The sun over the eastern foothills of Zhongzhou had a particular quality in the late afternoon, a liquid, honeyed light that poured itself over the world like a blessing. It was a light that forgave all sins, especially the sin of indolence. It gilded the clouds, set the distant peaks ablaze with a serene fire, and painted the vast, terraced fields of Fragrant Rice Village in shades of emerald and gold. The air itself was thick and warm, carrying the profound, earthy perfume of spirit rice—a scent so rich and nourishing it was said a mortal could live on the aroma alone for three days.
In the heart of this tranquility, nestled between perfectly ordered rows of waist-high rice stalks that shimmered with a faint, innate luminescence, lay Wei Xiao'ou.
To the casual observer, he was the very picture of wasted potential. A young man of seventeen, perhaps eighteen summers, sprawled with an almost artistic carelessness across a small, grassy mound between the paddies. A wide-brimmed hat of woven straw was tilted so precisely over his face that it created a perfect pocket of shadow, a private little night in the midst of the brilliant day. He wore the simple, rough-spun trousers and tunic of a village youth, patched at the elbows and knees but scrupulously clean. One hand rested on his stomach, rising and falling with a rhythm so deep and steady it seemed to be tuned to the slow, patient heartbeat of the land itself. The other hand was flung out to the side, his fingers lightly brushing the shaft of a most peculiar object: a patched-up, rusty umbrella that looked as if it had been rescued from a succession of tragic endings.
This was Wei Xiao'ou, the undisputed, twelve-time reigning champion of the annual Lazy Immortal Festival. And he was, to all appearances, masterfully, profoundly, and blissfully asleep.
The world, however, was not.
A stout, red-faced man with forearms thick as spirit-root yams wiped his brow, his eyes scanning the fields with a practiced, critical gaze. "The Qi-Gathering Dew is late this year," he muttered to his companion, a woman with hands permanently stained with the green of medicinal herbs. "The stalks are strong, but the kernels lack sweetness. It's a bad omen."
The woman nodded, her expression grim. "Old Man Zhang's rheumatism is acting up again. Says his bones ache like they're filled with gravel. Always happens when the dew is late."
Such was the life in Fragrant Rice Village. The rhythms of cultivation, of weather and harvest, were not abstract concepts; they were the very substance of existence, woven into the fabric of every conversation, every worry, every hope. The village itself was a cluster of sturdy, timber-and-plaster houses with gracefully curved tile roofs, nestled in the protective embrace of the verdant foothills. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys, carrying the scent of burning pine and baking flatbread. The laughter of children chasing fat, waddling spirit-ducks echoed from the central square, and from the ancestral hall at the village's highest point, the faint, rhythmic sound of a wooden mallet striking a giant mortar announced the evening rice-pounding ceremony was about to begin.
Every meal in Fragrant Rice Village started with three formal bows to the fields, a tradition so ancient its origin was lost to time. It was a gesture of thanks, of respect, and a silent plea for the continued bounty of the land. Rice was not just sustenance; it was sacrament.
And Wei Xiao'ou, sleeping in the middle of it all, was either its greatest devotee or its most shameless heretic.
"Xiao'ou!"
The bellow shattered the pastoral symphony like a rock through a still pond. A mountain of a youth came crashing through the rice stalks, his passage leaving a temporary wake in the shimmering green sea. This was Cousin Wei Tiezhu. At nineteen, he was a monument to earnest effort, his body a sculpture of knotted muscle built from a decade of relentless, and largely fruitless, body cultivation. He was stuck at the Essence Condensation 3rd layer, a plateau he had been hammering against for eight long years. His brow was perpetually furrowed, his face a canvas of pure, uncomplicated frustration with a world that refused to yield to sheer force.
He loomed over his sleeping cousin, his shadow engulfing the boy. "Xiao'ou! Wake up, you lazy bone! This is serious!"
Wei Xiao'ou's only response was a soft, contented sigh. He shifted slightly, nuzzling his cheek deeper into the soft grass beneath his head.
Wei Tiezhu's fists clenched. He had a history with Xiao'ou's naps. There was the time he'd tried to haul the sleeping boy to the harvest festival by his ankle, only to trip over a perfectly exposed root and sail headfirst into the ceremonial vat of newly fermented rice wine. There was the time he'd tried to douse him with a bucket from the well, only for the rope to snap, sending the bucket plummeting back down and pulling him in after it. Experience had taught him a certain wary, superstitious respect for his cousin's slumber.
