Nine Hidden Blades

Nineteen-year-old Qin Lie is merely the son of a miner in a frontier town, with ordinary talent. Yet his father was branded a traitor to his clan over a massacre at a military mine, and eventually died a tragic death. Carrying a broken blade and a pitch-black, battered scabbard, the young man enters the Scarlet Heaven Sect, where he is publicly humiliated and can only settle at Broken Blade Peak, the smallest and poorest peak in the sect. In his first fight to the death, he discovers that the old scabbard can briefly preserve the blade force that dissipates when an enemy blocks his strike, giving his next slash a hidden follow-up. But the scabbard cannot steal his enemies' cultivation. He must bear the pain, medical debts, and the consequences of every weakness his opponents expose himself. Together with his sharp-tongued, fiercely protective sectmates, he claims first place in the sect's overall rankings, clears his father's name, and goes on to defeat young powerhouses from the righteous path, the demonic path, the demon tribes, and the devil clans.