Your Hell Core, whilst formidable, was not ready to contain such potent, alien energy. It almost tore you apart. You were… decaying. Rapidly."
Xiaochen remembered the agony, the golden cracks in his obsidian skin, the sickening dissolution of his transformed body. He recalled his hands, black and shrivelled, turning to ash. He tried to examine himself now. His arms were still a dark, necrotic grey, but the skin was slowly, painstakingly, regenerating. There were deep, purple-black cracks across his chest, radiating from where his Hell Core pulsed faintly. His white hair was matted with dried blood and ash. He was in a small, damp cave, the walls streaked with mineral deposits. A faint, almost imperceptible Void Qi flowed within the rock, a gentle current of untainted energy.
"How… how am
