The Foundation Establishment Old Monster's Despair!

Ten Azurewood Demon-Slaying Sword Auras descended with an utterly terrifying pressure.

These tangible streams of azure true essence cleaved apart the gray miasma overhead, along with several towering ancient trees that would have taken several men to encircle. They were ground into splinters that flew wildly through the sky.

Several Black-Iron Heavy Cavalry soldiers hiding at the edge did not even have time to scream. Their hundreds of pounds of armor, together with the flesh and blood inside, were crushed by the sword qi and exploded directly into glaring clouds of blood mist.

Lu Chen had no immortal cultivator's divine sense to investigate with.

But the extreme sense of danger he had honed over years of fighting countless great demons in the deep mountains had already locked onto the trajectory of the descending killing blow at the very last moment.

Not only did this rough brute not retreat, he instead strode forward and met it head-on.

He brutally raised his left arm across his face, shielding his vital points. His right foot stomped viciously down into the muddy ground beneath him.

The bluestone slabs around him shattered with a boom.

The metallic patterns of the twelfth layer of Iron Cloth Shirt activated instantly, while blinding dark-red blood qi erupted beneath his skin.

"Boom!!!"

The ten unstoppable Azurewood Sword Auras struck Lu Chen squarely across his broad back and shoulders, and a horrifying tearing sound that set teeth on edge immediately erupted through the forest.

That iron-gray flesh, capable of crushing a mid-grade flying sword barehanded, was finally forcibly split open by the enraged strike of a Foundation Establishment old monster.

Bloody gashes deep enough to expose bone ripped open along his skin, and great torrents of crimson blood sprayed wildly from the wounds, dyeing the mud and water beneath his feet red!

Yet that horrifying sight of grievous injury lasted less than a single breath.

The berserk blood qi of the twelfth extreme layer completely surged and boiled under the stimulus of agonizing pain.

A muffled explosion rang out from Lu Chen's chest. Every tendon in his body tightened to its limit at that instant, and the torn muscle groups advanced rather than retreated, clamping down tightly inward.

The immortal sword auras attempting to cut deeper were forcibly trapped between his flesh and bones, unable to descend even half an inch further.

Then, scorching crimson blood-qi smoke shot straight into the heavens from his wounds. Carrying an extreme heat, it actually ground away those lofty azure true-essence sword qii, dispersing them completely into a heap of useless vapor!

After the blood qi washed through them, the fierce killing moves hanging in midair vanished without a trace.

The arrogance on Chen Yuanshan's face as he hovered in the distance could no longer be maintained. He simply could not believe what was happening below.

The old fox anxiously spread out his immense divine sense, penetrating the still-rising crimson blood-qi smoke with utmost care as he swept over every inch of Lu Chen's limbs and body.

What his divine sense discovered made the scalp of this Foundation Establishment cultivator, who had lived for over a century, go numb.

No dantian! No spiritual roots!

He could not find even the faintest trace of true-essence foundation!

"There is no spiritual qi on you... You're that mortal?!"

Chen Yuanshan's eyes bulged. He no longer cared about maintaining the bearing of an exalted expert and opened his throat to roar out this horrifying truth, one that could shake the immortal sects of all East Mystic Province to their core.

How could Lu Chen possibly give him the chance to spout nonsense?

The violent blood-qi smoke around his body surged upward, and searing air carrying a powerful suffocating sensation slammed into Chen Yuanshan's face, forcibly choking the unfinished half of his sentence in his throat and making him cough repeatedly.

Two savage lights exploded in Lu Chen's eyes.

He bent over, and his two hands, each larger than a cattail fan, plunged directly into the carcass of the dead Ironclad Rhino at his feet. His thick fingers gouged into the flesh of the three-thousand-jin demon beast.

His broad waist and back bent sharply backward into an exaggerated arc, his spine cracking in a rapid series of explosions.

He directly used this enormous beast as an oversized concealed weapon and hurled it viciously at Chen Yuanshan in midair.

The massive black shadow howled toward him with an overwhelmingly oppressive gust of wind.

Chen Yuanshan's heart pounded wildly. Suppressing his panic, the top-grade flying sword beneath his feet flared with blue light. He controlled the sword with extreme awkwardness, desperately shifting sideways.

The heavy rhino carcass swept past the sole of his shoe by the narrowest margin and flew higher into the air on a gale.

