My Chest Will Shatter Your Immortal Sword!

The young disciple stumbled and crawled into the dense miasma forest.

The rotten mud beneath his feet was unevenly deep and shallow, and he had long since lost one of his white cloud-patterned boots. Black mud covered his entire body as he rolled and crawled, while the thorny shrubs on either side viciously tore open his cheeks and arms.

Blood streamed down from his wounds, but he could not spare a thought for the pain.

The bizarre, horrifying massacre from moments ago replayed madly in his mind. He gulped down ragged breaths, his lungs burning with searing pain.

"I escaped... I escaped!"

The young disciple braced himself against the trunk of a thick old tree. His legs were so weak he could not stand at all, and he collapsed onto the pile of foul-smelling dead leaves.

He looked back.

Nothing lay behind him but black miasma too thick to see through. There was no sign at all of that bare-chested mortal.

As long as he escaped the suppression range of that black stone, he could gather his true essence again. Once he could ride the wind, this deep mountain forest would never trap him.

This assignment had been a life-threatening pitfall. Once he returned to the City Lord's Manor, he would mince that damned steward into ten thousand pieces.

He raised his sleeve haphazardly to wipe the blood from his face.

An exceptionally faint rustling came from the bushes ahead.

The young disciple's hands abruptly froze.

He raised his head, his gaze piercing the thin miasma as he looked into the darkness ahead.

A pair of beastly eyes glowing an eerie green lit up soundlessly.

Then came a second pair, a third, a fourth.

More than a dozen pairs of green eyes stood out starkly in this deathly silent forest.

The stench of rotting leaves in the air was joined by a thick, fishy reek.

A pack of Netherwind Wolves.

Those immortals had been hurling fireballs and unleashing wind blades up ahead, causing such a huge commotion that they had long alerted these beasts hunting in the area. The fresh scent of blood emanating from the young disciple had become the deadliest beacon.

"No... Get away!"

The young disciple's scalp went numb with terror as his hands groped wildly over the ground. He had already thrown away his flying sword before that mortal. All he held now was a handful of mud.

He desperately circulated his dantian, trying to form the most basic Fireball Art to frighten off the wolf pack.

True essence had only just gathered along his meridians to his fingertips.

A massive Netherwind Wolf lunged straight out of the darkness ahead. Its thick forepaws slammed down on his shoulders, and the tremendous force knocked him flat onto the ground.

Its gaping bloody maw bit down at his head.

"Ah—help! Hel—"

The scream lasted only half a breath.

More than a dozen demonic wolves surged forward, completely swallowing the lone disciple of the immortal sect. The crisp sounds of fangs tearing through flesh and bone rang out one after another in the night.

In the clearing before the cave.

The captain heard the screams drifting clearly from the forest several hundred paces away.

They had stopped too quickly.

The captain's back was pressed tightly against the black City-Guarding Stele. His clothes had long been soaked through with cold sweat.

His calves shook wildly inside his trousers, and his knees would not obey him at all.

Of his subordinates, some were dead, some crippled, and the one who had fled into the forest had clearly been torn apart by demonic beasts.

It was all over.

This was not an operation to encircle and suppress a mortal. They had delivered themselves right to his doorstep as food.

With trembling hands, the captain reached for the storage pouch at his waist, embroidered with the hidden pattern of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect.

He pulled out a yellow talisman paper.

A high-grade sound-transmission talisman.

This was the last card up his sleeve, the only artifact he had that could contact the outside world.

Lu Chen stood not far ahead, showing no intention of stopping him. Those rough, huge hands hung casually at his sides, and several drops of blood from when he had crushed someone's cervical spine still clung to the iron-gray skin.

Seeing Lu Chen's unconcerned expression, the captain gritted his teeth, and a savage resolve surged through him.

He suddenly opened his mouth and bit viciously into the tip of his tongue.

A piercing pain shot through him.

A mouthful of warm blood essence instantly filled his mouth.

"Pfft!"

The captain spat a mouthful of blood essence mixed with true essence directly onto the yellow sound-transmission talisman.

The intricate patterns drawn in cinnabar absorbed the blood essence and instantly erupted with a blinding light.

"Black Mud City has been attacked! The City Lord falsified the military report!"

The captain roared himself hoarse at the talisman, his voice completely cracked.

"That thief is no demonic cultivator! His physical body is terrifying! All immortal arts are ineffective against him!"

"Requesting reinforcements from the inner sect! Seal off Immortal-Breaking Mountain immediately! Immediately—"

He flung the glowing sound-transmission talisman in his hand high into the air.

The talisman immediately transformed into a fist-sized ball of fire. Carrying the desperate plea he had just shouted into it, the fireball shot skyward, preparing to rip through the miasma of the night and fly out of this damned forest.

The captain stared fixedly at that ball of fire.

As long as this message got out, the inner sect elders would notice. No matter how capable this brat was, he would never withstand the slaughtering blades of a Golden Core elder's flying sword.

The fireball had risen less than a zhang.

The crude ancient rock patterns on the stele's surface suddenly flickered.

A massive primordial force field centered on the stele abruptly contracted inward.

The spiritual energy in the surrounding air instantly became incomparably viscous, even ceasing to flow altogether. The withered yellow leaves were pinned so hard into the mud by that invisible pressure that they could not so much as twitch.

