Although every trial of the Gates of Life and Death allowed for a reincarnation and recovery, this restoration was not a clean format reset; at the very least, memories remained. Beneath the accumulation of these memories, piece by piece, Hao Qi began to sense a profound weariness, an ancientness, and even a faint taste of decay deep within his soul.
Though this taint was exceedingly subtle—so faint that had he not been a top-tier martial artist, he likely wouldn't have perceived it at all—that decaying, aged scent undeniably existed. Across ten trials of the Gates of Life and Death and three hundred and sixty million years of time, it amounted to barely a wisp, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, not even one hundred-millionth of the total volume of his soul and consciousness. Yet this accumulation was real. If it continued to pile up like this day after day, a time would come when this decay would completely occupy his soul, his consciousness, and the very essence of his life.
Hao Qi was no scientist, but he was an educated man nonetheless. With immense willpower, he spent a million years slowly deducing and calculating the proportion of this decaying aura invading his essence. Measured in time, it would take roughly thirty-one billion billion years for these decaying wisps to completely take over everything he was.
Chapter 536