The fallout from the first round of the Outer Sect Tournament was a study in contrasting perceptions. For Wei Tiezhu, his victory was a hard-won validation, a crack of sunlight in the mine-shaft darkness of his sect life. For Wei Xiao'ou, his victory was an unmitigated catastrophe, a meticulously laid plan for obscurity that had spontaneously combusted into a spectacle.
The whispers in the refectory, the training grounds, and the dormitories were no longer about the "Lucky Slacker." They were now about the "Umbrella Savant," the "Lazy Prodigy," the disciple who had defeated a fire-wielder without so much as wrinkling his robes. It was an intolerable state of affairs.
He had to fix it.
The second round of the tournament was scheduled for the next day. The field had been halved, and the competition would be stiffer. Xiao'ou spent the evening in deep, uncharacteristic contemplation, lying on his bunk and staring at the bottom of the bunk above him as if it held the secrets of the universe.
Murong Chubby, sensing his business partner's distress, offered a consoling meat bun. "Cheer up! Our sales have quadrupled! Everyone wants a piece of the 'Umbrella Savant's' secret training regimen! I told them it's a strict diet of napping and cola, but they don't believe me."
"That's the problem," Xiao'ou murmured. "They're starting to believe in the wrong thing. I need to re-establish the narrative. I need to lose. Spectacularly."
"Lose?" Chubby blinked. "But winning is good for business!"
"Short-term thinking, Chubby," Xiao'ou said, sitting up. "If I win, I attract more attention. More scrutiny. Elders poking around, rivals plotting, maybe even a forced promotion to the inner sect. Can you imagine? Waking up at dawn for advanced sword drills? The horror." He shuddered. "No, we must remain small, unremarkable, and comfortably lazy. Our business thrives in the shadows, not the spotlight."
"So… you're going to throw the match?"
"Not throw it. That would be dishonorable, and they might detect suppressed spiritual energy. No, I must lose with integrity. I must deploy my full, publicly-known capabilities—which is to say, my umbrella and my napping skills—and be genuinely, unquestionably bested."
He lay back down, a new, determined glint in his eye. "I must master the Art of Intentional Failure."
—
The next day, the tournament grounds were even more crowded. Wei Tiezhu fought his second match against a whip-thin disciple who used a chain-dagger. It was a bad matchup. The chain-dagger could circumvent Tiezhu's solid defense, striking from unpredictable angles. For five minutes, Tiezhu was on the defensive, blocks of stone sheared from his spiritual armor by the whipping blade. He was being slowly, methodically carved apart.
But he remembered Xiao'ou's words: Be the boulder. Let the river flow around you. He stopped trying to block every strike. He focused on rooting himself, on making his core an unassailable fortress. The chain-dagger lashed his arms, his back, drawing thin lines of blood, but it could not find a vital point, could not break his stance. The river of attacks was furious, but the boulder remained.
Finally, the chain-dagger disciple, overextending in frustration, left an opening. Tiezhu didn't punch. He simply stepped forward, his body a battering ram of solidified earth Qi, and slammed his shoulder into the disciple's chest. The air left the disciple's lungs in a whoosh, and he crumpled to the ground, gasping.
Another win. The crowd, now firmly on the side of the underdog, roared its approval. "Young Master Boulder! Young Master Boulder!"
Tiezhu, bleeding from a dozen superficial cuts, felt a fierce, primal pride. He was no longer just surviving. He was competing.
Then came Xiao'ou's turn.
His opponent was a girl from the Beast Taming branch. She didn't enter the ring alone. By her side paced a sleek, silver-furred Spirit-Wolf, its eyes intelligent and fierce, its fangs dripping with faint, paralytic venom. This was a completely different kind of challenge. The umbrella might block direct spiritual attacks, but how could it defend against a living, thinking predator?
This was perfect, Xiao'ou thought. A wolf was unpredictable. It could easily "outmaneuver" his "limited" defensive style.
The bell rang.
The Beast Taming disciple pointed. "Flurry! Disarm him!"
The Spirit-Wolf, Flurry, shot forward like a silver arrow, a blur of fang and claw aimed directly at the hand holding the umbrella.
This was it. The moment of glorious, plausible defeat. Xiao'ou prepared to let the wolf knock the umbrella from his grasp. He even loosened his grip.
But as the wolf leaped, something unexpected happened.
From the crowd, a scruffy, non-descript spirit chicken, which had somehow hitched a ride from Fragrant Rice Village hidden in the supply carts, burst onto the edge of the ring. It was Big Yellow.
"Bwak-bwak-BWAAAAK!" it squawked, a sound of pure, outraged territoriality.
The Spirit-Wolf, Flurry, mid-leap, faltered. Its predator instincts were confused. A chicken? In the middle of a sacred duel? Its focus broke. Instead of hitting Xiao'ou's hand, its shoulder slammed into the opened umbrella.
