A Greedy General Hoards a Fragmentary Immortal Stele, the Ultimate Dao Furnace Burns Blood Marrow Vine

Deep within Immortal-Breaking Mountain lay a spiritless abyssal valley.

Thick night fog churned between the steep rock walls. Carrying the thirty-thousand-jin City-Guarding Stele on one shoulder, Lu Chen strode over the uneven rubble beneath his feet and arrived before the narrowest cave pass in the valley.

The pass was narrow, a terrain easy to defend and hard to attack.

Lu Chen halted. The knotted muscles around his waist and hips suddenly sank, and his thick thighs crushed the rock layer beneath his feet into a wide collapse. The brute force of a hundred thousand jin surged section by section through his spine.

Wrapping both arms around the heavy stele, Lu Chen exerted his strength and viciously hurled the thirty-thousand-jin black stone forward.

The Dao Stele crashed heavily into the mud, fitting seamlessly into the pass and completely sealing off the cave's passage to the outside world.

The instant the Dao Stele landed, the dim black stone surface blazed with light. Several dark-red archaic markings from antiquity flickered madly.

A savage, overbearing ancient force field violently spread outward from the Dao Stele.

The Heaven-Locking Array of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect was extracting the vitality of all Immortal-Breaking Mountain. Wisps of thin spiritual energy from the immortal sect's formation had only just seeped into the valley when they slammed head-on into that unreasonable force field.

There was no stalemate, no buffer. The immortal spiritual energy was forcibly squeezed out by the force field, crushed in midair into ordinary air that served no purpose. Inside the cave, the laws of heaven and earth used by cultivators were completely cut off.

The depths of the cave were dim and dry.

A-Nan curled up atop a hard, dry boulder. The little girl was wrapped in a tattered Netherwind Wolf pelt, her small face burning red and hot, her forehead covered in beads of sweat.

New jade-like bones were rapidly growing within her tiny body. A continuous series of dense, crisp bone cracks rang out. The newly formed marrow frantically demanded nourishment, and the vitality in her body was rapidly drying up, urgently requiring energy from outside.

Lu Chen strode to the boulder and sat down cross-legged directly beside its hard edge.

His rough hand pulled over the animal-hide bundle tied to his lower back all along the way. He untied the leather cord and peeled back the hide, revealing a century-old Blood Marrow Vine, dark red from root to tip, to the air.

Extremely pure immortal spiritual energy wreathed the Blood Marrow Vine's surface, giving off waves of pungent, rich fragrance. Its roots still carried soil from beneath the black market treasury.

Lu Chen had no pill furnace and knew nothing of slow simmering over a gentle flame. He grabbed the dirt-covered Blood Marrow Vine, shoved it straight into his mouth without even looking at it.

His upper and lower jaws snapped open and shut wildly, brutally crushing the muddy vine.

The Ultimate Dao Furnace of the twelfth layer of Iron Cloth Shirt rumbled open. Thick veins immediately bulged beneath Lu Chen's skin, his blood flow instantly surged to its limit, and a heavy roar like muffled thunder came from within his blood vessels.

The Blood Marrow Vine slid down his esophagus into his stomach. The immortal laws and medicinal power contained within the spirit herb exploded on the spot, turning into countless tiny spikes of spiritual energy that fought and rampaged wildly through Lu Chen's body.

The pure-yang heat of the twelfth layer swept in with absolute suppression. Scalding Ultimate Dao blood and qi wrapped layer upon layer around those rampaging immortal laws. His muscles writhed, his stomach and intestines ground and strangled. Lu Chen forcibly crushed the lofty spirituality of the immortal sect's spirit herb, extracting and squeezing out only the herb's most fundamental, purest essence.

Lu Chen closed his eyes. The immense medicinal power dissolved and coursed through his body, bringing waves of backlash pain and swelling that threatened to burst his meridians.

He endured the agonizing pain and relied on his Ultimate Dao physique's absolute control over blood and qi to forcibly rein in that pure medicinal power charging wildly about.

Bit by bit, he drove all the primordial essence into his right arm, pressed it along the veins of his wrist, and forced it all into the tip of his right index finger. A drop of highly condensed heart's blood, radiating a dazzling red glow, rapidly gathered beneath the skin of his fingertip.

The scene returned to Black Mud City.

On the muddy streets after the rain, the commander of Black Mud City's guards was leading over a dozen heavily armored subordinates down the main road.

At the center of the group, two men dragged a battered wooden cart with thick iron chains. Zhang Elder, his lower body completely paralyzed, lay on the cart. The commander was escorting the old farmer straight toward the damaged formation core in the inner city.

The commander strode at the very front of the group. His face was flushed an extremely unnatural red. His chest rose and fell violently, and his breathing was more than twice as heavy as usual. With every breath, hot air sprayed from his nostrils.

The commander only felt as though a fire burned inside his five viscera and six bowels, making his entire body unbearably hot and restless.

The fragmentary black stele hidden against his body within his inner armor was pressed tightly against his flesh. The broken stele silently unleashed its power, crazily devouring the Foundation Establishment true essence spilling from the commander's dantian.

Each time the fragment of stone consumed a wisp of immortal true essence, it immediately fed a domineering, savage surge of Ultimate Dao blood and qi back into the commander's body.

Violent blood and qi forcibly flooded into the commander's fragile meridians. A cultivator's meridians were originally suited only to absorbing the gentle spiritual energy of heaven and earth step by step; under the impact of this blood and qi, the inner walls of his meridians were stretched and pulled without cease.

The commander was utterly unaware of this. Feeling the strength continuously swelling through his limbs and bones, he instead believed that the immortal treasure was cleansing his sinews and marrow.

Wild joy filled his heart as his mind began calculating at lightning speed. As long as he completely refined this power, he would immediately break through his current cultivation bottleneck and rise directly into Black Mud City's absolute core of high-ranking figures. Then, even the rules of the immortal city would be his to set.

Suppressing his excitement, the commander tried to secretly circulate the Azure Firmament Sword Sect's qi-guiding art, intending to guide that hot current.

The moment he began, his heart jolted. The circulation of spiritual energy within his body had become extraordinarily obscure and difficult. The once-smooth cycle of qi was clogged everywhere with a sluggish resistance, and he could not mobilize the true qi in his dantian at all.

The wooden cart jolted over the pitted bluestone pavement, letting out a piercing scrape.

The commander turned his head irritably.

Zhang Elder lay half-dead on the cart. The old farmer's shriveled cheek was pressed against the filthy wooden boards, yet his clouded eyes stared past several guards and fixed themselves on the commander's neck.

At the commander's neck, thick green veins had bulged from the backflowing blood and qi, while the flushed redness had spread all the way to his ears.

Zhang Elder's cracked lips slowly pulled apart, revealing a miserable smile brimming with mockery.

The commander was utterly enraged by the smile of this lowly mortal.

He strode back, raised his heavy black-iron war boot, and viciously kicked the side of the wooden cart.

"Old bastard, you're at death's door and still dare play tricks!" the commander cursed through gritted teeth, spittle flying everywhere.

The wooden cart shook violently. The commander turned around and continued striding forward.

He did not notice that the nails on his ten fingers, hidden within his black-iron gauntlets, were turning black and hardening at a visible rate, even protruding outward into sharp horny points.