It was already mid-May and the warm afternoon sun was raining down over the back courtyard of the Song residence. In the middle of the yard, Su Tang was standing there firmly with a small bow in her hands and a quiver of arrows on her back. Currently, she was drawing back the bow and aiming at a target not far away.
With a woosh, an arrow flew straight out from the bow. Song Yi was sitting at the side drinking tea with Pengmo standing behind him and, with disbelieving eyes, he watched as the arrow drunkenly swerved away from the bull’s-eye and flew away toward freedom.
Your heart is free to fly, yo yo yo…
(tl note: This line is a direct quote from the 2007 song 自由飞翔 which doesn’t have an official translation but should be something like “Free Flying”. I did my best with the lyrics but translating songs is hard.)
“Oh hohoho, just perfect!” Su Tang watched the arrow disappearing into the distance and solemnly pumped her little fist.
A certain Divine Beast was squatting near Su Tang’s feet and, currently, his ears were waving uncomfortably and his eye was twitching uncontrollably. He could only try to silently hypnotize himself: This person is not my master… not my master…
Of course, as soon as Su Tang finished speaking, she had to dodge the book Song Yi had thrown at her head and listen to his angry roar: “What exactly was “perfect”? Just how long have you been learning already? And how many times did you miss the target just now?”
Song Yi jumped to his feet and his bushy beard and eyebrows all straightened out in his anger. He really couldn’t understand. Su Tang was a natural-born genius. When it came to other things she could learn them all quickly and in one try, so how could her archery skills become like this?
Su Tang covered her head with her hands and looked at Song Yi pitifully, “Master, this disciple really must speak up to emphasize that corporal punishment is wrong! Corporal punishment will only result in this disciple becoming too scared to learn anymore.”
“Hehe, you little fox, there’s no use pretending in front of me. Normally you miss eight out of every ten arrows, but today I won’t let you go back until you bring that number down to seven.” Song Yi replied. After all, these two hadn’t been master and disciple for just a few days by now, so he knew Su Tang’s character and didn’t bother to pay attention to her little tricks.
The most mystifying thing for him was that the problem wasn’t that Su Tang was too weak to draw the bow. If that had been the case, it would have been fine and Song Yi could just let it go with the reason that girls weren’t expected to learn to fight anyway and this kind of knowledge probably wouldn’t help her much. But what was frustrating for Song Yi was that Su Tang, this nine-year-old girl, was more than strong enough to draw the bow and shoot the arrow, but the problem was that she would miss every time!
Back when she had first started learning and had been able to miss the target 100% of the time, Song Yi had really wanted to ask her how she managed to avoid the target so perfectly every time!
Moreover, she had already spent several months learning by now, but she still missed the target eight out of every ten times. In this situation, could Song Yi not be angry?
“Well, this isn’t actually my fault. The real root of the problem is that these arrows all have hearts that yearn for freedom!” Su Tang retorted in an extremely justified tone. How could this be her fault? Obviously, it was the arrow swerving away on its own.
Listening to this cunning little fox spouting sophistry, Song Yi couldn’t help but glare at her. But Su Tang just met his angry gaze with a smile. Of course, in reality, Su Tang also had her own struggles. On the one hand, she truly was inexperienced in archery and only had a few months of practice and, on the other hand, she also has some serious issues with controlling her own strength.
This problem could be traced back to the magical space that she had been bound to when she first transmigrated. Whenever the space upgraded, her body would also upgrade at the same time. The orange cat had actually explained this matter to her at one point, and it seemed that after an upgrade, not only would the things the space produced become more and more excellent, the space would also nourish its master, Su Tang’s, body at the same time.
Because of this, Su Tang’s body had slowly become stronger and stronger over time. Unfortunately, the ultimate result was that she had a lot of strength, but she wasn’t able to control it very well. This was also the reason why Su Tang had specially told Song Yi that she wanted to learn horse-riding and archery.
In fact, normally women wouldn’t learn these sorts of things. Even those wealthy young ladies from the large families in the capital would, at most, maybe learn some horse-riding skills, but they definitely wouldn’t learn archery at all.
But Su Tang was different. She was using these sessions where she learned archery to practice precisely controlling her own strength. This was valuable because, honestly, she currently had a lot of strength but no control. Of course, she also had an uncomfortable feeling that this training might turn her into a powerful killing machine, which was a bit worrisome.
And, of course, she really couldn’t explain this problem to anyone else. All she could do was slowly learn to control her power by herself. Unfortunately, the result of all this was that from an outside perspective it seemed like her accuracy was never able to improve at all, nearly angering her master to death.
Song Yi looked at his little disciple who was wearing an innocent expression and immediately felt speechless. He pointed at her nose and sputtered: “If you have any hidden troubles, just say them out, don’t make excuses. All I’m asking is a 30% success rate, but you can’t even do that?”
Song Yi felt that he had already lowered his requirements to the absolute lowest possible threshold, but his little disciple obviously didn’t agree. Su Tang also immediately opened her mouth to retort, but before she could say anything she suddenly noticed a message from the orange cat, ‘Be careful, someone’s coming!’
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tl begging corner:
