Ashes of the Fourth Seat

He was three sentences in a novel he'd already read. Shen Kui: Fourth Seat disciple, fallen to Seventh, dead at the tournament for attacking the protagonist in jealous fury. That was the whole story. A cautionary footnote about what pride costs. Then someone woke up in his body — and started reading the records Shen Kui left behind. The ranking system isn't meritocracy. It's a machine, and Elder Mao Shan has been running it for forty years. Shen Kui saw it clearly. He built a case. He protected his little brother by disappearing from his life. And then he died branded as exactly what his enemy needed him to be: bitter, petty, and alone. The man living in his ashes isn't a hero. He's tired, furious on someone else's behalf, and carrying eight months until the tournament that was supposed to kill him. He has a system that converts injustice into power, a fifteen-year-old brother who thinks he was abandoned, and evidence that could bring down an elder — if he can survive long enough to use it. He didn't ask for Shen Kui's life. But he's going to finish it.