By employing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy combined with first-principles calculations, we performed a systematic investigation on the electronic structure of LaBi, which exhibits extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR), and is theoretically predicted to possess band anticrossing with nontrivial topological properties. Here, the observations of the Fermi-surface topology and band dispersions are similar to previous studies on LaSb [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 127204 (2016)], a topologically trivial XMR semimetal, except the existence of a band inversion along the Γ-X direction, with one massless and one gapped Dirac-like surface state at the X and Γ points, respectively. The odd number of massless Dirac cones suggests that LaBi is analogous to the time-reversal Z 2 nontrivial topological insulator. These findings open up a new series for exploring novel topological states and investigating their evolution from the perspective of topological phase transition within the family of rare-earth monopnictides.PACS numbers: 73.20. At, 71.18.+y, 71.20.Eh Exploring exotic topological states has sparked extensive research interest, both theoretically and experimentally, due to their promising potential in low consumption spintronics devices 1-3 . In the past decade, since the discovery of quantum spin Hall effect in graphene 4 , remarkable achievements have been reached, including the findings of twodimensional (2D) 5-7 and three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TIs) 8 , node-line semimetals 9,10 , topological crystalline insulators 11,12 , and Dirac and Weyl semimetals [13][14][15][16][17][18] . Strikingly, although the TIs have ignited the whole field for years, the realization of novel massless surface Dirac fermions, i.e., topological surface states (SSs), is still pretty exciting due to the great prospects in tunability of the topological characteristics through easily accessible manipulations 19 . Among the extensive efforts, the study on the topological phase transition (TPT) can also effectively facilitate the exploration and investigation of topological SSs and even the Dirac semimetals [20][21][22] .Recently, the discovery of simple rock salt rare-earth monopnictides LnX (Ln = La, Y, Nd, or Ce; X = Sb/Bi) [23][24][25][26][27][28][29] has renewed the platform for searching these novel topological states. The most remarkable signature of this series is the extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) with a resistivity plateau at low temperatures, which is proposed as the consequence of breaking time-reversal symmetry 23 . However, the theoretical predictions for the topological properties vary in the LnX series 30 . In addition, similar fingerprints have also been reported in several semimetals including TmPn 2 (Tm = Ta/Nb, Pn = As/Sb) 31-36 , ZrSiS 37-39 , WTe 2 40 , Cd 3 As 2 41,42 , TaAs 43 , and NbP 44 . The topological origin of the large magnetoresistance and resistivity plateau is still under debate. Furthermore, the rich and interesting topological phases predicted in the LnX family offer an ...