One Arm Shatters White Bones, Sha Qi Intimidates the Underground City

Deep within Immortal-Breaking Mountain, the night wind swept the pungent stench of blood and rot through the forest.

Lu Chen wore a broad black cloak that completely concealed most of his brawny frame.

His left arm was tightly held against his chest, protecting a flat, seemingly empty cloth bundle tied there.

His feet crunched over the thick layer of rotting fallen leaves. Lu Chen made no attempt to hide his tracks as he walked step by step toward the entrance of the underground black market hidden deep within the miasma.

Ahead lay a massive natural sinkhole.

The black market's entrance stood at the bottom of the pit.

It was a towering gateframe crudely assembled by crossing together the bones of more than a dozen enormous second-rank demon beasts.

On either side of the bone wall, two early Qi Refinement Realm rogue cultivator guards leaned against it in boredom.

Their Daoist robes were tattered and covered in grime that years of washing could never remove.

They kept tossing several dull, low-grade spirit stone fragments of terrible quality between their hands, comparing their miserable earnings for the night.

"Damn it, what the hell are those dogs in Black Mud City's inner city going crazy over?"

The guard on the left spat viciously onto the ground, his face full of agitation.

"In the middle of the night, they suddenly activated the city-protecting grand formation in full. Not even a living rat can get out."

The guard on the right rubbed the spirit stone fragments hard between his hands and joined in the cursing.

"Isn't that the truth!"

"The prices in this gray market outside the city have more than tripled!"

"These lousy stones could have bought two low-grade Divine Movement Talismans in there yesterday, but today they can't even buy half a bottle of the worst Rejuvenation Pills!"

The two were cursing with relish.

Then the gray miasma that had drifted slowly through the area year-round abruptly stopped moving without warning.

The wind died.

A terrifying heat that made breathing difficult suddenly surged through the air.

Lu Chen stopped ten paces away from the white-bone gate.

The pure yang blood vitality overflowing from the twelfth layer of Iron Cloth Shirt poured uncontrollably from beneath his cloak.

Beneath his feet was a wide mud pit that had been waterlogged for years.

In the mere few breaths after Lu Chen came to a stop—

An extreme heat crashed down.

The filthy water in the mud pit boiled on the spot, releasing vast clouds of pungent white vapor.

The moisture evaporated in an instant.

The soft, wet mud visibly hardened at a frightening speed before cracking across a wide area with a series of dry, snapping crack-crack sounds.

Sweat poured down the left guard's face as he finally noticed the utterly abnormal heatwave.

He abruptly straightened up, forcibly suppressing the panic in his heart as he pulled a pitted, low-quality flying sword from his waist.

Its tip pointed directly at the tall shadow in the black cloak ten paces away.

"Stop!"

"Who are you with? Don't you know the rules?"

"Take out your identity token and let us see it!"

The guard shouted loudly, but his wildly trembling legs and voice gone completely off-key drained every last trace of confidence from him.

Lu Chen ignored such nonsense.

Beneath the loose black cloak, the massive muscles of his right arm tensed layer upon layer with grotesque intensity.

He did not even make a move to draw a weapon, much less utter a single word in reply.

Lu Chen merely raised his right foot casually.

Then he stomped down on a hard bluestone protruding from the mud.

There was no thunderous explosion.

That solid bluestone, hard enough to be forged into the blank of a low-grade flying sword, silently turned into a heap of exceedingly fine stone powder the instant Lu Chen's foot landed on it.

The crushing force of his pure flesh did not stop with the stone's pulverization.

That utterly unreasonable, primordial brute strength traveled horizontally through the underground rock strata with extreme precision.

The ground before the bone gate violently jumped upward.

The two guards only felt an irresistible, savage force of vibration shoot up from their heels straight toward the crowns of their heads.

Their legs gave out, and with two thuds, they dropped to their knees before the bone gate in perfect unison.

Their knees smashed heavily into the gravel, making them suck in cold breaths of pain.

At the very same instant Lu Chen raised his foot and crushed the bluestone—

His violent physical force burst outward.