"It's Aunt Hong's explosive ducks!" Tiezhu tried again, his voice a mix of panic and exasperation. "The whole flock got through the broken part of the fence! They're in the treasury garden! They're pecking at the Golden-Scale Eggplants! Grandfather San is looking for you! He's got that look in his eye!"
This was a catastrophe of village-level proportions. The treasury garden was a small, walled plot behind the ancestral hall where the clan cultivated its most precious spiritual ingredients—plants used for minor healing, for offerings, and for the rare times a clan elder attempted a breakthrough. The Golden-Scale Eggplants were particularly valued; their skins, when properly prepared, could temporarily sharpen eyesight. And Aunt Hong's explosive ducks were… well, they were a force of nature. Plump, white, and deceptively serene, they possessed a digestive system that could process raw spiritual energy and expel it as a minor, concussive blast. A flock of them in the treasury garden was the equivalent of a small, waddling, and utterly chaotic demolition crew.
From beneath the straw hat, a muffled, dreamy voice emerged. "Tell him… I'm meditating on the profound Dao of… not being awake." The words were slurred, punctuated by another soft sigh. "The Eggplants… will understand. It is their… karmic trial."
Wei Tiezhu looked as if he might spontaneously achieve a breakthrough through sheer rage. "Karmic trial?! Xiao'ou, Grandfather will have our hides tanned for drumheads! Get up!"
It was then that a new shadow fell over them, one that was not born of the setting sun or a hulking cousin. This shadow was cool, sharp, and carried the faint, clean scent of ozone and high-altitude winds. The spirit rice rippled, not from a natural breeze, but from the powerful, controlled downdraft of a magnificent, snow-white crane.
The bird was a creature of breathtaking elegance, its feathers pristine, its eyes like chips of black jade, radiating a palpable aura of refined power. Upon its back sat a young man who seemed carved from the same ice as the distant peaks. He couldn't have been much older than Xiao'ou, but he carried himself with an ageless, imperial grace. His robes were of shimmering, ice-blue silk, embroidered with silver threads that depicted cranes in flight—a blatant, and expensive, display of his clan's affiliation. His features were sharp and perfectly symmetrical, his hair tied back in a severe topknot pierced by a simple but profound jade hairpin. He was Lin Proudcrane, a direct scion of the illustrious Lin Clan, and he was, very clearly, and profoundly, lost.
His eyes, the colour of a winter sky, swept over the village, the fields, and the two cousins with an expression of undisguised, glacial disdain. He had been seeking the legendary Myriad Swords Peak for three days, and this backwater village of mud and mediocrity was the final insult.
He did not deign to address them directly at first. His gaze settled on the sleeping form of Wei Xiao'ou, and a sneer touched his lips, so faint it was almost elegant.
"Such indolence," he said, his voice cool and cutting, carrying effortlessly over the field. It was a voice used to being listened to. "I had heard the spirit rice of the Zhongzhou foothills was the stuff of poets' dreams. It seems the poets have been drinking too much wine. This grain is… passable. But it seems the disciples it produces are even worse." His eyes flicked to Wei Tiezhu. "A muscle-bound oaf, straining at a door he lacks the key to open." Then back to Xiao'ou. "And a sleeping log, content to rot where it fell. This place is not a cultivation site. It is a monument to wasted potential."
The words hung in the air, cold and heavy. Wei Tiezhu flushed a deep, mortified crimson. The insult to the village's rice was a direct blow to their pride, but the assessment of his own cultivation struck a nerve so raw it was agony. He stood there, trembling, his massive fists clenching and unclenching, utterly powerless before the aura of casual superiority that radiated from the young master.
But before the heat of Tiezhu's shame could find a voice, something else happened.
Wei Xiao'ou sneezed.
It wasn't a dramatic, earth-shattering sound. Not a thunderclap of divine intervention. It was a simple, sleepy, almost delicate ah-choo! A perfectly normal human sound.
And yet.
It coincided with a sudden, perfectly timed gust of wind that swept down from the nearby Jade Mist Hills. This was no ordinary breeze. It was a capricious little zephyr, the kind that twists fallen leaves into dancing spirals and plucks hats from unsuspecting heads. This particular gust carried with it a cloud of fine, iridescent pollen from the Dreamroot Flowers that grew in a wild, neglected patch on the field's edge—a pollen known to the villagers for its potent, if brief, disorienting effects. A few breaths of it could make a man forget his own name for a handful of heartbeats.
