“Seeing Master made me happy, but also sad. He had aged far too much compared to before. My aptitude for the alchemy dao is probably quite good. Becoming the forty-fifth alchemist in the pill tower before the age of thirty caused quite a stir. Even the senior practitioners said I was a true alchemy dao prodigy. Many of them pleaded with my master to send me away, to preserve a spark. Yet my master refused.0

“Actually, I understood. The alchemists here had to refine pills day and night without rest, trying to meet the front lines’ demand. The attrition among alchemists was severe. All the previous forty-fifth alchemists had worked themselves to death. But I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t want to leave. I came here with...0