Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

The ravines stretched out beneath our feet, the soil compacted solid.

The captain, who was walking at the front, suddenly stopped in his tracks.

He suddenly raised his right hand.

The four outer disciples following behind quickly stopped. The short, fat man with the leg injury couldn't stop in time and crashed headfirst into the tall man's back, gasping for breath in pain.

"Captain, why are you stopping?" the tall man asked in a low voice, still clutching the high-level fire talisman in his hand.

The captain didn't turn around.

He stared blankly at a spot a dozen feet away, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down twice before he gasped for breath.

Following the captain's gaze, everyone looked up.

At the edge of the dark woods, behind the vines halfway up the mountain, a huge, exaggerated black shadow blocked the way.

That was a town road stele weighing 30,000 jin.

The ancient and intricate rock patterns on the surface of the stones exude an extremely savage and oppressive feeling in this wilderness.

"That...that's the black stone in the inner city square?" The short, fat man didn't even care about the pain in his legs anymore; his teeth started chattering uncontrollably.

No one responded.

These cultivators are completely out of their minds.

Thirty thousand catties of inanimate objects. Even if ten of the armored giant rhinoceroses from the sect, who specialized in hard labor, came, they definitely wouldn't be able to drag them into this steep, broken-immortal mountain forest.

The captain's palms, gripping the flying sword, were covered in sweat from fright.

"What kind of monster dragged this over..." the captain muttered to himself, his voice trembling. His understanding of the common sense of the cultivation world was shattered at this moment. This was definitely not something a mortal without spiritual roots could do, much less something a demonic cultivator like the Blood Demon Sect, who only knew how to play with essence blood in the shadows, could accomplish.

"Captain, should we move closer?" The young disciple took a half step back, his longsword swaying in his hand.

"What are you afraid of!" The captain gritted his teeth and forced himself to take a deep breath. "Although the spiritual energy here is thin, we are still Qi Refining stage cultivators! Since he was able to drag this stone here, he must have exhausted all his strength."

"Scatter! Scatter, all of you!" The captain waved his hands repeatedly. "Form a semi-circle around them! Form the Four Symbols defensive formation! Put all the protective talismans from your storage bags on your bodies!"

The four disciples dared not delay and quickly took out yellow paper from their pockets.

Faint golden and aquamarine lights appeared one after another. The group spread out, carefully stepping on the fallen leaves, and formed a semi-circle as they approached the huge Dao stele.

……

Deep inside the cave.

Lu Chen closed his eyes.

The sound of people stepping on the fallen leaves outside was barely audible to an ordinary person. But to Lu Chen, it was as clear as a drumbeat right next to his ear.

It wasn't just footsteps.

And there was the sound of a heart pounding.

The hearts of all five people were pumping blood frantically due to extreme tension. The subtle friction sounds of blood flowing through their meridians were all clearly captured by their hearing, which was enhanced by the extreme qi and blood.

Lu Chen opened his eyes.

He turned and walked to the innermost flat, dry boulder.

Anan was wrapped in a thick wolf skin, breathing heavily, fast asleep. The strange strength she had unleashed after breaking the black iron chain had exhausted her, and she was now in the most crucial stage of recuperation for her jade bone transformation.

Lu Chen stretched out his rough, large hands and tucked the edge of the wolf pelt down, wrapping the little girl up even more tightly.

He stood up and strode to the cave entrance.

He squeezed sideways through the gap, which was less than half a foot wide.

It was bitterly cold outside.

Lu Chen did not stand in a conspicuous place, but instead stuck to the deepest, darkest corner on the outside of the Dao stele.

At this moment, he forcibly suppressed the violent blood energy of the eleventh layer of "Iron Shirt".

Cultivators rely on concealment talismans or the Turtle Breathing Technique to hide their true energy fluctuations. But Lu Chen doesn't need those fancy spells.

Qi and blood are restrained.

The great river that had been raging beneath the skin suddenly calmed down.

Lu Chen's heart rate began to drop drastically. Thump—thump—the intervals between beats were stretched extremely long.

The scorching heat on the iron-gray skin dissipated rapidly. His body temperature dropped quickly, becoming exactly like the weathered, 30,000-pound black stone behind him, not emitting even a trace of heat.

He stood there in the shadows, completely merging with the stele.

……

"Use your divine sense to probe!" The captain, standing in the middle, gave the order in a low voice.

The disciples immediately closed their eyes and forcibly mobilized the meager spiritual power between their brows, scanning the cave and the Dao stele ahead.

For cultivators, divine sense is the most reliable form of vision. As long as there is any fluctuation of spiritual energy on the other party, even a low-level demon rat can be clearly detected.

After a while.

The young disciple on the left opened his eyes, his dough twitched twice, and he looked puzzled.

