Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

Meanwhile, in the mud alleys of Dongxuan Prefecture, a powerful and ruthless figure was carrying a 100,000-jin inanimate object as he charged into the Immortal Sect's deadly killing formation. Hundreds of thousands of miles away in the desolate Western Wilderness, another raging fire was also burning without pause.

After resting for less than half an hour, Li Laosi, carrying his tattered machete, led the sixty blood bandits and continued to advance into the heart of the Great Plains.

Not a single weed could grow in this area, and the dry, weathered rock made an extremely rough grinding sound underfoot. Just as the group crossed a bare mound, the ground ahead suddenly collapsed in a large area without warning.

Large swaths of loess and dust fell down with a rumbling sound.

"Back off! Get your footing!" Old Li shouted in his hoarse voice, his thick left leg firmly planted on the solid ground at the edge of the collapse.

The tremors lasted for a good dozen breaths. When the sand and soil settled, a giant, dark blue-green metal object, half-buried deep in the loess, completely filled the field of vision of these men who had worked the land.

This creation is shaped like an extremely rough, round cauldron, as tall as a three-story building!

Its massive outer shell is covered with charred marks left by repeated strikes from terrifying heavenly lightning. In some places, huge craters have been blasted out, exuding a desolate, ancient aura that has transcended millennia and still refuses to bow down. This thing, standing beneath the wasteland, is itself a poignant and irrefutable testament to the unyielding spirit of its extreme ancestors.

The one-eyed old man at the back of the group scrambled to the edge of the pit, his cloudy one eye suddenly contracted, and he collapsed to the ground, wailing loudly.

"It's the Great Wilderness Bone-Sacrificing Furnace!" The old man pounded the ground with his withered hands, his face covered in mud from crying. His voice was hoarse, filled with a pent-up resentment that had been suppressed for millennia. "Back then, those bastards in the heavens struck down our ancestral land, and this furnace bravely bore the brunt of the heavenly lightning for our ancestors!"

The old man suddenly raised his head, his face filled with fanaticism as he stared at the charred giant cauldron, and shouted hoarsely, "Great Chief, this furnace isn't completely dead yet! As long as we have the true blood of the Ultimate Path flowing through our veins, this old fire can be reignited! This is a true treasure left to us by our ancestors to break through the limits of our physical bodies!"

Upon hearing this, Li Laosi's heavy breathing stopped for a beat.

He planted the ancient broken spear, which he had been carrying on his shoulder, into the ground beside him, and without a word, leaped into the bottom of the furnace, which was more than ten feet deep. His large feet landed directly in the thick ashes that had accumulated over tens of thousands of years.

Ignoring how choking the dust was, Li Laosi plunged his rough hands into the ash heap and frantically dug and scraped.

He peeled away layer after layer of thick ash with his fingers and pried out an object no bigger than a fist, emitting a faint red glow.

This is half a fragment of top-grade Fire Crystal Marrow!

The great fortune hidden in the desolate place was directly grasped in the hands of this earth-slaughtering butcher. The fire crystal marrow was frighteningly hot, instantly burning transparent blisters into the thick calluses on his palms.

Li Laosi didn't even blink. He strode to the damaged array eye in the very center of the furnace bottom and pressed the half-piece of fire crystal marrow hard into the groove.

"Give me a name!"

He roared, and the ancient military formation blood pattern on his chest instantly turned a blinding red. Extremely hot Dao blood flowed through the meridians of his arm, forcefully pouring into the formation's core without reservation, directly using his own life blood as the fuse!

"boom!"

A terrifying, muffled sound that shattered eardrums came from the deepest part of the earth.

Dark red, nameless flames erupted from the cracks in the broken bone-sacrificing furnace! The temperature within the entire crater soared to an alarming level in an instant. The intense heat distorted the space within the crater, and even the surrounding weathered rock began to soften under the heatwave.

Li Laosi drew the thick-backed crocodile bone machete stained with beast blood from his waist, used his big feet to push off the furnace wall, and leaped out of the giant pit.

He pointed the blood-stained tip of his knife at the sixty rough men standing by the pit and shouted orders.

"Heaven has given us a firewood stick to temper our bodies, we can't be ungrateful!" Old Li spun his blade and pressed it directly against the carotid artery in his left arm. "Everyone stick your left arms out! Cut the carotid artery! Cut deep, until you see the bone!"

The rules of the extreme path have always been to live by facing death. This cruel and self-torturing method of body refinement is the only way for the remnants of the lower realms to become stronger.

Sixty tough men didn't utter a single wasted word. They were all peasants who had crawled out of the mines, and had long since risked their lives.

