Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

Lu Chen loosened his clenched fingers.

Hard fragments of a mid-grade immortal sword fell through his rough fingers.

The iron powder hit the muddy pit full of demon blood, but didn't even splash a drop of water.

He shook his hand.

Shake off the black ash stuck to your knuckles.

He turned and strode toward the 30,000-jin town road stele that sealed off the cave entrance.

Lu Chen turned his strong body to the side.

He squeezed through the extremely narrow gap, less than half a foot wide, between the stele and the rock wall into the cramped cave.

The night wind outside was extremely strong.

The biting mountain wind blew straight into the cave from the ground.

As soon as Lu Chen squeezed in, the remaining pure Yang Qi and blood from the eleven layers of Iron Shirt on his iron-gray skin immediately erupted with a terrifyingly high temperature.

The heatwave rolled outwards without restraint.

It forcefully pushed all the biting cold winds from the cave entrance back outside the black rocks.

On the dry, hard, flat rock at the innermost part of the cave.

The little girl was curled up tightly in a ball.

The mid-grade spirit stones beneath her had long since had their spiritual energy completely drained, leaving them as gray, worthless stones.

A layer of extremely sticky liquid had seeped from the little girl's pale skin.

The liquid has a gray-black color.

It emitted an extremely unpleasant, fishy odor.

This is the acquired turbidity that has accumulated in the human body over many years.

Lu Chen crouched down, revealing his tall frame.

With extremely stiff movements, he pulled over a clean Taoist robe from the side.

This robe was confiscated from the storage bag of an outer disciple.

Lu Chen didn't care at all how precious the material was; he simply rolled it into a ball.

Large hands held the fabric.

He tried to use as little force as possible, gently wiping away the sweat and dirt that kept seeping from the little blind girl's forehead and cheeks.

Lu Chen stopped wiping halfway through.

His gaze swept toward the town's road marker blocking the entrance.

The ancient, oppressive aura emanating from this black stone is extremely domineering.

It tightly locks in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth outside the cave, preventing even a trace from flowing in.

In this environment, even cultivators can't form a basic Qi-gathering incantation.

But Lu Chen noticed something unusual.

This terrifying gravitational field had absolutely no suppressive effect on their shared extreme physiques.

Instead of suppressing it, it did not.

This pressure, instead, transformed into an invisible giant iron hammer.

It relentlessly pounded on the bones inside Anan's body that were undergoing transformation and reorganization.

It's like a blacksmith swinging a hammer to forge a rough blank.

One hammer blow after another.

It forcefully brought out all the impurities deep within the bone marrow, making Anan's transformation into a more solid and pure form.

Anan survived the most difficult period.

His breathing gradually became longer and more even.

The rise and fall of the thin chest cavity is very regular.

Just then.

A dull thud came from the deepest part of her body.

"rumble……"

This is not the sound of breathing.

This is the sound produced by the intense friction and collision of newly formed bone marrow under the reshaping of extreme power.

The sound was extremely muffled.

It was exactly like the rumbling thunder rolling deep in the clouds before a summer downpour.

The booming sound of bone-deep strife echoed through the cramped cave.

The small pebbles beneath Lu Chen's feet vibrated almost imperceptibly on the ground due to the sound waves.

Lu Chen put away his Taoist robe, confirmed that A-Nan's vital signs were stable, and then turned around.

He walked up to the pile of spoils and sat cross-legged on the hard, dry stone ground.

They rearranged the contents that had spilled from the outer disciple's storage bag after crushing it.

He has no divine consciousness.

There's no need for those fancy formulas.

They emptied the bag of all its contents at once.

"Splash!"

The items were piled up into a small mountain.

Several jade slips engraved with cultivation methods rolled into his hand.

Lu Chen didn't even glance at them, directly pulling these cultivation manuals, which cultivators treasured, several feet away.

This thing is too much trouble to even use for starting a fire.

His large, thick fingers moved back and forth through the pile of junk.

They quickly picked out more than ten medicinal herbs whose roots were still covered in wet mud.

They are all from quite a few years ago, some even hundreds of years old.

The rules for alchemy in the immortal sects are terrifyingly numerous.

One must prepare the alchemy furnace, calculate the timing and heat, and formulate the medicines according to the principles of monarch, minister, assistant, and guide.

The slightest mistake could turn it into a furnace of waste.

Lu Chen didn't care about any of that.

He did not have an alchemy furnace.

The physical body is the best furnace.

He grabbed a medicinal herb covered in yellow mud and stuffed it, roots and all, directly into his mouth.

The two rows of large front teeth snapped shut.

"Click, click, click."

They chewed it savagely.

The bitter juice, mixed with a muddy taste, exploded in my mouth.

His throat bobbed, and he forced the chewed medicine residue into his stomach.

The medicine had just been swallowed.

The ultimate furnace is running at full speed.

These dozen or so ancient herbs contain extremely potent medicinal properties.

The moment it touched my stomach, the reaction was so intense it was like pouring a ladle of cold water into a pot of boiling hot oil.

"boom!"

The violent effects of the medicine surged wildly through my stomach.

Lu Chen's iron-gray abdominal muscles tensed instantly, and his eight-pack abs spasmed violently due to the enormous impact.

The muscle mass rolled and twitched back and forth.

He sat cross-legged on the spot, his back ramrod straight.

The scalding hot blood and qi in the body poured into the stomach from all directions.

With an extremely tyrannical attitude, it forcefully crushed the rampant and violent medicinal properties that were running rampant everywhere.

The impurities and toxins contained in the medicinal herbs were instantly burned away by this high-temperature blood energy.

It turned into wisps of black mist and was expelled from Lu Chen's body through his pores.

What remains is the purest medicinal essence.

