Cold.
Cold that seeped into the marrow.
Lin Feng felt as though he had sunk into an endless deep sea.
There was no light around him, no sound; even the sensation of gravity had vanished.
He tried to move his fingers.
But the connection between his consciousness and his body seemed to have been forcibly severed by a rusty, blunt knife.
Pangu's Essence Blood...
Instinctively, he tried to summon that eternally boiling surge of heat.
Yet when he looked within, the ocean of his bloodline, once as searing as magma and as brilliant as dark gold, had dried up like saline earth scorched by the blazing sun.
The once-full core of his essence blood had been reduced to a tiny spark, so faint it was nearly extinguished, clinging to life in the deepest recess of his heart.
This was the price of "complete awakening."
This was the desolation left by "burning mode."
"Cough..."
Lin Feng's chest heaved sharply.
A breath of stale air that had long been trapped inside him squeezed out of his throat, accompanied by tiny flecks of blood.
He slowly opened his eyes.
His vision was a blur of overlapping images.
Pale blue liquid... a glass pod lid... and Star Sea Survivor's aged face, filled with worry.
Splash!
As the nutrient solution drained away, the pod door slowly slid open.
Without anything supporting him, Lin Feng's body toppled forward helplessly like a heavy sack of sand.
A thick, powerful hand caught him.
It was Blood Axe.
"Don't push yourself. Your body is worse off than an ordinary old man's right now."
Blood Axe's voice was hoarse, carrying a weariness it had never held before.
Leaning against Blood Axe's shoulder, Lin Feng took great gulps of the laboratory's oxygen-scented air.
Every breath tugged at the meridians throughout his