Taking the Chosen One's Place from the Start: I'll Borrow This Cheat First

Jianghaishi has martial arts.

The Martial Arts Stele appears once every hundred years. It bears nine markings, and comprehending one lets you break through a realm. The geniuses on the Prodigy Rankings reach the first rank at seventeen, the third rank at twenty, and break through each realm in just one year.

Shen Mo is twenty-four, with a blood-and-qi score of nine cards. Ten cards is the threshold for becoming a martial apprentice. He’s one card short. He’s been stuck there for six years, mocked for every one of them.

He’s the last temple keeper at the City God Temple. He sweeps the courtyard and chops wood: two bundles a day, thirty jin apiece. He’s been doing it for twenty-two years.

Then, on the day the Martial Arts Stele appeared, he saw a ball of golden light floating above the head of a prodigy.

[Take his place, and that light will be yours.]

He reached out and grabbed it.

The prodigy vomited blood on the spot. His insight was interrupted, and one of his hands was ruined. Shen Mo went from being a nobody who wasn’t even a martial apprentice to reaching the first rank in a single step. He took someone else’s place once more, and reached the second rank.

That was when he realized, everyone in the city had light above their heads.

And beneath the well that had run dry for twenty-two years, the golden light floating there was beyond counting.