Lin Proudcrane, his mouth still gracefully poised in mid-sneer, inhaled sharply to deliver another, more scathing critique.
The iridescent pollen cloud enveloped his head.
His eyes, previously chips of winter jade, widened in startled confusion. The refined, arrogant planes of his face contorted into a bizarre mask of surprise. He choked, a strangled, undignified sound that was utterly at odds with his pristine image. A violent spasm ran through his body, upsetting his perfect, crane-riding balance—a balance honed by years of elegant sword practice and meditative flight.
"Gack—!" he managed, before his body, betraying him completely, pitched forward.
He tumbled from his spiritual crane in a flail of expensive blue silk, a pinwheeling descent that ended with a wet, conclusive splat face-first into the soft, rich, and unfortunately quite muddy, soil at the edge of Wei Xiao'ou's personal paddy.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
The spiritual crane let out a confused, squawking trill, circling overhead. Wei Tiezhu stood frozen, his jaw unhinged, his brain refusing to process the scene of a heavenly genius planted face-down in the mud like a common radish. The distant sounds of the village—the children laughing, the mortar pounding—seemed to have been swallowed by a sudden, profound silence.
And then Wei Xiao'ou, in the midst of a deep, rolling dream-turn, slid gently from the small, grassy mound he'd been napping on.
Thump.
He landed, soft and comfortable, his body settling with a sigh of profound contentment, directly atop the prostrate form of the Lin Clan's young master. He used Lin Proudcrane's silk-clad back as a rather lumpy, but apparently serviceable, mattress. One of his arms draped casually over the young master's side, his fingers still loosely curled. He snored gently, the picture of perfect peace.
The spell broke.
"XIAO'OU!" Wei Tiezhu's shriek was pure, unadulterated terror. He lunged forward, his mind racing with visions of the entire Lin Clan descending upon their tiny village and turning it to ash for this unimaginable insult.
From the edge of the field, partially hidden behind a thick stalk of spirit rice, a scruffy spirit chicken named Big Yellow peeked out. It was a non-descript bird, its feathers a motley mix of brown and yellow, one eye perpetually squinted. But its beady, intelligent gaze was fixed not on the fuming, mud-covered young master, nor on the panicking muscle-cousin. It was fixed on the rusty, patched-up umbrella that now lay beside the sleeping boy. As the last rays of the sun caught its pitted metal tip, it seemed to gleam with a light that was not a reflection, but a faint, internal pulse, a heartbeat of something ancient and utterly terrifying.
Wei Xiao'ou, the Lazy Immortal of Fragrant Rice Village, slept on, blissfully unaware that he had just, without a single conscious thought, declared war on one of the most powerful cultivation clans in the eastern reaches of Zhongzhou.
—
The aftermath was a controlled explosion of panic.
Wei Tiezhu, with strength born of sheer desperation, managed to haul a groggy, protesting Xiao'ou off the mud-soaked back of Lin Proudcrane. The young master was spluttering, a symphony of incoherent rage and mud bubbles. His pristine robes were ruined, caked in the fertile, black earth of the rice paddy. The smell of ozone and high mountains had been thoroughly replaced by the pungent aroma of wet soil and humiliation.
"You! You mortal worm! You… you…!" Lin Proudcrane scrambled to his feet, his body trembling not from cold, but from a fury so pure it seemed to vibrate the air around him. He pointed a shaking, mud-dripping finger at Xiao'ou, who was now standing blearily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Hmm? Is it time to eat?" Xiao'ou yawned, stretching his arms above his head with a satisfying series of pops. He blinked slowly, his gaze focusing on the seething, mud-monster version of a heavenly genius before him. "Oh. Hello. You seem to have… fallen. The paths can be tricky. You should watch your step."
Lin Proudcrane made a sound like a teakettle about to achieve liftoff. "You dare! You did this! You and your… your peasant trickery!"
"Trickery?" Xiao'ou looked genuinely puzzled. He glanced at his cousin. "Tiezhu, what is he talking about? I was asleep."
Wei Tiezhu looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him whole. "Young Master Lin, a thousand apologies! My cousin… he sleeps very deeply! It was an accident! A terrible, unfortunate accident!"
