Warring States Survival Guide
Chapter 50 - 27: Trust me, I always win when I gamble, guaranteed victory!_2

Chapter 50: Chapter 27: Trust me, I always win when I gamble, guaranteed victory!_2

Harano was deeply grateful for this—more and more so as he grew older. After all, even if he asked himself honestly, he probably wouldn’t have had the patience to tolerate some uncivilized wild kid. Deep down, he really missed that period of his life that changed everything for him, so whenever making a bow came up, he couldn’t help but smile.

Ah Man didn’t know about his past. Seeing him suddenly smile, she just figured he was showing off, and her rebellious streak flared up again. She couldn’t help but sneer, "So what if you can make a bow? Not like it’s anything special! You’re just bored out of your mind! The village is drowning in bamboo bows and wooden bows, why bother making your own? Just ask one of those dumb villagers for one, and you’d have it! Seriously, you idiot, do you not know a freebie when you see one?"

"My bow’s different." Harano didn’t care at all about her nonsense. He picked out a charcoal stick, got some makeshift drafting tools ready, and started drawing. Smiling, he said, "I want to make a GOOD bow!"

"What’s so different about it?" Ah Man was getting more and more curious. "Don’t tell me you can really make a bow? You can build a Three-Laminated Bow? Layered-Wrap Bow? Don’t tell me you can even make a Five Vine Bow?"

Wooden bows and bamboo bows are both traditional Japanese bows—usually made with catalpa, viburnum, beechwood, or moso bamboo as the main body, strung with ramie cords. Pretty simple design, actually. Because the wood isn’t that strong, these bows are usually huge—normally over two meters long, and two and a half meters isn’t rare. That’s the classic Japanese yumi for you.

These are the types of bows you usually see in Japanese anime.

They used this bow design all the way up to the late Heian Era, when someone borrowed a bow-making technique from the Korean Peninsula and modded it. Basically, you’d plane the front of the bow, glue on bamboo strips to boost the power.

This bow was called the "Attached Bamboo Bow," but it didn’t last long. Not long after, it got replaced by the "Three-Laminated Bow," which had bamboo strips glued to both sides. That held on until the late Kamakura Shogunate.

When the Kamakura Shogunate was on its last legs, Japan went through a wild time of clashing swords and banging shields, and the weapons leveled up again. They took the Three-Laminated Bow, then wrapped tons of vine cord around the bow, usually thirty-six coils up top and twenty-eight down below, pushing the bow’s power even further. The string switched to lacquer-soaked hemp from Han China. That’s how the Layered-Wrap Bow got made, becoming the main weapon on the battlefield.

The major issue with this style is that it was super clunky. Eventually, by the middle to late Muromachi Era, as the world got messier, the brand new "Five Vine Bow" emerged. The bow-making process wasn’t popular yet, so it was super cutting-edge—rumor was, with just five vine layers, it could shoot sixty-six meters (enough to kill or wound unarmored targets; to pierce armor, move up another 30–40 meters). If you lob the arrow, it could go up to 370 meters (in theory, at an optimal 39-degree angle with a light arrow; actually hitting something is just luck, it’s basically impossible to aim). They bragged about it as the strongest bow in the world.

Later on, Japan even built the Thirty-Three Rooms Hall, and held archery contests there every year, all based around the Five Vine Bow legend. After that, Japan pretty much stopped inventing new bow types anyway—bows and arrows just couldn’t keep up with the times, everything stood still, so there weren’t any new "legends" either.

If Harano could make a wooden bow or an attached bamboo bow, the only weird part would be why some pampered rich kid would bother doing such a menial job—since the villagers already made those bows, there’s no skill to it, just elbow grease. But if he really could make a Layered-Wrap Bow or even a Five Vine Bow, then that’s impressive for real. Dude’s definitely packing some family secret techniques—could swap careers to a professional bow maker, maybe even a master bow maker, on the spot.

Ah Man finished asking, still frowning and suspicious that Harano was secretly some bow-making prodigy. Maybe there really was a side to him she hadn’t figured out. But Harano definitely couldn’t make those primitive composite bows—he just sketched while recalling from memory, calculating levers and offsets, and casually threw out, "Nope, none of those. Like I said, I want to make a good bow."

