The Scarred Realm: The Scarless One Breaks the Seals and Ascends to Godhood

Everyone in Cangwu Town was afraid of A-Wu.

Not because he was fierce, but because he was “empty.”

Sunlight cast no shadow on him. His feet left no prints in the mud. Even the flowers from the old locust tree at the village entrance slid off his shoulder instantly, as though they had never touched him. The town’s old Trace Master said the child had a “Traceless Body”: Heaven and Earth took no notice of him, he had not even a trace of life, and he was an ill-omened person destined to be forgotten by the world.

Mountains have their lines, the “geographical traces” formed over billions of years, etched with the roar of shifting tectonic plates. Trees have their lines, the “traces of life” of spring growth and autumn decay, recording the tenderness of rain, dew, and sunlight. Even the blood shed by the black-robed man bore the fractured, violent “battle traces” that told of his struggle before death.

But A-Wu himself looked down and saw that his body was utterly empty, without a single line. Yet he could feel the lines on the copper plate creep along his palm, like water flowing into a dried-up riverbed.

The black-robed man’s final breath brushed A-Wu’s ear. His voice was as faint as mist: “Traceless one... break the traces... undying...”

As the words fell, the black-robed man’s body turned into a sky full of drifting flakes, leaving not a trace behind. Only the copper plate grew hot in A-Wu’s palm. The flowing lines began to twist and reassemble, finally weaving themselves into four words:

“The First Trace.”