Chapter 69: The Storm of Arrows

"Let’s test that."

Lin Tian’s voice echoed across the silent jade platform. He stood unmoving, the black Spirit-Fire Repeating Crossbow resting against his shoulder, its hollow barrel aimed squarely at the ten racks holding Deacon Liu’s prized Blue-Edge Spirit Swords.

For a single, agonizing second, the entire plaza held its breath. Even the wind seemed to still, as if the jade platform itself were waiting to see what the strange black weapon would do.

Then Deacon Liu let out a harsh scoff, fighting down the chill crawling up his spine. "Test what? You’re holding a hollow lump of iron with no bowstring. Are you going to throw it at my swords? Blow on it until they crack? What a pathetic bluff."

The disciples below murmured in agreement. Even the three Elders frowned, as if this youth from the Artifact Pavilion had turned a sacred exhibition into a child’s game.

A few in the back rows exchanged uneasy glances. Something about the stillness in Lin Tian’s eyes didn’t match the confidence of a man about to fail.

Lin Tian didn’t argue. His eyes only narrowed.

A bluff, You’re about to learn what happens when trapped wind meets iron.

Without breaking Deacon Liu’s gaze, he channeled a thread of his Level 9 Yang Qi into the low-grade spirit crystal seated at the base of the chamber.

HMMMMMM—!

A high, furious hum tore out of the weapon, like a swarm trapped inside a steel drum. The Wind-Gathering Runes — carved by Aunt Lin’s hand, sealed by his own — woke together in a single instant.

The air on the platform twisted violently. A small, visible vortex tore into the sealed chamber, robes snapping in the sudden pull, the temperature on the stage dropping as the surrounding air was crushed into a space no larger than a fist.

"What is that sound?" a disciple in the front row gasped, hands flying to his ears.

One of the Elders shot upright in his chair, eyes wide. "It’s drawing in the ambient Qi on its own — without any tension mechanism at all!"

"Beast-tendon fatigues. It snaps. It has always been the ceiling on what a bow can do," Lin Tian said, his voice cutting over the howling wind. "This doesn’t rely on string at all. A sealed Wind-Compression Array holds the storm itself as the string — one that never tires, never snaps, and costs almost nothing to carve once the method is known."

Deacon Liu’s smile froze on his face. The pressure rolling off the stringless weapon drained the color from his cheeks. "Wait — stop! What are you doing?"

"Testing your flaws," Lin Tian said coldly.

Insight Eye.

A interface swept across his vision, locking onto every hairline weakness in the fifty Blue-Edge swords resting on the racks. Twelve percent impurity. All edge, no spine. Ready to break.

He tapped the trigger array.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The sound was not the soft twang of a bowstring — it was thunder cracking on command. The compressed tempest inside the chamber released in a heartbeat, and with no physical string to draw back by hand, the array cycled again, and again, faster than the eye could follow.

Ten armor-piercing bolts tore across the platform in a single, brutal second.

CRASH! SHATTER! KREEECH!

The stage erupted in a storm of metal. The bolts struck the weapon racks with the force of falling stone.

The unbreakable Blue-Edge Spirit Swords didn’t bend — they burst apart. The blunt, high-speed impact found every flaw Lin Tian had already marked, and dozens of blades snapped in half, spraying jagged blue shards across the jade like hail. The wooden racks splintered to kindling. The entire display was gone in an instant.

Dust and shredded splinters still drifted through the air above the platform.

Silence swallowed the plaza whole. Not even a whisper stirred among the ten thousand people crowded shoulder to shoulder, as though the sound of the shattering had taken every voice with it.

Ten thousand disciples stood frozen, mouths open, staring first at the ruined swords and then at the smoking, stringless weapon in Lin Tian’s hand.

The three Elders had leapt from their seats without realizing it, their ancient eyes wide with disbelief. Grandmasters of cultivation, and none of them had ever seen a low-tier weapon unleash a barrage like this without draining its wielder dry.

Deacon Liu stood rigid, a thin line of blood cut across his cheek from stray shrapnel, though he didn’t seem to feel it. His knees gave out. He sank onto the ruins of his own ambition, eyes empty.

Lin Tian lowered the crossbow. The hum of the Wind-Compression Array faded, leaving only the clink of shattered metal settling on stone.

