A Tacky External Art Bought with Half a Stale Bun

The mud alleys of Black Mud City's outer city never saw daylight year-round.

Even the wind here reeked sour and foul.

The air was forever thick with the stench of fermented slop. These past few days, it had gained the bitterness of low-grade hemostatic herbs, along with the sweat-sour odor that could never be washed from mortals' bodies.

Looking up into the distance, immortal light soared skyward from the inner city. The formations shimmered in a riot of colors, dazzlingly bright.

That was where the cultivators lived.

The mud alleys had nothing but gloom.

Bare-chested, Lu Chen squatted before a battered mud stove.

He had to control the heat precisely.

He had spent three days digging through the wasteland outside the city just to find these few low-grade hemostatic herbs.

If even a trace of their medicinal potency boiled away, A-Nan's coughing would not be suppressed tonight.

While the fire simmered, Lu Chen spread his legs apart.

He dropped directly into a horse stance.

His breathing instantly became heavy and deep.

The great sinews along his waist and back stood out one by one, running up his spine to the back of his head.

The thing he practiced was called Iron Cloth Shirt.

This technique did not possess the slightest trace of immortal aura.

Years ago, a group of old soldiers fleeing famine had come to Black Mud City. More than half had starved to death.

Lu Chen had used half a moldy, blackened coarse-flour steamed bun to forcibly pry a tattered, incomplete book from the hand of a dying old soldier.

That was all he owned.

Mortals could not cultivate immortality; they had no spiritual roots.

In these mud alleys, where lives were worth less than weeds, mortals could be beaten to death by the immortal city's guards at any moment, or thrown out to feed demon beasts.

Lu Chen practiced this tacky external art for no other reason.

Only so that when the guards lashed him with their whips, his bones would not snap on the spot.

The broken wooden door creaked.

A-Nan emerged barefoot, feeling her way forward.

Her tiny body was rather frail.

She clutched an old cloth doll missing half an ear in her hand.

A grimy strip of cloth covered her blind eyes.

"Lu Chen."

A-Nan's voice was timid.

She always habitually reached out in front of herself, searching for the hem of Lu Chen's clothes.

Hearing her, Lu Chen hurriedly withdrew from his horse stance.

He looked at his hands, caked with herbal ash and mud, and did not immediately go to steady her.

First, he rubbed them hard against his washed-faded coarse trousers more than a dozen times.

Only when his palms were red and hot from rubbing, completely free of dust, did he reach out and press his hand atop A-Nan's head, giving it two gentle rubs.

"The medicine will be ready soon. Don't run around. Just stand here and wait for me."

A-Nan nodded obediently, hugging the earless cloth doll even tighter with both hands.

A violent commotion suddenly erupted from the neighboring yard.

It was the sound of something hard smashing against iron.

Then came a burst of wailing sobs.

Old Zhang from next door was swinging a chipped hammer, smashing his family's only cooking pot into pieces.

Then he stuffed the iron shards into a tattered cloth sack, piece by piece.

Tomorrow was the Offering-to-Immortals Festival.

Every mortal in the outer city had to scrape together three Mortal Silver coins as an offering.

Those who could not pay had no room for negotiation. They would immediately be driven from the city to feed demon beasts.

As Old Zhang wiped away tears, he stuffed the iron shards into the sack.

He kept muttering under his breath.

"Smash it and trade it for money... trade it for Mortal Silver..."

"If we don't pay, the immortals will feed us to the demon beasts in the back mountain..."

"This old man doesn't want to die. I've still got a grandson to raise..."

The entire mud alley was filled with this deathly, despondent crying.

Lu Chen never stopped fanning the stove with his palm-leaf fan.

He had long grown used to it.

In this world, mortals were merely livestock raised by immortal sects, laborers who provided offerings.

A mortal's life was worthless.

Suddenly, A-Nan's brows knitted together.

Her little hand abruptly seized Lu Chen's hem.

Her grip tightened and tightened.

Her knuckles turned white with force.

"Lu Chen..."

A-Nan hunched her shoulders and shuddered all over.

"What is it?" Lu Chen immediately threw down the fan, turned, and pulled her behind him.

"Something is falling..." A-Nan raised her head, her blindfolded eyes facing the sky above the mud alley.

"It feels cold... and sharp..."

Mortals could not sense spiritual energy, but although A-Nan could not see, her instincts were eerily accurate.

She possessed an instinctive rejection and disgust toward fluctuations of spiritual energy in the heavens.

Without hesitation, Lu Chen shielded A-Nan in his arms.

His back tightened, muscles bulging in hard blocks.

The blood and qi of Iron Cloth Shirt sped through his body.

A dull explosive crack suddenly burst from the mouth of the alley.

It was the sound of a cured leather whip viciously striking flesh.

"Get lost! Blind fool!"

The immortal city's guard roared so loudly that clods of dirt rained from the mud walls.

Several mortals huddled at the alley entrance were sent flying by the lash, rolling through the mud again and again amid shrieks of agony.

Steward Zhao, belly thrust out and hands clasped behind his back, swaggered into the mud alley.

