Ultimate Dao Battles the Wolf Pack, Blind Girl Senses Blood Qi

Lu Chen stepped steadily over the ground carpeted with dead branches and rotting leaves.

The towering white-jade walls of Black Mud City had been thoroughly left behind.

The rolling black mountain range ahead was the outer reaches of Immortal-Breaking Mountain, where the immortal sects strictly forbade mortals from entering.

The evening wind blew out from the depths of the forest.

It carried the fermented, putrid stench of leaves that had lingered for years.

Lu Chen dragged the black iron chain onward.

Clatter.

Clatter.

The heavy chain crushed the gravel beneath it, producing a harsh grinding sound.

In this forest, where not even insects chirped, that sound carried far into the distance.

Without warning, more than a dozen pairs of beast eyes gleaming with ghostly green light lit up amid the black canopy ahead.

Those green points were scattered among the surrounding branches and behind the thickets.

Every gaze was fixed on Lu Chen.

These were Netherwind Wolves, first-rank demonic beasts that prowled the outskirts of Immortal-Breaking Mountain.

They were born exceptionally sensitive to spiritual energy.

Within the senses of these dozen beasts, the human intruder's body was completely empty, without the slightest ripple of spiritual energy.

He was not even comparable to the lowest-ranked wandering cultivator.

He was simply an ordinary mortal carrying a little girl on his back and dragging a black boulder behind him.

Fresh flesh and blood delivered to the wilderness.

Lu Chen stopped.

He planted his feet deep into the thick layer of humus.

His hands did not reach for the rusty woodcutter's knife at his waist, which he usually carried for protection.

Instead, he directly stretched out his rough left hand and grabbed the black iron chain wrapped around his right shoulder.

Then he gave it a savage pull.

The heavy chain uncoiled from his knotted muscles, loop by loop.

The thirty-thousand-jin black Dao stele lost its support.

Boom!

The massive stone slammed solidly into the muddy ground without any cushioning.

A huge crater exploded open on the spot.

Its violent weight smashed straight through the bedrock beneath the surface.

The ground within dozens of yards around it shuddered violently several times.

The three nearest Netherwind Wolves had already stretched their front paws from the tree trunks, ready to pounce down from above.

Yet the pure gravity transmitted through the earth veins made every bone in their bodies tremble.

Their limbs instantly went weak.

Their front legs dropped straight into the mud.

They could not even straighten their backs, much less launch an attack.

The sheer crushing weight ground these demonic beasts' hunting instincts into a puddle of sludge.

An incomparably irritable growl came from deep within the wolf pack.

A lead wolf as large as a grown bull suddenly shot out from the thicket to the side.

The fur over its body stood on end, and its fangs curled outward from its jaws.

It was exceedingly cunning.

It did not try to bite Lu Chen's muscles, which looked hard enough already.

Using the force of its charge, the lead wolf leaped into the air.

A rancid gale rushed at him, its target fixed directly on the frail figure tied to Lu Chen's back.

It intended to kill the weakest prey first.

Lu Chen did not even turn his head.

The blood qi of the eleventh level of Iron Cloth Shirt erupted within him.

Beneath his iron-gray skin, black metallic patterns rapidly emerged.

His right foot nailed itself firmly to the ground while his right hand casually reached behind him.

In that instant, his incomparably violent Ultimate Dao reaction speed utterly crushed a first-rank demonic beast's dynamic vision.

Before the lead wolf's gaping jaws could close—

Lu Chen's rough five fingers clamped down, perfectly and precisely, on its lower jaw.

The roar in its throat was forcibly cut short.

Lu Chen's five fingers abruptly clenched inward.

Crack.

The bone-shattering sound, enough to set teeth on edge, rang through the forest.

The lead wolf's proud, hard jawbone was crushed into fragments on the spot.

The muscles in Lu Chen's right arm bulged, and thick tendons rose beneath his skin.

Gripping the hundred-plus-jin beast, he exerted force with one arm and smashed it viciously against an ancient tree so thick that two people would need to link arms to encircle it.

Bang.

The trunk snapped in response.

Wood splinters flew everywhere.

Half the lead wolf's body was smashed into pulp, sliding down the broken stump below.

Red blood spread across the ground. The largest demonic wolf had fallen completely silent.

The leader's instant death utterly enraged the remaining wolf pack.

More than a dozen Netherwind Wolves sprang out from the canopy and the surrounding thickets at once.

They adjusted their postures in midair, then rapidly spread out after landing, surrounding Lu Chen in a semicircle.

Every wolf opened its mouth, baring its fangs.

The spiritual energy of heaven and earth began gathering at high speed.

