The Marked One

Waste?! Su Jin is an empty hand. On the day of his shadow-fixing at sixteen, he reached into the black stone urn in the ancestral hall. No white light rose from the urn—only a mass of black. It flashed black once, then vanished. No mark! No mark, not a single line—such a person is called an empty hand: unregistered, can be bought and sold to settle debts, killed without consequence. They are not considered human; they are property. Blue marks are commoners, red marks are scholars, silver marks are geniuses, gold marks appear once a decade; ring marks can suppress a nation. But no one knows that beneath the back of his hand lies the only divine mark in the world; and the one who sealed it is actually his father, missing for fourteen years. Marks are talent. They determine how fast you cultivate, and how much you must pay to climb one step higher—for each grade lower, the cost multiplies tenfold. High-realm cultivators with low marks are not unheard of, but they are so rare they become legends. Everyone in the world believes one saying: Marks can be changed. That saying was deliberately spread by someone. The thing he stole made the blank space on the back of his hand stir. An old man lifted him up, taught him to cultivate, and broke the seal for him: "To become strong, you must first learn to die." What he didn't say aloud was that for this mark, he had waited a lifetime. With each layer of seal broken, he gets one step closer to that position. And the price is—forgetting the one who has always waited for him. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Marked One — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