Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

High in the clouds above Broken Immortal Mountain.

The gale was extremely fierce; if an ordinary bird were to come up, its bones would be instantly scraped to powder.

A colossal white jade ship, roughly the size of half a mountain, was steadily navigating through the fierce winds. A thick, semi-transparent array of light enveloped its exterior, blocking all deadly air currents. The intricate cloud patterns carved into the ship's surface were painstakingly filled in with top-grade spirit stone powder.

The top floor of this giant ship is a luxurious three-story pavilion.

In the very center of the incense pavilion stood a purple-gold incense burner, about half a person's height. Inside burned a thin, long stick of incense. This was a spirit-concentrating ambergris incense, just a finger's length long, which could fetch a hundred low-grade spirit stones in the Myriad Treasures Spirit Pavilion. For ordinary mortals at the bottom of society, that amount of money was enough to buy the lives of everyone in half the outer city. But within the incense pavilion, this incense was merely used to dispel the chill of the high altitude.

The Holy Maiden of the Azure Sky Sword Sect sat cross-legged behind layers of snow-white gauze curtains.

She wore an immaculate cloud-patterned robe. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were forming a cultivation mudra. The rise and fall of her chest was drawn out.

Two very soft knocks came from outside the door.

An old woman pushed open the carved wooden door and tiptoed over the high threshold. She carried a cane engraved with a complete dragon head magic array, clearly indicating she was a Core Formation stage expert. Outside, such cultivation would be enough to make her a retired emperor in a place like Xuanni City.

But inside this fragrant pavilion, the old woman stood extremely respectfully three steps away from the gauze curtain. She even forcibly suppressed all the fluctuations of her Core Formation stage spiritual energy in her dantian, for fear of disturbing the person meditating inside.

The old woman bowed slightly, the bottom of her dragon-headed cane hovering in mid-air, not daring to make a sound even when it touched the ground.

"Holy Maiden, the disciple leading the boat reports that the spirit boat is about to leave the border region of Dongxuan Prefecture completely."

The person inside the gauze curtain remained silent.

The old woman paused briefly before continuing her report.

"There's something else," the old woman said in a low voice. "Last night, there was some trouble outside Xuanni City. The city lord sent an urgent message early this morning, saying that several high-level demonic beasts outside the city went berserk and, under the cover of night, smashed down a large part of the inner city's array walls."

Upon hearing this, the saintess inside the gauze curtain didn't even lift her eyelids.

"Is such vile and sordid stuff even worth getting my ears dirty with?"

The saintess's voice was very clear and crisp, yet completely flat. It conveyed an air of detachment from worldly life and indifference to mortal existence.

The old woman immediately lowered her head even further.

"I was too talkative," the old woman quickly apologized. "That Lord of Xuanni City is indeed a good-for-nothing fool. The sect spends so many spirit stones to support him, but he can't even handle such a small matter as cleaning up the lowly people before your Ceremony of Severing Dust. Now he's made a fool of himself by having the city wall collapse."

The old woman tightened her grip on her cane.

"Once we return to the sect, I will personally report to the Enforcement Hall and have him punished by being sent to the Fire Cave for three months of fire torture."

A crisp, clear sound of jade clinking came from inside the gauze curtain. The saintess was fiddling with the extremely rare ice jade bracelet on her wrist.

"Whether or not he is punished is a rule of the Enforcement Hall."

The saintess stopped, rubbing a jade bead between her fingertips.

"I have severed all ties with the mortal world. Whether those peasants in Xuanni City live or die, whether they are eaten by demonic beasts or starve to death in the streets, has nothing to do with me anymore. You are not allowed to mention them in front of me again."

The enormous white jade spirit boat continued to fly forward, its hull brushing against the thick clouds.

Directly beneath the spirit boat lies the deep, ancient forest on the outskirts of Broken Immortal Mountain. This is the very place where Lu Chen brutally killed those outer disciples of the Azure Sky Sword Sect last night.

The old woman glanced down through the half-open window of the incense pavilion.

Below was a wild forest shrouded in a persistent black miasma. Acting on instinct as a Core Formation cultivator, the old woman extended her divine sense downwards.

The divine sense of a Core Formation stage cultivator is extremely vast, instantly piercing through thousands of feet of sky and the turbid miasma, directly sweeping over a certain swamp in the forest.

The old woman's brows furrowed suddenly.

She detected several corpses in her divine sense. The corpses had been gnawed beyond recognition by the wild beasts in the forest, but on the few tattered pieces of cloth scattered on the ground, the cloud patterns of the outer disciples of the Azure Sky Sword Sect could still be faintly seen.

That was the unlucky guy whose neck was snapped by Lu Chen last night and who was then devoured by the demon wolves.

