Hearing that familiar cry, I froze slightly and looked closely. The person I was holding wore a black robe and had an aged face, but his eyes were still quite spirited. Who else could it be but Ling Ying?
"Ha ha ha ha, Elder Ling, why is it you? What are you doing here too?"
I immediately let go awkwardly and set him down, then said in surprise, "Elder Ling, you've already advanced to Dou Zong? Congratulations!"
"Hmph, I can't compare to you, brat. I heard you set up some Great Love Alliance in the Central Plains, went up against the Hall of Souls, and even drove back two Dou Sheng from the Hall of Souls?"
Ling Ying straightened the robe I had rumpled, looking at me with an extremely complicated expression. When we had first met, I had merely been a tiny Dou Master, struggling against the Yun Lan Sect, the declining Snake-People Tribe, and the Chuyun Empire in that backwater known as the Gamma Empire.
Back then, a Nine-Star Dou Huang Peak like him had already been an unparalleled expert, standing high above all others, enough to overlook the entire Gamma Empire. I had even needed to borrow his power!
But what about now?
Seven or eight years had passed. I had grown from that little Dou Master into a Dou Zong expert, and my influence had spread from the tiny Gamma Empire to the Central Plains. Holding the authority of the Great Love Alliance, I was now capable of contending with Dou Sheng from the Hall of Souls!
Yet he had only broken through from Nine-Star Dou Huang Peak to One Star Dou Zong, and had relied on pills to forcibly cross that threshold. Whether he could ever cultivate to Two-Star Dou Zong in this lifetime was