Shen Li was born with defective meridians, a “leaky” waste of a cultivator.
When others cultivate, their qi enters the body and gathers in their dantian. When he cultivates, it trickles away through his meridians until every last drop is gone.
For nineteen years, all he could do was tend the Shen family's nearly bankrupt sword workshop, sharpening and repairing other people's swords and cleaning up broken weapons.
Then, one day, a bloodstained broken sword was tossed in front of him.
Shen Li pressed his left hand against the crack and struck it once with his hammer.
A dead man's voice rang out from inside the sword.
Only then did he discover that any broken weapon that had truly taken a life might retain the owner's final battle.
He could hear them.
And he could repair broken weapons, borrowing the final strike their owners had made in life.
One broken sword let him defeat a true martial artist for the first time.
Another shattered blade led him back to the old Black Gorge case from ten years ago, when thirty thousand people were buried.
His father, Shen Guanshan, was the traitorous general accused by the world of opening the city gates and causing the deaths of thirty thousand defenders.
Everyone said the Shen family deserved to die.
Only the broken sword his father left behind, silent for ten years, finally spoke once.
It had only one fragmentary message:
**“Don't trust... the military records.”**
From that moment on, Shen Li knew.
He wasn't just repairing a broken sword.
He would follow the weapons of the dead across the land, sword by sword, and dig up the truth someone had buried ten years ago.