Half-foot-long wind blades condensed in the air one after another.

This was their innate spell, Netherwind Blade.

A first-rank demonic beast's innate technique, it was powerful enough to slice through ordinary refined-steel armor with ease—and it was the immortal method mortal hunters feared most.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

More than a dozen wind blades tore through the leaves in their path with piercing explosions of air.

All of them slashed toward Lu Chen's chest and face.

The spiritual-energy spells of the immortal path and the pure flesh of the Ultimate Dao clashed for the first time in this wilderness.

Lu Chen did not dodge at all.

He suddenly kicked off the ground with both legs.

The mud beneath his feet exploded into two deep pits.

Charging headlong through that dense barrage of wind blades, he crashed straight into the center of the wolf pack.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

A continuous series of metal-on-metal impacts erupted through the forest.

The sharp wind blades struck Lu Chen's iron-gray skin and were directly deflected by that hardened defense.

They left only faint white marks across the surface of his skin.

They did not even cut through a layer of flesh.

The eleventh level of Iron Cloth Shirt completely ignored attacks from such low-grade spells.

Lu Chen raised his right fist.

There were no fancy forms.

Pure Ultimate Dao killing intent burst forth completely, carrying the most primal force of destruction.

One punch smashed into the nearest Netherwind Wolf.

The violent force pierced straight through the demonic wolf's body.

Its hide remained completely intact.

But under that terrifying shock force, its internal organs instantly turned into a puddle of pulp.

The demonic wolf flew backward, blood pouring from its seven apertures.

Lu Chen stepped forward, his left hand forming a claw as he seized the neck of another demonic wolf trying to ambush him.

With a casual twist—

Its neck bones snapped.

He used the dead wolf's body as a weapon, swinging it in a full arc and smashing it into the three wolves pouncing from the right.

The dull cracks of breaking bones intertwined with heavy impacts.

Lu Chen rampaged through the wolf pack.

Every strike carried devastating weight.

It was a completely one-sided slaughter.

The wind blade spells they had been so proud of did not even make a sound when they struck him.

Half an incense stick later.

The forest fell silent once more.

Broken branches and overturned earth covered the ground.

More than a dozen Netherwind Wolf corpses lay sprawled in every direction.

Lu Chen stood amid the pile of corpses, his bare upper body drenched in sticky demonic blood.

Dark-red blood ran down the defined lines of his muscles.

With this trip into Immortal-Breaking Mountain, their evening provisions and beast hides for warmth overnight were completely taken care of.

In a place where the strong devoured the weak, hunter and prey could exchange identities in the span of a thought.

Lu Chen raised his right hand, covered in demonic blood.

The Ultimate Dao Furnace in his chest began to operate madly.

He forcefully absorbed the thick layer of wolf blood in his palm.

Though the blood of first-rank demonic beasts also contained violent spiritual energy, it was far inferior to that Azure-Water Qilin's.

Ultimate Dao blood qi unleashed its tyrannical crushing force, pulverizing and incinerating that spiritual energy in just a few passes.

Not a trace of extraneous impurity remained.

Lu Chen extended his right index finger toward his shoulder.

A drop of exceptionally gentle pure blood seeped from his fingertip.

This was the origin of life, stripped of all demonic qi and spiritual-energy impurities.

A-Nan lay in the cloth sling and obediently leaned her head forward.

That bloody slaughter just now had not frightened her.

In her perception, Lu Chen's blood qi was the safest thing in existence.

Lu Chen smeared that drop of pure blood across A-Nan's pale lips.

The little girl closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, licking the blood clean.

Her complexion visibly grew a little rosier.

Lu Chen was just about to collect the wolf hides from the ground.

A-Nan suddenly stopped moving.

Her delicate brows knitted tightly together.

A little hand emerged from the sleeve of her tattered cotton coat.

It pointed straight toward the pitch-black forest deeper ahead.

"What is it?" Lu Chen lowered his voice.

A-Nan pressed her face to Lu Chen's shoulder, her voice carrying instinctive disgust.

"A mass of blood is coming from over there."

"It's very gray."

"And it smells especially bad."

Lu Chen looked in the direction A-Nan pointed.

There were only impenetrable tree trunks and endless shadows.

There was no movement at all.

But he trusted A-Nan's sharp sensitivity to blood qi completely.

A mass of gray blood.

The forests at the outskirts of Immortal-Breaking Mountain had never been safe ground.

Lu Chen walked over to the enormous Dao stele, picked up the black iron chain again, and wrapped it around his arm loop by loop.

He stared into the impenetrable darkness ahead.

The muscles in his right arm tightened completely.