The Hands of the Endless Tide

In the Crimson Reef Sect, a spirit root is a birthright and Wu Sheng has none. He is a shelf-hand, which means he carries dead cultivators to the sea. When the old tide-master teaches him Sea-Hands, a forbidden technique that trades pieces of the user's own body for power, Wu Sheng uses it on the first man who calls him nothing. A finger goes. An eye follows. A lung. Some memories. Each loss is a stage, and each stage is a war. The sect that raised him becomes a sect that hunts him. The Tide Emperor sends immortals, then pearls, then plagues. Wu Sheng builds an academy of discarded talents on a bare reef and teaches them the one thing the sects never will: that a debt paid in flesh still buys a future. The sea owes him. He intends to collect.