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Fine. Then just run in circles. Whatever. The point is to not show them our aces and to make them think we have none. The extra level of subterfuge is there exactly for this purpose - it gives them believable alternatives to explain our performance with.

 

I, IV, A.

Let me properly outline my proposal.

Double Identities: I think the A/B choice gives us a great opportunity to retain the spirit of our original plan (learn more about our opponents while making others doubt our ability and/or identity) while improving it. As I mentioned before, the gist of it is that we will go around telling everyone we are the Great Apprentice of the Southern Maniac, we are here to lay the smackdown, why not take bets on me, etc. But instead of intimidating anybody, we will be relatively flighty and taunting, easy-going and delighting in the ban on fights outside the tournament. Given our age as well, it will be very easy to make many people think that Jing is an imposter who is relying on this ban to just swill a few drinks, and probably does not even have an invitation, etc.

Next step, we will enter the competition with a false name, and proceed as we had originally planned; win a couple of battles without showing off many of our abilities or true skill, and then lose. This was always what we were going to do, right? Except now, our opponents will be even more pissed or disdainful, allowing people to think that the matches we win are upsets predicated on arrogance. So, again, what we are doing is making the process smoother.

The result: depending on what rumours they hear, our future challengers, when they meet us, will think: (1) this boy is an imposter and useless in the tournament; (2) this boy may really be the apprentice but he is useless in the tournament; (3) this boy fought in the tournament and didn't do very well, but we're not sure if he's got much to do with the rumours about the apprentice; and so forth. Certainly some might suspect there is more to us than we seem, but that will happen anyway with our original plan - it's inevitable when the Southern Maniac is concerned. The great advantage to this additional subterfuge is this: in the original, we just need to beat a couple of them and everyone else will buckle up. In this version, even when we beat two or three, there will be an even greater conflagration of rumours: did Xu Jing beat them, or the false name we gave at the tournament? Was it the imposter or the real apprentice? Who is who? Who is the one standing in front of me? This will extend our advantage and give us much greater flexibility.

Poetry, Singing, Drinking, Talking: From every episode in our past, we can see that Jing has two primary talents: one, strength in combat; two, a natural 'nous' and a way of talking to people. Only the snake girl has ever caught Jing out on the second count; it is this ability we are counting on for the above plan, and I think this will benefit us in medium and long term as well.

In the short term, a key part of this double identity will be to in fact meet with as many people as possible before the tournament, parade ourselves around, talk ourselves up as 'apparently Zhang's apprentice' while appearing arrogant and foolish and generally seeming not very much like the Southern Maniac. What better than an easy-going fellow who's telling tall tales about the Maniac while drinking in the taverns?

In the medium term, we will depend on similar resources to complete Zhang's challenge and to infiltrate Yuhua Hall. As we discovered in the case of Qingcheng (?), infiltration can only get us so far when the point is to challenge and defeat the school's young stars, rather than assassination or theft or sabotage. These supplementary skills will allow us to do the groundwork in finding out information or avoiding a mob of angry people coming after us (as much). For Yuhua Hall, I'm sure sleight of hand and the like will also help - but hey, if people want maximum beast with two backs for Jing, we want someone who can take a drink, who can say some nice words, etc.

In the long term, we want to be a person who might have a brutal and unorthodox reputation, but turn out to be pretty likeable in person. I think that is the way we will be able to make friends and inspire loyalty and tap into the welath of unorthodox ability spread throughout the pugilistic world. We don't want to be someone who is a fiersome killer, then you meet him and it turns out he puts laxatives in your tea and steals your coin - lots of people talk about wanting to be a khan, and ultimately I think most people don't want a Dio-Jing anyway.

In short, what I am proposing is that we take our non-combat abilities, as well as the reputation of the apprentice of the Southern Master, and exploit both to our fullest advantage in our goal of making everyone think we are no threat. Where our original plan involved suppressing our reputation, I think it is better to turn the negative into a positive if possible.

Further modifications welcome, but I think this would be much more interesting.

 

Ok, let's give it a whirl.
I, IV, A

 

II, IV, A

 

I may be dense here, but if we enter under a false name and put a mask on, people will think Jing skipped out on the tournament. If we enter under a false name, but with Jing's face, people will recognize him and just call him out on it. If we've been swilling booze in the taverns and taunting the participants, people will recognize us just by face, "oh, it's Xu Jing."
Moreover, we'll have to get a little farther in the tournament if we want a preview of the Eight Student's talents.

 

That is the point. Who is he, really? Why he calls himself Xu Jing, yet registers under another name? What's his deal?

This is the kind of questions we want them to ask themselves.

 

But our face remains the same, doesn't it? Who gives a shit what the dude that's laying down the smack on you calls himself, what matters is that he can fight.

