The morning mist clung lazily to the mountains of the Azure Cloud Sect.
Birds chirped. Bamboo rustled in the wind. The air held that calm, ancient silence only cultivators understood.
And in the middle of all this spiritual serenity...
- "Damn it! Who stole my steamed buns again?!"
Lian stormed out of his small wooden hut, barefoot and half-asleep, waving a pair of chopsticks like they were divine weapons.
He wasn't a sect elder. He wasn't even a proper inner disciple.
He was just... Lian.
The guy responsible for washing robes, sweeping the stairs, and somehow burning rice in a spirit-powered cooking pot.
But fate is strange.
Yesterday, while trying to take a nap under a peach tree, Lian accidentally sat in the Elder's Meditation Array. The moment he yawned, the ancient formation flared to life—runes spinning, light flashing...
A passing elder saw it and bowed deeply, whispering:
- "This… This must be the Dao of Sleep Enlightenment…!"
By the time Lian woke up, word had already spread.
"Senior Brother Lian has entered a state of transcendent harmony through inaction!"
"His cultivation must be unfathomable!"
Lian, holding his stomach and still looking for his missing buns, simply scratched his head.
- "Why does everyone keep calling me senior brother now? I just want breakfast..."
Somewhere nearby, a girl in white robes watched him from behind a tree.
- "To remain so humble after reaching enlightenment… Truly a sage beyond sages..."
And so began the legend of Lian—the man who cultivated the Dao by doing absolutely nothing.