Broken Grain

My name is Shen Mo, a contract sweeper who specializes in burning the bodies of defaulters. There is an iron law in this world - contract is power, breach of contract is death. Everyone has oath lines carved on their skin. The deeper the lines, the stronger the power. Those who breach the contract will have their tattoos broken and their bodies executed, and I will dispose of their corpses. I thought I would live like this for the rest of my life, until late that night, a cold-faced female judge broke into my crematorium. Her name is Ye Zhiqiu, the youngest silver pattern judge in the history of the temple, and has the "eye of truth" that can see through all defaulters. But she stared at me for a long time and finally said, "I can't see through you." Because she doesn't know that the broken lines on my body are not the mark of a breach of contract, but the curse of my bloodline. My ancestors once signed a taboo covenant with the "Lord of the Contract" in this world - using blood as a contract to protect the balance from generation to generation. The price is that each generation of successors will be engraved with the broken marks of all the ancestors' defaulters. When Master Ye Zhiqiu's relic - a ring engraved with the truth - fell into my hands, I was forced to be involved in a conspiracy that swept the entire world. Someone at the top of the temple forged a contract and squeezed the souls of the defaulters; the owner of the contract was not a god, but an alchemist who had been tortured for two thousand years; and my broken heart was the only key to awaken his true power or end his pain. What's even more troublesome is that the cold-faced female judge started looking at me differently at some point. She betrayed the temple for me, she almost lost her eyes for me, she cried "you can't die" for me.