[Fantasy premise + Pure martial arts + System + Playing it safe + Power progression + No female lead]
Chen Yan is the least remarkable soldier in charge of collecting weapons at Blackstone Pass. Every day, he cleans broken spears in piles of corpses, records the dead, and repairs damaged weapons.
Until one night, he saw the final move of a fallen soldier in a bloodstained spearhead.
The Repository of Ten Thousand Weapons lets him read the traces of martial arts left behind by the owners of real, damaged weapons before they died.
But the System doesn't grant cultivation realms, hand out complete techniques, or heal his wounds for him.
Understanding a move doesn't mean his body can withstand it.
One wrong step in training can tear his muscles and bones apart. One extra repetition might cost him his life.
So Chen Yan collects weapons and acts weak by day, then shuts himself away to practice at night. He'll always retreat rather than risk his life showing off. Unless he's forced to act, nobody knows how many deadly moves this weapon collector has hidden away.
From the ruined Blackstone Pass to the beacons of the Nine Wilds, from the rise and fall of dynasties to the decline of martial arts, he follows the trail of broken weapons for five hundred years, preserving the names of generations of unknown soldiers.
Only when someone tries to use the Ten Thousand Weapons Stele to lock the world's martial arts back into the hands of a privileged few does Chen Yan realize that the Repository of Ten Thousand Weapons was never merely a gift.
Five hundred years later, he shuts down the System with his own hands and uses the martial arts he cultivated to break the limits of heaven and earth for the first time.
Cultivation stages: Listening to Breath, Gathering Force, Bone Tempering, Embracing the Pass, Opening the Furnace, Blood Changing, Mountain Suppression, Sea Gazing, Heaven-Connecting, Heavenly Gate
