Chen Yan, a menial laborer of the Qingyun Sect, has spent three years on the work nobody else will touch: sifting furnace slag at the bottom of the Wanbao Pit. The sect's verdict on him came to just eight characters — a spirit root of five mixed elements, no hope of ever laying a foundation.
Then, in the bottom of the pit, his hand closes around a broken sword, and the *Mending Art* awakens: everything has a flaw, and what is flawed can be mended.
The sword can be mended. A ruined pill can be mended. Even a man's severed meridians can be mended. With every repair, he grows a little stronger. Three chapters to break through a realm, seven days to lay his foundation — and a menial's name is written into the inner-sect roster.
But the further he goes, the less right it feels. What he has been mending was never a thing at all. It is the wound in himself, the hole that was cleaved open when he was four years old.