What he wanted to make was a modern compound bow. Or, you know, as close as he could get to a modern compound bow, given his crappy resources. High accuracy, massive power—something to blast arrows through heavy armor, freak the enemy out so bad they’d piss themselves. Absolute intimidation. If he had to leave the village one day, and didn’t have his electric stick, his close combat skills would drop way down—so he’d just shoot enemies from a distance, same effect.

As for whether it’d actually work... who knows? He’d never shot a living person either. Guess he’d have to build one and find out!

Ah Man didn’t get it. The more he talked, the weirder it sounded: "A GOOD bow? How good? There’s something better than a Five Vine Bow? How far can it shoot?"

Harano honestly didn’t care that much about range, but the stronger the bow, the further it shoots—kind of goes hand in hand.

He thought for a second, remembering two compound bow test videos he’d seen: one shot six Coke bottles through, dead-on at a coin at 70 meters, and hit a target 170+ meters away; angled shot landed over 690 meters. Another guy was shooting marbles, hit two teeth at 150+ meters, needed nine stitches, got sued for 170K, probation for six months.

But realistically, he was missing a lot of materials and couldn’t do it that well. He mentally dialed it back, thought about it, then muttered, "Maybe about sixty ken for aimed shots? Within sixty ken, I should be able to guarantee decent accuracy and at least some stopping power."

Ah Man immediately didn’t believe him. She wasn’t some pampered young lady, after all—she’s an "Original Ninja" who’d watched people kill each other in the grass with her own two eyes. Hearing this, she instantly felt like her intelligence was being insulted, and snapped: "No way! You’re just bullshitting me. There’s no such thing as a bow that strong in this world—sixty ken and still aiming? I don’t buy it!"

Harano was just making a bow to kill time, maybe as a backup plan—he wasn’t trying to prove anything, so he didn’t care whether she believed him or not. He just kept working and tossed her a quick, "Believe it or don’t, up to you."

Ah Man glanced at the crazy squares, lines, circles, and loads of weird "Southern Barbarian letters" on his paper, and just thought he was talking shit—stupidly, brainlessly wild bullshit.

She wasn’t about to let him get away with this—plus, she was scrappy by nature, and wanted to argue a bit more. Suddenly her eyes lit up and she got all excited, slapped her hand down on Harano’s Mino Paper and blurted, "No way on earth. How about a bet? Five kan... hmm, three kan. You dare?"

Harano treated her pretty well, so she didn’t want to totally screw him over—three kan was good enough, still sort of kind.

Harano glanced up at her, then bowed his head back down, pried her claws off his stuff, and grumbled, "Not betting. You don’t even have three kan."

"If I lose I’ll bet my head!"

Harano was just speechless—she really would trade her life for money. He looked up and sighed, "Your head’s already a bet, you forgot?"

Right, they’d already made a bet earlier—on whether Oda Nobunaga, that big idiot, would get destroyed in two years. She was supposed to come back and pay him then...

Ah Man remembered, but that was no big deal for her!

Barefoot, she ran out the door yelling, called Ah Qing, who was practicing Martial Arts in the yard, then pulled her back over and said to Harano, "Don’t worry about it! We’ve got plenty of heads to gamble. The only question is whether you’ve got the guts to take the bet!"

Ah Qing froze for a second before realizing what was going on, and couldn’t help but frown prettily, scolding in a low voice, "Sis, what kind of mess are you making this time?!"

Ah Man couldn’t care less whether she was mad, yanked her over, whispered in her ear, "How is this a mess? Trust me, I never lose a bet! This is a guaranteed win! When it’s payout time, we split it fifty-fifty... forty-sixty... uh, thirty-seventy, twenty-eighty, whatever, I want eighty, you get twenty. No way I’ll let you work for nothing!"

If Harano had said thirty ken, heck, even forty, maybe she’d squeeze her nose and pretend to believe him for the sugar daddy’s sake. But sixty ken? That’s nearly twice what a Five Vine Bow can do! There’s no way Japan has a bow that strong.

Does he really think she’s some naïve bumpkin?

She, Ah Man, was never a fool—she’s the number one Wise Man of Koka’s Life-saving Style!

So, this bet is as good as won!