The Ultimate Dao Furnace Swallows Medicine Whole, the Old Mudleg Grips Raw Iron

Lu Chen loosened his clenched fingers.

The fragments of the hard mid-grade immortal sword sifted through the gaps between his rough fingers.

The iron powder struck the muddy pit slick with demon blood without even splashing.

He shook his hand.

Flinging the black ash from his knuckles.

Then he turned and strode toward the City-Guarding Stele, thirty thousand jin in weight, that sealed the cave entrance.

Lu Chen turned his muscular body sideways.

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

Outside, the night wind howled fiercely.

The bleak, bone-piercing mountain wind swept along the ground and poured straight into the cave.

The instant Lu Chen squeezed inside, the residual pure yang blood essence left behind by the eleven layers of Iron Cloth Shirt coursed through the iron-gray surface of his skin and erupted with terrifying heat.

Heat waves rolled outward without restraint.

They forcibly drove every gust of biting cold wind back beyond the black stone.

On the dry, hard stone slab at the very back of the cave.

A-Nan's tiny body was curled tightly into a ball.

The few mid-grade spirit stones beneath her had long since been drained of every scrap of spiritual energy, turning into dull gray waste stones.

At some point, an extremely sticky fluid had begun seeping from the surface of the little girl's pale skin.

It was a mingled gray-black color.

It gave off an unbearably foul, fishy stench.

This was the acquired turbid qi that had accumulated within an ordinary person's body over many years.

Lu Chen crouched his towering body down.

With extremely stiff movements, he pulled over a clean daoist robe from beside him.

This robe had been seized from an outer sect disciple's storage bag.

Lu Chen did not care in the slightest how valuable the material was. He simply bunched it into a ball.

Holding the cloth in his broad palm.

He tried to be as gentle as possible as he slowly wiped away the sweat and grime constantly seeping from the little blind girl's forehead and cheeks.

Halfway through, Lu Chen stopped.

His gaze swept toward the City-Guarding Stele blocking the entrance.

The ancient desolate pressure radiating from this black stone was tyrannical beyond measure.

It tightly locked down the heaven-and-earth spiritual energy outside the cave, refusing to let even a trace seep inside.

In an environment like this, cultivators could not even form a basic qi-gathering art.

But Lu Chen noticed something unusual.

This terrifying gravity field did not suppress Ultimate Dao physiques like theirs, which shared the same origin, in the slightest.

Not only did it not suppress them.

This heavy pressure instead became an invisible great iron hammer.

Without pause, it struck the bones in A-Nan's body as they transformed and reassembled.

Like a blacksmith swinging his hammer to forge a crude billet.

One hammer blow after another.

It forcibly drove out every impurity buried deep in her bone marrow, making this transformation of A-Nan's jade bones denser and purer.

A-Nan had endured the hardest stage.

Her breathing gradually became long and steady.

The rise and fall of her thin chest settled into a regular rhythm.

Just then.

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

"Rumble..."

It was not the sound of breathing.

It was the sound of newborn bone marrow violently grinding and colliding as Ultimate Dao power reshaped it.

The sound was incomparably muffled.

It was like distant thunder rolling through the depths of storm clouds before a summer downpour.

As the roar of colliding marrow echoed through the cramped cave.

The tiny bits of gravel beneath Lu Chen's feet actually bounced twice against the ground, almost imperceptibly, shaken by the sound waves.

Lu Chen withdrew the daoist robe. Only after confirming that A-Nan's vital signs were stable did he turn around.

He walked over to the pile of spoils and sat cross-legged directly on the dry, hard stone floor.

He began sorting through the items he had just dumped out after crushing the outer sect disciple's storage bag.

He had no divine sense.

Nor did he need any of those flashy incantations.

He simply emptied every last miscellaneous item from the bag in one go.

"Clatter, clatter."

The items piled into a small mountain.

Several jade slips inscribed with cultivation methods rolled to his hand.

