Bai Xiaochun made it to the final four of the Heavenspan Tournament through a combination of his absurd durability, creative surrender tactics, and what the other competitors described as 'infuriating luck.' By this point, the audience had divided into two camps: those who thought he was a genius playing the fool, and those who thought he was a fool getting lucky. Both camps were wrong.

The semifinals pitted him against a prodigy from the Cloud Soaring Sect — a young woman named Liu Ruyan who had reached Core Formation at fourteen and was widely expected to win the entire tournament. She was fast, precise, and merciless in her efficiency.

'You've been lucky,' she said when they met in the center of the arena. 'But luck runs out.'

'I know,' Bai Xiaochun said. 'That's why I cultivate.'

The match lasted sixteen minutes, which was twelve minutes longer than anyone expected and exactly four minutes longer than Liu Ruyan had ever needed to defeat an opponent. Bai Xiaochun's Iron Skin and Silver Skin absorbed her techniques with painful efficiency. His defensive formations, improvised mid-battle, redirected her attacks. His Sect Evasion Steps, honed through years of dedicated running-away, kept him just ahead of her final strikes.

In the end, she defeated him — but only after expending nearly her entire spiritual energy reserve, and only by landing a technique that would have killed anyone without an immortal technique.

'I should have crushed you,' she said, gasping for breath.

'Most people say that,' Bai Xiaochun replied from the arena floor, where he was lying flat on his back with three cracked ribs and a profound sense of relief that the match was over.

He placed fourth in the tournament. Not first, not second, but fourth — high enough to bring honor to the Spirit Stream Sect, low enough to not attract the dangerous kind of attention. It was, Bai Xiaochun reflected, the perfect outcome.

For once, the cultivation world had given him exactly what he wanted.