The blood skull wailed and twisted, the formation collapsed, and the Foundation Establishment cultivator bled from all seven orifices before dropping to his knees.
"Furnace, refine!" The clones hurled their furnaces together. Energy surged from the furnace mouths, and the blood skull and the cultivator's corpse turned to ash in an instant.
Pure energy poured in like rivers flowing backward into the sea. The furnace in Lu Chen's qi sea trembled, and his cultivation faintly rose.
"Impudent!"
Three Golden Core pressures shot into the sky from within the stronghold as three Golden Core experts stepped through the air.
The man in the center wore standard-issue gold armor of Yanbei, his face as sinister as a hawk's.
The old woman on the left held a snake-headed staff, while the burly man on the right carried a massive axe over his shoulder.
The third leader of Prison of Heaven Cave had died on the Barren Wind Plain, and they had guessed that perhaps some Nascent Soul old monster was targeting them.
They had been trying to figure out a solution when someone actually attacked Prison of Heaven Cave.
Then they saw that it was a Martial Dao Cultivator in the Qi Surge Realm, and their noses nearly twisted out of shape with fury.
They were even more interested in Lu Chen's clones.
A Martial Dao Cultivator at this realm could not possibly create clones.
"Youngster, answer me. Did you kill our two Golden Core cultivators?" the old woman on the left demanded in a deep voice.
"They were nothing but trash. They deserved to die!" Lu Chen showed no fear. If anything, he was faintly excited.
Three Golden Core experts, all seasoned Golden Core experts. They had certainly comprehended fragments of laws.
Killing them could produce three spiritual artifacts.
The gold-armored commander's eyes widened in fury. With a roar, he curled his fingers into a claw.
A hundred-zhang blood hand condensed in the void, carrying a foul wind as it clawed toward Lu Chen.
"You dog who does not know his own limits, die!"
"Explode!" Lu Chen directly unleashed his ultimate move.
The three clones lunged forward, and the newly refined furnaces smashed over like cannonballs before exploding outright.
Boom...
Baleful flames and qi-and-blood energy intertwined into a terrifying storm. The gold-armored commander's blood hand shattered, and his protective Spiritual Light cracked at once.
The old woman's snake staff broke in two, the burly man's massive axe melted into molten iron, and the three staggered back, charred black as coal.
All three suffered severe injuries. They vomited blood together, their auras instantly withering.
The three turned to flee, but Lu Chen's true body arrived in a flash with Wind and Thunder Steps.
Blade aura transformed into a thousand layered phantoms that sealed all directions. "Qi and Blood Domain, suppress!"
Working together with the three clones, four domains overlapped and pressed down. The three Golden Core experts sank as though trapped in a mire.
The gold-armored commander howled, "I serve under King Yanbei..."
"Save it for underground!" Lu Chen turned his blade. Blood lines appeared across the three men's necks, and their heads rolled across the sandy ground.
With a sweep of the furnaces, the Golden Cores and mangled corpses were drawn into separate furnaces.
He feared that if the Myriad Manifestations Furnace devoured them all at once, it would go berserk. Not only would he suffer backlash, he might even waste this energy.
Because the external furnaces were of too low a grade, the three corpses inside remained perfectly intact and could not yet be refined.
He would keep them and digest them slowly.
Seeing this, the remaining bandits fled in all directions.
The three clones carried the external furnaces on a killing spree, only stopping after slaughtering eighty or ninety percent of them.
Lu Chen came before an iron cell, shattered the cell door with a slash, and a tide of rotten stench rushed into his face.
More than three hundred slaves huddled within the dark prison, all wearing shackles and iron chains.
An old man with disheveled hair suddenly burst forth with sharp light from his cloudy eyes.
He was actually a Golden Core expert.
"Fellow Daoist..." the old man said hoarsely.
Lu Chen swung his blade and severed the shackles. "How did you end up as a slave?"
"My name is Zhong Yan. I was once the deputy general of Skyfire Pass. I was ambushed in secret by these bandits and reduced to slavery!"
Lu Chen nodded. "Senior Zhong Yan, I'll leave them to you. Take them back to Skyfire Pass and settle them properly."
As he spoke, he tossed Zhong Yan two bags of pills. "They're ordinary, but enough for all of you to recover. The bandits here have all been killed. Rest and recuperate before setting out!"
With that, Lu Chen flashed away.
"My name is Lu Chen!"
