Achieving physical sainthood begins with the Iron Shirt technique!

The white jade square in front of the main hall of the city lord's mansion in the inner city of Xuanni City.

The grand formation shattered completely, and the violent storm of spiritual energy had just subsided. The once luxurious and majestic sacred grounds of the immortal sect were now nothing but ruins. The air was filled with the pungent smell of burning and the strong stench of blood.

"Ah—my eyes! My consciousness is gone!"

"Help! What's burning my soul!"

Hundreds of elite sword cultivators from the Azure Sky Sword Sect lay sprawled on the bluestone slabs. These once high and mighty prodigies, worshipped as gods by mortals, were now writhing in agony in the mud. They clutched their faces tightly with their hands, thick, foul-smelling black blood gushing from between their fingers.

The backlash from the extreme Dao Qi and blood was extremely domineering, completely ignoring the defense of the immortal true essence. That destructive power directly turned this group of sword cultivators into complete blindness.

The city lord lay paralyzed in a muddy pit at the edge of the ruins, half his face covered in blood. He too was suffering from the backlash, enduring the needle-like pain in his eye sockets, he used his hands to support himself on the ground and crawled towards the blasted crater in front of him.

At the bottom of the deep pit, the Four Symbols Sealing Spirit Array Plate that he had previously summoned was tightly gripping the black broken stele that had detonated everything.

The dark red, barren patterns on the surface of the broken monument still pulsed restlessly, radiating a terrifyingly high temperature.

"Treasure...this is a priceless treasure that can withstand even the laws of the Core Formation stage. Such an opportunity must not be handed over." The city lord panted heavily, his movements incredibly fast. Ignoring the scalded skin on his palms, he grabbed the Spirit-Suppressing Jade Box, which was guarded against detection. He roughly swept it, along with the array plate and the black stone, into the jade box, snapped the mechanism shut with a "click," and then stuffed it deep inside his undergarments.

He had just hidden the jade box when an extremely sharp whistling sound came from above.

A powerful sword aura forcefully tore through the night. The special envoy of the Azure Sky Sword Sect, riding a top-grade flying sword, descended with terrifying pressure.

The special envoy was wearing a gold-embroidered Taoist robe and had a fierce expression on his face.

"Where is the Lord of Xuanni City? Show yourself!" The envoy's voice, crackling with true energy, shook the surrounding rocks, causing them to scatter. "Why did the Heaven-Locking Array collapse? How come that good-for-nothing Song Que lost contact with the Soul Lamp while searching the mountain?"

The city lord lay on the ground, his mind racing.

We absolutely cannot tell the truth. If the sect finds out that the city's protective array was shattered from a distance by a mere mortal soldier with no spiritual roots, and that Song Que was also killed by a mortal, then all the immortal officials in Xuanni City would be skinned alive, their tendons pulled out, and nailed to the sect's punishment pillar to be burned alive for hundreds of years.

Without making a sound, the city lord sent out a tiny, highly sensitive whisper, precisely into the ears of the blind elites around him:

"Gentlemen! This matter must remain a secret! If anyone dares to utter a single word that hundreds of elite members of our immortal sects had their eyes crippled by a lowly peasant, the sect's enforcement hall will absolutely skin us alive! If you want to save your lives, all of you must insist on one thing—that it was done by a powerful figure from the demonic sect!"

The elites rolling on the ground were all shrewd individuals. With their lives, fortunes, and future cultivation prospects at stake, none dared to act foolishly, and they all nodded repeatedly, clutching their bleeding eyes. This group of hypocritical lackeys of the immortal sects swiftly reached a sordid political consensus at that moment.

The city lord stumbled to his feet, collapsed at the envoy's feet, and howled in utter misery.

"Your Excellency! We've been wronged!" The city lord pounded his chest and stamped his feet, tearfully accusing, "It wasn't some mortal from the lower realm causing trouble at all! It was the Core Formation old demon from the Western Wilderness Blood Demon Sect! That old devil somehow obtained a void array plate and directly tore apart a spatial node, ambushing the array's core! Deacon Song and the others went into the mountains to search for him, and they probably fell victim to that old demon's treachery!"

The blind cultivators on the ground immediately joined in, wailing loudly, "Special Envoy, you are wise! That old demon's aura was overwhelming, he had no regard for the rules of the immortal sects, and our divine senses were destroyed by his murderous aura after just one glance! He is definitely a late-stage Core Formation monster!"

The envoy frowned, glancing at the blind man rolling on the ground, and then at the ruins of the array's core that had been ravaged beyond recognition.

"Hmph, I knew a few mere mortal bastards couldn't possibly cause such a big storm." The envoy sneered, accepting the lie without question.

Those in the immortal sects have always been arrogant and condescending. In their minds, mortals are even lower than roadside weeds. Let alone breaking a great formation, they would be killed by the true energy if they even touched the hem of a cultivator's robe. Only a Core Formation Demon would make a move, which makes sense.

"Those rats of the Blood Demon Sect dare to run rampant in Dongxuan Prefecture! They're courting death!" The envoy flicked his wide sleeves. "Issue my order! Completely seal off news of the destruction of the Xuanni City's array core. Notify all vassal families within the city to immediately go to the mines and the outer city and drive out all those mortal mine slaves!"

