Immortal Formation, My Ass! I'll Smash It to Pieces with One Punch!

Lu Chen withdrew his gaze from the Dao Stele in the distance, carried A-Nan on his back, and strode forward.

Strips torn from that ragged outer garment were cinched tightly over his broad shoulders.

His soles stepped steadily out of the muddy alley and onto the bluestone-paved street leading to the inner city.

Bang.

The hard bluestone slab beneath his foot sank in a huge depression.

The dull impact spread through the ground in every direction.

With every step Lu Chen took, a distinct footprint half an inch deep was left in the bluestone.

Scalding white vapor still billowed from the iron-gray surface of his skin.

From the wounds torn open during his close-quarters battle with the Azure-Water Qilin, dark-red blood trickled down his solid muscles, drop by drop.

The blood struck the bluestone with a steady pitter-patter.

Behind the broken wooden doors lining the muddy alley, pairs of terrified eyes were hidden.

Those mortal neighbors who normally starved and froze alongside Lu Chen in the outer city were now all huddled behind their door cracks, trembling.

Even though they were all mortals, even though they hated the immortal sects to the bone, the sight of this blood-drenched youth who had torn apart the sect's guardian spirit beast with his bare hands still made their knees go weak.

Some could not stop their legs from shaking and wet themselves on the spot.

No one dared breathe too loudly, much less open a door and speak to him.

Lu Chen paid no attention to the commotion on either side.

He simply kept walking.

A-Nan's heartbeat on his back was still exceedingly faint. Right now, there was only one thing he wanted to do.

Go to the inner city.

The moment he emerged from the muddy alley and reached the entrance to the broad main street of the outer city, a vast sea of people completely blocked his path.

Dozens of Immortal City guards clad in heavy black-iron armor held standard-issue sabers and spears flashing with cold light, sealing off the wide street completely.

Steward Zhao had somehow changed into a clean set of clothes and was hiding at the very rear behind layer upon layer of guards.

Two men in Eight Trigram Daoist robes stood beside him, each holding a compass covered in runes, their chins raised high.

They were formation masters dispatched from the inner city of Immortal City.

The instant Steward Zhao saw Lu Chen approaching in that fiendish state, he instinctively shrank half a step behind the guards in fright.

But when he remembered that formation masters from the inner city stood beside him, his fat courage swelled again.

He thrust a pudgy finger through the gap between the guards' shoulders and pointed it at Lu Chen's nose.

"You little beast!"

Steward Zhao cursed at the top of his lungs, spittle flying everywhere.

"You've brought down a calamity that reaches the heavens! You even dared lay hands on the spirit beast of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect's Grand Elder!"

"The Immortal City enforcement squad and formation masters are all here now!"

"Why aren't you kneeling and awaiting death? Offer your neck willingly, and their lordships might show mercy and leave you an intact corpse!"

Lu Chen did not stop.

One step after another.

The crunch of bluestone being crushed beneath his feet drew closer and closer.

The long-faced formation master standing to Steward Zhao's left impatiently picked at his ear.

He cast Lu Chen an incomparably disdainful glance.

"Fatty Zhao, what are you shouting for?"

The long-faced formation master wore a look of utter contempt, his voice steeped in lofty arrogance.

"He's nothing more than a mortal who accidentally swallowed the true blood of an exotic beast and temporarily went mad."

"A mortal body can't withstand such immense spiritual energy. His brain has probably already been burned to mush. He's just a wild beast that knows only how to charge about."

The slightly younger formation master on the right echoed him, too lazy even to give Lu Chen a proper look.

"Senior Brother is right. A mortal body that consumes spirit blood can hold on for, at most, a short while longer before it bursts apart on its own."

"Stop wasting words on him. Use the Beast-Trapping Formation and grind him to death."

"Finish this filthy work early and go back to report in. Stay too long in this poverty-stricken outer city and you'll get covered in mortal stench—it'll damage your Dao foundation."

They knew this process like the backs of their hands.

In the past, mortals had also been unable to bear the oppression and attempted to rebel. The immortal sects' standard method for dealing with mortal uprisings was formation suppression.

Clean, efficient, and they did not even need cultivators to draw their swords and hack apart that filthy flesh themselves.

The long-faced formation master flicked his wrist.

Four apricot-yellow formation flags flew from his sleeve.

With piercing shrieks through the air, the flags accurately embedded themselves into the bluestone at four points around Lu Chen.

The flags fluttered without wind, and the cinnabar runes upon them suddenly lit up.

"Rise!"

The formation master swiftly formed a hand seal.

A translucent pale-blue light screen instantly rose from the four formation flags, closing together in midair and trapping Lu Chen beneath it.

The instant the light screen formed, the environment inside the formation changed completely.

Lu Chen felt his shoulders suddenly sink.

The gravity in the surrounding space multiplied several times in an instant, the crushing force pressing down from every direction on his flesh, bones, and even his internal organs.

If it had been an ordinary mortal, this alone would have made them bleed from all seven apertures and collapse to the ground, unable even to crawl.

