Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

Ten miles outside the Dongxuan Seventh Black Iron Mine Area, black slag heaps formed by years of mining have piled up into hills. The area is filled with choking miasma, and the rock strata are all bare and deathly pale.

The mine patrol walkway is built halfway up the mountain. It is constructed entirely of driftwood soaked in preservative solution, with heavy stone blocks weighing thousands of kilograms underneath.

"Snap—"

The barbed bone whip lashed fiercely against the thin, tattered shirt. The sound of flesh tearing and ripping was extremely grating.

The white-haired old man slipped and could no longer withstand the weight on his back, crashing face-first into the foul-smelling mud. He frantically clawed at himself in the mud, trying to regain his balance.

The entire cart of iron ore behind it lost its balance, and the wooden cart collapsed on the spot. The heavy iron, weighing several hundred kilograms, tipped over and smashed down, landing entirely on the old man's left leg.

"Snap!"

The shriveled leg bone was broken off at the root.

The old man convulsed in pain, his hands gripping the mud on the ground. He gritted his broken teeth, swallowing his screams. His rough, cracked hands groped wildly, desperately pulling the scattered ore into his robes, afraid of losing even a single piece. In the rules of the immortal sect, losing a piece of heavy iron meant paying with a finger.

Several miners, also wearing shackles, stood trembling nearby, none daring to step forward to help.

Above the plank road, three Qingxiao Sword Sect cultivators at the Qi Condensation Realm looked down from their vantage point. They rode enormous, ferocious wolfhounds. These were savage first-tier demonic beasts from the edge of the Great Wilderness, often tamed by immortal sects to spy on the remnants of the common people. Foul-smelling saliva dripped continuously from their mouths, and they bared their sharp fangs.

The young patrol leader yawned, casually drew his wooden sword from his waist, and tapped the edge of his muddy boots with the back of the sword.

"Old man, get up and pull the cart! Stop playing dead!" The young patrolman spat out the grass in his mouth, his face full of disgust. "You worthless weed born from the earth, destined to be fuel for the immortals. Your lowly life isn't even worth half a cartload of heavy iron!"

A tall, thin guard chimed in, "Brother Zhang is right. These remnants of the Xia Tu tribe deserve to work twelve hours a day. As for supplies, we can just grab another batch of refugees from outside and fill the gaps when they break."

"If you don't finish your mining task today, you'll all have to become fillers in the sect's alchemy furnace." The young patrolman swung his bone whip, the tip cracking in the air. "I'll count to three, and if you don't get up, I'll break your spine."

"one."

The old man braced himself with his hands on the ground, his broken left leg dragging behind him, as he struggled to prop up his upper body.

"two."

The vicious wolfhound suddenly began to whimper uneasily, its four paws digging into the wooden board, instinctively retreating backward.

A deep, muffled whistling sound suddenly came from high above.

The air was forcibly pushed aside by an absolute weight, creating a suffocatingly sharp sonic boom. The surrounding air pressure suddenly increased, and the wind around the walkway stopped flowing altogether.

The young patrolman felt the sky darken overhead, so he looked up.

A huge black stone slab blocked out the entire view.

He didn't even have time to make a sound, or even to form hand seals and mobilize his true energy.

The 100,000-jin (50,000 kg) Primordial Evil Stele of the Desolate Bone of Heaven crashed down with a deafening roar.

There were no magical lights or shadows, no fluctuations of spiritual energy. The heavy monument pressed down on the heads of the young patrolman and the vicious wolfhound. Man and wolf, along with their protective aura at the Qi Condensation Realm, were crushed into an unrecognizable mass of flesh and blood by the sheer force of ten thousand jin.

"Boom—"

The immense impact shattered the plank road. Layers of rock below crumbled, and the entire mountain, piled high with black slag, sank half a foot downwards with this single blow. Countless boulders cascaded down the slope, kicking up clouds of dust.

The remaining two patrolmen were thrown over by the blast wave. They looked at the spot where their companion had disappeared, where only a black, menacing monument was pressed into a crevice in the rocks, and thick blood was seeping out all around.

The tall, thin patrolman was terrified. His hands trembled as he reached for his waist, desperately trying to pry open the communication jade talisman, hoping to send a distress signal to the main mining area.

The dust ahead was kicked away by heavy footsteps.

Lu Chen's imposing figure emerged from the flying slag.

He was shirtless, his dark skin shimmering with dark gold patterns. He didn't even glance at the two guards, and casually picked up two finger-sized pieces of slag from the ground with his right hand, flicking them with his finger.

"Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Two fragments of rock tore through the air, piercing through with terrifying kinetic energy.

The tall, thin guard's fingers just touched the edge of the jade talisman.

