Chapter 175: Where’s the Treasure?

Accompanied by a wave of intense dizziness, Li Yanchu felt as though he were drifting in warm currents of water.

When everything finally settled, he opened his eyes.

And then, he froze on the spot.

What lay before him was not the celestial paradise he had imagined. There were no ethereal mists, no spiritual beasts or divine birds roaming freely in a fairyland-like Blissful Land.

Instead, he was met with the sight of a vast, ruined wasteland. Temple after temple once stood proud and magnificent, the architecture grand and imposing. But now, all that remained were desolate ruins and crumbling structures.

Li Yanchu’s gaze passed over shattered walls and collapsed peaks, finally landing on a towering divine mountain in the distance.

The mountain was immense and boundless, piercing into the heavens, yet the summit had been cleanly sliced flat by some unknown force, as if it had been forcibly erased from existence.

Li Yanchu could hardly imagine what kind of power could obliterate a mountain of that size.

It could only have been the work of immortal beings.

“Is this Mount Jinting?” Li Yanchu muttered to himself, deeply shaken.

No wonder it had been called the vast Daoist sanctuary of a land-bound immortal; before its fall into ruin, this place must have been a thriving, transcendent Blissful Land.

“What happened here? And what became of the Immortal Ma who once resided in this place?” he wondered.

Standing amid such immense ruins made Li Yanchu feel incredibly small.

It stirred a deep awe and reverence for the extraordinary, a sobering reminder of the sheer scale of transcendence.

Above, the sky was heavy and dark; every so often, firelight or lightning flickered faintly through the swirling clouds, resembling a post-apocalyptic sky teetering on collapse.

It cast an oppressive weight on the heart.

“No wonder that Baxia statue had such horrific wounds...”

Even Li Yanchu’s last lingering hope that the Blissful Land of Mount Jinting might still hold the splendor of legend was now thoroughly crushed.

Of course.

If this place had not undergone a cataclysmic battle beyond imagination, then how could that divine Baxia statue have ended up with its divinity dispersed and body nearly destroyed?

One had to know that before its inner spirit dissipated, even attacks from multiple primordial spirit avatars hadn't left so much as a scratch on it.

Without lingering, Li Yanchu rushed toward the nearest temple he could see. That temple stood half-hidden in the crags of a steep lone peak and remained relatively intact. Now that he had arrived in this place, he had to seek his immortal fate.

With a shift of his body, he began to race across the desolate wasteland, making his way toward the temple. Everywhere the eye could see, there were only broken walls and shattered ruins.

The spirit qi in the air was extraordinarily rich, yet there were no flowers, no trees, not even the chirp of a single bird. An eerie silence blanketed everything. It was so quiet that it was suffocating.

In this vast Blissful Land of Mount Jinting, there was not a single sound? The silence was enough to set one’s heart on edge.

After enhancing his martial manuals, Li Yanchu had also enhanced his tonic medicine, specifically a potent formula known for replenishing blood and bolstering energy, the Tiger-Wolf Rejuvenating Elixir.

Ordinary medicinal broths were now almost useless to someone of his physique and cultivation. Spending 400 merit points, Li Yanchu enhanced a medicinal decoction that now appeared like translucent amber.

After taking the elixir, wisps of white vapor began to rise from his body.

Combined with the solid foundation he had already accumulated, in just three short days, Li Yanchu had fully mastered the martial techniques he had enhanced into peerless martial arts—Divine Astral Hands, Six Yang Saber Art, and Primordial Chaos Technique.

His overall strength had undergone a complete transformation. Now, when he activated his movement technique and sped through the ruins, his speed was more than twice as fast as before. His stamina seemed limitless, boundless in endurance.

Even compared to the Daoist Wind-Riding Art, he was not at a disadvantage. Yet even so, after rushing through shattered walls and broken ruins for half a day, he still hadn’t reached the temple partially hidden within the steep, solitary peak, let alone the towering mountain still far off on the distant horizon.

