The Wood Element Leaves No Trace

There was a ranking in the martial world, listing the ten greatest masters of the age.

The ranking was organized by "appearance." When practitioners of external martial arts reached a certain level, their temples bulged like walnuts. That was the only fatal point on their entire bodies, and a single willow leaf piercing it would kill them. Those who reached the pinnacle returned to simplicity, revealing nothing at all. The martial world called such people "Formless."

Ten years ago, a tenth-place name appeared on the ranking out of nowhere: Su Mu.

No title, no sect, and nothing listed under weapons. For ten years, the martial world had been unable to answer three questions: Who was he? What made him worthy? Why did he fight unarmed?

No one knew he was the very first Formless master, once erased from the top of the ranking with a stroke of a vermilion brush. His nickname was "Leaf."

Now he roamed the martial world beneath a bamboo hat. In every town he visited, he stumbled upon a case, and behind every case was a hand reaching out from the capital. When he investigated to the end, he discovered that the ranking was no honor, but a business in raising poisonous insects. Behind fifty years of breeding them stood a man who would not allow another master to rise in the world.

Then his sworn brother was getting married, and the bride was the younger sister of Liu Qingyi, ranked fourth. The wedding feast turned into a killing ground, forcing him to make his first move in ten years.

A willow leaf, driven in at a slant by half an inch.

The ten people ranked above him began to lose sleep.