Poor People's Mass Burial Ground, Forging a Blood Furnace Through Life for Life

At the end of the foul-smelling underground Yin River.

The fence was violently smashed open by brute force.

Fourth Li thrust half his body out of the water and vomited mouthful after mouthful of yellowish bitter water. Blood-engorged leeches covered his entire body, giving off a nauseating stench. His left arm, mangled in the earlier fall, had bone fragments piercing through the flesh, leaving it utterly useless.

Relying on sheer will alone, he clung desperately to the moss-covered bluestone slab of the drainage outlet with his right arm.

Zhang Elder was still strapped to his back with strips of rotten cloth.

Gritting his teeth, Fourth Li kicked wildly beneath the water and forcibly dragged both of them out of the Yin River and onto shore.

This was the very edge of Black Mud City's outer city.

A poor people's mass burial pit reserved for dead mine slaves and disease-ridden laborers. There was not even a proper grave mound here—only shallow pits dug open by wild dogs and rotting straw mats everywhere.

The icy night rain came crashing down without mercy.

Fourth Li no longer had the strength to move even an inch. He rolled over and frantically untied the tattered cloth strips on his back, carefully laying down Zhang Elder, whose breath was as faint as a thread.

He propped the old farmer against a broken, half-shattered headstone with no inscription, then hunched his broad back and did his best to shield the old man from the rain pelting down upon him.

After doing all this, Fourth Li collapsed into a puddle like a heap of mud. His chest heaved violently, and his throat produced harsh, bellows-like gasps.

Zhang Elder had already reached the end of his wick.

The old man's spine had long ago been crushed beneath the guard commander's kick. His lower body was completely numb; even the agonizing pain had gone numb with it. After soaking in the Yin River all the way here, every last trace of warmth had drained from his body.

His breaths came in fits and starts, more going out than coming in.

This shriveled old skeleton had endured until now solely because of the hatred for the immortal sects bottled inside his chest. Now that he had escaped the inner city, the taut string in his heart slackened, and the strength of his final flare was utterly exhausted.

The bloodshot, clouded pupils in Zhang Elder's eyes slowly began to lose focus. Bit by bit, his gaze scattered.

At that moment.

In the pitch-black sky above the inner city, more than ten miles away, an extremely faint yet exceptionally glaring dark-red streak of blood suddenly flashed across the heavens.

It was the single drop of purest origin Desolate Blood that had formed when the guard commander's immense ultimate-way vitality and blood, after exploding in midair, collapsed inward upon itself.

This drop of Desolate Blood did not scatter with the wind.

It paused in midair. Not only was it drawn by vitality and blood of the same origin, it was also frantically tugged by the fragment of a stele clutched tightly in Zhang Elder's palm.

That fingernail-sized piece of black stone skin erupted with an incomparably greedy longing.

The blood streak drew a straight red line through the curtain of rain. Ignoring the distance of more than ten miles entirely, it plummeted straight toward the mass burial pit with incomparably violent force.

"Crack!"

A crisp sound rang out.

The incomplete stone skin was shattered on the spot by the falling drop of Desolate Blood, turning into a pinch of black ash.

The scorching Desolate Blood did not fall to the ground. It plunged directly into Zhang Elder's bony chest.

"Sizzle!"

A searing heat exploded in an instant, burning straight through the old farmer's tattered coarse-cloth garment. His flesh gave off a pungent smell of scorching.

Yet that overwhelmingly tyrannical life force also struck Zhang Elder's failing heart channels at that very instant.

The old man's previously scattered eyes abruptly contracted under the stimulation of that powerful life force. In the depths of his pupils, the clarity of his final flare returned completely.

He could not even feel the pain of his body being burned through.

Trembling, Zhang Elder raised his broken, dislocated hand and clenched tightly around the mass of Desolate Blood rampaging wildly within his chest.

He turned his head with difficulty.

His gaunt neck made a grinding sound that set teeth on edge. The old farmer stared fixedly at Fourth Li, who lay collapsed in the mud beside him.

The butcher's right wrist had had its tendons severed earlier by the immortal city guard commander's wind blades. The flesh around the wound was curled back, and his entire arm was practically ruined.

"Fourth..."

Zhang Elder forced out the last breath of his life. His voice was hoarse, like two rough stones grinding against one another.

Mouthful after mouthful of black blood surged madly from the corners of his lips, impossible to stop.

Staring at Fourth Li, the old man commanded sharply, "Bring... your hand over here!"

Fourth Li shuddered all over.

