I Am Nowhere to Be Found in the Heavenly Order

The Heavenly Order assigns everyone a place, and each place has a fixed number: cultivators across the land compete for a total of 526 seats. Some claim a seat overnight, some wait a century for their turn, and most spend their entire lives outside the Order, drawing in energy, opening their meridians, gathering their spirit, then growing old and dying. Shen Que fared even worse. At the ceremony where places were assigned, the Heavenly Order Stele couldn't record his name. Instead, four characters appeared: NO SUCH PERSON. By the ironclad law, the rootless must be sent to "fill the Order": the living are used to fill empty seats and prevent calamities in the Order. He wouldn't die without leaving a trace. He had no trace to begin with. Then he discovered that precisely because he was not listed in the Order, he could see what others could not: the empty places. And he could briefly take up residence in them. Each time he borrowed one, he came one step closer to "nonexistence."