Smelling the rot and foul stench inside the cave, the boy took another look at the mountain mandrill's headless corpse.
"Where on earth did this beast come from?"
He said this because monkeys always lived in groups. Though solitary ones did exist, he had never heard of anything like this living in the Qinling Mountains. He had seen clever monkeys before-they were primates, after all-but one this vicious, one that understood attacks and psychological maneuvering, so cunning and treacherous, was truly rare.
Had he not encountered it on his way up the mountain, in another two years, once its vital essence grew stronger, this mountain mandrill would have become a serious menace. Not only would it attack people and hunt beasts, it might even approach the mountain spirits and wild monsters of supernatural tales.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Lian Youming looked at the bones on the ground with a sigh, particularly those of the two children. Judging solely by their stripped-off clothes, they had not been dead long-only two or three years.
He crouched down, about to throw the mountain mandrill outside, when his gaze suddenly stopped. His expression grew rather strange, and he reached out with his right hand, slowly parting a patch of black hair on the back of the beast's neck.
The black hair was stiff and dense, much like boar bristles, but the skin beneath it was bare, as though it had been burned. Stranger still, there was actually a brand on it, seemingly a mark in the shape of a lotus.
"A lotus? Could it be the White Lotus Sect? Surely this isn't the Beast-Driving Technique again."
Lian Youming frowned slightly and examined it carefully again, but unfortunately found nothing else. Besides, the beast already reeked of a sickening, foul stench. Now mingled