Chapter 57: Is He Even Human?

"Ninety meters away, can this gun even hit anything?"

Just as Qin Jun finished making his preparations, he heard someone ask.

Startled, Qin Jun turned his head and saw Zhao Erwa.

"Director Zhao?"

Qin Jun looked at Zhao Erwa in surprise. With one lame leg, how had he managed to approach him completely silently?

Zhao Erwa smiled faintly. "Surprised? Even with just one leg, sneaking up on a few monkeys isn't hard for me!"

Qin Jun was left speechless, knowing full well that the "monkeys" referred to Vietnamese soldiers.

Though they were called monkeys, these were veterans tempered by several wars, possessing a wealth of combat experience.

Even their weaponry was more advanced than that of China's troops at the time.

Yet, a veteran like Zhao Erwa could easily handle them. That was no small feat!

Qin Jun didn't know what to say, but he had a hunch that Zhao Erwa was a shrewd man.

True to form, abandoning all protocol, Zhao Erwa simply followed and lay down right beside Qin Jun.

He raised his head, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the slope in the distance.

"Ninety meters, the wind direction is decent—at least it won't cause too much wind resistance. The position chosen is quite professional."

Qin Jun smiled. He had the short-form video platforms of the future to thank for this!

Mainly because those platforms had every kind of person imaginable. As long as you were willing to watch, the intelligent algorithm kept feeding you content whether you wanted it or not.

Take casting an iron wok, for instance. Did people really think he knew how just by watching it once?

Or lime burning, with professional streamers introducing old village lime kilns, and bored people live-streaming the replication of vintage lime kilns.

Naturally, while domestic hunting videos didn't exist, foreign creators engaged in legal hunting and lawful filming.

So, if you had the inclination, what couldn't you learn back then?

Compared to the master craftsmen on the internet, the sniper-style pneumatic air rifle he built was worlds apart.

Would you believe people could whip up a Gatling gun using nothing more than cardboard?

They could make rocket launchers, aircraft carriers, you name it!

The most impressive feat, and the one Qin Jun admired the most, was using a laser cannon to shoot mosquitoes.

That little radar kept spinning, automatically scanning, locking on, and attacking. Tell me, wasn't that amazing?

"What are you daydreaming about? Look at how that flock of sparrows is distributed; you've got to hit the outer perimeter first."

"If I'm not mistaken, this gun of yours is an air rifle, right?"

"A very special air rifle. The sound shouldn't be too loud, should it?"

"Listen to me. Shoot the sparrows on the outer edges first, then work your way inward."

"Play your cards right with this flock, and you can bag seven or eight in a row."

"If you can steady your hand and slow down your pace, getting fifteen or sixteen is entirely possible."

Qin Jun glanced at the enthusiastic Zhao Erwa. He seemed even more focused and excited than Qin Jun himself.

"Why don't you give it a try?"

Infected by Zhao Erwa's enthusiasm, Qin Jun spoke up involuntarily.

"Alright, thanks, brother. You could tell my hands were itching, couldn't you?"

"I won't be polite then. Let me test out the gun first!"

With that, Zhao Erwa gave a wriggle of his body and directly shoved Qin Jun aside.

Meanwhile, Zhao Erwa's hands weren't idle either; he had already taken possession of the pneumatic air rifle.

After a brief fumble, Zhao Erwa's eyes lit up.

Qin Jun looked speechlessly at his hands. Had his weapon just been hijacked?

This Zhao Erwa felt a bit lacking in propriety!

You're a grown man in your thirties and a factory director to boot; why are you acting so flaky?

"Push the barrel down to pressurize it, right?"

"There's considerable resistance. For an air rifle without a gas cylinder, the power is surprisingly not weak."

"Heh, and it even has automatic feeding? Pity there's no gas cylinder, otherwise it could do continuous fire!"

"Puff!" Accompanied by the wind, a soft sound rang out.

"This gun is well-made, feels very stable. There are rifling grooves inside, right? Looks like quite a few!"

"The bullet velocity is a full three hundred and fifty meters per second. Reaching that sort of speed with a cylinderless air rifle is already quite impressive."

"The trajectory is very stable too. At a distance of ninety meters, there's barely any deviation. Brilliant!"

"Puff!" "Puff!" "Puff!"

Qin Jun dropped his jaw, watching Zhao Erwa shoot.

Was this guy even human? He fired casually while chatting away.

On the western slope, dozens of sparrows had landed on a large patch of jujube trees.

Because they were widely scattered, Zhao Erwa constantly shifted his shooting direction.

Yet, after firing so many shots, he still hadn't startled the flock.

He hit the southern side first, then the northern side.

Just like that, he continually widened the distance and fired.

By the time he had consecutively killed over a dozen sparrows and finally caused a panic, the remaining large flock flew away together.

"Sigh, nothing to be done. Some of the sparrows were clustered too close together, so disturbing the big flock was inevitable!"

