Chapter 432: The Human-Puppet Celestial Maiden Statue! Blazing Inferno! Burn It All Away!

Zhang Wei sneered dismissively and stepped right up behind Li Yanchu. “Daoist Master Cao Cao, finish him off.”

In response, Li Yanchu smiled.

“You sure your intel isn’t useless or out of date? Or did you mean to trick me?” he said.

Zhang Wei hurried to explain, “Daoist Master Cao, don’t falsely accuse me. I only want to win you over, why would I give fake intel? It’s just that this Blissful Land has changed in bizarre ways, and no one was prepared.”

Li Yanchu smiled faintly and said nothing.

By now the handsome scholar could no longer restrain himself. He plunged his hand into his belly and pulled out a bronze ancient bell nearly half a man high. The bell should have been a Daoist artifact, but now it bore mottled, dull stains of blood, and gave off an ominous aura, which was colder than the chill of ordinary hateful ghosts.

This is a Daoist artifact that has been tainted

, Li Yanchu thought. Clearly this Blissful Land had once been invaded by strange demons as well, though perhaps not the exact same kind as those in Mount Jinting.

Clang

!

Li Yanchu drew the Jiaoslayer. With one flash of steel he severed the handsome scholar’s wrist.

Strangely, the bronze bell did not drop; it instead hovered in midair.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

That hoarse, uncanny sound rang out and set everyone on edge.

This time Zhang Wei felt something inside him erupt. In an instant his eyes went blood-red.

“Kill, kill! When you’re all dead, these treasures will be mine!” he snarled.

Instead of panicking, Zhang Wei even looked faintly gleeful at the thought. His mind had been tainted and twisted by the sound of the bell. As that eerie chime rang out again, Zhang Wei dropped to his knees almost instantly.

Meanwhile, Li Yanchu only frowned slightly. What on earth was going on with this temple?

Under Zhang Wei’s bewildered gaze, Li Yanchu walked straight up to the ancient bronze bell and struck it with his blade. Others could barely hide from the bell fast enough, yet Li Yanchu seemed to have his own unique method. That method was simple: charge straight in!

This time, the Jiaoslayer made no sharp clang as it struck. The entire bronze bell split cleanly in two, the cut smooth and even.

With a heavy

thud

, the halves crashed to the ground, looking now like nothing more than an ordinary bronze bell.

In this temple, there had been two sinister instruments of death: the painting of the dragon-headed bird-bodied deity, and the tolling of the bronze bell. But now, both had been destroyed by Li Yanchu.

Holding the Jiaoslayer, he slowly walked toward the handsome scholar.

“Are you planning to say something,” Li Yanchu asked politely, “or should I just kill you now?”

Are you insane?!

The scholar’s heart churned violently.

“I...” He had only begun to speak when a flash of cold steel flared before his eyes.

The once-handsome scholar was instantly cut down, and his head flew high into the air as blood gushed forth.

Just then, Li Yanchu sent a burst of flame from his palm, burning the body and clothing on the ground to ash in an instant. Then he walked straight toward the statue of the celestial maiden as a cold smile tugged at his lips.

He hadn’t acted right away earlier because he’d wanted to let the other cultivators fight it out first, and more people meant less effort for him. Now, the statue of the celestial maiden stood still and silent, appearing no different from an ordinary stone sculpture.

Then, the blade flashed again! The statue split cleanly down the middle and toppled to either side.

But inside, there was no soil, nor stone, but only pale, quivering flesh. There were no organs, nor bones, just meat, a writhing, pulsing mass of it!

“Holy hell! What the hell

is

that thing?!” Zhang Wei let out a startled cry, instinctively stepping back.

He cast a grateful look at Li Yanchu. He had originally planned to use the experience he’d gathered from his predecessors to explore this so-called Blissful Land together with Daoist Master Cao Cao.

But now, it was clear that the Blissful Land had changed. Terrifying, unpredictable things were unfolding here, far beyond anything he had imagined. That made the records in Zhang Wei’s hands seem far less important.

But this Daoist “Cao Cao”... He truly hadn’t expected him to be

this

formidable! Those supposedly unstoppable, unsolvable horrors... under his hand they were nothing but one punch, one slash. He was an absolute monster of a man.

The mangled flesh on the ground still writhed, trying to rejoin itself, but anything cut apart by the Jiaoslayer would never have the chance to come back together. It specialized in cutting through all that gaudy trickery.

“Daoist Master, do you think that the Peach Talisman is still somewhere in this temple?” Zhang Wei asked.

By now his whole attitude had changed. All he wanted was to follow Li Yanchu around. If he stuck close to someone like this, no matter how dangerous this Blissful Land was, he’d survive to the end!

“I have a method,” Li Yanchu said calmly. “We can try it.”

By this time the temple had completely returned to normal. That eerie darkness was gone; after all, it had been sustained by those evil spirits, and now every last one of them had been slain by Li Yanchu.

Even another cultivator of the second realm couldn’t have done it better, or as easily. The key was still the Jiaoslayer, bane of all those flashy, supernatural tricks. Most of their strange regeneration abilities simply didn’t work against it. Only beings like that faceless woman they’d seen when first entering Mount Taoyuan might be different.

He went through the corpses on the floor, keeping up his useful habit of looting. Most of what he found were sinister magical artifacts, but on the feng shui master’s body he discovered an ancient-looking map that made his eyes light up slightly.

He already had one like it, taken back when he killed the three Heavenly Kings of the Bare Body Sect.

I wonder where this map will eventually lead

, Li Yanchu thought.

As for those dark and twisted artifacts, he’d always scorned them. They were double-edged swords. They were handy against enemies, sure, but... But when you used those resentful spirits, that grudging qi, and those strange powers, they also corroded the user’s mind.

Watching those dark artifacts get shattered by his Jiaoslayer, Zhang Wei couldn’t help feeling a little sorry. Still, as he’d said earlier, he only needed a single Primordial Yang Fruit. Everything gained while teamed up would belong to Li Yanchu. And judging by the way things were going, Li didn’t even need a partner, he could clear this place alone.

Curious about what trick Li meant to try, Zhang Wei listened as Li Yanchu said, “Stand by me. Don’t wander off.”

Then Li Yanchu used an object-manipulation technique and summoned three artifacts: the Heaven-Illuminating Seal, the Five-Dragon Wheel, and the Ten Thousand Crows Urn.

“This is... the Fire Virtue Star Lord’s divine artifacts?!” Zhang Wei sucked in a breath, eyes wide with admiration.

Who was this young Daoist who possessed such powerful artifacts? The Ten Thousand Crows Urn should belong to the Fire Virtue sect; the Five-Dragon Wheel, if his memory served, was the feared Mount Mao’s Danyangzi’s weapon, yet here they were in his hands.

While Zhang Wei wondered, Li Yanchu had already activated the pseudo-mythical artifact fire artifacts. Heavenly flames filled the temple, instantly turning anything they touched into ash. The sun seemed to burn the sky, and fire dragons and fire crows ravaged the entire hall.

Although this temple was theoretically a relic inside the Mount Taoyuan Blissful Land, it had long since been occupied by evil spirits; there were no images of immortals, only hidden demons. To Li Yanchu, the cleanest solution was plain and simple: set it all on fire and burn it out.