"An accident?" Lin Proudcrane's voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "I am Lin Proudcrane, of the Azure Crane Lin Clan! I do not have 'accidents' with filth from a mortal rice village!" His spiritual pressure, previously contained, began to leak out. It was the pressure of the Foundation Establishment realm, a force that should have made the two Essence Condensation-level youths buckle to their knees.
Wei Tiezhu grunted, his muscles straining as he fought to remain upright, his face pale. But Wei Xiao'ou just stood there, looking slightly inconvenienced, as if a mildly strong wind was blowing against him.
"The Azure Crane Lin Clan?" Xiao'ou repeated, his brow furrowing in thought. "Oh! The ones who live up on the windy crags? I heard your Patriarch is very fond of pickled plums. Is that true?"
The spiritual pressure stuttered. Lin Proudcrane stared, nonplussed. How did this… this sleeping log… know about his great-granduncle's infamous fondness for sour plums? It was a closely guarded secret, a shameful vice for a man of his stature.
Before he could formulate a response, a new, calm voice cut through the tension.
"The wind from the hills carries many stories, Young Master Lin. Some of them are even true."
An old man was walking slowly towards them, leaning on a gnarled walking stick carved from a single piece of spirit-peach wood. He was dressed in simple, but clean, grey robes, his back slightly bent, his face a roadmap of wrinkles earned from a long life under the sun. But his eyes, dark and bright as polished river stones, held a depth of wisdom that seemed to see right through a person. This was Grandfather Wei San, the village storyteller and the de facto head of the Wei mortal branch.
He stopped a few paces away, his gaze taking in the scene: the furious young master, the terrified Tiezhu, and the yawning Xiao'ou. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corners of his mouth.
"Grandfather!" Wei Tiezhu gasped, relieved. "The ducks… the treasury garden…"
"I know," Wei San said calmly, his eyes never leaving Lin Proudcrane. "Aunt Hong is rounding them up now. A few eggplants are… slightly perforated, but the world has not ended." He then bowed, a slow, respectful dip of his head that was neither subservient nor arrogant. "Welcome to Fragrant Rice Village, Young Master Lin. I am Wei San. It seems our humble fields have offered you an… unexpected welcome."
Lin Proudcrane, faced with the quiet authority of the old man, was forced to regain a shred of his composure. He straightened his muddy robes, a futile gesture. "This… individual," he spat, pointing at Xiao'ou, "assaulted me."
"Did he now?" Wei San turned his placid gaze to his grandson. "Xiao'ou, did you assault this esteemed young master?"
Xiao'ou looked genuinely affronted. "Grandfather! I was napping. I think I dreamed of… a very angry butterfly. It was quite loud." He looked at Lin Proudcrane. "Were you the butterfly?"
Wei Tiezhu let out a strangled groan.
Lin Proudcrane's eye twitched. He was being mocked. He was sure of it. But the old man's demeanor was so sincere, the sleeping boy's confusion so seemingly genuine, that he couldn't find a purchase for his rage. To insist further would make him look like a fool who was bested by a napping mortal.
"I… fell," he forced out through gritted teeth, the admission tasting like ash. "Due to the… unpredictable winds."
"The Jade Mist zephyrs are famous for their caprice," Wei San agreed amiably. "They have tipped over many a cart and stolen many a hat. It is a lesson in humility for us all." He gestured towards the village. "Please, allow us to offer you hospitality. A place to clean your robes, a hot meal. Our spirit rice is simple, but it is nourishing. It is the least we can do."
The offer was a lifeline, a way to salvage a shred of dignity from the debacle. But Lin Proudcrane's pride was a bleeding wound. To accept hospitality from these peasants after such an humiliation was unthinkable.
"No," he said coldly. He whistled sharply, and his spiritual crane descended, landing gracefully nearby, though it gave the muddy patch a wide berth. "I have wasted enough time here." He shot a final, venomous glare at Wei Xiao'ou, a look that promised retribution in another time, another place. "Remember this face, sleeper. Our paths will cross again."
With a swirl of muddy silk that tried and failed to be dramatic, he mounted his crane. With a powerful beat of its wings, the bird lifted into the air, carrying the fuming young master away towards the distant, mist-shrouded peaks.
A long silence settled over the field.
Wei Tiezhu finally let out the breath he'd been holding, his shoulders slumping. "Oh, ancestors. We're dead. He's going to come back with his entire clan and turn us into fertilizer."
