Don't Look Down on a Middle-Aged Man in Hard Times

A Spirit King at twenty-three, a loser at thirty-three. Ten years in the gutter, burned to ashes in a single day.

At twenty-three, Chen Mo made a name for himself across Qingzhou as the youngest Spirit King in a century. Then his most trusted brother and the woman he loved most joined forces to cripple his spirit core. Ten years later, at thirty-three, he is mining at Blackstone Mine: a zero-rank Spirit Apprentice, with less dignity than even the rats underground. Then, on the day of a mining disaster, he digs a black stone bead out of the collapsed earth. A voice lives inside it and says:

Kid, your spirit core isn't crippled. You locked it yourself.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.