In the Eastern Divine Prefectures, history seems unusually selective.
Every city, academy, and cultivation clan honors the name of Donghuang the Great, the legendary ruler credited with bringing peace to a chaotic age. Yet scattered across old stories and half-forgotten records are traces of another name, one that few people mention and even fewer dare discuss openly.
Most people don’t care enough to ask why.
Ye Futian certainly doesn’t.
At Qingzhou Academy, his reputation is already bad enough without involving himself in old legends. For three years he has remained stuck at the lowest stage of cultivation, earning the frustration of his teachers and the ridicule of fellow students. Skipping lessons, sleeping through lectures, and avoiding anything that resembles hard work, he looks exactly like the kind of disciple destined to be left behind.
The strange thing is that Ye Futian never seems particularly worried about it.
While talented students compete for recognition and influential families place enormous expectations on the younger generation, he spends most of his time doing whatever he pleases, usually accompanied by his close friend Yu Sheng. Unfortunately, academy life becomes much harder to ignore when examinations approach, rival students start looking for opportunities to embarrass him, and questions about his future become impossible to avoid.
For Ye Futian, the bigger problem isn’t the outside world, it’s the academy itself.
Examinations are approaching, several instructors have already lost patience with him, and there is no shortage of students eager to see him embarrassed in public. Being known as Qingzhou Academy’s most hopeless disciple might sound amusing at first, right up until people start discussing whether you deserve to remain there at all.
Of course, Ye Futian handles these concerns the same way he handles most things, by pretending they aren’t concerns.
That approach works surprisingly well, at least for a while.
Between troublesome classmates, family expectations, and the constant pressure surrounding cultivation, his peaceful days gradually become harder to maintain. The more attention he attracts, the more people begin questioning whether the academy’s laziest student is really as simple as he appears.