Unless I'm misunderstanding this plan, this is just needless theatrics, the same result can be achieved by simply entering under our name and losing some matches down the road. Sure, we can taunt them down in the bars and taverns, I'm down with that, but why the name and identity juggling?

Besides that, I'm still more in favor of entering under a Mystary identity.

 

But we won't be laying down the smack to powerful opponents. Look:

What do you consider a preview?
A 1-on-1 battle against one of the Eight in the last stage is impossible to win without revealing our hand. If we lose a battle in the final stage, we are eliminated.

The only combat information we'll get without leaking our own is in the preliminary stages. We will also supplement it with other sources, such as the "locker room", and whatever else we find available.

The whole post is worth quoting:

 

The point is that our identity won't even be clear before we enter the tournament. Here is a 15 year old boy who says his name is Xu Jing (in fact, we could give a false name here too, if people don't know what the Southern Maniac's apprentice is called; either way, no matter) and a fiersome apprentice, and acts generally like he has no gravitas or authority as you might expect. Then he enters with a different name, but the same face - both the onlookers and our opponents will then think: (1) Oh, this is his real name, he's not Xu Jing the Apprentice, he was having us on; (2) Oh, maybe this is the real name of the apprentice - but why is he so bad at fighting?

Basically, because there is not much information available to any of our interlocutors about our real identity, and because our face itself is not known either, almost every combination benefits us by adding to the confusion. (treave if I am mistaken here let us know). Baltika9 it wouldn't be the end of the world if we went with the original low-profile plan; I just think here's an opportunity to do something interesting which also has cool repercussions for how we can work the situation in Zhang's missions.

And yes, I thought everyone had a consensus that we wouldn't get very far in this tournament. Now you want us to 'lay the smack down' and fight several of the Eight? If we do that everyone will be wary of us, no matter what plan we go with!

 

Ah, I see.
It's a good plan, confuse our opponents and confuse our identities. There's one 'however' here,

Putting our name and identity out there will draw attention to us, and not the positive kind: Zhang isn't well loved and that will extend to us also, at first. With all the taunts that we will be performing with your plan, someone is bound to snap and come at us, or back us into a corner with a group of their bros and then come at us. And then we will have to fight back, not halfheartedly either and people will notice the discrepancies in our performance in the tournament and our performance in the streets. And if by some chance the committee wanted to get Zhang's apprentice out here for more than just humiliating him in the tournament, we will be walking right into their plots. As I said above, Zhang isn't all that well-loved and, come to think of it, neither are we (we pissed off our fair share of people, Songfeng prominently among them), among the Orthodox sects, so we won't have any well-wishers here.

I think we can get through here without anyone even recognizing our presence if we play our cards right and our cloak of anonymity will leave much more options open to us in the future.

 

I guess I am trying to think forward and say, eventually, no matter how quiet we are in the tournament, they will figure out that one dude, apprentice or not, is laying the smack down on the Eight. At that point even fi they don't know we are Zhang's apprentice they will be on guard. If we can keep this deception going, every time we show up, every sect will think, "is this another imposter or the real thing?" Again, I don't think the incognito plan is a bad one, but I'm thinking that this covers more bases.

Does anyone remember, or has treave told us, whether to complete the mission we need to say, after beating someone, "you were beaten by the apprentice of Zhang Jue?" If yes, then that makes my subterfuge even more necessary; if no, perhaps we can try and get all of them namelessly, though I still don't think we'll be that lucky.

 

The question was already raised:

So, basically, do not wander into dark alleys. The town is under a heavy guard.
Alternatively, there will be no one to notice our performance in a dark alley, so feel free to go wild. You are unlikely to be attacked by their best disciples, those really have a vested interest in not being kicked out, and you can easily dispose of common trash.

I think our real identity alllows for more options:

People are taking interest in us. We might be approached by some of the unorthodox members, too.

Yes, the mission requires us to do so. Otherwise we wouldn't contemplate writing our name in blood after supposedly killing Lingshu.

 

Making friends will be much harder if we go boasting around that we are the Southern Maniac's apprentice and act all arrogant while we attract all of our enemies and wannabe heroes to come and get a piece of us. I would much rather we make a few friends and contacts quietly and participate incognito in the tournament.

 

Yes, everyone has to know Zhang's apprentice defeated the Eight Students.

The plan was to tap out without giving too much away and then sitting on the sidelines. We're not going to the finals in this tournament. If it's our real mission you're thinking about, eventually word will get around that Zhang's apprentice is roaming around and challenging the greatest students of the Eight Sects, and beating them. By then, they'll just spread word of our style and appearance and the charade will be up anyways, our face and styles will remain the same. Doubtlessly, they will be more spooked if we just appear out of nowhere and start kicking ass and taking names, much more intimidating that way.

