The Wrong Imitation

The Azure Cloud Sect did not collapse the morning after the needle fell silent. It did something far more dangerous: It tried to act normal.

 

The bells rang on schedule. The training fields opened at the usual hour. The Elders arrived with disciplined expressions and carefully neutral tones. From the outside, the sect looked functional—stable, even.

 

But beneath that routine, something had shifted. Not with a bang, but with a series of idiotic whispers.

 

Shin Yung noticed it from his pavilion window.

 

He reached for a teapot, his hand moving through the air with a grace he didn't feel. He watched the amber liquid leave the spout, spiraling into the porcelain cup, but the sound—the sharp, splashing tinkle of water—arrived a full second later. It was nauseating. Every motion felt like a ghost limb trying to catch up to a body that had already left the room.

 

He closed his eyes and tried to call for the System, but the blue interface didn't respond. Instead, a vast, static-filled void pulsed behind his eyelids. It looked like a broken transmission—gray noise, flickering jagged lines, and a hum that vibrated in his teeth. It wasn't just "off"; it was a fractured reality refusing to render. He felt like a poorly edited video file, skipping frames in a world that demanded fluidity.

 

 

His headache was still there, throbbing like a low-frequency reminder that his brain had just been forcibly restarted. He sat by the window, watching the morning exercises, hoping for a return to the usual discipline.

 

However, what he saw made him question his own sanity.

 

"What in the hell..." Shin Yung muttered, gripping the windowsill. "...are they doing?"

Below him, a group of fifty outer disciples were gathered. They weren't practicing the Cloud Flow Sword Style, known for its grace and fluidity.

Instead, they were walking backward.

 

And not just walking backward—they were moving their limbs in spasmodic, broken rhythms, like robots running on dying batteries. One disciple would take a step, freeze for two seconds with one leg in the air, and then violently stomp down. Another was twitching his head to the left every three steps, as if his neck were caught on an invisible hook.

 

Shin Yung felt a cold sweat forming on his back. He recognized those movements.

 

They are copying my lag, he realized with dawning, absurd horror.

 

Yesterday, because of his system desynchronization, Shin Yung’s movements had appeared delayed to everyone else. He was out of step with reality because his brain was crashing. Now, these talented disciples were interpreting his neurological failure as a "High-Level Cultivation Technique."

 

" Sync is a shackle! The Great Anomaly doesn't wait for time, so why should we?" a senior disciple shouted at the front of the group. His face was purple, veins bulging in his forehead. "If you flow, you fail! The universe does not flow around Senior Shin! The universe chokes! We must become the stutter!"

 

Shin Yung closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool wooden frame.

 

You can't teach a glitch, you idiots, he thought. You can't build a curriculum around a system crash. If you force your bodies to mimic an error, you aren't going to ascend. You’re just going to need a chiropractor.

 

He decided to head down to the field, needing to see this madness up close.

 

The world still felt slightly misaligned to him. Every sound arrived a fraction of a second late—the chirp of a bird, the rustle of leaves, the chime of a bell. It was like watching a movie with a poorly synced audio track.

 

But the social atmosphere was worse.

 

Conversations died as he passed. Disciples stopped mid-motion. A few tried to adjust their posture instinctively, then froze halfway, uncertain if such traditional respect was even appropriate for "The Anomaly."

 

He found Wei Jun and Chen Ming at the edge of the training grounds.

 

Wei Jun looked pale, his usual cheerful face replaced by nervous sweating. Chen Ming, the stoic observer, was frowning so deeply his eyebrows nearly merged into one.

 

"Senior Shin!" Wei Jun squeaked, bowing so fast his forehead nearly hit his knees. "You’re... awake."

 

"Senior... how... are... you... feeling... today?" Wei Jun asked. He wasn't just being polite; he was speaking with a mechanical, rhythmic delay, pausing between every word because he genuinely believed that speaking to Shin Yung normally was a sign of low-level cultivation. He looked like he was vibrating with nervous energy, his eyes darting to Shin Yung’s shadow as if expecting it to move on its own.