Lu Chen did not even look at them. He casually pushed these cultivation manuals, which cultivators treasured like jewels, several feet away.

These things were not even worth the trouble of using as kindling.

His thick fingers rummaged through the pile of clutter.

Before long, he picked out more than ten spirit herbs, wet mud still clinging to their roots.

None were young. They were all good things that had grown for decades or even over a century.

When immortal sects refined pills, their rules were frighteningly numerous.

One had to prepare a pill furnace, calculate the proper time and heat, and combine ingredients according to the medicinal principles of sovereign, minister, assistant, and envoy.

One careless mistake, and an entire furnace would become useless slag.

Lu Chen did not care about any of that.

He had no pill furnace.

His fleshly body was the finest furnace of all.

He grabbed a spirit herb still stained with yellow mud and shoved it directly into his mouth, roots and leaves alike.

His two rows of broad teeth snapped shut.

"Crunch, crunch."

He chewed savagely.

Bitter juice mixed with the earthy stench of mud burst across his mouth.

His throat bobbed, and he forcibly swallowed the chewed medicinal dregs into his stomach.

The instant the herbs entered his belly.

The Ultimate Dao Furnace began operating at full speed.

The medicinal potency contained within those dozen or so century-old spirit herbs was immense.

The moment it touched his stomach, the reaction was as violent as pouring a ladle of cold water into a wok of boiling hot oil.

Boom!

The frenzied medicinal properties crashed wildly about within his stomach and intestines.

The iron-gray muscles of Lu Chen's abdomen instantly tightened, and his eight-pack spasmed violently under the enormous impact.

The blocks of muscle rolled and twitched.

He remained seated cross-legged, his back ramrod straight.

The boiling blood essence in his body surged into his stomach from every direction.

With an incomparably tyrannical stance, it forcibly crushed the violent medicinal properties darting everywhere.

The impurities and toxins contained in the spirit herbs were incinerated on the spot by that high-temperature blood essence.

They turned into wisps of black qi that escaped through Lu Chen's pores.

All that remained was the purest essence of medicinal power.

Swept along by Ultimate Dao blood essence, this essence merged without reservation into every limb and bone of Lu Chen's body, replenishing his skin, flesh, tendons, and bones after time and again breaking past their limits.

The scene shifted.

A hundred li beyond Immortal-Breaking Mountain.

Mud Alley in the outer city of Black Mud City, reeking of sour rot.

The autumn rain that had fallen all night had only just stopped.

The sky was gray and dim, carrying a gloom that could not be driven away.

The uneven Mud Alley was filled with murky puddles.

Not even a dog bark could be heard anywhere in the entire alley.

Every household had their broken wooden doors shut tight.

The air was shrouded in a deathly stillness more suffocating than the night itself.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The harsh sound of a battered copper gong suddenly exploded at the mouth of the alley.

Brutally tearing apart the silence.

Several guards of the immortal city, clad in heavy black-iron armor, strode into Mud Alley.

The guard walking in the middle pushed a sturdy wooden wheelbarrow with both hands.

Its wheel ground over loose gravel and bluestone slabs, making a teeth-grating "creak, creak."

The cart did not carry weapons.

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

The iron rings clanged and rattled together.

The order issued by the immortal sect yesterday had officially come into force.

The collection of doubled taxes had begun.

From the broken house with half its roof collapsed, second on the left.

A heartrending scream quickly rang out.

"Sir soldier! Sir soldier, give me half a day! I truly do not have a single copper coin left!"

"Get lost!"

Without the slightest mercy, a guard raised his combat boot and kicked a skeletal widow heavily out over the threshold.

The widow fell straight into a filthy puddle full of rotten mud.

Before she could even climb to her feet.

The guard tore a thick iron chain with a lock clasp from the wheelbarrow.

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

With a "click."

The clasp locked tight.

A child of three or four ran out from the house. Terrified by the sight, the child burst into loud sobs and flailed tiny hands as they rushed forward.