These essences, carried by the ultimate qi and blood, were fully integrated into Lu Chen's limbs and bones, filling the skin and muscles that he had broken through his limits time and time again.

……

The scene changes.

It is a hundred miles away from Broken Immortal Mountain.

Outside the city of Xuanni, in that mud alley that reeks of sour stench.

The autumn rain that had been falling all night had just stopped.

The sky was overcast, shrouded in a persistent gloom.

The uneven, muddy alleyway was filled with murky puddles.

You couldn't hear a single dog bark in the entire alley.

Every household kept their broken wooden doors tightly shut.

The air was filled with a deathly stillness that was even more suffocating than the darkness of night.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

The extremely piercing sound of a broken gong suddenly rang out at the entrance of the alley.

It brutally shattered the silence.

Several guards from the immortal city, clad in heavy black iron armor, strode into the muddy alley.

The guard in the middle was pushing a sturdy wooden wheelbarrow with both hands.

The wheels creaked and groaned as they rolled over the gravel and flagstones.

There were no weapons in the truck bed.

It was filled with a whole bunch of heavy iron shackles.

The iron rings clanged together.

The order issued by the Immortal Sect yesterday has officially been implemented.

The pressure to collect doubled taxes has begun.

Inside the second dilapidated house on the left, where half of the roof has collapsed.

Soon after, a heart-wrenching scream rang out.

"Sir! Sir, please grant me half a day! I really don't have a single copper coin left!"

"Get out of here!"

Without any mercy, a guard raised his boot and kicked a gaunt widow out of the threshold.

The widow fell directly into a filthy puddle full of mud.

She hadn't even had a chance to get up yet.

The guards simply ripped a thick iron chain with a lock off the wheelbarrow.

He strode forward, grabbed the widow by the hair, and forcibly put the iron lock around her neck.

A "click" sound.

The latch is stuck fast.

A three- or four-year-old child ran out of the house, and seeing this scene, burst into tears, waving his little hands as if trying to pounce on it.

The guards didn't even glance at the child.

He gripped one end of the chain tightly with both hands, turned around, and walked out of the alley.

The widow couldn't even kneel steadily; she was pulled down by the immense force.

She was relentlessly dragged forward through the muddy water filled with sharp pebbles.

His neck was so tightly strangled that he couldn't utter a complete syllable; the skin and flesh were torn and the blood seeping out left an extremely glaring red line in the dirty puddle.

next door.

Old Zhang sat on the ground, leaning against the half-collapsed courtyard wall.

Through the dilapidated fence, he could clearly see the tragedy unfolding in the muddy ground outside the gate.

Old Zhang didn't make a sound.

His hands, so dry they were just skin and bones, were tightly hidden inside his large, tattered sleeves.

In the palm of the left hand.

He was clutching a piece of black gravel tightly.

This is the very fragment that flew from the bottom and fell into the mud alley when that terrifying shirtless young man yesterday forcefully pulled up and smashed the town's city road monument.

The edges of the gravel are extremely sharp.

They had already pricked Old Zhang's palm, and dark red blood smeared on the stone surface.

But he held on very tightly, showing no sign of loosening his grip.

The grandson trembled with fear at the widow's screams outside.

With snot and tears streaming down her face, she desperately tried to burrow into Old Zhang's arms.

Two little hands gripped the old man's tattered, patched coat tightly.

Old Zhang stretched out his right hand and covered his grandson's mouth to stop him from crying.

He raised his head.

Those cloudy eyes, which had become timid due to long-term oppression and would instinctively avoid the officials of the Immortal City.

Everything has changed today.

Those cowardly acts of begging vanished completely.

Deep in his eyes, there was an extremely abnormal, morbid calmness.

The laws and regulations issued by the Nine Provinces Immortal Alliance at the grassroots level are extremely strict.

Human life is as worthless as grass.

The peasants in the outer city, let alone resist.

Even if it's just offending the guards on duty with a disrespectful look.

Once discovered, they would be tied to a bronze pillar in the inner city square and subjected to the torture of branding with hot irons.

They used a red-hot iron to burn the character "贱" (meaning "cheap" or "despicable") into his face.

But at the moment.

Old Zhang stared straight at the domineering Xuanjia guards outside the door.

Listen to the sound of iron chains rubbing against stone slabs.

His eyelids didn't even twitch.

They completely ignored those ingrained, intimidating laws.

Old Zhang's gaze quietly returned from outside the door.

He slowly lowered his head.

Walk past the broken water vat with a large hole in it.

His gaze fell directly on the far corner of the courtyard.

There, leaning against the earthen wall, stood a hoe, a farming tool usually used for turning the soil.

The wooden handle of the hoe had turned black from use, and a layer of patina had formed on its surface.

The iron blade was covered with dried yellow mud, and its edges were chipped in several large places, covered with reddish-brown rust.

Old Zhang's left hand, hidden in his sleeve.

The knuckles slowly tuck inwards.

The veins on the back of his hand bulged out one by one.

Five withered fingers were slightly bent into a posture of exertion.

The sound of the gong outside grew closer and closer.

The guards who were banging gongs had already reached the courtyard gate.

"Bang!"

A deafeningly loud bang.

Old Zhang's dilapidated wooden courtyard gate, which was already on the verge of collapse, was kicked so hard that it shattered into pieces.

The broken splinters flew in all directions.

A burly guard strode into the courtyard.

The heavy combat boots slammed into the largest puddles in the center of the yard without any hesitation.

Dirty water splashed everywhere.

The guard was carrying a long, tanned cowhide whip that had just been used to lash someone and was still dripping blood.

He glanced down at the elderly Mr. and his grandson, who were huddled in the corner.

His bulging face twisted into an extremely arrogant, sinister grin.

"Old man, where's the money?"

As he cursed, the thick, deadly hand reached directly for Old Zhang's collar.