Looking at the old man, usually hunched and meek but now erupting with terrifying ferocity, the lowborn butcher's eyes reddened, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

He gritted his teeth. Without the slightest hesitation, he directly extended that mangled right arm.

Zhang Elder stretched out his shriveled old hand.

Using every ounce of strength in his life, he forcefully pressed the burning drop of Desolate Blood in his palm deep into the innermost depths of the gaping wound in Fourth Li's right wrist.

"Aaargh!"

Fourth Li threw back his head. Veins bulged one after another across his neck as he let out a shriek of utterly inhuman misery.

The Desolate Blood entered his body.

The powerful, tyrannical ultimate-way force instantly transformed into raging flames within him.

His severed wrist tendons were melted apart by the heat. His shattered wrist bones were forcibly smashed, ground down, then pieced back together beneath the impact of ultimate-way vitality and blood.

This pain of being flayed, having one's tendons pulled, then pulverized and reassembled far surpassed the thousand cuts of execution.

Fourth Li writhed madly through the muddy puddle in agony. His left hand clawed at the ground, gouging more than a dozen deep furrows through the sludge as every fingernail tore up and bled.

Zhang Elder did not let go.

The old farmer lunged forward, pinning Fourth Li's flailing wrist beneath his ruined body. His shriveled fingers gripped that mass of Desolate Blood like iron pincers, not allowing even the slightest bit to leak out.

Bloody foam mixed with fragments of internal organs poured madly from the old man's mouth.

Facing the wind and rain, he roared hoarsely at Fourth Li:

"Fourth... today, this old man has finally seen it clearly!"

"Those immortals sitting high above us, their bones are fucking brittle too! Stick a knife into them, and they bleed just the same; they die just the same!"

"Use this thing... to smash a path of life open for us mud-legged wretches with no way to live!"

The old farmer was trading his life for another's.

With the resolve of his final flare, he forcibly drew this drop of origin Desolate Blood into his body, making himself a bridal garment for ultimate-way power.

The violent Desolate Blood surged from Fourth Li's wrist, smashing through the blocked mortal meridians in his body like dead branches and rotten wood.

This force rampaged all the way through him before finally plunging viciously into Fourth Li's heart.

"Thump!"

A terrifying boom, like a war drum being struck, erupted from Fourth Li's chest.

That fragile heart which had once belonged to a mortal underwent a forced transformation beneath ultimate-way power. Its muscle fibers tore apart, reinforced themselves, and swelled wildly.

In just a few breaths, the heart was forcibly transformed into the rudimentary form of an Ultimate Blood Furnace.

Every drop of ordinary blood in Fourth Li's body was drawn into that blood furnace.

When pumped back out, it had all been tempered by intense heat into restless dark-red Desolate Blood.

The transfer of power was complete.

Zhang Elder's old hand, which had gripped Fourth Li's wrist so tightly, finally lost all strength. It slid down limply and struck heavily into the mud.

The muscles on the old farmer's face relaxed completely.

He felt neither fear nor unwillingness. On that weathered old face was a liberated smile of supreme satisfaction, as though he had seen through the rules governing immortals and mortals.

He released his final breath.

Zhang Elder had breathed his last.

The torrential rain continued to fall.

Fourth Li lay sprawled in the mud, his eyes fixed on the black night sky. Not a single tear fell from them.

The butcher felt the enormous heart rumbling inside his chest.

The Ultimate Blood Furnace was operating.

With every beat, it pumped scorching Desolate Blood through his limbs and bones. His severed right wrist had not only been fully restored, but was now filled with unimaginable, terrifying strength.

It was the mad illusion that even if a shield of raw iron stood before him, he could punch straight through it.

Fourth Li slowly climbed to his feet.

Looking at the old farmer's smiling corpse, an unyielding wildfire that could scorch the heavens ignited in the depths of his eyes.

He found a long-abandoned, collapsed grave hollow filled with water and carefully placed Zhang Elder's body inside.

Fourth Li knelt on the ground and, with the pair of large hands newly remade by the ultimate way, scooped up great handfuls of slick yellow mud and completely buried the old farmer.

The heavy rain washed over the lonely grave without an inscription.

Fourth Li drew the butcher's knife from behind his waist, its blade already steeped in the blood of immortal sect lackeys.

Relying on the terrifying stamina granted by the Ultimate Blood Furnace, a stamina that knew no such thing as exhaustion.

This lowborn outer-city butcher turned around and plunged headlong into the boundless rainstorm.

Without pausing for even a moment, he ran wildly through the night.

Straight into the depths of the thick miasma around the outskirts of Immortal-Breaking Mountain, so dense it could not be dissolved.