The Fragmented Manual

When Chen Yuan knelt before his grandfather's grave with half a piece of dried bread in his pocket, he understood one thing: in this ruthless world of cultivation, charging in headfirst was a sure way to die.

After joining the Qingyun Sect as a servant, he never sought the limelight. While outer disciples fought to claim treasures in secret realms, he crouched in the library dusting shelves, quietly picking up scraps of cultivation manuals nobody else wanted. While senior inner disciples fought tooth and nail over spirit veins, he chopped wood in the kitchen and secretly refined medicinal dregs for body tempering over the stove. Even when the demonic sect attacked the mountain gates and everyone else rushed to fight, he grabbed a water vat and hid in the deepest part of the scripture pavilion.

“Chen Yuan? What can that good-for-nothing do besides sweep floors?”

“I heard an outer disciple took his monthly pay, and he didn't even dare complain. What a coward.”

“He won't last three years in the sect!”

Then one day, when Ancestor Blood Demon slaughtered the mountain and wiped out the sect, and no cultivator could stand against him, the servant who always hid in the corner suddenly stepped forward.

Using the Seven-Star Steps he'd secretly learned, he hid among the corpses to evade a fatal blow, then flung the medicinal dregs he'd refined over three years on the stove. They turned out to be the long-lost Ten Thousand Poisons Soul-Eating Powder.

He raised a hand, and in his palm appeared the scrap of a cultivation manual once dismissed as waste paper. By now, he had mastered it completely.

Ancestor Blood Demon cried out in terror, “Who are you?!”

Chen Yuan brushed the dust from his clothes and gave a smile more painful than tears. “Don't ask. I just got lucky.”

(Muttering under his breath: I've kept my head down for ten years. At last, I can change into a new set of clothes in broad daylight.)