Fading into you

The Cloud-Veil Sect has perfected a Dao of purity a cultivation path that can cleanse demonic corruption and karmic fire alike. At its center stands Yan Qinghe, the Sect's youngest Elder and its most closely guarded secret.
Born with a mutated Purifying Spirit Root, Qinghe's blood carries the scent of Midnight Winter Orchid a fragrance capable of suppressing even the deepest corruption. But every life he "purifies" leaves residue behind. Karma does not vanish. It only changes hands.
His Golden Core has never formed properly. Instead, it crystallizes. Jade creeps slowly through his meridians, turning flesh to translucent stone. In less than three years, he will no longer be a cultivator.
He will be a relic.
Lu Zhao was once a war general at the Nascent Soul stage until he drowned in battlefield karma. Now his spiritual veins burn with karmic flame, and every breath feels like molten iron beneath his skin.
He captures Qinghe for one selfish reason:
To steal that fragrance. To numb the pain.
He does not know that every breath he takes shortens Qinghe's life.
When Heaven begins correcting the imbalance, when sect politics tighten like a noose, and when purification reveals itself to be nothing more than a shifting of sin - both men are forced to choose:
Remain tools of a broken Dao,
Or fracture Heaven's accounting itself.
If purity requires sacrifice, and karma demands payment -
Who, in the end, will bear the cost?