His boots stepped into a mud puddle, splashing filthy water all over him.

With a disgusted expression, he shook his feet and covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief.

Two immortal city guards hurried ahead to clear the way, bloodied whips in hand.

Steward Zhao kicked open the neighboring courtyard's gate.

The wooden door crashed down.

Old Zhang had just wrapped up the pot fragments and had not even had time to kowtow in greeting.

Steward Zhao stepped forward and kicked him directly.

The iron pot fragments scattered across the ground. The broken earthen pot in the yard, used to boil medicine for rheumatism, was kicked over as well.

Scalding medicinal broth splashed directly over the old man's legs.

Old Zhang screamed and dropped to his knees. Ignoring the burns on his legs, he desperately knocked his head against the ground like a pounding garlic.

Steward Zhao looked down at him from above.

"Crying at a funeral?"

"Being able to pave the way for the Holy Maiden to sever her worldly ties is a blessing you lot cultivated over ten lifetimes!"

"Don't fail to recognize kindness, or delay the karmic cause and effect of the immortal path!"

"At tomorrow's Offering-to-Immortals Festival, offerings will be doubled. Short even one coin, and your entire family will be thrown out of the city!"

Old Zhang kowtowed again and again, his forehead smashing against gravel until it was covered in blood.

He did not dare utter even a single plea for mercy.

Steward Zhao snorted coldly and turned to leave the yard.

As he tilted his head, he happened to spot Lu Chen's courtyard gate.

Bare-chested, Lu Chen held the little blind girl A-Nan firmly behind him.

Steward Zhao stopped and took two steps forward.

"Isn't this Lu Chen, the hardest-boned fellow in our mud alley?"

The two guards broke into mocking laughter, flicking the whips in their hands.

Lu Chen clenched his fists tightly.

The veins on the backs of his hands bulged all the way up his forearms, throbbing wildly.

The inner force of Iron Cloth Shirt rampaged madly through his muscles.

He wanted to smash that revolting fat face with one punch.

But he did not move.

He turned his head and looked at A-Nan hiding behind him.

The little girl was trembling all over in terror, clutching the earless cloth doll tightly.

If he struck now, he could not protect A-Nan.

The rage in his chest was about to explode, but Lu Chen forcibly swallowed this burning fury back down.

He lowered his head.

He said nothing.

Seeing Lu Chen lower his head, Steward Zhao sneered and spat a thick gob of phlegm before Lu Chen's door.

"What good are hard bones?"

"Trash without even a spiritual root."

"You'll only ever be maggots in the mud, creatures that can be crushed beneath one foot."

Steward Zhao extended a fat finger and poked Lu Chen's forehead.

"Have both your offerings ready tomorrow."

"Otherwise, this steward will personally throw your useless blind little sister to the demon beasts in the back mountain!"

At those final words, Lu Chen abruptly raised his head.

Just as he was about to erupt—

The heavens changed.

Without any warning, a brutal force violently tore apart the clouds overhead.

Deafening thunder crashed down from the ninth heaven.

The ground of the entire mud alley began to quake violently.

Roof tiles clattered down, shattering in the muddy water.

The already dim mud alley was instantly plunged into utter darkness.

A colossal white-jade spirit vessel, so vast it occupied half the sky, hovered directly over Black Mud City.

The spirit vessel blotted out the sky and covered the sun.

Its immense shadow pressed down upon the entire mud alley.

This was no ordinary immortal sect patrol.

This was the Azure Firmament Sword Sect's spirit vessel for crossing provinces.

Immediately afterward, a terrifying pressure so dreadful it suffocated all who felt it descended from the sky.

This was spiritual pressure deliberately unleashed by cultivators.

An indiscriminate crushing force.

The mortals in the mud alley fell to their knees in droves.

Some were crushed until blood poured from their seven orifices, passing out on the spot.

Old Zhang was pinned into the mud, unable even to lift his head.

Steward Zhao and the two guards, who had just been strutting about in arrogance, also dropped to their knees with a thud, trembling all over.

Lu Chen's knees bent instantly, letting out a shrill scrape of grinding bones.

Bang!

The mud-brick pavement beneath his feet was forcibly stamped with two cracks.

The immense pressure forced him to kneel.

A-Nan's face turned deathly pale under the spiritual pressure; even her breathing was completely cut off.

Lu Chen seized A-Nan by the shoulders and held her firmly beneath his chest.

He used his own back to bear that invisible mountain.

His teeth bit until blood flowed.

It dripped down his chin.

The force of Iron Cloth Shirt surged to its limit.

He would not kneel!

Even if I die, I will not kneel to these scum who treat mortals like livestock!

His legs continued to bend, his muscles running beyond their limits, on the verge of tearing apart.

Just as he was about to collapse.

A massive shadow loomed over the edge of the spirit boat.

It was not human.

It was an exotic beast as large as a house, its entire body burning with an eerie watery-blue glow.

It thrust out its ferocious head.

This was the Azure-Water Qilin, a high-ranking exotic beast tamed by the immortal sect.

The beast opened its bloody maw and exhaled white frost, looking down from above at the mortals crawling frantically across the ground below.