Moving through a forest at high speeds was one thing, but doing so with an arrow stuck in a shoulder was a completely different story. Liu, forcefully ignoring the pain that came about as the arrow shook around inside of his arm, broke into a run. Xin's dropping of a hostage in front of him, though, caused Liu to stumble momentarily before catching himself against the trunk of a tree. The arrow, luckily enough, hadn't been messed with this entire time, but things could likely get worse if it wasn't dealt with. This was a good a time as ever, it seemed, to take a moment's reprieve as the others did their thing.

"Understood. I'll stay behind here, then," Liu replied, looking around before taking some of the nearby vines and wrapping the victim of Xin's scare tactics onto the trunk of a nearby tree. With that fighter secured, Liu took a deep breath and, preparing himself for the worst, began to slowly work the arrow out of his shoulder.

Arrows, it seemed, hurt a lot more coming out than they did going in.

[hr]
The chase in the trees above, however, became a lot more chaotic once the archers from earlier moved deeper into the forest. Left and right, forward and back, up and down... It was as if another group of archers had suddenly joined in the fight. In actuality, the ordeal was a series of tripwires that the bandits were triggering to fire as they moved, causing chaos on both sides of the fight. One barked an order unintelligible to anyone not in his immediate vicinity, and the remaining assailants split their forces all over the place. Down below, one of the fleeing bandits dropped to the ground and let out a loud whistle before drawing his blade, in hopes of stalling whoever came his way... Even if only for a few moments. What that meant, only the bandits really knew.