 

"What is happening here, Wei Jun?" Shin Yung asked flatly, pointing at a disciple who was trying to circulate Qi while standing on one finger, his face a dangerous shade of violet.

 

"It’s... the 'Glitch Meditation', Senior," Wei Jun whispered, glancing around fearfully. "Rumors say you passed the needle not through power, but by... existing without synchronization. They think if they can turn off their body's 'sync,' they can reach your realm."

 

Chen Ming nodded. "They believe harmony is a prison for ordinary people. They think being 'wrong' is the key to divinity."

 

Chen Ming, however, looked weary. "It’s not just the outer court, Senior," he muttered, leaning in closer. "The Inner Circle is in a state of intellectual civil war. I saw two Core Disciples arguing by the library this morning. One claimed that our 'Cloud Flow' style has been a mistake for a thousand years because it’s 'too fast' to catch the Dao. They’re calling for a revised manual—one that incorporates 'The Sacred Pause.' They think you’ve discovered that the universe is lagging, and we’re all just too well-synced to notice."

 

Shin Yung watched the chaos escalate.

 

"Senior Brother Han!" a younger disciple cried out from the third row. His body was trembling violently. "My Qi... it feels like it’s flowing backward! It’s... extremely uncomfortable!"

 

"Good!" the group leader shouted, his eyes wild. "Uncomfort is proof that your logic is breaking! Force your Dantian to reject the energy! Senior Shin made the water flow upward! Do you think he did that by following the rules?"

 

No, Shin Yung thought, his stomach churning. I did that because the rules of the world failed to catch me. I didn't break them. They missed me.

 

"Don't do that," Shin Yung whispered, though his voice was too low to be heard.

 

Suddenly, the younger disciple made a strange 'glug' sound. His body stiffened, his eyes rolled back, and he fell flat on his back with his legs still frozen in the air.

 

"He has reached the Deep State!" someone cheered enthusiastically.

 

"IDIOTS!"

 

A booming voice shook the leaves off the nearby trees.

 

Elder Liu, the disciplinarian of the Outer Court, stormed onto the field. He was a mountain of a man with a beard like steel wool. He knelt beside the collapsed disciple, placing a hand on the boy's stomach.

 

The cheering stopped instantly. A heavy silence fell.

 

Elder Liu lifted his hand, his face red with fury. "He hasn't reached a Deep State! He has a high-level abdominal cramp! His Qi is blocked in his intestines because he tried to hold his breath while walking backward!"

 

Elder Liu looked like a man who had spent fifty years building a cathedral only to watch a group of monkeys start peeling the gold off the walls to see if it tasted like bananas. He wiped the sweat from his brow, his hands trembling with a mix of exhaustion and existential insult.

 

"Bring the stretcher!" Liu roared at a pair of terrified medics.

 

"And someone tell the Alchemist Hall we need more digestive pills and muscle relaxants than spirit stones today! At this rate, half the sect will achieve enlightenment in the infirmary by sunset. I have disciples who have spent decades perfecting the harmony of the soul, and now they’re throwing it all away to see who can give themselves the worst case of constipation in the name of 'The Anomaly'."

 

The disciples gasped.

 

"Who authorized this? What style is this? This isn't in the manuals!" Elder Liu roared.

 

"It is the Formless Lag of the Anomaly," the senior disciple replied, though his voice was now trembling. "We... we are trying to shed the constraints of continuity, Elder. As Senior Shin did."

 

Every eye on the field turned toward the terrace. Toward Shin Yung.

 

Shin Yung froze. He wanted to scream. He wanted to say, "I was just dizzy! My brain was short-circuiting, not a secret technique!"

 

But he couldn't. If he admitted it was a fake, the Elders would stop fearing him. If they stopped fearing him, they would start dissecting him.

 

Shin Yung looked past the training grounds and saw Su Yan. She was surrounded. A dozen junior girls and a few frantic were hounding her with questions.

 

"Sister Su, when he moves, is it true that his intent is already at the finish line while his body is still at the start?"