Zhao Erwa shook his head with an expression of regret. However, instead of getting up, he turned in a different direction. There happened to be more sparrows hiding in a patch of bushes behind them.

Levering the barrel down, he opened fire again.

Zhao Erwa's speed was blistering. In the split second before the flock of sparrows grew alert, he had already fired three shots.

And every single one of the three shots hit its mark; not a single one missed.

Qin Jun was left speechless. If he had taken those shots, he probably would have only had a single chance.

Yet this guy managed three shots while looking completely casual.

Qin Jun had previously been quite confident in his marksmanship, but now that confidence was utterly shattered.

Compared to these veterans who had survived a hail of bullets, the marksmanship he had fed with endless rounds of ammunition really amounted to nothing.

What puzzled Qin Jun the most was that Zhao Erwa hadn't test-fired the gun at all. How on earth had he hit the target with his very first shot?

Qin Jun was thoroughly familiar with the gun he had built.

Especially at a distance of ninety meters, without test-firing, who knew where the fired bullet might drift off to!

Yet this man managed to hit the target dead center on the first try.

Seeing no more targets left, Zhao Erwa finally stood up, intending to wander around the vicinity to satisfy his craving a bit more.

As for his earlier claim about just wanting to test the gun, Zhao Erwa, much like Qin Jun, had long since banished it to the back of his mind!

Qin Jun had no desire to lose his gun a second time, so he immediately reached out and grabbed Zhao Erwa.

Seeing Zhao Erwa smile sheepishly as he handed back the gun, Qin Jun surprisingly felt a twinge of embarrassment himself.

Getting his own gun back made him feel as guilty as if he had just committed a robbery? What on earth was that about?

Qin Jun brushed the feeling aside, pretending not to see the lingering look of reluctance in Zhao Erwa's eyes.

These elite soldiers all carried a heavy aura of outlaw daring.

If you tried to reason with them or stand on ceremony in front of them, you were bound to get the short end of the stick.

"Little Qin! When you're at work, focus on your work. How about I hang onto this gun for you for now?"

Seeing that he hadn't won any sympathy, the older brother Zhao Erwa decided to throw away his pride completely.

What kind of person was Qin Jun? A baby of over seventy months dealing with a man in his thirties—wouldn't that be as easy as taking candy from a baby?

Firmly taking back the gun, Qin Jun said, "Teach me how to shoot! Especially the first shot!"

"Heh, you noticed, did you? Not bad at all. In that case, I'll teach you a thing or two!"

Mentioning marksmanship made Zhao Erwa instantly drop any talk of work or duty.

He immediately transformed into an instructor, beginning to impart some of his hard-earned experience to Qin Jun.

"No matter how good a gun is, once the target is far away, the bullet will go out of control."

"If you don't understand a firearm, when you use it, you have to factor in some margin of error in advance!"

"Just like the first shot I fired earlier—I preset several targets in my mind, such as a target with a fifteen-degree deviation, and one with a thirty-degree deviation."

"Mm, you guessed it right: it was pure guesswork, but I guessed right this time!"

A flash of understanding crossed Qin Jun's mind. So it had been a happy accident!

Anticipating that his first shot might deviate, Zhao Erwa had mentally pre-calculated the possible deviation.

While aiming at the primary target, he simultaneously selected several targets near it, treating them as potential deviation targets.

If he missed the primary target due to deviation, he still had a chance of hitting one of the other targets.

Next, Qin Jun genuinely learned quite a few shooting techniques.

Over the course of that single afternoon, with one teaching and the other trying, the two of them managed to bag fifty or sixty sparrows.

Qin Jun didn't take these sparrows home; instead, they processed them right there in the kiln's dugout quarters.

Qin Jun specifically asked Uncle Qin Zhihai to stir-fry the dishes, while his eldest sister Qin Yingchun naturally took charge of cooking.

With the large pork bones left over from lunch, combined with some fatty pig intestines set aside the previous day, the ingredients for that evening's meal could be considered quite lavish.

With delicious food on hand, the key figures of the kiln could sit down together and enjoy a proper, heavy-drinking meal.

This meal counted as an official factory reception banquet, especially since the newly arrived Zhao Erwa and his two companions were all cadres.

Three meat dishes, a large basin of egg drop soup, and plenty of steamed white wheat flour buns—this level of hospitality was by no means low in the countryside!

"Qin Jun, can't you learn something proper for a change?"

"You've pretty much mastered all the crooked, underhanded tricks in this factory."

While eating oil-fried sparrows and sipping fine liquor, Qin Shi still couldn't resist mocking Qin Jun.

Mainly because this kid Qin Jun was far too adept at exploiting the rules.

Take Qin Yingchun, for instance; she was also sitting to the side, quietly gnawing on a sparrow.

In the countryside of that era, dainty maidens did not exist, and certainly no one would refuse meat delivered right to their mouths.