The Underdog’s Comeback: Shen Zheng and the Thirteen-Tailed Demon Fox

The cows are flying up in the sky. I'm the one bragging down on the ground.

This is a book about bragging, played completely straight...

Shen Zheng is a complete loser who can't get anything done and has nothing to his name. He sets his sights too high, delivers too little, and thinks far too much of himself.

Every day, he thinks he's a genius whose talents have gone unrecognized. The strange thing is, though, that while you can say he never succeeds at anything, you can't say he doesn't know how to do anything. He knows a little about everything and can turn his hand to anything, but somehow it never works out.

As for having nothing, that's not quite true: whatever he does have belongs to his family.

Personally, I think the reason he never succeeds at anything is that drinking gets in the way. He's a bona fide drunk and a total loser.

But one day, after getting drunk, Shen Zheng walked home alone at night and pointed up at the sky, shouting, “From now on, I, Shen Zheng, am going to be a self-important loser. So what are you going to do about it?”

No sooner had he said this than he collapsed with a thud. When he came to, he was lying on the floor at home. He couldn't understand how he'd gotten back, so he went to the bathroom. The sight of himself in the mirror gave him a fright: his face was pitch-black, his bald head was black too, and patches of scorched skin were peeling up. It was obvious he'd been struck by lightning. Shen Zheng was spooked. He couldn't help wondering if the heavens had really struck him down because he'd stood outside the night before, pointing at the sky and making such a grand boast.

After that, Shen Zheng's life began to change. He kept encountering things no ordinary person could understand and seeing things no ordinary person could see. It made him wonder if he was going insane. And that was the day Shen Zheng began his journey to turn his life around.