From the moment he saw this man, Yang Linghu had silently recited, "Immortal Venerable, bless me," activating Chen Yang's strand of consciousness within his sea of awareness.
At the same time, he clutched an Adamantine Talisman in his other hand, ready to activate it for protection at any moment.
The situation with the monster in that cave was unclear. Perhaps it had learned some kind of transformation technique.
Earlier, he had used the Immortal Venerable's consciousness to inspect the man and confirmed that he was a human cultivator before refraining from kicking him away.
Seeing that he had been frightened out of his wits, Yang Linghu reached out, lifted him up, and set him on a rock nearby.
"What's your name?"
"Liu Qing."
"Liu Qing, calm down. I won't abandon you. Tell me what happened."
Hearing Yang Linghu's steady voice, Liu Qing gradually calmed down and began recounting everything to him.
"Six days ago! A half-human, half-snake monster appeared out of nowhere!"
"The Secret Treasury's cultivation limit was clearly Qi Gathering Early-stage, yet its cultivation had already reached the Fourth Layer of Qi Gathering! From that day onward, it began hunting down and devouring human cultivators everywhere!"
"Later, people from several major factions joined forces to surround and kill it. We thought that with everyone's strength combined, we would be able to kill it soon enough."
"But who could have expected that the monster's vitality would be so astonishing? Even when its body was pierced through, it could quickly recover by devouring flesh and blood. It was incredibly difficult to kill."
"And it possessed a splitting divine ability. After devouring enough flesh and blood, it could split new little monsters off from its body."
As he spoke, he pointed at the one Yang Linghu had smashed to pieces. "Like this