Then, spiritual energy within the pale-blue light screen began to gather wildly.

Dozens of palm-sized wind blades formed out of thin air.

Their edges gleamed with a ghastly pale green light as they spun at high speed, producing shrill tearing sounds.

"Fall."

The long-faced formation master snorted coldly and pressed his finger downward.

"This formation can trap even a second-rank demon beast alive until it dies."

He stared at the suppressed figure within the formation, his tone thick with mockery.

"Let's see how many cuts your mad mortal flesh can endure."

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Dozens of wind blades howled in from every direction toward Lu Chen.

They slashed mercilessly at his back, chest, and neck.

Lu Chen stood where he was without dodging. He merely hunched his back slightly, shielding A-Nan more securely.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Dense metallic collisions exploded thunderously within the formation's light screen.

Sparks flew everywhere.

The wind blades struck Lu Chen's iron-gray, metallic-sheened skin but could not cut through his flesh. They left only shallow white marks behind.

And that was not all.

Scorching Ultimate Dao blood vitality had been constantly spilling from Lu Chen's body.

The wind blades condensed from spiritual energy had barely finished slashing and had not yet retreated when they were forcibly scorched apart by that terrifying body heat.

The wind blades became wisps of white spiritual-energy residue and completely dissipated into the air.

Outside the light screen.

The sneers on the formation masters' faces froze.

The Beast-Trapping Formation had been designed specifically for cultivators and demon beasts. Its greatest strength was spirit suppression: it could suppress the flow of spiritual energy within the formation and drastically weaken those trapped inside.

But Lu Chen was a mortal.

There was not the slightest trace of spiritual energy in his body. He relied entirely on pure blood vitality and brute force.

The spirit-suppression effect the immortal sects took such pride in did not amount to a fart against him.

Inside the light screen, Lu Chen raised his head slightly.

The joints in his neck cracked sharply.

Feeling the formation's severalfold gravity suppression, he suddenly found it exhilarating.

After swallowing the Qilin's true blood earlier, that violent energy had been rampaging through his body. Though it had forcibly raised his external cultivation realm, his flesh had become somewhat swollen and insubstantial.

Now, crushed beneath this gravity, his formerly bloated and uncomfortable flesh and bones instead underwent an extreme tempering.

Stimulated by the immense pressure, the blood vitality within him did not stagnate. Instead, it boiled even more fiercely.

Blood surged through his thick vessels, roaring like great rivers.

The Ultimate Dao Furnace revolved frantically, crazily extracting the violent power hidden deep within his flesh and blood.

Crack.

An exceptionally faint sound of breaking came from within Lu Chen's body.

It was a barrier in his cultivation technique that should never have been broken.

Iron Cloth Shirt, eleventh layer.

Lu Chen murmured inwardly.

This external cultivation technique, common as dirt in the mortal world, had possessed only ten layers since ancient times.

At its peak, it only reached the Great Perfection of Mortal Iron.

Yet driven forcibly by primordial blood vitality and stimulated by the crushing pressure of an immortal sect formation, it had been pushed into an unknown, entirely new realm.

A faint layer of black metallic patterns began to emerge over his iron-gray skin.

The density of his muscles doubled once more.

His body no longer looked as bloated and swollen as before. Instead, it contracted by a full circle, becoming extraordinarily lean and honed, radiating explosive oppression.

Lu Chen stepped forward.

He withstood the hundreds upon thousands of newly condensed wind blades within the formation and the doubled crushing pressure.

Step by step, he walked bolt upright toward the edge of the light screen.

The wind blades crazily scraped across his face, yet he did not so much as blink.

Brilliant spiritual-energy lights continuously burst around him, but they could not halt his steps in the slightest.

The long-faced formation master's expression changed completely.

His lofty composure vanished without a trace, replaced by incomprehensible terror.

"What in the living hell is this monster?!"

He roared at the top of his lungs, his hands forming seals frantically as he desperately poured the spiritual energy in his body into the formation flags.

The four formation flags shook violently, and the pale-blue light screen instantly doubled in thickness.

Gravity surged once more.

The younger formation master also panicked. He hurriedly pulled out several low-grade spirit stones and slapped them onto the formation core, trying to push the formation's grinding power to its limit.

Lu Chen had already reached the very edge of the light screen.

He was less than two steps away from the guard squad outside.

He stopped and looked up at the translucent formation wall before him.

There was no opening spell technique.

No hand seals or incantations.

Nor was there any grand display of drawing upon heaven and earth's spiritual energy.

Lu Chen simply raised his right arm.

His right fist drew back, pulling into an incomparably violent half-moon arc.

The newly born black metallic patterns on his arm raced wildly beneath his flesh.

Carrying the crushing force of ten thousand tons, carrying the terrifying brute strength of the eleventh layer of Iron Cloth Shirt.

He punched the light screen.

"Crack!"

A crisp shattering sound abruptly rang through the deathly silent street.

That formation light screen, said to be capable of trapping a second-rank demon beast until it died, under Steward Zhao's ghost-struck gaze of horror—

Exploded with countless spiderweb-like cracks!