The city lord was taken aback, then quickly replied, "My lord, why are you driving away mortals?"

"The great formation of Broken Immortal Mountain is now broken; that old demon must be hiding inside." The envoy's face was cruel, showing no regard for mortals. "Send those lowly mortals to the front to scout. Let them brave the lightning formations and probe the poisonous miasma. Even if tens of thousands of mortals die, we can still exhaust that old demon's trump cards. Do it immediately!"

The city lord breathed a sigh of relief; the precious treasure was finally safe. He quickly kowtowed, "Your Excellency is wise! This humble official will immediately arrange for cannon fodder!"

The outer perimeter of Broken Immortal Mountain.

The night wind howled, and the rain poured down.

Li Laosi carried the dulled butcher knife on his back, trudging along the muddy mountain path. Rain lashed against his face, constantly washing away the blood and mud from his body.

With each step he took, the Extreme Blood Furnace in his chest emitted a muffled roar.

Scalding, wild blood coursed wildly through his limbs and bones, causing his muscles to throb with intense pain. The severed tendon on his right wrist, forcibly reattached by the wild blood, was now burning red. He felt no fatigue whatsoever; his body was filled with inexhaustible, violent power. Raindrops falling on him were instantly vaporized into white smoke by the intense heat emanating from him.

In the woods ahead, a dilapidated temple, half of which had collapsed, came into view.

A faint light leaked through the crack in the door, and the sounds of several men cursing and swearing could be heard from inside.

Li Laosi stopped in his tracks. The voice was all too familiar. During the day in the muddy alley, it was these very men who had whipped the old woman kneeling and begging for mercy next door to death with long, barbed whips. They were all the lowest-ranking guards of Xuanni City.

Li Laosi tiptoed and pressed himself against the base of the leaky, broken wall.

A fire was burning in the temple. Three guards were drying their soaked clothes around the fire, tearing at cooked meat they had stolen from the homes of ordinary people in the outer city.

"What bad luck! How could the array's core explode in the middle of the night? Now we're stuck here in this lousy mountain ravine getting soaked in the rain." A tall, thin guard spat, his face full of resentment.

"Be content. It's better than being captured and used as a filler in the array." Another guard chewed on a piece of fatty meat. "I heard quite a few important figures died in the inner city. If you ask me, it's because those cultivators were just bored and had nothing better to do than mess with the wrong people."

"What's it to us? Once the rain stops, we'll just go back to the outer city, grab a few peasants, chop them up, and that'll be it." The guard captain poked at the fire with a branch. "Those worthless lives in the outer city are just food for us, fodder for our medicine and fertilizer. Did you see when you whipped that old woman to death during the day? Her bones were so brittle, one lash and she snapped in two. She was truly despicable."

The three of them burst into unrestrained laughter, their laughter filled with a twisted sense of superiority, as if they were trampling on the heads of ordinary people at the bottom of society.

Outside the door, in the muddy ground, Li Laosi's hand, holding the pig-slaughtering knife, trembled violently.

Even though his bloodline had been replaced with the blood of the extreme wilderness, his decades of being a submissive subject left him with an instinctive fear of the immortal sects and these guards, making him subconsciously want to retreat and run away. This was a lingering effect of having his spine broken decades ago.

He had just taken half a step back.

The bloody scene from earlier that day flashed through his mind. Old Zhang's lumbar spine was crushed, his lower body limp in the mud, and he was spitting out mouthfuls of black blood. But that withered old hand was tightly gripping his wrist, forcibly pressing the last glimmer of hope for a comeback into his body.

"Even the bones of those immortals are brittle!"

"Go and carve out a way for us peasants to survive!"

The old farmer's heart-wrenching roar exploded right next to Li Laosi's ears.

The ingrained subservience and servility of the people were instantly crushed into dust in the face of this extreme rage and hatred.

Li Laosi suddenly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. The blood furnace in his chest roared like thunder, and the blood in his body boiled completely.

He did not back down.

Li Laosi raised his thick right leg and kicked it hard at the rotten wooden door of the dilapidated temple.

"Bang!"

The wooden door, along with half a mud wall, was kicked to pieces by this wild, brute force. Chunks of wood and mud, carried by the wind, crashed into the temple, extinguishing the fire on the spot, and sparks flew everywhere.

The three guards were startled and jumped up, grabbing their weapons.

By the remaining dim light, the guard commander could make out the person standing at the door. It was a butcher from the outer city, covered in mud and wearing tattered black iron armor, holding a chipped pig-slaughtering knife in his hand.

"So it's just a lowly wretch from the outer city! You scared the hell out of me!" The commander's vigilance vanished instantly upon realizing he was just a mortal, leaving only annoyance at being disturbed.

He grinned maliciously, picked up the heavy black iron spear, and channeled his inner energy into his arms. The sharp spearhead sliced ​​through the air, mercilessly piercing Li Laosi's heart.

"You piece of trash from the muddy alley, I'll send you to meet that old woman right now!"