The next morning, drums boomed like thunder across the central square of the Great Li Imperial City as the once-in-thirty-years Martial Dao Tournament officially commenced.
Su Yueli wore a cold, white carved mask and had arrived early at the elevated viewing stands.
The venue was already packed with a sea of people. In the preparation area below, ordinary martial artists and experts from the great secular lineages had all gathered, their sabers, spears, swords, and halberds gleaming with a cold light beneath the morning sun.
Sitting in a corner, Su Yueli swept her cool gaze over the area below before quickly fixing it on a section bearing a black eagle banner.
The Pang Family.
At the sight of that familiar emblem, a cold smile curled across Su Yueli's lips.
The few young contestants dispatched by the Pang Family were brimming with vigor and blood energy. Judging by their strength, they were likely all around the Fourth Realm.
That standard was more or less the same as the tournament she had joined sixty years ago.
After a full sixty years, the foundations of secular lineages had ultimately remained stuck circling within this same little pond.
Su Yueli shifted her gaze toward the center of the Pang Family's viewing stand.
A middle-aged man in luxurious robes sat there, steady as Mount Tai, his expression stern and imposing.
Su Yueli probed him with the instincts of the Illusion-Breaking Realm, only to find her perception strangely blurred. She could not see through the middle-aged man's martial cultivation at a glance.
What was more, a faint, cool aura seemed to linger around him.
"Spiritual energy fluctuations?"
Su Yueli raised her brows, inwardly surprised.
The current head of a secular martial lineage was actually an immortal cultivator?
"Brothers, did you see the fellow seated in the