 

"Su Yan, you brought him here—did he show you the secret of the Un-Synced Heart?"

 

Su Yan looked trapped. Her shoulders were hunched, her face a mask of polite horror. She was caught in the worst kind of fame: the pride of having discovered a genius, and the terror of realizing that the genius was a virus. She caught Shin Yung’s eye for a split second, and the look she gave him was a plea for a reality that made sense again.

 

The crowd thinned when the elders intervened, sharp voices cutting through the frenzy. Questions died mid-sentence. Disciples were pulled back by their sleeves.

 

"You have to stop them," Su Yan said, finally free, her voice close now—too close.

 

He watched the disciple being carried away, legs still stuck in a rigid V-shape.

 

"I can't, Su Yan."

 

"You can," Su Yan hissed, stepping up beside him.

 

Her face was pale with stress.

 

"Tell them it’s wrong."

 

"If I tell them it’s wrong, they’ll just think it’s a 'mental test'," Shin Yung replied bitterly.

"Cultivators are the most stubborn people in the world. The more I forbid it, the more they’ll think I’m hoarding a great secret."

 

Shin Yung realized.

 

I'm a god to them, which means every 'no' I say is just a 'yes' they haven't deciphered yet. Every action I take only strengthens the myth.

 

He walked away, unable to watch the tragic comedy any longer. However, his path was blocked by three disciples.

 

They froze. Literally. One foot hovering, eyes unblinking.

 

"Gree... tings... Se... nior... Shin," their leader said, giving a one-second pause between every word to mimic Shin Yung’s audio delay.

 

"Gree... tings."

 

Shin Yung stared at them. The absurdity of it—after everything that had happened—made the corners of his mouth twitch.

 

"Stop," Shin Yung said softly.

 

The disciple’s hovering foot wobbled. "Senior?"

 

"The path to the Dao..." Shin Yung improvised, his mind racing for a bullshit excuse that could save their legs without revealing his secret. "...is not found by imitating the phenomenon, but by understanding the stillness behind the error."

 

He pointed at the boy’s trembling leg. "Put your foot down. The earth has not rejected you yet."

 

The disciple slammed his foot down, relief flooding his face. "Thank you for the guidance! I... I thought I had to reject gravity to understand your level."

 

"Gravity is useful," Shin Yung said dryly, walking past them. "Keep it. You'll miss it when it's gone."

 

As he walked away, he heard them whispering fervently behind him.

 

"Did you hear that? 'The earth has not rejected you YET.' That implies that for him, the earth ALREADY rejects his steps!"

 

" He’s granting us gravity... because we aren't ready to fall upward."

 

Shin Yung closed his eyes. He couldn't win. Every word he spoke was filtered through the lens of their awe and fear.

 

He reached his pavilion and slammed the door. The silence offered no comfort.

 

"They are treating me like a method," he whispered to the empty room.

 

Suddenly, a red light flickered in his mind. It wasn't the friendly blue interface. It was jagged and unstable.

 

[ System Diagnostics ] [ Anomaly Detected: Recursive Imitation ] [ Local Reality is attempting to standardize the 'Error'. ]

[ Reality Synchronization (RS): 0.04% ] [ Status: Rising ]

 

Shin Yung stared at the number. It wasn't an experience bar.

 

"It’s a resistance meter," he realized, his blood turning cold.

 

The world wasn't accepting him. The world was trying to force him to synchronize. The more the disciples copied him, the more the Sect tried to define him, the higher that number would go.

 

And if it reached 100%... reality would complete the synchronization process. 

The correction would be absolute. 

Shin Yung would no longer qualify as an existing entity.

 

Outside, a small explosion rocked the training grounds—someone had likely tried to mix Fire and Water Qi to simulate a "paradox."

 

Shin Yung pulled the blanket over his head.

 

"They’re going to kill themselves," he groaned into the darkness.

 

"And the history books will call it 'The Shin Yung Enlightenment'."

 

There was laughter in his heart. But it tasted like ash.