His voice drifted over from afar, and Zhong Yan could not help but smile bitterly.
What an impatient fellow.
Of course he was impatient.
Could such a huge bandit nest possibly lack a storehouse?
By the time he found it, the storehouse doors were already open, and three men were frantically stuffing things into their pockets.
They were three minor bandit leaders.
The three clones attacked and killed them outright.
Lu Chen, meanwhile, began his celebration.
Spirit stones and manuals flowed into his Universe Ring like a torrent.
He filled four of them.
Three had only just been acquired.
They were the spoils from killing the three Golden Core experts.
As for ordinary weapons and armor, provisions, and other supplies, he threw them into the Myriad Manifestations Furnace to refine them into pure energy to nourish himself.
As the sun set in the west, Lu Chen stepped out through the gates of the Prison of Heaven Cave stronghold.
Behind him, the slaves supported one another as they left, their shadows stretching long beneath the setting sun.
Three days later, the group arrived at Skyfire Pass.
Naturally, the general guarding the pass recognized Zhong Yan.
Lu Chen did not have him introduce him either. He passed through Skyfire Pass and entered Great Yan.
Only now did his hanging heart finally settle.
Like a fish returning to the sea.
This time, after wiping out Black Collar Prison Heaven Cave, he had not fed every item into the Myriad Manifestations Furnace.
He kept three thousand low-grade spirit stones, along with many pills, spiritual plants, high-grade equipment and martial techniques, fragments of formation-breaking maps, and more.
The four furnaces were also filled with energy, and there were even the corpses of three Golden Core experts.
He did not hurry onward. As he traveled, he absorbed and refined energy while consuming marrow to temper his body.
Before he knew it, he had broken through to the sixth level of the Qi Surge Realm.
This realm already allowed short-distance teleportation with the support of qi and blood. Now, with the enhancement of Wind and Thunder Steps, his teleportation distance had doubled to twenty meters.
This greatly expanded his room to maneuver.
But likewise, the consumption had increased.
He had only just escaped the shackles of three uses, yet now it had become the same as before.
If he used it too many times without sufficient energy, he would suffer backlash.
Of course, that was only when moving at the limit.
His strength had also unknowingly broken through two thousand jin.
On South Street of Chixiao City, sunlight dyed the bluestone slabs blood-red.
Lu Chen dragged his saber as he walked, the tip of the Soul Severing Saber scraping sparks from the stone slabs as he appeared before the Lu residence.
This time, he would forcefully confront the Lu Family head-on.
He would wash away the hatred of having his bloodline stolen with blood.
Moreover, for someone the Lu Family had declared dead to suddenly appear on the streets was itself enough to leave people utterly bewildered and excited.
The vermilion-lacquered gates of the Lu residence burst open, and twenty black-armored guards filed out.
The leader grinned viciously. "Lu Chen, you cripple, you still dare come back to die?"
"Come back to die?" Lu Chen raised his eyes, and a bloody gleam flashed through his pupils.
Wind and thunder erupted beneath his feet, and his figure crashed into the crowd like a ghost.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Fists rained down like a torrential storm. The guards' armor shattered inch by inch, while the sounds of breaking bones and miserable cries rose one after another.
In no more than ten breaths, all twenty guards lay sprawled on the ground. None had died, but every one of them had broken tendons and shattered bones.
"Lu Chen! You, you dare..."
A gray-clothed servant with a sharp mouth and monkey-like cheeks cowered behind the gate. He was Wang San, Lu Ran's most loyal lackey from back then.
"Too noisy." Lu Chen's blade flashed. Wang San's head flew into the air, and before blood mist could even spurt from his severed neck, his corpse had already been swallowed by the Myriad Manifestations Furnace.
The remaining servants screamed and fled, and the space before the Lu residence instantly became empty.
Seven Lu Family elders stepped through the air, followed by a large force of Lu Family guards.
The white-bearded elder at the front, Lu Changqing, wore a complicated expression. "Lu Chen, stop. Regarding what happened back then..."
"Third Elder..." Lu Chen interrupted him, his blade tip pointing toward the crowd. "I only have one question. When my bloodline was stripped away back then, did you take part?"
Lu Changqing shook his head. "This old man was in seclusion and never emerged."
"Good. Step aside." Lu Chen shifted his gaze to the hawk-nosed old man on the right, killing intent surging. "Fourth Elder, when you personally stripped away my bloodline, did you ever imagine this day?"
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