Chronicle of Broken Artifacts

Every old thing in the city houses someone who never managed to move on. Lin Mingbei grew up in a scrapyard. His grandfather taught him only three things: how to inspect objects, how to repair them, and never to ask where they came from. He followed those rules for twenty-six years. Until one day, among a pile of bronze fragments sold by the pound, he found a sword that had been broken for three thousand years. Only a foot long, it had two breaks ground smooth with a grinding wheel. Whoever had ground it down hadn't wanted anyone to recognize it. Something lived inside the sword. Not a person. The creature had green scales and was visible only from the waist up. It asked him one question: "Where is my abyss?" In the trade, these are called spirit weapons, ranked from first to ninth grade. Their grade doesn't depend on how sharp the weapon is, but on how powerful its former owner was in life. A school commandant could reach no higher than sixth grade; only someone like Guan Yu could qualify for third. Lin Mingbei's capacity was three jun, making him a narrow vessel at the bottom of the trade. He hadn't even reached the threshold. He couldn't summon great figures; all he could do was understand what the dead had left behind. But in this world, there were too many people with strength and nowhere to use it, and too few who could understand what things held. Nine marks were carved along the spine of the sword, one for each former master. The first nine were all dead. The tenth mark was empty.