Chapter 27
When everyone panicked, he yawned.
"WAKE UP, YOU LAZY BUM!" shouted one of his teammates, a burly man whose face was flushed red with both anger and exhaustion as he struggled to fend off attacks from three opponents at once.
"WE NEED YOUR STRENGTH!"
Huan Zheng did not respond—he merely rolled slightly to the side, avoiding a sliver of sunlight that suddenly shone into his eyes, then let out a long sigh that sounded like someone who had just sipped warm tea on a cool morning.
"Relax, my friend," he said in a lazy tone that sounded like a lullaby, "this game won't end just because one person is sleeping. Besides, look—"
He raised one index finger, pointing toward the east where the enemy's flag fluttered arrogantly.
"Your team is still safe. Your flag hasn't been taken. So there's no reason to panic."
The teammate nearly spat in Huan Zheng's face, but an incoming attack forced him back into the fight, curses still spilling from his mouth, while Huan Zheng only gave a faint smile—a smile unseen by anyone except perhaps Ling Xu, who watched him from afar with a mix of amusement and the urge to throw a stone at his head.
On the other side of the field, Ling Xu's team was facing unexpected difficulty—a team composed of recruitment candidates from the Blood Sword Sect, one of the most influential sects in Tianzhu, moved with such perfect coordination that they looked like a single body with a thousand hands, pressing Ling Xu's team from all directions with movements that never stopped, never paused, like waves endlessly crashing against rocks without ever tiring.
"Lin Xue!" shouted the female team leader, her voice hoarse from issuing too many commands.
"We need your help in the center! Our defense is starting to collapse!"
Ling Xu sighed—the same kind of sigh she often let out whenever Huan Zheng did something incredibly foolish, but this time it came from knowing she had to show a bit of her ability if she didn't want her team to suffer a crushing defeat and attract even more attention than they already had.
She dashed forward, her dark blue robe fluttering like the wings of an owl in the night, and with a swift yet controlled motion, she released thirty poisoned needles at once.
Not deadly poison, only a temporary paralytic she concocted from ordinary herbs—striking thirty enemies precisely on their shoulders and arms, causing their weapons to fall to the ground with clattering sounds like small bells dropping from a tower.
"Hey, you're actually amazing!" exclaimed one of her teammates in admiration, but Ling Xu ignored the praise—she instead glanced toward the eastern side of the field where Huan Zheng still lay on his back, and for a moment, their gazes met through the gaps between battling cultivators, and Ling Xu could see the corner of Huan Zheng's lips lift slightly.
It wasn't a proud smile, but one that said:
"I knew you could do it, Miss Poison. I never doubted that."
Amid the chaos of the match entering a critical stage—where Huan Zheng's team was falling far behind as its members grew exhausted from facing a more coordinated enemy, while their only hope still lay sprawled beneath an artificial cherry blossom tree with his hands as a pillow and eyes closed like someone vacationing on a private beach—an eerie silence suddenly enveloped the field.
Not because the battle had stopped, but because everyone felt a different kind of vibration, one that came not from the sky or the earth, but from the body of a man who had just yawned and began scratching his head in a lazy yet oddly deliberate motion.
"Finally awake, you lazy bum!" shouted the burly teammate again, his face now red not only from anger but also from relief that nearly made him cry.
"QUICK, PULL THE FLAG BEFORE WE ALL DIE!"
Huan Zheng—still going by the name Zheng Huan for the time being—let out a long sigh like someone who had just been told his tea was gone and no one could get him more, then stood up with a movement that was incredibly slow, incredibly lazy, utterly unhurried, as if he were stretching after an overly long nap even though he had only been lying there for less than half an hour.
"Alright, alright," he said while scratching his butt—literally scratching his butt, in front of dozens of cultivators who stared at him with expressions ranging from despair, confusion, to murderous intent—then walked toward his team's flagpole with a staggering gait like someone who had just awakened from a coma.
"Stop yelling. My head hurts."
And then, with one hand still half-raised after finishing scratching his butt, Huan Zheng grabbed his team's flag.
Not with lightning speed, not with an explosive burst of Qi, but with a pull so ordinary, so lazy, so utterly unenthusiastic that several members of the opposing team even laughed, thinking this man was merely a new source of amusement to brighten an otherwise dull day.
But their laughter was cut short when something happened: every member of the opposing team—more than forty people, with cultivation levels ranging from First Star to Twentieth-Level Supernatural Star—was blown backward simultaneously like rag dolls caught in a hurricane, their bodies tumbling across the lush grass, some clutching their shoulders or waists with pained expressions even though their injuries were minor, mere scratches and bruises that would fade within hours, yet what silenced them was not the pain—but the realization that a single lazy pull from a man who had just scratched his butt had sent them all flying like dry leaves in autumn.
"Wha… what just happened?" whispered a female cultivator with wide eyes, her neatly arranged hair now disheveled from rolling on the ground, while beside her, her teammate could only shake his head blankly like someone who had just witnessed a miracle too absurd to believe.
Huan Zheng did not answer.
He simply released the flag from his hand, letting it fall to the ground with the soft flap of cloth that sounded utterly ordinary amid the suffocating silence, then turned and walked back beneath the artificial cherry blossom tree with the same laziness, the same staggering gait, the same unhurried pace, as if what he had just done was nothing more than opening a window in the morning, not defeating dozens of cultivators with a single pull he didn't even consider an effort.
"Zheng Huan," called Ling Xu from afar, her voice trembling between admiration and annoyance—admiration because she knew no one on this field could do what Huan Zheng had just done, and annoyance because he did it with an attitude that made everyone want to punch him, "could you at least pretend to be a little tired? So they won't get too suspicious?"
Huan Zheng turned his head, raising one eyebrow with his signature lazy expression, then replied in a voice loud enough for everyone on the field to hear—perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, no one could tell, as his face remained as expressionless as a gravestone.
"Tired? For what? I only pulled a flag, not lifted a mountain."
Fhooooh!!
To be continued…