On the floating island, there was one more person.
Baili Hong.
Beside him stood a Tiger-Head War Saber over a zhang long.
The demonic patterns on the blade devoured and spat out the surrounding spiritual light. Several newly added cracks along its spine were slowly healing under the nourishment of that light.
Hearing the commotion, Baili Hong lifted his eyelids. When he saw Xu Changqing emerge from the fissure, a faint smile appeared on his face.
"Ninth Junior Brother, you finally came out."
He looked Xu Changqing up and down, a flicker of barely noticeable surprise passing through his eyes. Then his smile deepened. "You stayed in there for more than a hundred days. If you'd come out a few days later, the Cosmic Tidal Surge might have already passed."
More than a hundred days had passed outside?
Xu Changqing's heart stirred at his words.
He had spent thirteen hundred years in the passage, while only a little over a hundred days had passed in the outside world.
No wonder the others had come out long ago.
The backgrounds they had chosen did not possess such an extreme flow of time as his.
They had spent, at most, several decades to one or two centuries inside before finishing their cultivation and leaving.
Xu Changqing quickly stepped forward. "Fourth Senior Brother, have you been waiting outside for me this whole time?"
Baili Hong waved a hand. "Before Eldest Senior Brother left, he told me to stand guard until you came out.
"You are Great Dao Venerable's ninth direct disciple and the last to enter the sect.
"Among your senior brothers and sisters, aside from Third and Fifth, whose whereabouts are unknown, your cultivation is the lowest.
"No one can say what variables might arise within something like a temporal gap. Having