Cultivating Immortality Without an Immortal Root, I Guard a Single...

Bones collected on the riverbank, four coins per pound. When Wang Chengshan was eleven, he found half a weight on the shore. From then on, he learned a skill no one else recognized: bone weighing. He could tell how many pounds and ounces a bone weighed, how many years it had been wet or dry, and whether its owner died bent over or standing straight. He had no spiritual root. Not one of the three rings of light on the spirit-testing disc appeared for him. But he had nine vertebrae in his spine. While others opened their dantians, he opened his joints. The year all nine lit up, he was seventeen... The night he reached Foundation Establishment, rain fell on the mountain all night, and for the first time, waves rose in the Sea of Bones.