Suspect bad starter cable to battery

[Yuta]

I am currently having issue of starting. I got a new battery, but the car won't even click. Werid thing is, if I hot wire the starter, in other words, if I feed 12V to the starter directly, then I can start the car by turning the key.

From my observation, the positive cable from battery is connected directly to the starter, there is no fuse inbetween. That means this can only be a bad cable / ground / terminal issue.

Could this be any relay / fuse related issue? If any related fuse or relay is bad, the car maybe wouldnt get spark, but it is still going to crank, right? There should also be no fuse or relay from ignition switch to starter selonoid, correct?

Anybody run into issues like this?