The fireball in midair bore the brunt of it.

The violent forbidden-arts domain crushed down upon it without mercy.

The fireball shook violently twice before an utterly invisible gravity seized it tight. Its light dimmed at a visible rate.

"Don't stop! Fly out!" the captain shouted desperately.

It was useless.

"Sizzle."

The fireball was completely snuffed out.

Under that crushing pressure, the expensive high-grade sound-transmission talisman turned directly into a sheet of charred wastepaper.

The scrap of paper spun twice in midair, then drifted slowly down, landing right in the muddy water by the captain's feet.

The captain stared blankly at the blackened paper on the ground.

His entire face had gone deathly pale. The flesh on his face twitched uncontrollably.

Despair completely shattered his mental defenses.

He had entered an immortal sect as a child and cultivated bitterly for more than a decade, rising before dawn and sleeping late. He had always regarded the immortal sect's cultivation arts as the most supreme power in the world.

He had believed that as long as one possessed true essence, mortals were ants that could be crushed at will.

But now.

Before this bare-chested mortal and this broken stone, the true essence he had been so proud of could not even ignite a talisman.

All contact with the outside world had been completely severed.

This place had become a true deadland where no cry to heaven would be answered.

Lu Chen moved then.

He slowly straightened. Beneath his iron-gray skin, every exaggerated muscle bulged.

Lu Chen tilted his head.

The bones in his neck rotated with it.

"Crack, crack, crack."

A series of exceptionally crisp explosions rang through the forest.

Lu Chen stepped forward, the rough soles of his feet crushing broken branches and rotten leaves with dull thuds.

One step.

Two steps.

He moved slowly, yet carried an overwhelmingly tyrannical pressure as he advanced straight toward the captain pinned against the stele.

"Don't come over..."

The captain's lips trembled as he pressed himself backward again and again, his back scraping several bloody marks across the stele's rough surface.

There was nowhere left to retreat.

Either way, he would die.

The captain's eyes became utterly bloodshot, red veins filling the whites. He let out an incomparably shrill, crazed roar.

"Lowborn dog! I'll take you down with me!"

He abruptly raised his right hand and pressed a finger against the Tanzhong acupoint on his chest.

This was the most taboo life-for-life technique within the immortal sect.

He directly sacrificed a hundred years of his lifespan, along with the last mouthful of natal blood essence in his heart, forcing it all out.

The captain's once fairly young face shriveled at a visible rate. Deep wrinkles rapidly crawled over the corners of his eyes, and the black hair tied behind his head turned mottled white within several breaths.

His withered palm slapped his storage pouch.

A compact mid-grade flying sword glowing crimson shot out.

This was the trump card he had exchanged for with most of his life's savings.

He sprayed all of his blood essence onto the blade.

The flying sword let out an ear-piercing sword cry.

Under normal circumstances, once this mid-grade flying sword was activated with blood essence, its sword radiance could surge more than three zhang long, enough to easily slice through stone pillars as thick as several men embracing them.

But now.

The stele's crushing pressure slammed down mercilessly upon the flying sword.

The flames that should have surged were forced down onto the very surface of the blade.

The light on the sword body became incomparably dim, even carrying a thick, viscous quality, like a fire poker just pulled from a furnace before it could be quenched.

The captain gripped the hilt with both hands. Exhausting his final shred of strength, he fought against the stele's gravity and viciously thrust at Lu Chen's heart.

Lu Chen watched the flying sword stab toward him.

He did not make a single move to dodge.

The muscles over his chest instantly swelled.

The eleventh layer of Extreme Path Vitality and Blood surged wildly through his body, all of it gathering in the skin directly before his heart.

Beneath his iron-gray flesh, the black metallic patterns instantly deepened, as profound as an ink-black mass that could never dissolve.

"Clang!!!"

A deafening explosion rang out.

The tip of the mid-grade flying sword struck Lu Chen squarely in the chest.

The immense impact burst forth in a huge spray of dazzling sparks. The sparks scattered over the surrounding mud, scorching the pooled water until it hissed.

The incomparably sharp sword tip only pierced Lu Chen's outermost layer of rough skin.

Beneath that, it jammed firmly against those jet-black metallic patterns.

Not even a single drop of blood flowed.

The captain clutched the hilt with both hands, his shriveled old face flushed crimson from the strain. What he had stabbed was not a mortal body of flesh and blood, but a mountain of black iron that could not melt even after ten million years.

The rebounding force traveled through the sword body and directly shattered the finger bones in both his hands.

Lu Chen's face did not so much as twitch.

Braving the scorching heat radiating from the sword, he forcibly took a step forward with his right foot.

"Creak—"

A teeth-grating sound of twisting metal rang out.

That seemingly indestructible mid-grade artifact was forced by Lu Chen's step to bend from the middle, its blade instantly pressed into an outrageously exaggerated arc.

If he pushed forward another half inch, the sword would definitely snap on the spot.

Lu Chen stopped.

He slowly raised his broad, rough right hand. His five callused fingers abruptly spread open.

Ignoring the heat and sharpness of the blade, that hand clamped tightly around the still-scorching dark-red flying sword.

His palm ground fiercely against the blade, producing an exceptionally piercing screech.

Lu Chen lowered his head.

From above, he stared at the white-haired immortal sect cultivator below him, his face full of despair.