He looked at the wreckage scattered across the platform.

"It seems your swords," he said, his voice carrying clean through the silence, "were full of flaws."

Gasp!

The spell broke. Ten thousand disciples sucked in a breath together, and the plaza detonated into noise.

"Heavens! Ten bolts in one second — it never stopped to reload!"

"Those Blue-Edge swords were shredded like scrap!"

"With that in the Dark Mist Forest, we could cut down a beast tide before it ever reached us!"

Somewhere near the front, an old veteran disciple simply stared at the smoking crossbow, silent, his eyes wet with something that looked like relief.

The lead Elder was already moving, crossing the stage without a glance at the kneeling Deacon Liu. He lifted a broken sword hilt, studied the damage, then turned his blazing eyes to the black crates behind Lin Tian.

"Unprecedented," he breathed. "Trading beast-tendon for a sealed Wind-Compression Array — the spiritual loss is almost nothing. But this shouldn’t be possible." He pointed at the crates. "Runes this fine, this dense, packed into a hollow chamber — a Master Refiner alone would need a week in isolation for one prototype. How did your pavilion produce a hundred in four days?"

Deacon Liu jolted out of his stupor, crawling forward on his knees. "Exactly! Elder, they must have cheated! No one forges a hundred Peak-Grade arrays in four days — they stole these from some ruin!"

Madam Shen, silent until now, finally stepped forward.

Her crimson robes stirred, her Level 9 aura settling over the stage, and Deacon Liu’s accusation died in his throat. Her face held nothing but calm authority. Only Lin Tian, through the Insight Eye, could see the devotion blazing beneath it.

"Respected Elders," she said, her voice carrying pride she made no effort to hide. "The Artifact Pavilion neither cheats nor steals. We simply stopped bowing to methods that outlived their usefulness."

She gestured toward Lin Tian. "Supervisor Lin Tian didn’t only design this weapon. He brought our pavilion a new way of forging entirely — a discipline he calls Segmented Craft."

The old world’s word for it would be an assembly line, Lin Tian thought, a faint smirk touching his lips, but this world only needs to know it works.

"We divided the labor by strength," Madam Shen continued. "Twenty low-level apprentices, under a Fixed-Flame Array, did nothing but cast the outer shells to a single standard. Our most experienced engraver — long buried in the Deep Scrapyard and overlooked by this sect for years — did nothing but carve the inner chambers. Freed from smelting and casting, her focus for the finest work became nearly boundless."

Her eyes gleamed as she finished. "Standardize the pieces, divide the labor, and speed multiplies on its own. Supervisor Lin oversaw only the final joining and the spiritual seal. What you witnessed today isn’t a miracle, Elders. It’s simply what happens when a bottleneck a thousand years old is finally recognized for what it is."

The Elders exchanged a stunned glance, taking a step back in unison. A craft once thought to depend entirely on a single master’s hand had just been split into pieces any steady worker could manage.

None of them had a counterargument ready. For men who had spent centuries defending the old ways, the silence said more than words could.

"Brilliant," the lead Elder said, color rising in his face. "This will change how the entire sect arms itself. Head Manager Shen, your pavilion has outdone every expectation. These crossbows become the new standard, effective immediately."

The crowd roared, the thought of wielding such a weapon setting their blood alight.

Madam Shen bowed slightly, her tone staying level. "Thank you, Elder. And Deacon Liu’s motion — to strip the Artifact Pavilion from my authority?"

The Elder’s gaze swung to the kneeling deacon with open contempt.

"A man who brings fragile toys to a battlefield and mocks true innovation has no business managing this sect’s resources," he said flatly. "The motion is denied. I’ll be reporting your conduct to the Disciplinary Hall myself."

"No — Elder, please—" Deacon Liu choked out, coughing blood as whatever remained of his composure gave way entirely. He crumpled to the jade floor, his ambitions buried beneath the wreckage of his own swords.

Madam Shen turned, her gaze finding Lin Tian. To the crowd, it read as a manager honoring a gifted subordinate. Beneath it, the devotion in her eyes was unmistakable to the one man who could see it clearly.

Lin Tian stood amid the roar of ten thousand voices, the spent crossbow still warm in his hand. With an engineer’s mind from another world and a growing grip on this sect’s most powerful women, his conquest of the Cultivation World had taken its first undeniable step.