The shockwave swept up the hem of the heavy black cloak, violently flipping a corner of it backward.

The guard on the right was kneeling on the ground with his head raised.

By the dim light cast by the spirit stones embedded in the passage walls—

His gaze locked onto Lu Chen's exposed right arm.

That arm, thicker than an ordinary man's thigh, was tightly wrapped in a lengthy section of heavy hundred-year Black-Iron Chain.

That was not the most terrifying part.

The most terrifying part was that the surface of the hundred-year Black-Iron Chain was caked in a thick layer of completely dried dark-red blood scabs.

Those blood scabs definitely had not come from low-rank demon beasts.

The right guard's Adam's apple bobbed madly, his eyes bulging as though they would pop from their sockets.

From within that inconspicuous layer of blood scabs, an incomparably terrifying remnant spiritual pressure radiated outward.

It was the distinctive aura possessed only by Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators!

Moreover, that aura was filled with utter terror from the moment before death.

A monster that had just torn a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator apart barehanded!

The right guard's scalp exploded with terror.

With a clang, he flung the shabby flying sword in his hand far away.

Using both hands and feet, he scrambled and rolled frantically into the mud at the side.

He wished he could embed his entire body into the mud, forcibly clearing the central gate passage completely open.

Lu Chen did not even spare the two cowards a glance.

He strode up to the white-bone gate.

There was still not the slightest fluctuation of true essence around him.

He had no intention whatsoever of forming hand seals or using true qi.

Lu Chen directly raised his thick right arm wrapped in Black-Iron Chain and pressed it against the white-bone gate, which weighed several thousand jin.

His huge muscles erupted with force.

There was no flash of spellcraft, only the unleashing of the most primitive brute strength.

Creak—

A succession of unbearably grating friction sounds immediately rang out from the white-bone gate.

Without any true qi enhancement.

By his strength alone.

Lu Chen forcibly pushed open a massive gap two zhang wide in the gate sealing off the entire underground black market entrance.

Huge chunks of rock at the hinge shattered on the spot, and rubble clattered across the ground.

The black market's true appearance was revealed.

It was a massive marketplace built entirely within a deep underground karst cave.

The space was intricate and maze-like, with thick stone pillars hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Several hundred low-level independent cultivators in ragged clothing, each reeking of desperadoes, gathered before the various crude stalls.

They traded stolen magical artifacts stained with dried blood and inferior pills darkened in color, giving off a pungent medicinal stench.

The commotion from the gate being forced open was simply too great.

The dull boom reverberated back and forth through the sealed cavern.

The marketplace, which had been bustling with endless haggling only moments ago, instantly fell dead silent.

Several hundred independent cultivators turned their heads in unison, staring fixedly toward the entrance.

These independent cultivators, who lived their lives licking blood from blade edges, were alert to the extreme.

At the same time, everyone's hands reached for the storage pouches at their waists.

More than a dozen different magical artifacts were gripped tightly in their hands.

Stacks of defensive talismans were pinched between their fingertips.

They were ready to strike at any moment.

Lu Chen strode into the cavern.

The soles of his shoes struck the hard, level stone floor, producing incredibly dull, echoing thud, thud sounds.

Every heavy footfall slammed fiercely against the eardrums of everyone present.

Lu Chen had no intention of concealing his aura.

The savage Sha Qi of an extreme body cultivator, of one who had just undergone a crushing slaughter, erupted without reservation from beneath his cloak.

The air throughout the cavern instantly became incomparably viscous.

Several stallholders closest to the gate bore the brunt of the violent blood vitality head-on.

Their faces turned ashen, their chests tightened, and they all let out muffled groans.

They did not even have time to gather up the goods at their stalls. Their limbs went weak as they staggered back repeatedly, directly knocking over several wooden racks behind them.

Protecting the cloth bundle against his chest with one arm, Lu Chen stopped in the very center of the marketplace.

From the shadows, dozens of gazes filled with greed and probing intent silently converged on him.