The old woman moved half an inch closer to the window, a trace of true energy seeping from her palm as she gripped her cane.

Her mind raced as she quickly made up her mind.

What are those good-for-nothings from the outer sect doing all day, always greedy for petty gains, running around to the outskirts of Broken Immortal Mountain in the middle of the night? They probably want to hunt a few low-level demonic beasts, dig up some demon cores to take back to the city and exchange for spirit stones.

As a result, his skills were not refined, and he ended up becoming food for those beasts.

The old woman withdrew her consciousness and placed her cane back on the ground.

The lives of a few outer disciples are nothing but worthless fodder; their deaths are no big deal. Hundreds of these talentless, backgroundless good-for-nothings die every year in the sect; it's not worth making a fuss about. If the spirit boat were to stop over such a trivial matter, disturbing the Holy Maiden's peaceful cultivation, that would be a truly grave sin.

The old woman turned her gaze away from the window, her eyes regaining their calm, completely forgetting about the woods below.

The morning breeze is extremely strong on the outskirts of Broken Immortal Mountain.

A gust of wind rose from the muddy ground below, which had just been ravaged by a massacre, pierced through the clouds, and blew in through the half-open window of the incense pavilion.

The wind carried a faint scent of blood, along with the stench of decay that emanates from the muddy alleys of the lower classes.

The saintess inside the gauze curtain suddenly frowned.

Undisguised disgust instantly appeared on her stunningly beautiful face.

"What does it taste like?"

The saintess immediately raised her hand. Her crystal-clear fingertips flicked outwards casually.

A stream of pure true energy emanated from his fingertip.

"Smack."

The carved wooden windows of the Fragrant Pavilion were slammed shut with true energy. Immediately afterward, the isolation array outside the windows was fully activated. A pale blue light curtain instantly covered the entire pavilion, completely blocking out all outside air.

The attic was once again filled with expensive ambergris.

The saintess lowered her hand and changed her meditation posture inside the gauze curtain.

"Have the disciples at the front of the boat activate the formation to its maximum. Return to the sect at full speed."

The saintess's voice was filled with extreme annoyance.

"The foul air from this remote and impoverished place will only taint my Dao heart if I inhale too much of it. If even a trace of the mortal realm's stench drifts in, let them jump off the spirit boat and feed the wild dogs themselves."

The old woman nodded repeatedly in agreement, then turned and quickly left the incense pavilion.

In less than half a breath.

Several giant array plates at the stern of the white jade ship simultaneously activated. Violent spiritual energy spewed out blue flames dozens of meters long, tearing a huge rift in the clouds.

The giant ship suddenly accelerated. Its massive hull left an extremely long and wide contrail in the air before disappearing completely into the deepest part of the sea of ​​clouds, heading straight towards Zhongtianzhou.

The saintess sat high on a cloud, completely oblivious to what was happening in the muddy puddle beneath her feet.

Unbeknownst to her, right there in the woods she had just despised, the mortal she had used as a sacrifice in her ritual of severing ties with the world, the one she had casually struck with a single sword strike, the one whose name she didn't even deserve to remember; the lowly commoner who could only find half a moldy bun in a stinking ditch.

He has already uprooted the town's road stele weighing 30,000 jin by hand.

He forcefully crushed the flying sword artifact that the immortal sect was so proud of.

The ultimate furnace ignited within that mortal's body was accumulating power with extreme ferocity. This power would one day smash into the Nine Heavens Gate, shattering her lofty dream of cultivating immortality, along with the entire order of the immortal path, into utter chaos.

……

The scene then returns to the ground.

The outer perimeter of Broken Immortal Mountain.

The cave entrance was mostly blocked by the stele.

Lu Chen sat cross-legged beside the cool crevice of the rock, his upper body bare. On his iron-gray skin, the dirt dried by the extreme qi and blood had hardened into a layer of crust.

He tilted his head back, his gaze piercing through the sparse tree canopy above, staring straight at the sky.

High in the sky, the trail of clouds torn apart by the airflow from the spirit boat was blindingly white.

Lu Chen didn't speak. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the fading cloud mark.

His left hand rested casually on his knee. In his large, rough palm, he held a piece of blackened metal. It was the tip of a mid-grade flying sword that he had broken off the night before.

Lu Chen's gaze never left the sky.

The major tendon in his right arm suddenly tensed.

The extreme qi and blood flowed down his arm and instantly into the five fingers of his left hand.

"Click."

He suddenly clenched his palms together.

That incredibly hard remnant of the immortal sect's blade was crushed into fine iron powder between his calloused fingers.

Lu Chen flipped his wrist over.

Metal powder trickled down between his fingers and onto the blood-soaked mud beneath his feet.