Everyone's eyes turned toward the tavern entrance.
A figure had appeared there at some point.
He was a young man dressed in black.
His face was stern, his eyes hollow.
A gray monkey with three eyes crouched on his shoulder, clutching a half-eaten chicken leg.
The moment Li Xiaoyu, Lu Xueqi, and Lin Jingyu saw the young man in black, all three of them jolted.
The chopsticks in their hands fell onto the table.
Their faces were filled with complicated emotions they couldn't put into words.
It was him.
It really was him.
Ghost Li.
Zhang Xiaofan.
They hadn't seen him in ten years. He had changed.
He had changed so much that they could barely recognize him.
The face that had once been honest and simple now held nothing but coldness and numbness.
The eyes that had once been clear now held nothing but deathly silence and emptiness.
A thick aura of blood and baleful energy shrouded him.
It was so pure and powerful that wherever he went, the Demon Sect fiends around him instinctively stepped back, not daring to meet his eyes.
His Cultivation, too, had reached a heart-stirring level.
The Shangqing Realm.
And he was at the advanced stage of the Upper Purity Realm.
The boy who had once spent over a decade cultivating at Big Bamboo Peak without distinguishing himself had now grown into someone capable of standing alongside the powerful elders of their masters' generation.
What had he gone through in these ten years?
How much pain had he endured?
Li Xiaoyu looked at that familiar yet strange figure and felt as if something were lodged in his throat. He couldn't utter a word.
Lu Xueqi's pretty face turned pale.
The Tianya Divine Sword in her hand let out a long cry.
She could feel