"Captain, there's nothing there." The young disciple gripped his longsword and pointed in the direction of the Dao stele. "When I scanned it with my divine sense, all I saw was a cold, broken rock. There wasn't even a trace of spiritual energy, let alone any living creature breathing."

"I didn't sweep it either," the tall man on the right echoed.

The captain frowned.

Under the scan of divine sense, that area was indeed completely clean, with no signs of life.

Did that kid leave the Dao tablet here and run away?

"Don't let your guard down." The captain gripped his sword hilt. "Slowly approach, go around to the back of the rock and take a look."

The younger disciple walked on the far left.

He carried the flying sword that gleamed with a bluish light, inching forward. His shoes sank into the slippery mud, and he didn't even dare to breathe too loudly.

We are getting closer and closer to the monument.

The oppressive feeling emanating from the black stone grew stronger and stronger.

Just as he was about to touch the side of the Dao stele, the young disciple stopped in his tracks.

He stared at the cracks in the rock at the base of the stele.

On it, there were actually a few extremely faint blood-red wild patterns flickering. That strange light did not belong to any kind of immortal cultivation technique he knew.

Curiosity instantly overcame fear.

He swallowed hard, then took another half step forward, craned his neck, and stretched out the flying sword in his hand, wanting to poke the blood-red barren patterns with the tip of the sword.

He just happened to bypass the darkest blind spot on the side of the road stele.

In the half-breath that his gaze was drawn to the wild patterns.

A heavy, extremely rough hand suddenly emerged from the shadows ahead.

The speed is completely unreasonable.

There was no opening move, no fluctuation of mana.

The large hand, like an iron clamp, tightly covered the young disciple's mouth. Half of his cheek and chin were also enveloped in that broad palm.

The young disciple's eyes widened instantly, his eyeballs almost bulging out of their sockets.

Extreme terror surged from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

He desperately tried to open his mouth to call for help, and tried to raise his hand to perform the simplest explosive spell.

That's too late.

Lu Chen didn't give him any time to react. While covering his mouth, his other hand had already gripped the back of the disciple's head like an iron hook.

The muscles in his arms suddenly tensed. The major tendons suddenly exerted force.

With both hands combined, twist hard to the side.

"Click."

The extremely crisp sound of bones breaking was completely concealed in Lu Chen's palm.

The young disciple's cervical spine was snapped on the spot by this violent, extreme force. His head drooped down at an extremely bizarre angle.

The protective talisman shield that cultivators are so proud of has no buffering effect whatsoever.

The man died instantly without even uttering a groan. The longsword slipped from his hand and fell to the ground, but Lu Chen caught it firmly with his foot before it made a sound.

Lu Chen remained expressionless, and casually stepped on the limp corpse, crushing it completely.

He half-squatted down, his rough fingers expertly pulling off the storage bag from the disciple's waist.

The entire killing process was swift, brutal, and silent.

……

The outer perimeter of the position, a dozen steps away.

The captain was intently watching the movements of his men in front of him.

The flying sword in the young disciple's hand, which had been glowing with a blue spiritual light, suddenly went black in his line of sight to the left.

Without any warning.

The captain's heart skipped a beat.

He immediately released his divine sense, frantically scanning the left flank.

No.

There was nothing there.

There was no high temperature from the falling fireball, no sharp sound from the water arrow piercing the air, and not even the most basic ripples from the collision of spiritual energy were produced.

The person just vanished into thin air.

An unprecedented fear, like ice water poured over the captain's head, struck him.

This is completely beyond the common sense of cultivators. If attacked, a cultivator's instinctive counterattack would definitely trigger a violent fluctuation of true essence.

How could it just disappear without even a fart?

"Xu Lin!" The captain couldn't suppress his panic and shouted loudly to the left.

No one answered.

The surroundings were eerily quiet. Only a night breeze swept by, making the dry leaves overhead rustle softly.

The sound, falling into the ears of the remaining three people, was even more torturous than the most agonizing chants.

"Where's Xu Lin? Wasn't he just next to that rock?" The tall man panicked, the explosive talisman in his hand trembling violently.

The short, fat man was so frightened that he collapsed into the mud and backed away repeatedly.

This is not an attempt to exterminate mortals.

This was a one-sided hunt by an unseen ghost!

Their pride and joy in their divine sense and magic became utterly worthless behind this black stone, devoid of any spiritual energy.

Several people stood back to back, pointing their longswords wildly, completely disrupting their formation.

in the dark.

Just as the tall disciple turned around, warily staring at the bushes behind him...

A very faint sliding sound came from the pile of dead leaves beneath his feet.

It was a thick, dark iron chain.

It swam silently over, close to the ground, following the mud and fallen leaves.

Like a venomous snake eyeing its prey in the dark.

One end of the chain was quietly raised and wrapped around the tall disciple's ankle with perfect precision.

The cool, metallic feel came through the boots.

The tall man's hair stood on end in that instant.