Artorian

Artorian is the main character of the side story Axiom and is also responsible for most of this wiki's theories on essence. He is an old man from the salt flats that decided to start cultivating when he reached ~50 years of age. So yes, he had a lot of corruption. Especially since he has 4 major affinities.

The reason Artorain is still alive
Because he is not dead (Just kidding).

Cultivation
Artorian is a starlight cultivator, which is the main reason he is still alive. His major affinities are Air, Water, Fire, and Celestial Essence, which happen to be the ingredients for sunlight or just light in general. His technique involves creating a bunch of perfect rings in his center and causing them to spin, using centrifugal force to separate his essences. This makes bottlenecks weaker and each rank relatively easy to reach. The downsides of this technique are that it is harder to tell what rank he is. The huge upside to this technique is that you can use it to cleanse your body of corruption, something previously thought to be impossible.

What Artorian has done
Artorian has done many great things, such as destroying then rebuilding his eyes out of essence. He also learned how to see in infrared, ultraviolet, light sight, wind sight, and Muscle sight. He opened all of his meridians within about 2 months, and he almost died doing it. He is also the headmaster of Mountaindale academy.