Zhao Gongming had always been bold and openhearted.
He strode forward, ready to throw an arm around Ye Xuan's shoulders and catch up with him as he had in the past.
Yet when he came within a hundred feet of Ye Xuan, his steps abruptly ground to a halt.
The smile on Zhao Gongming's face froze in that instant, replaced by undisguised horror.
His great, bell-like eyes stared fixedly at Ye Xuan, as though he had seen something utterly inconceivable.
Daoist Duobao, who walked beside him, also sucked in a sharp breath. The genial smile he usually wore vanished without a trace, and a few beads of cold sweat even seeped out on his plump cheeks.
As senior disciples of the Interception Sect, both were seasoned experts who had long since entered the Daluo Golden Immortal realm, and their sensitivity to the energies of heaven and earth was extraordinarily keen.
In their perception, the Ye Xuan before them was no longer the human cultivator at the Primordial Unity Golden Immortal realm they had met on Golden Ao Island last time.
Now, Ye Xuan stood there quietly. No magical power leaked from his body, yet he seemed to have become one with all of heaven and earth.
His aura was as unfathomable as an abyssal sea, complete and flawless, faintly radiating the pressure of an Immortal King Giant who stood above all creation.
That pressure matched the very pinnacle of the Daluo Golden Immortal realm in the Primordial World perfectly. In some respects, it was even deeper and purer than that of veteran Daluo Golden Immortals like them.
Daoist Duobao's heart shook violently.
Since their last meeting, only the briefest instant in the long ages of the Primordial Wilderness had passed.
For an ordinary cultivator, that would not even have been