Wait, why duck Bai Jiutan? If the medicine puts you back in ship shape and if Nameless does no lasting damage (big ifs for sure) then this is an opportunity to take him down in the most definitive manner possible. Not to mention all the hilarious demands Jing might make when/if he wins.
Because it's reasonable to pick one goal and stick to it. Trying to do everything at once seems like it could backfire. If you want to fight Bai Jiutian, then there is a path there that can lead us to victory, and that's BA. Why would you fight Bai Jiutian with that level of humiliation at stake and spend the time we could be learning about him studying up on Nameless
We would need Yandi's tips to help us out there, because he came here for the express purpose of fighting BJ. The Sword Saint trained Yandi, so it's safe to say that the man knows a lot about how to defeat Huashan techniques. The Shaolin manual that we'd gain from defeating Nameless wouldn't be very helpful to us because it's not like we could become a monster in the technique a night before the match with BJ. I suppose the Abbot might be willing to give us a little cram session on it in private, especially since he wants to see us wipe the shit-eating grin from BJ's face, but that still doesn't show us how we'd actually go about countering BJ's actual techniques and abilities.
Another option would be to ask Yiling for tips, since she apparently almost beat him last year. Hopefully she hates that smarmy little shit more than she hates us and just wants to see the fucker go down.
Thing is, Jing absolutely has to win both fights. Whatever insidious plot is served by having Nameless take the tournament cannot be allowed to come to fruition. That is assuming of course that Nameless actually plans to win the tournament, and that she is affiliated with the WiB conspiracy. But more paranoid speculation is useless at this point. The -less trio are dodgy foreign devils and they have to be stopped. I like to think that if it came down to it, Jing would swallow his pride and suffer the depredations of Bai Jiutan, Zhang Jue and all the rest if it meant saving the day, but with the way the votes are going that clearly isn't the case and fair enough. Fuck begging forgiveness from that twerp.
All of the evidence that we have suggests that the -less trio and the conspiracy taking place here are completely unrelated:
“I said her style was Persian, but now I can be a bit more specific. Her martial arts hail from a particular group… a Zoroastrian fire cult. They have been making inroads into the Central Plains for a while, but the Eight Sects probably don’t know about them just yet. My uncle has had dealings with this particular cult in the past. That’s all I can tell you about. The rest are family secrets,”
...
“You are a brave fighter, little Tujue girl. I came searching for the boy prince but found something more fun,” says the person - no, woman - in black. She is advancing upon Yunzi now, talking in Han - she is definitely from the Central Plains and not a Tujue tribesperson.
The Persians are shady, but this conspiracy seems to be homegrown. Also, it is important to note that the group associated with the Woman-in-Black seems to be all-female, but we know that Shapeless is male. It doesn't seem to be the case that they would know a technique like the Yuhua Duqing Palm, either. All the evidence points to them being an entirely separate group that's unrelated to the conspiracy.
Trying to defeat Nameless (which isn't even part of the challenge), then come into a fight against Bai Jiutian without the proper preparation seems like a disaster waiting to happen. That's why I feel that the options that work best are either AB or BA. With AB, you fight, and hopefully beat, Nameless, then you refuse to fight BJ on the grounds that you never accept a "gift" from an opponent that wants to humiliate you - allowing us to get away from the challenge without losing too much respect. We then gather our strength so we can fight him later. With BA, you put all your focus on BJ and you really prepare to take him out.
That being said, I suppose it is possible to win against Nameless and BJ, it's just significantly harder. I just think that there's a lot at stake and I'd rather not do everything at once and fuck up horribly at the end.