Wei Xiao'ou, however, had already lost interest. He was looking towards the village, his stomach letting out a low rumble. "I hope dinner is ready. All this excitement has made me hungry." He bent down and picked up his rusty umbrella, using it as a walking stick as he began to amble back towards the sounds of home.
Wei San watched him go, his ancient eyes thoughtful. He then looked down at the spot where Lin Proudcrane had fallen. There, pressed deep into the mud, was the clear, perfect impression of the young master's face. And just beside it, where Xiao'ou's foot had最后 been placed when he stood up, the mud was perfectly smooth, untouched, as if no weight had ever been there at all.
—
The evening meal in the Wei household was a boisterous affair. The main room was filled with the warm, savoury scent of braised spirit-pork, steamed vegetables, and of course, a large, gleaming pot of perfectly cooked white spirit rice. Wei Xiao'ou sat cross-legged on a cushion, shoveling food into his mouth with a serene focus, seemingly already having forgotten the day's events.
Wei Tiezhu, however, picked at his food, his appetite gone. "He said 'remember this face'! He's going to hold a grudge!"
Aunt Wei Hong, a robust woman with a kind face and arms strong enough to wrestle an explosive duck, snorted. "Let him hold a grudge. If all the young masters from the big clans held grudges against everyone who saw them with mud on their face, there'd be no one left to rule. Eat your rice, Tiezhu. You'll need your strength to fix that fence tomorrow."
"But Auntie, he was Foundation Establishment! His aura was so strong!"
"And yet, he still fell in the mud," said a quiet, thoughtful voice. Little Wei Bao'er, only nine years old, was sitting at the low table, not eating, but instead carefully drawing on a piece of scrap paper with a piece of charcoal. She was a slight child with enormous, dark eyes that saw things others didn't. She was drawing a door. It was a simple rectangle, but she was adding intricate, impossible patterns to its frame, patterns that seemed to shift if you stared at them too long.
"What are you drawing, Bao'er?" Wei San asked gently, taking a sip of his tea.
"A door," she said, without looking up. "For the angry man. So he can leave faster next time."
Wei Tiezhu stared at her, then shook his head. The whole family was mad.
Later, after the meal was finished and the stars had begun to pepper the velvet sky, Wei San found Xiao'ou out in the small courtyard, leaning on his rusty umbrella and looking up at the moon. It was a slender crescent, like a sharp nail paring hanging in the darkness.
"The Lin Clan is not to be trifled with, Xiao'ou," the old man said softly, coming to stand beside him.
"I didn't trifle, Grandfather," Xiao'ou replied, his voice lazy but his eyes clear in the moonlight. "I napped. There's a difference."
"Is there?" Wei San leaned on his own stick. "The wind was very… timely. As was your sneeze."
Xiao'ou smiled, a slow, easy smile. "The world is full of coincidences, Grandfather. It's what makes life interesting."
Wei San was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the chirping of crickets and the distant hoot of an owl. "Your father… before he and your mother left on their journey… he told me to watch over you. He said you were special. That you asked a question that changed everything."
Xiao'ou's smile didn't falter, but it became a little more distant, a little more ancient. "I was a curious child."
"What was the question, Xiao'ou?"
Xiao'ou turned his head and looked at his grandfather, and for a fleeting instant, the old man saw not his lazy grandson, but something else—a depth in his eyes as vast and cold as the space between the stars. It was gone in a blink.
"I asked," Xiao'ou said, his voice barely a whisper, "why we have to play the game if the rules are so boring."
He then yawned, the moment shattering. "Well, I'm off to bed. Big day of napping tomorrow." He tapped his umbrella twice on the ground and ambled back inside, leaving Wei San alone under the crescent moon.
The old storyteller stood there for a long time, looking up at the sky. He thought of the blank piece of paper in the black-lacquered box hidden under the ancestral hall floor, the paper that had once held the Thirteenth Question. He thought of the rusty umbrella that was never far from his grandson's side. And he thought of the clear, un-muddied spot beside the impression of a heavenly genius's face.
"Survive first, ascend later," he murmured, reciting the secret family motto. He shook his head, a slow, wondering smile spreading across his wrinkled face. "Perhaps… perhaps we have been misunderstanding what it means to survive."
In his coop on the edge of the village, the spirit chicken Big Yellow tucked its head under its wing. And in the depths of its simple animal dreams, it did not dream of worms or grain, but of a vast, brilliant bird of fire, circling a throne made of a single, laughing syllable.
The game had begun.