[Three years in the black market made him a lone shadow who fought his way to the peak of Body Tempering. After his coming-of-age ceremony, he became a boy from the bottom rung, shouldering the weight of the world.]
In the future Federation, high-martial combat rules the world, and class barriers loom like an impassable chasm. When Lin Mo was fifteen, his parents mysteriously died in a research institute explosion, leaving behind a mountain of debt and a younger sister afflicted with a rare genetic disease. Taking the alias “Shadow,” Lin Mo plunged into the underground black-market arena and fought for his life on the edge of death for three years. With the heaven-defying talent of his innate “Pure Breath Physique,” he climbed to the top of the Hive Arena over a mountain of corpses.
To protect his family and uncover the truth, Lin Mo shed his black-market alias and entered a public high-martial academy. His peak Body Tempering strength, the incomplete cultivation manual his parents left behind, and fighting alongside his childhood friend Zhao Hu helped him stand out in academy tournaments and the city qualifiers, but also exposed his whereabouts time and again. From the mud of the residential districts to the spotlight of the global league, he combined the ruthlessness of black-market brawling with the discipline of academy training. As he outmaneuvered Hive informants and noble students, he pieced together the fragments of the truth behind his parents' deaths.
The fatal flaws in the psionic energy project, the schemes of Federation elders, a secret invitation from the Interstellar Alliance... As shadow collided with light, and personal grudges intertwined with class injustice, Lin Mo was no longer “Shadow,” fighting merely to survive. He wielded martial arts as a blade to cut through the fog of power monopolies, and kept the peace of those he loved alight in his heart. This journey of redemption, which began in the black market, would make him a new legend who broke the mold of the high-martial age.
“I came from the darkness, not to sink into it, but to illuminate every faint light that has been trampled.”
