Chapter 422: The Opening of the Blissful Land! The Faceless Woman!

At those words, not only did Li Yanchu turn his gaze toward her, even the innkeeper looked over.

She’s even willing to give something like that away, this girl is clearly determined to stick close to him,

the innkeeper thought.

As a woman herself, and a beautiful one at that, the innkeeper’s instincts were rarely wrong.

“Since that’s the case, thank you very much,” Li Yanchu said.

Xiao Ran smiled brightly, saying no more. She didn’t mention teaming up with Li Yanchu inside the Blissful Land either. She simply sat down openly to express her gratitude and then presented him with a bronze token that the wandering experts of Mount Youming would have fought over.

To be honest, she left quite a good impression on Li Yanchu.

Xiao Ran decided to stay at the Taiping Inn, waiting for the Blissful Land to open. According to her sect’s records, the appearance of a Blissful Land followed no discernible pattern. Some required a token of entry, some did not, and some would even forcibly draw people inside.

Certain Blissful Lands had appeared multiple times throughout history, while others, perhaps only appearing once or twice, had their records lost in the dust of time.

Li Yanchu didn’t return to Qingyun Temple. That night, under the innkeeper’s

insistent persuasion

, he stayed at the inn.

“Word is, when the Blissful Land appears, it might drag people in by force. If that happens, I don’t want to end up inside the place with nothing on,” Li Yanchu said, looking at the innkeeper who had thrown herself into his arms.

“I don’t care,” the innkeeper murmured, cheeks flushed. “Who knows how long you’ll be gone this time? You said that Mount Jinting’s Blissful Land had a different flow of time inside. Who’s to say this one won’t be even longer? I just want to make sure you don’t have the energy to chase after other women.”

Her face was red, teeth gently biting her lip.

Normally she wasn’t so forward, but the appearance of that young girl earlier had sparked a flicker of crisis in this mature, voluptuous woman’s heart.

“You sure about that?” Li Yanchu smiled faintly.

Her blush deepened, but she lifted her chin defiantly.

Li Yanchu laughed, wrapped his arms around her, and carried her inside.

***

In a quiet room elsewhere in the inn, Xiao Ran held a conch-shaped listening shell to her ear. Suddenly, her face turned crimson. Like a frightened rabbit, she jumped up, cheeks burning hot.

She hurriedly hid the shell and gulped down a full cup of tea, but her face remained flushed, even her ears turning scarlet. After a deep breath, she hesitated, then pressed the shell to her ear again.

She kept that posture all the way until dawn...

When the first light of morning shone and the roosters crowed, just as Li Yanchu was about to rest, he suddenly felt a familiar force enveloping him.

“Seriously? You had to pick

this

moment?” he couldn’t help but curse aloud.

The next instant, his figure vanished from the Taiping Inn.

At that same moment, many others in the inn also disappeared. They were all cultivators who had come seeking the opportunities hidden within the Blissful Land.

Xiao Ran, too, vanished without a trace.

***

When Li Yanchu opened his eyes again, he was already standing in an unfamiliar place. A dazzling sun hung high overhead, its heat scorching and fierce.

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

He immediately understood that the Blissful Land had pulled him in. But as he looked around at this seemingly ordinary world, a flicker of confusion crossed his face. Unlike the barren, ruined realms of the previous two Blissful Lands he had entered, this one was brimming with vitality.

“Could it be that this place never fell to the corruption of those ancient evils,” he murmured to himself, “and has somehow remained intact all this time?”

A glimmer of spiritual light flickered in his eyes as he scanned the surroundings.

Suddenly, on a distant slope, he spotted a skeleton. With a single stride, his figure blurred, streaking through the air like a shadow, and in moments, he was standing before it.

The corpse had long since decayed to bare bones, its clothing reduced to dust.

Only a rusted, half-buried saber remained. It was a

zhanmadao

[1], its blade mottled and corroded, ready to crumble at a touch.

“Was this one of the Daoist disciples who once cultivated within this Blissful Land?” Li Yanchu wondered aloud. “Or a later cultivator who ventured here in search of immortal fortune?”

To be honest, the unnerving normalcy of this place filled him with unease. For someone like him, a place that appeared

too normal

was often the greatest sign that something was terribly wrong.

He began moving swiftly through the strange terrain, his figure flickering across the landscape as he searched for anything of value. The Mount Jinting Blissful Land had been nothing but desolation, yet even there he had found treasures of heaven and earth. This realm, by contrast, pulsed with life, and that vitality was no illusion. There must be extraordinary treasures hidden here.

Right now, Li Yanchu carried upon him the Dao Dust Bead, a treasure said to accumulate good fortune. While his luck couldn’t compare to that of the most gifted prodigies, he still counted among those with deep and auspicious destiny. Since he had entered this Blissful Land, there was no reason to leave empty-handed.

Strictly speaking, this space wasn’t vast, it was nothing like the boundless expanse of Mount Jinting’s Blissful Land.

But though he hadn’t encountered another living person yet, he suddenly caught sight of a woman bathing beside a jade-green pool.

The woman’s figure was curvaceous, her body completely bare. Even from behind, her silhouette alone could stir endless imagination.

However, Li Yanchu did not act rashly. He stood his ground, his expression wary, and activated his Spiritual Sight to observe from afar.

He had seen many so-called “back-view beauty” before, those whose beauty from behind could captivate a nation, yet whose faces, once revealed, could terrify entire armies.

This time, he wasn’t taking chances.

A faint light flickered in his eyes, and soon, he saw the woman’s true nature. She wasn’t a living being at all; she was merely a spirit, a fragment of some greater existence.

Just as he was assessing his surroundings, a carefree, amused voice suddenly rang out beside him, “Well, well. In a dump like this, there’s actually a beauty bathing here? Guess I’ve lucked out!”

The speaker was a young man dressed in white robes, with charming peach-blossom eyes and delicate features like carved jade.

Li Yanchu, though no master of face-reading, could tell at a glance that this man’s aura was hollow, and his energy was shallow despite his looks.

Li Yanchu made no move to interfere, as anyone capable of entering a Blissful Land surely had some skill. He decided to watch first, then act.

The young man sauntered forward, whistling lightly, clearly intending to flirt.

“Hey there, miss...”

But before he could finish, the alluring woman turned around. Her skin was pale and smooth, but her face... had no features. She had no eyes, nor nose, nor mouth. Her face was just a blank, skin-covered void. The sight was unspeakably eerie.

The white-robed youth recoiled, shouting in horror, “What the hell is

that

thing!?”

Furious and alarmed, he pulled a yellow talisman from his robes and hurled it at her.

BOOM!

With a thunderous explosion, the faceless woman’s head was blasted apart. Yet in the very next instant, her body lunged forward, pressing tightly against the young man’s.

Before his eyes, the horrific wound on her head began to knit itself back together, flesh reforming until she once again stood whole as a cold, lifeless, faceless woman. Then, without warning, she pressed her lips to his face.

Strangely, none of the protective artifacts the young man wore activated. He was still frozen in shock, unable to comprehend why his charms had failed and why the faceless woman kissed him.

From behind, the scene might almost have looked tender, even beautiful. But Li Yanchu felt an ominous fluctuation ripple through the air.

The next second, the young man’s face began to peel away, slowly, bit by bit, as though being drawn off by invisible hands. The sight made Li Yanchu’s scalp crawl.

1. The zhanmadao was a single-bladed anti-cavalry Chinese sword. It originated during the Han dynasty and was especially common in Song China. Here’s a reference

image

. ☜