The rubble pierced directly through the throats of both men. Two huge, bloody holes exploded in the back of their necks.

The two bodies fell backward, tumbling down the edge of the broken walkway and plunging into the bottom of the abandoned mine pit, hundreds of feet deep.

Lu Chen untied the bowstring of the demonic python from his chest, confirming that A'Nan was still sleeping soundly in the ghostly wolf skin. He strode forward, his large black iron boots crunching over the blood-soaked ground, and walked to the side of the old man with the broken leg.

He knelt down on one knee, and with his thick, heavy hand—enough to tear a flying sword apart with his bare hands—he reached out and gently supported the old man's back, lifting him up from the mud.

The old man was in so much pain that his face was covered in sweat. He opened his cloudy eyes and, by the dim moonlight, saw the fleshy face in front of him.

He knew that face all too well. A few months ago, in the mud alley outside Xuanni City, it was this rough-looking man who had been protecting that blind little girl every day with half a stale cornbread. The old man lived at the entrance of the alley back then, and would even give them two hot sweet potatoes during festivals.

The old man's withered lips trembled uncontrollably, and his hands gripped Lu Chen's coarse cloth trouser leg tightly.

"The Lu family brat? You're Lu Chen!"

"Uncle Zhang, it's me." Lu Chen patted the old man's mud-covered back. "Don't be afraid. I've already sent those few cultivator bastards away."

Upon hearing this, the old man completely broke down. He covered his face with his hands and wept uncontrollably.

"You should have run away sooner! You shouldn't have come here!" The old man sobbed uncontrollably. "A few months ago, I heard you tore down the town's stone tablet, and the city lord's mansion sent people to conscript men. They dragged all of us who lived nearby to fill the mine pits. Now the entire mining area has gone mad. Those immortal lords don't want to mine at all. They've driven all five thousand underground laborers into the main camp's formation."

The old man was crying and coughing at the same time, with blood and froth flowing down his chin.

"They're going to open fire inside the formation. Five thousand living people are all going to be pushed into the alchemy furnace, refined into human pill residue, to fend off the blood demons sweeping in from the depths of the Great Wilderness. Hundreds of children have already died inside, and these celestial beings don't even spit out bones!" The old man pushed Lu Chen's shoulder desperately. "You hurry, take A'nan and run, go as far as you can. Don't worry about us old bones, we're just waste material, beyond saving!"

Upon hearing this, Lu Chen's inner blood furnace suddenly exploded with a deafening roar. He stood up, his pure Yang blood energy radiating outwards, causing the water on the ground to sizzle.

He ignored the old man's words and instead pulled a broken blade of a celestial flying sword from the animal skin pouch at his waist. This item was a spoil of war he had seized while killing the elites of the Azure Sky Sword Sect, and it was filled with extremely heavy Yin energy.

Lu Chen bit his left index finger until it bled.

Driven by his immense inner strength, he forcibly extracted the pure Yang blood of the Supreme Dao. The blood, carrying astonishingly high temperatures, dripped onto the broken blade of the flying sword.

"Hiss—"

When the extremely yang blood met the yin iron, it erupted into a cloud of pungent white mist. The blood flowed across the surface of the broken blade, forcibly branding a dark red ancient array pattern onto it.

Lu Chen gripped the hilt of the knife and fiercely drove the broken blade into the black rock wall beside the old man.

Using Yin Iron as a candle and Yang Blood as fire, this piece of broken iron, under Lu Chen's manipulation, formed a defensive circle two zhang in diameter, successfully addressing the weakness of the extreme blood energy easily evaporating and dissipating in the air.

A ring of dark red light spread along the ground, firmly enveloping the old man in the center.

"Uncle Zhang, you stay inside." Lu Chen turned his back to the old man, grabbed the century-old black iron chain with both hands, pulled the 100,000-jin evil stele that had sunk into the ground, and carried it on his shoulder.

He turned his head and looked at the old man.

"Hiding inside the circle, those evil demons and poisonous insects in the Great Wilderness will not dare to approach even half a step when they smell my blood."

Lu Chen pointed to the main mining area ahead, shrouded in darkness.

In the distance, faint, mournful howls echoed across the desolate wasteland.

"As for those immortal masters who use living people to refine medicine residue," Lu Chen grinned, revealing his gleaming white teeth, "I'll teach them a lesson today. I can smash all the memorial arches they worship with all the consumables."

He tightened the ropes binding A-Nan.

Lu Chen carried the 100,000-jin evil tablet, stepping on the broken stones on the ground, and strode towards the pass of the black iron mine area.

With each step the large black iron boots took, a deep footprint was left in the ground. The echoing scraping sound of the iron chains in the valley tolled the death knell for the Seventh Mining District.