

Chapter 174 - Arrows

As soon as Zhao Wei stepped out, his intuition told him that there was danger all around, and sure enough, his surroundings showed proof of that matter. The walls were stained in several shades of brown, dried blood of whatever poor thing was in this place last, actually make that several poor things.

Zhao Wei wasn't sure what was going on here, but he was pretty sure it wasn't anything good. As he moved forward he felt his leg suddenly sink as a tile beneath him was pushed down by his weight. Walls were suddenly erected in front and behind him keeping him in a 5 meter square box. Instantly, 4 bolts of arrows shot out of the walls in his direction. It wasn't any normal thing as Zhao Wei would find out.

As he dodged the first volley, he thought he was in the clear. But the bolts suddenly rebounded as it hit a corner and directly ricocheted towards Zhao Wei once more.

By sheer luck, Zhao Wei had twisted his body away from directly getting pierced, but it still gave him a few cuts here and there. When it hit the wall, Zhao Wei was listening to the sound it made after he dodged, finding that it wasn't the same sound arrows usually made when it hit concrete, he twisted his body away just in case, who knew that this simple act would actually save his life. But it wasn't over yet.

As it flew past Zhao Wei, it rebounded again as it hit the wall on the other side of the hall, but this time, the 4 arrows split up, each jumping at a different angle but all still aiming at Zhao Wei as well, albeit at different angles this time, luckily since he was facing the direction they were coming at he could easily maneuver his body to dodge.

Yet again, when each arrows landed on a surface, it ricocheted, worse was that the more they bounced off, the more their angles deviated from each other. As Zhao Wei continued to dodge, the arrows began to come at him from two different direction, two from the front and two from the back, and even now he was already suffering from at least seven minor injuries that he knew of.

And still the arrows bounced around, the angles were getting more difficult to predict and splitting even more, now coming from four different directions and still ever changing, at some points they would even bounce from his blind spots which made his heart beat like mad every time it happened.

Although he was facing arrows, it felt more like he was matched up against an intelligent combatant who was always looking for ways to put him down. His only hope was that the arrows would lose speed and finally drop before he lost his concentration and by extension his life, but so far, the chances of that happening was getting slimmer and slimmer in his mind. Somehow, despite it continuously hitting several surfaces, it still retained it's kinetic energy.

At this point, suddenly another 4 arrows were released into the small cube that contained him, and like the very first batch, they bounced of the walls of this trap and continuously attacked him from several angles at once. Zhao Wei knew he couldn't last very long, especially if another batch came around, he decided to go for some drastic measures.

In his next move, he dashed towards one of the walls and gave it a good punch, hoping to level it. But to his surprise and remorse, his own hand bounced back, almost hitting him right in the face, but he didn't come out unscathed as his leg was pushed back to the pathway of an arrow which pierced into his calf. At this point another batch of arrows were released, making the small space far too crowded that Zhao Wei would have to tell the arrows to excuse him if he wanted to shift about. Despite that, Zhao Wei's face held a very big smile, his incident with the wall and his subsequent injury showed him the way to deal with this.

Normal walls would absorb some of the kinetic energy from items that collided with them, this was why even if anything hit them and was rebounded, it would definitely lose some speed in the process. The walls, that trapped him negated that very fact which was why the arrows kept flying about no matter how many times they bounced off the walls. But Zhao Wei's injury had shown him the answer, he just needed to stop the arrows from reaching the walls.

First things first, he needed to remove the hindrance in his leg, which was easier said than done considering he had to do it while dodging with his life on the line. It might just seem like normal arrows, but those wouldn't give Zhao Wei any trouble considering his physique and training. These arrows and the mechanism that launched them were much more sophisticated than they would seem, as to give a superhuman like Zhao Wei trouble, the speed they had to travel at was incredible to say the least.

After attempting to get rid of the arrow in his calf several times, Zhao Wei became frustrated as every attempt would bring him so close to losing his life. So then he ran up to one of the walls and smashed the back part of the arrow against it. The force and rebound forced the arrow out the other side of his calf, allowing him to snap off the arrow head and pulling it out the other side.

Before, it wasn't just about being in this kind of situation that made it hard, but also the fact that when he tried to push the arrow through, it would hurt like hell. By smashing it against the wall, it served two purposes, one he got the process done much faster, and two, it allowed him to rip the band-aid off instead of doing it in slowly agony.

Both meant basically the same thing, but Zhao Wei felt that he had to repeat those and several other similar reasons in his head to justify inflicting that kind of pain to himself.

Once he was done, an arrow was already coming towards his chest. Zhao Wei moved backwards using the swivel steps which gave him enough time to grasp the arrow just before it killed him. This might seem simple, but he initiated a high speed movement in a very small space and while he was being targeted from many other directions, simple was the farthest thing from it.

He smiled as his hand began to smoke from the inside.