BONGGG!
The same resonant gong sound echoed. The wolf yelped, thrown back by its own force, tumbling head over paws to land in a dazed heap at its master's feet.
The Beast Taming disciple stared, mortified. "Flurry! What are you doing?"
Xiao'ou stared at Big Yellow, who was now strutting proudly at the ring's edge as if it had just single-handedly won the battle. He felt a profound sense of cosmic injustice.
The disciple, flustered and angry, tried to rally. She sent Flurry in again, but the wolf was now wary, circling the umbrella instead of charging. The disciple herself drew a short sword and lunged.
What followed was a farce. Xiao'ou, desperately trying to lose, would clumsily maneuver the umbrella to block the sword strikes, but each block seemed to perfectly deflect the blade into the path of the circling wolf, forcing it to dodge. He'd trip over his own feet, only to have the stumble somehow place the umbrella shaft exactly where the wolf was about to bite. He was a symphony of incompetence, but every note of that symphony was accidentally forming a perfect, impenetrable defense.
The crowd was in stitches. It was the funniest thing they had ever seen. The "Umbrella Savant" was a bumbling fool, yet his opponent couldn't lay a finger on him.
Finally, in a last, desperate attempt, the Beast Taming disciple whistled a command for a pincer attack. Flurry leaped for Xiao'ou's back while she thrust her sword at his front.
Xiao'ou, seeing his chance, decided to end the charade. He would simply fall over. He let his foot catch on a perfectly smooth piece of stone, intending to tumble backwards and surrender.
As he fell, he dropped his umbrella.
The falling umbrella, spinning lazily, its handle described a perfect arc. The handle smacked Flurry on the nose, making the wolf recoil with a surprised yelp. At the same time, the rusty metal ferrule at the tip swung around and tapped the disciple's wrist with a sharp click, numbing her fingers. Her sword clattered to the ground.
Xiao'ou landed flat on his back with a thud, staring at the sky in despair.
The ring was silent. The disciple was disarmed. The wolf was whimpering, holding its nose.
The referee, after a long, confused pause, raised his hand. "Wei Xiao'ou… wins."
The crowd erupted in laughter and cheers. It was the most absurd victory in the history of the Heavenly Sword Peak.
Xiao'ou lay there, defeated by his own luck. He had mastered the Art of Intentional Failure, only to discover that his failures were more successful than most people's victories.
—
The ripples of his second win were even wider. The story of the chicken-assisted, umbrella-dropping victory spread like wildfire. He was becoming a folk hero to the downtrodden outer disciples, a symbol that you didn't need to be a genius to succeed; you just needed to be lucky enough.
This did not sit well with everyone.
In a secluded courtyard high in the inner sect peaks, Long Aotian was practicing his sword forms. His movements were a blur of deadly precision, each slash cutting a permanent line in the air that shimmered with residual power. His servant, a cowering outer disciple, relayed the news of Xiao'ou's latest victory.
Long Aotian's sword didn't falter. "The clown continues his performance," he said, his voice cold. "He defiles the sanctity of the tournament with his farces. He is a stain on the honor of the sect."
"He's become quite popular, Young Master," the servant ventured cautiously.
"Popularity is the currency of the mediocre," Long Aotian sneered. "He wins without skill, without effort, without honor. He mocks the very Dao we strive for." He finished his form, and the accumulated slashes in the air collapsed inwards with a sound like shattering glass. "When the time comes, I will personally wipe that lazy smile off his face. I will show the sect what true power looks like."
—
Elder Guo received the tournament reports in his austere chamber. He read the account of Wei Xiao'ou's match, his expression unreadable. He then unrolled a separate scroll, a report from the Alchemy Hall. It detailed the unprecedented quality and yield of Spirit Herb Garden #9, directly crediting the oversight of Disciple Wei Xiao'ou. A third scroll, from the Assignment Hall, noted a formal complaint from Senior Brother Gao, accusing Xiao'ou of "willful indolence and spiritual mockery."
Elder Guo set the scrolls down. A lazy disciple who napped through his duties yet produced miraculous results. A clumsy fighter who won duels through a series of unbelievable accidents. It was an irresolvable contradiction.
"Some weeds," the Elder murmured to himself, a saying from his own mortal youth, "are so tenacious they can break through stone. Not because they are strong, but because they find the cracks nobody else can see."
He made a note on a jade slate: Observe Disciple Wei Xiao'ou. Do not interfere. Report any… anomalies.
—
For Shen Bing, the second victory was the final piece of a puzzle she couldn't solve. She had watched the entire match, her Frozen Heart Scripture maintaining a perfect, analytical calm. And yet, she had seen it. The way his every stumble, every clumsy move, had resulted in a geometrically perfect defense. The odds of such a thing happening by chance were astronomically low. It was as if the universe itself was bending over backwards to keep his umbrella in the right place at the right time.
