The Outcast: The Old Celestial Master Taught Me Only the Light-Gathering Technique

[No System + dark humor + solid writing]

Chen Shu is twenty-two and runs an incense and candle shop in a small town in western Hunan.

His main business is making paper figures and paper horses and selling joss money. His side gig... is using light-concentrating magic as a flashlight.

His greatest ambition in life is to coast along until he dies: may the shop stay open, may there always be rice noodles to eat, and may Old Zhou from the rice-noodle shop next door stop teasing him all the time.

Then, one morning, a man in a gray jacket who claimed to be a temporary employee of Everywhere Access stood at his shop entrance and handed him a photograph.

“Practitioners' techniques have all failed at once. Sixty-seven cases. We need someone who can ‘see’ the cause.”

Chen Shu glanced at the photo and leaned his bamboo ladder against the wall.

“I sell joss money. I'm not a doctor.”

“But you can see what nobody else can.”