"Sizzle—"

A sickening, teeth-grinding sound of blades slicing through flesh rang out in unison. Sixty roughly polished bone knives cleanly cut through the skin and flesh of the left arm. Deep, bone-revealing gashes burst open.

The most potent and concentrated essence of the ultimate path flowed down his thick arm. The drops gathered into a stream, all flowing into the broken rune grooves around the edge of the bone-sacrificing furnace.

With the pure, same-origin wild blood of these sixty-odd people flowing in and activating, the residual fire in the center of the formation was completely saturated with its inherent power.

"boom!"

The subterranean fire, which had just been hovering at the bottom of the pit, suddenly rose a full three zhang (approximately 10 meters)!

The dark red earth fire transformed directly into an extremely intense, viscous, and impenetrable dark red blood mist, which descended upon them, completely engulfing the sixty blood disciples and Li Laosi.

The baptism began, or rather, the live dismemberment officially commenced.

"Gara! Garara!"

Deep within the blood mist, a series of terrifying cracking sounds echoed as bones broke and were forcibly reformed. The "Primordial Ultimate Path Remnant," which had been swallowed whole in the previous battle on the plains, was now completely detonated by this earth fire!

That was a malevolent aura condensed from death, ignited entirely by this earth fire. The violent power transformed directly into hundreds of files within the men's internal organs, scraping their bone marrow and tearing their fascia, forcibly supporting their broken bodies from being burned to ashes on the spot by the earth fire.

This is risking one's life to unlock potential.

The heart-wrenching screams were muffled and suppressed by the thugs. All sixty men gritted their teeth so hard they could withstand the bleeding from their arteries, yet not one of them uttered a sound of pain.

Under the relentless tempering of the furnace, large chunks of their dry, cracked, and festering skin began to peel off. The dead skin fell into the fire, emitting a pungent, burnt smell.

As the old skin peeled away, a new, tender, iron-gray membrane with a metallic sheen grew out of the flesh!

These sixty people, who were originally regarded as livestock by the immortal sect, collectively crossed the threshold and officially entered the initial stage of the Extreme Iron Shirt Technique.

The body tempering process was nearing its end. The blood mist slowly thinned.

After the bone-burning furnace burned away the remnants of the ancestors, the vast primordial vitality remaining at the bottom of the furnace was fully activated and forcibly poured into the bodies of these sixty newborns in a completely unreasonable manner!

They had all bled a large basin of blood, so these people should have been suffering from blood and qi deficiency, and couldn't even stand up straight.

But the result was completely the opposite!

The moment the iron-like tendons took shape, a startling muffled thud, like the beating of war drums, resounded from the chests of these men. Far from being depleted, their internal energy, replenished by this ancient vitality, surged into an extremely violent and boiling state!

Overflowing with energy and blood! Frenzied and excited!

Beneath that layer of iron-gray skin, thick, bluish-black blood vessels bulged out. Everyone's eyes were bloodshot. The immense vitality made their meridians swell, and an uncontrollable surge of physical ferocity rushed to their heads.

The bone knives in their hands creaked under their grip, and everyone was panting heavily. They desperately needed to find something to smash to pieces, to vent the pent-up rage that was churning their insides.

God always seems to arrange the most suitable target at the most critical moment.

Just when they desperately needed to vent, an extremely violent tremor suddenly came from underground in the Great Plains.

The gray earth within a radius of several miles bulged up in large areas. The commotion caused by the bone-burning furnace was so great that the astonishingly overflowing aura of blood and qi directly attracted the enormous creature deep in the plains.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Five huge craters were blown open in the ground in succession.

Five giant sand lizards, their bodies covered in thick, dark yellow rock armor, burst out of the ground, bringing with them a nauseating stench.

Their size was terrifying; each one was comparable to a small hill. Their massive claws could smash weathered rock to pieces with a mere slap. These were all peak-tier first-order behemoths!

Saliva dripped from his barbed jaw, splashing onto the ground and emitting a foul-smelling wisp of smoke. His five large, lantern-sized, blood-red vertical pupils, brimming with greedy hunger, stared intently at the group of bloodthirsty Extreme Blood Army soldiers beside the bone-sacrificing furnace pit.

The monster has set its sights on blood.

Li Laosi ripped off the tattered leather sling hanging from his shoulder, revealing his bulging, bloodshot iron-like muscles. He pulled out the ancient war spear with one hand and burst into wild laughter at his brothers behind him.

"Stop holding back, you bastards! God's sent us a meat punching bag!" Old Li stomped his foot, crushing the rocks at the edge of the pit, unleashing his full power as he charged straight at the hill-like sand lizard. "Tear them apart!"

The ultimate battle between the Blood Disciples of the Extreme Path, a battle that transcends their own level, collided with a deafening roar.