Against the Sky: The Light of Defiance

At twelve, Xiao Mubai was tested to have a ninth-grade waste spirit root, causing an uproar in his clan. Overnight, he fell from "Xiao family's little genius" to a punching bag in the menial courtyard. After four years of beatings, he learned one thing: don't argue, just keep accounts. Until one day, while being beaten, he suddenly "saw" it—the spirit root on the Xiao family genius Xiao Lingxiao had an uneven interface, as if it had been attached later. The dead root inside his own body had a break in the opposite direction: it wasn't that it never grew, but that it had been extracted. An old gatekeeper told him: Your waste is not innate. An old map from thirty years ago bore four characters: "Spirit Root Grafting." Beneath the spirit vein pool, someone was secretly using hidden pipes to siphon spirit energy. The clan tournament, the city lord's mansion, the Spirit Root Bureau, the Tianshu Sect… an invisible thread linked all the geniuses who had "suddenly become useless." The whole world thought he was trash. Only he knew—his talent wasn't missing; it had been stolen. Now, he will record it back, one stroke at a time. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Against the Sky: The Light of Defiance — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