From this alone, one could tell just how vast the ruins of this Mount Jinting Blissful Land truly were. It was practically an ancient kingdom.

Along the way, everything Li Yanchu saw was lifeless wreckage. Not only was there no sign of living beings, but aside from shattered stones worn down by the ages, there was nothing else at all.

It was completely different from the descriptions provided earlier by Master Huizhen and Chen Yang; there were no mystical scenes, no treasures of heaven and earth lying about, and none of the atmosphere of a paradise on earth.

Good thing Hongtu didn’t come along, or he’d be cursing nonstop by now...

Li Yanchu thought to himself.

It had been half a day, and he still hadn’t seen a single living person; but now, the sky around him was beginning to darken.

Night was falling, and Li Yanchu looked up and finally managed to make out the truth: There was a sun in this desolate ruin, but the sun was black!

That was why it had seemed invisible before.

So, this Mount Jinting Blissful Land actually has both a day and night cycle... and when I first entered, it wasn’t reversed day and night, it really was daytime?

A suspicion emerged in Li Yanchu’s mind.

But then another thought occurred to him,

In a place like this... could there really still be any divine treasures left?

At long last, Li Yanchu arrived before that temple. It was massive, and bore traces of age all over its structure.

Inside the main hall stood the statue of a Daoist immortal. He carried a peachwood sword on his back, had three flowing strands of beard, and bore an extraordinary presence.

Li Yanchu narrowed his gaze; he could sense a thread of lingering incense and prayer power still attached to the statue, but it was nearly depleted. He respectfully gave a bow to this Daoist predecessor to show his reverence.

Only then did he step into the great hall. Several eternal lanterns were still lit within, casting a faint glow. Yet despite the dimness, the hall did not feel eerie or grim. Instead, it emanated a righteous and solemn aura, one that put the heart at ease.

“Could this be the land-bound immortal of the Mount Jinting Blissful Land?” Li Yanchu’s eyes reflected deep thought.

In the Daoist scriptures, it was written, “The Earth Immortal is half of Heaven and Earth, with divine talent. If one does not awaken to the Great Dao, one remains at a minor achievement. Their merit is unseen, but they remain in the world, undying.”

In simple terms, Earth Immortals were considered the middle tier among immortals below the Heaven Immortals who ascend in broad daylight, but still possessors of longevity and immortality.

According to the records, the ones who dwell in the Seventy-Two Blissful Lands were precisely these land-bound immortals.

Yet now, this Mount Jinting Blissful Land looked as though it had been ravaged by some terrifying external force, turning the entire sacred ground into ruins. Its Daoist lineage had been completely severed.

Li Yanchu didn’t rush to explore the hall. Instead, he quietly sat down, began to meditate, and practiced breath control and spiritual refinement to restore his body to peak condition.

As the saying went,

“A lone man should never enter a temple.”

This old adage had several meanings. One interpretation was that remote mountain temples often served as hideouts for bandits and outlaws, so a lone traveler entering one could easily meet with misfortune.

Another meaning was more superstitious: that ancient temples deep in the mountains were prone to harboring malevolent spirits and unclean entities.

A group of people could bolster each other’s yang energy, and where yang energy was strong, ghosts and evil things dared not draw near.

Since this Mount Jinting Blissful Land had clearly suffered through a great war, surely many lives had been lost at the time.

And yet, along the way, Li Yanchu had seen no corpses, no bones, nothing. Where were the people who had originally lived in this sacred Daoist land? Where were the Daoist disciples? And what of the enemies who had invaded this holy ground?

There was not a single trace of them, and this made Li Yanchu feel uneasy.

“Just what exactly happened back then?” he wondered.

And then another question surfaced,

Are the other Blissful Lands and Grotto-Heavens like this as well?

Just as his thoughts were racing... Suddenly, he heard footsteps.