The guard did not even spare the child a glance.

Gripping one end of the chain in both hands, he turned and headed out of the alley.

The widow could not even kneel steadily before the immense force dragged her down.

She was mercilessly dragged forward through muddy water filled with sharp stones.

Her throat was cinched so tightly that she could not produce a complete sound. Blood seeped from her abraded flesh, drawing an intensely glaring red line through the filthy puddle.

Next door.

Old Man Zhang sat on the ground, leaning against a courtyard wall that had collapsed halfway.

Through the broken fence, he saw every detail of the tragedy unfolding in the muddy ground outside.

Old Man Zhang did not make a single sound.

His withered hands, nothing but skin over bone, were hidden tightly inside the wide sleeves of his tattered clothes.

In his left palm.

He clenched a black fragment of stone.

It was precisely the fragment that had shot from the base of the immortal sect's City-Guarding Stele yesterday, when that terrifying bare-chested young man had forcibly uprooted it and smashed it down, sending the shard flying into Mud Alley.

The stone fragment's edges were incomparably sharp.

They had long since pierced Old Man Zhang's palm, smearing dark red blood across its surface.

Yet he gripped it with all his strength, showing no intention of loosening his hold.

His little grandson trembled all over from the widow's screams outside.

Snot and tears covered his face as he desperately burrowed into Old Man Zhang's arms.

His two little hands tightly clutched the old man's patched, tattered coat.

Old Man Zhang stretched out his right hand and covered his grandson's mouth, preventing him from crying out.

He raised his head.

Those cloudy eyes, once made timid by years of oppression, eyes that instinctively avoided the immortal city's stewards whenever he encountered them.

Had completely changed today.

Every trace of pleading weakness had vanished cleanly.

In the depths of his gaze lay an extremely abnormal, morbid calm.

The decrees the Nine Provinces Immortal Alliance issued to the lowest classes were harsh to the extreme.

The lives of mortals were worth less than grass.

As for the mud-legged peasants of the outer city, forget resisting.

Even if they merely offended a guard carrying out his duties with a disrespectful look.

Once discovered, they would be tied to bronze pillars in the inner city square and subjected to the burning-brand punishment.

A red-hot iron would be used to sear the character "lowborn" into their faces.

But at this moment.

Old Zhang stared straight at those black-armored guards strutting tyrannically outside the door.

Listening to the scrape of iron chains against the stone slabs.

His eyelids did not so much as twitch.

He utterly ignored those terror-inducing decrees etched into his very bones.

Old Zhang silently withdrew his gaze from outside.

He slowly lowered his head.

Past the broken water vat before him, with a huge chunk missing from its rim.

His gaze fell squarely upon the farthest corner of the courtyard.

There, propped against the earthen wall, stood a hoe normally used to turn the soil.

The hoe's wooden handle had been worn black with use, its surface coated in a smooth patina.

Its iron blade was caked with dried yellow mud, its edge chipped in several places and covered in reddish-brown rust.

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

Slowly curled inward at the knuckles.

The veins on the back of his hand bulged one after another.

His five withered fingers bent slightly into a stance ready to exert force.

The clang of the bronze gong outside drew closer and closer.

The guard beating the gong had already reached the courtyard gate.

Bang!

An exceptionally brutal crash rang out.

Old Zhang's already tottering wooden courtyard gate was kicked to pieces with one heavy blow.

Broken splinters flew in every direction.

A guard with a face full of flesh strode into the courtyard.

His heavy combat boots rudely stomped into the largest filthy puddle in the middle of the yard.

Dirty water splashed everywhere.

In his hand, the guard carried a long whip of tanned cowhide, fresh from lashing someone and still dripping blood.

He looked down at Old Zhang and his grandson, huddled in the corner by the wall.

The fleshy folds of his face pulled into an incomparably arrogant, savage grin.

"Old bastard, where's the money?"

As he cursed, that thick, life-taking hand reached straight for Old Zhang's collar.