Hiss…0

A wisp of azure flame flickered to life. 6

Luo Chen stared blankly at the azure flame dancing atop his fingertip. After three long years, aided by the Ice Prison's extreme cold, he had finally refined the Withering-Flourishing Fire he had once recklessly absorbed into his body. From that moment on, like Dan Yangzi, he was one of the rare few to command a primordial true fire while still in Foundation Establishment.0

Yet the price he paid was far heavier than anyone could imagine. 2

As the azure flame dispersed, Luo Chen's hand brushed over his hair that hung loose down his back. The strands felt dry beneath his fingers, and their color had turned ashen gray. Were it not for the smooth, healthy glow of his skin, one might have mistaken him for an old man on the verge of death.2

Such a condition was exceedingly rare among Initiates. It usually appeared only in those whose lifespan was nearly exhausted, when their blood essence waned so much that even their spirit power slipped beyond control.0

And yet Luo Chen possessed a third-tier archaic beast physique. Though he was still far from the level where he could regenerate his body from a single drop of blood, his skin was as smooth as an infant's, and his hair should have been as black as silk. Yet the strands that now hung behind him had turned a lifeless shade of gray, and the reason behind it all was...0

"It was my own doing after all," he murmured in a hoarse voice. "Sometimes, advancing too quickly in cultivation brings its own curse."1

He thought back carefully to when he had truly begun cultivating in earnest. 0

When he first transmigrated, he was twenty-six. He spent a full year mastering fasting concoctions. By twenty-seven, he had begun studying the Myriad Wonders Pill. The immense profits that came from refining this pill and other such brought him countless spirit stones, and with the help of those resources, his cultivation advanced at astonishing speed. In the thirty...0