The guests in Merit City had been reveling to their hearts' content. Following the battle five days earlier that wiped out the Heaven-Chosen Divine Sect's spies, old friends from Azure Cloud Prefecture raised their cups and drank freely. Combined with the celebration of the Li Family's newborn prodigy reaching one month old, the victory banquet had filled twelve corridors of the Li Family estate.
Yet now no one remained at the tables. Golden goblets radiated spiritual energy, and the delicacies on the plates still bore marks where they had been pressed. Servants carrying food stared blankly at the empty seats. Moments ago, those mighty cultivators so rarely seen had been exchanging compliments; now they had vanished without a trace. The servants' hearts suddenly felt as heavy as the plates in their hands, which they did not know whether to set down or carry back to the kitchen.
The guests who had been celebrating stood among the clouds.
Li Qiuming stood at the front of the crowd, dressed in splendid golden robes. Beneath his long hair was a middle-aged face with a goatee on his chin. At his waist hung the Spirit Gun, a magical treasure forged by the artifact refiners of Hundred Treasure Mountain. Rumor had it that the gun could seek out enemies on its own from ten thousand miles away.
Beside him stood the family steward, Huang Xiujin, the guest elder guarding the family, Zhuo Linlin, and the Painting Ancestor, Dongfang Xuan. The family's old friends were there as well: Feng Chunlin, Prince of Qingyun Prefecture, Sun Haotian, patriarch of the Sun Family, High Person Universal Compassion of the Ethereal Immortal Sect... Earlier, they had been exchanging compliments at the banquet, discussing the Li Family's victories in the Heavenly Palace and the Far West, astonished that the Li