In the final years of the Great Zhao dynasty, martial arts schools and merchant protection corps stood side by side in the land of Jinmen, where firearms and bare-knuckle combat both held sway. Chen Yan, born in the salt works, was a lowly sparring servant at a declining boxing school. By chance, he awakened a fragmentary mirror in his sea of consciousness. His burden value was nine, and he could analyze every fighting style and supernatural technique he saw.
He joined Zhao Tieshan's escort group on a run along the old Zhili road. Ambushed midway by the Fire Oil Gang, he turned the tide by precisely following up with a Half-Step Collapse Fist strike. After completing his body tempering, he unlocked the Root-Locking Gate. He then encountered a forbidden-hand apothecary, classified in the Zhenwu Bureau's restricted records, and the entire team was caught in a White Frost Ambush, their lives hanging by a thread.
Chen Yan poured his qi and blood into his fists and broke through the apothecary's skin, which was immune to physical attacks. He led the team in slaying the medicine corpse and entered the first stage of meridian opening. A single medicine core caused a sensation throughout Jinmen, and the name of the lowly sparring servant suddenly rang through the headquarters of the merchant protection corps.