Also, here's the problem with complex plans in general: they are much more prone to going awry if events don't follow your expectations, Shulgi learned that the hard way, and for someone like Jing, who has shit happen to him and often, that's a bad idea. Simple plans are much more flexible and let us seize opportunities as they come. This isn't a "oh noes, shit luck!" argument, it's more of a general observation. Jing has shit happen to him all the time, good and bad, and that shit can break the most complex plan very easily.

 

Why overcomplicate this unnecessary? Why draw attention to ourself where before we were worried someone might spot us as Maniac's apprentice?

I say we go in this incognito. We can then freely mingle with our peers, getting the best info and contacts from them and learning who our targets even are. Something that is unlikely in the extreme if they even suspect we are connected with the Maniac - nobody wants to have anything to do with that lunatic. People are not going to talk to us as openly (or at all), and we decided to join the tournament precisely because of info and contacts we can get from our peers. Let's not sabotage that now.

 

Because there is no harm to it if they do not know whether it is our real identity, and whether we have something to back it up. It keeps the water muddled even after we start mowing the disciples one after the other. It spreads confusion and buys us time in the long run.

Unlike the Maniac, we haven't built a reputation of our own yet. I think people would be interested to know what kind of a person got to train under the tutelage of one of the Great Pugilists.

I kind of agree with you, but I just can't resist playing mind games with our new personality. It fits so well.

 

But if we didn't start this show in the first place, nobody would know about our identity either. You do not muddle the water if nobody knows you are there as it only serves to draw attention to you. If they even suspect we might be connected to the Maniac nobody is going to talk to us, no matter how many identities we throw at them. Or if there is somebody smarter then us there (and there most certainly is) they could feed misinformation to us. And all we get in return is to spread some conflicting rumours about us? Why the hell were we then all worried about keeping our identity a secret just a few update before? So that we could blow it wide open now?

 

Or the people think we are mini-Maniac and flee from the scene.

 

The town is under guard. Infighting is prohibited. Again, we don't have a reputation of being able to kill every guard in town and thus ignore the rules altogether. What would they be afraid of?

Sorry, the incognito ship had sailed when we decided to participate in the tournament. If losing is all we are going to do here, I don't see why we couldn't just watch the match from the sidelines.

We wanted them to think we are useless. This is a more effective way to do it. Simple as that.

 

I, II, A.

 

"Complex plans often go wrong" is a general adage, but you don't trust general adages when there are specific factors in your situation telling you otherwise. As I argued, people know so little about us, our apprenticeship, our name, our face, our skills, etc. - that parading around puffing ourselves up as Super Killer Zhang Jue Junior actually further blurs our true identity. "Oh, that guy, he's a hack" + "Who actually is he, this or that?" is much more 'incognito' than "Oh, here's a strange guy who refuses to tell anyone who he is." And once there is sufficient confusion, even leaking small bits of information by mistake simply adds to the confusion and mitigates the damage, whereas if we are dependent upon nobody knowing about us, those mistakes add up.

And yes, if everyone has to know that it was Zhang's apprentice that just defeated them, then our incognito plan will only last till, the first or second of the Eight. That's still helpful for the tournament, but I think my plan will last us longer.

 

We don't have a reputation so people don't know what to expect. They do not know if we are able to kill every guard or not.

How about death? I don't think it reassures anyone that guards will come after you have died.

 

This is correct, which is why I left the actual registration for a later choice, which I'm sure will also be debated once you find out more about the competition. For now, I'll just say that confusion can be added with A as well as with B.

 

We haven't killed anybody of renown for 2 years now. Why would people suspect us of being a crazy murderer just because we happened to be apprenticed by one? Yes, it shows that we are reckless and probably have got a death wish, but no more than that.

You don't suppose that a person you've met on a street is a psychopath just because you know nothing of them.

If we were able to kill everyone in town, common sense dictates they would've heard about that. Such prowess is hard to keep secret.

 

We voted for joining the tournament for "potential knowledge, contacts and benefits". For information on who our opponents will be. We voted for participating because it gave us access to "lockeroom". Nothing there about giving our real identity. Declaring ourself openly will compromise this badly. Sure, somebody (whoever was responsible for sending us the invitation) might suspect who we truly are even if we remain incognito, but our peers wont - they have no idea that the Maniac's apprentice was even invited to join the tournament.

Hell, if A wins, then I say let's just start taking out our targets right here and now. We are not likely to get much useful info from our peers, but many of out targets are likely to be here - let's do as many as we can. It could really cut down on the time we need to complete this assignment and leave us some free time to start working on our true mission. That would be much more useful than any rumours we might spread about ourself. Time for subtlety is gone.