Lin Fengming is seventeen, with a qi and blood reading of just 0.87 calories.
With only two months until the martial arts entrance exam, he still falls short of even the minimum standard. Meanwhile, the Tiansheng Martial Arts Academy where he grew up is losing students, its equipment is falling apart, and the Martial Arts Association is about to revoke its license.
Until one night.
In an old wooden post that had stood in the academy for more than forty years, he discovers a dried bloodstain.
The moment his finger touches it, Lin Fengming sees a man who died many years ago.
The man is covered in blood. In the final moments of his life, he threw 999 punches at the post.
From then on, Lin Fengming discovers that he can see the “martial traces” the dead have left behind in this world.
A bloodstain might conceal the final fist technique a martial artist comprehended.
A broken blade might record its owner’s last battle before death.
Others have to keep making mistakes as they train in martial arts.
Lin Fengming can see exactly how they won, and how they died.
But martial traces come at a price.
Each time he enters the memories of the dead, he has to relive their fear, pain, and death.
Then one day, he uncovers an even more unsettling truth.
The founder of the academy, dead for forty years, left behind a martial trace.
An unknown martial artist who died in the wilderness left one, too.
But his father, missing for seven years, left nothing.
And beneath the Tiansheng Martial Arts Academy lies a door older than the history of modern martial arts.
When that door awakens for the first time, Lin Fengming hears his father’s voice, seven years after his disappearance.
“Fengming.”
“Don’t open the door.”