That night, she went to the herb garden again. She needed to see. She needed proof.
She found him not on his mound, but standing in the middle of the Silver-Moon Petals, his eyes closed, his umbrella held upright before him like a staff. He wasn't humming this time. He was perfectly still.
And then, he began to move.
It was not a sword form. It was not a cultivation technique. It was a series of slow, flowing, almost drunken movements. He weaved between the plants, his umbrella tracing languid arcs in the air. But as he moved, Shen Bing's spiritual sense, honed to a razor's edge, perceived the impossible.
With each pass of the umbrella, the spiritual energy in the garden moved. Not in a wild surge, but in a gentle, organized flow. The Wood Qi from the plants, the Earth Qi from the soil, the Water Qi from the irrigation channels, and the faint, pervasive Metal Qi from the distant sword peaks—all of it was being gently herded, like sheep by a patient dog. The energies wove around the plants, strengthening them, balancing them, warding off blight and pests without any direct application of power.
He was not cultivating. He was gardening the very fabric of reality.
As he completed his slow, dance-like routine, he stopped, opened his eyes, and looked directly at the shadow where she was hiding.
"Senior Sister Shen," he said, his voice calm and clear in the moonlit silence. "The night dew is bad for the complexion. You should really wear a thicker robe."
Her heart, a frozen lake for a decade, skipped a beat. He had known she was there. How? Her concealment technique was flawless for someone at his level.
She stepped out of the shadows, her face a mask of ice, but her mind was a storm. "What are you doing, Wei Xiao'ou?"
"Napping," he said, leaning on his umbrella. "It's a moving meditation. Very restful."
"This is not napping. This is… this is a level of spiritual manipulation that…" She trailed off, unable to find the words.
"That what?" he prompted, a faint smile on his lips. "That a lazy outer disciple shouldn't be capable of?"
"Yes."
"Maybe I'm just very, very good at napping." He began to walk back towards his mound. "Or maybe, Senior Sister, you're asking the wrong question. You're asking 'how is he doing this?' when you should be asking 'why does it work?'"
He lay down, arranged his umbrella beside him, and closed his eyes. "The 'how' is just technique. The 'why' is philosophy. And philosophy is much more interesting to discuss while horizontal."
Shen Bing stood there for a long time, watching the boy who had just casually redefined her understanding of cultivation. The fracture in her heart widened. A sliver of his lazy, laughing philosophy had seeped into the frozen fortress of her mind.
Why does it work?
It was a more dangerous question than any sword technique.
—
The drawing for the third round, the quarter-finals, was held at the end of the day. The remaining eight disciples stood before the elder overseeing the lottery.
Wei Tiezhu drew his opponent first: a brute from the Enforcement Division, a body cultivator known for breaking bones. It was a terrible draw, a classic clash of immovable object against an unstoppable force. Tiezhu paled but set his jaw. He would be the mountain.
Then, it was Xiao'ou's turn. He reached into the jade vase and pulled out a slip of paper. He unrolled it, and his heart sank.
The name written there was "Jian Sorrow."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Jian Sorrow was not the strongest in the tournament, but he was arguably the most dangerous. He was a sword nerd, a disciple so obsessed with the theory and principle of the sword that he had neglected his own cultivation, remaining in the outer sect for a decade. He was stuck at the peak of Essence Condensation, but his understanding of sword intent and combat theory was said to rival that of inner sect disciples.
He was also, famously, the most humorless, pedantic, and analytical fighter in the entire sect. He was immune to tricks, to luck, to farce. He would see through any attempt at intentional failure. He would dissect Xiao'ou's style with clinical precision and dismantle it.
For the first time since arriving at the Heavenly Sword Peak, Wei Xiao'ou felt a genuine flicker of concern. This was not an opponent he could defeat by accident. And it was certainly not an opponent he could lose to with any dignity.
Jian Sorrow stepped forward. He was a lean, intense young man with burning, fanatical eyes. He pointed a finger at Xiao'ou.
"Your umbrella," Jian Sorrow declared, his voice ringing with absolute conviction. "It is not a tool. It is a sword. A sheathed sword. And in our match, I will prove it. I will force you to draw it. I will make you acknowledge the blade you hide in your laziness."
The crowd went silent. The Umbrella Savant versus the Sword Theorist. The clash of absurdity against absolute dogma.
Xiao'ou looked at the zealot in front of him, then down at his rusty, patched-up umbrella. He sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of the heavens.
It seemed the universe was no longer content with letting him nap. It was demanding a performance.
And for the first time, Wei Xiao'ou wondered if he might have to actually, genuinely, try.
The thought was exhaustingly unpleasant