At fifteen, Chen Yuan had his fate tested. The stone stele turned pitch-black, and he was judged to have a "doomed fate."
His whole clan laughed at him. His father turned away. That night, his mother packed an old blade, went alone into Qingzhou's forbidden lands, and never came back. She hadn't gone there to die. She'd gone to trade her life for her son's.
He lay dying in a pool of blood in the woodshed when a book floated up by itself.
[Book of Defying Fate: See people's destinies, seize the fate of the dead, and melt ten thousand destinies to forge your own.]
At the twelfth-month tournament, he punched straight through the fighting platform and laid out the debts of sixteen years, one by one beneath the ancestral tablets in the clan shrine.
The truth came to light that very day: the fate he'd been judged to have was supposed to be heavenly grade. The favored daughter of the Xie family, adored by all on the high platform, had the destiny carved out of his.
When she finally found him, she reached for his sleeve with red-rimmed eyes.
He shook her off.
"Miss Xie. There is nothing between us."
He had burned his own fate to gain those things, and he had no intention of giving any of them back. She would have to repay the life she owed him herself, one step at a time.