Chen Yuanshan had only just steadied the breath lodged in his throat, thinking he had escaped disaster.

In the muddy bog below, Lu Chen planted his feet in the sludge and exerted strength through his waist, driving the entire mass of muscles along his back.

A Black-Iron Heavy Spear he had casually picked up from the ground was gripped in his reverse hold and hurled out with savage force, carrying a shrill sonic boom that tore through the air!

The heavy spear was unimaginably fast. Though launched later, it arrived first, striking the still-flying rhino carcass in midair with extreme precision!

Pure, tyrannical brute force exploded within the dead beast in an instant, tearing the three-thousand-jin mass of rotten flesh completely apart from within!

"Bang!"

Great masses of flesh, shattered organs, and foul demon blood burst across the sky, forming a crimson curtain that blanketed the view.

The divine senses of the immortal cultivators suffered immense interference the instant they touched that dense layer of blood qi, completely losing their lock on the ground below.

At the very moment all the upper echelons of the immortal sects had their divine senses smeared by the blood rain filling the sky, and were even scared witless by the trembling earth—

Lu Chen moved.

Using the perfect cover of blood and the dim forest, the tendons in his entire left arm erupted with a bone-chilling crack.

That century-old Black-Iron Chain, soaked in demon blood, pierced precisely through the blood mist under the terrifying force of his swing and wrapped tightly around the ankle of Chen Yuanshan, who was flying low on his sword just outside the fifteen-zhang forbidden zone!

To close the distance, Lu Chen burst into a sprint, completely leaving the safe protection range of the City-Guarding Stele.

His right foot stomped a terrifying crater into the ground, and a mountain-toppling force yanked violently downward through the iron chain.

The Foundation Establishment retainer did not even manage a scream before that irresistible brute force dragged him from the air, sending him headfirst into a distant mud pit and splashing muck everywhere!

Pain instantly flooded his body. Chen Yuanshan crashed into the mud, his ankle bones crushed completely by the chain.

At that moment of life-and-death desperation, he had no time to consider why Lu Chen dared to rush out of the forbidden zone.

His withered hand trembled as he crushed the azure jade talisman concealed in his sleeve.

This was the life-saving trump card he had acquired by exhausting a century of savings and going bankrupt at an underground black-market auction—the Azureedge Sword Jade.

Here, there was no longer the suppression of that ancient, heavy pressure from the City-Guarding Stele. The abundant spiritual qi of heaven and earth outside instantly erupted into turmoil.

At the very same moment the trump card shattered, hundreds upon thousands of fully tangible azure sword qii burst from the broken jade talisman.

These incomparably sharp sword lights instantly curled back, holding nothing in reserve as they formed an outwardly bulging, all-encompassing barrier of killing sword qi. The entire shield unleashed one hundred percent of its terrifying killing power, protecting Chen Yuanshan seamlessly at its center.

The surrounding air was all sliced apart with hissing sounds.

Lu Chen let out an exceedingly brutal snort.

He did not take this protective sword radiance, pushed to its absolute limit and capable of mincing an ordinary body cultivator into pulp, seriously at all.

With nothing but a mortal body, he did not retreat a single step. Without the slightest reason or restraint, he thrust both broad hands straight into the immortal formation at the height of its power!

The peerlessly sharp Azurewood Sword Qi cut wildly, instantly mangling the skin and flesh on the backs of his hands and arms into a bloody mess.

Yet not the slightest sign of pain or retreat could be found on that iron-gray face of the hardened man.

Instead, he bared two rows of stark white teeth in a wide grin, his entire face twisting into an incomparably excited and savage smile. He had completely gone red with killing intent.

The flesh on his ten fingers was shredded bloody by the rapidly revolving formation. Finger bones as hard as diamond were directly exposed to the air, colliding with the sword qi and throwing off showers of sparks.

The warm crimson blood of a mortal forcibly dyed red the lofty, supposedly indestructible azure sword formation of the immortals.

Lu Chen ignored everything else. His two hands, with only bones and sinew left, locked tightly onto the formation's circulating spiritual-qi nodes. The berserk pure-yang blood qi within his body poured violently inward through the cracks torn open in the sword formation.

"Break for me!"

Amid his rough roar came an ear-piercing explosion of collapsing spiritual qi.

Those hands drenched in mortal blood actually tore this impregnable sword-qi shield apart by force, ripping open an enormous, wildly exaggerated gap straight down the middle!