Haze Shenron

Southern Marshlands.

Chiaotzu landed on a patch of gray rock that was barely dry enough to stand on.

The moment his feet touched the ground, a sizzling corrosion sound came from the soles of his boots.

Liquid seeping from the surface was eating away at the rock layer beneath his feet, bubbling with sickly yellow-green foam.

Chiaotzu hurriedly floated half a meter upward. Looking down, he saw that the rock he had stepped on had already sunk into a shoeprint-shaped indentation, its edges still dissolving away.

"So gross."

Chiaotzu frowned with his pale little face and looked around.

As far as the eye could see stretched a rotting swamp that reached the horizon.

Dead trees stood crookedly in the muck, their bark peeled away to reveal blackened wood underneath.

A layer of dark-green moss covered the damp ground, and beneath that moss lay bottomless bogs.

Every so often, a bubble would rise there, bursting and releasing a wisp of foul-smelling yellow smoke.

The sky was equally murky.

Low clouds had been stained lead-gray by poisonous fumes. Sunlight could not penetrate that heavy toxic barrier, and the entire swamp was shrouded in a sickly yellow gloom.

Chiaotzu's psychic power instinctively flowed over the surface of his body, forming a thin protective layer.

The Eternal Energy Reactor within him operated steadily, blue energy cycling endlessly through his meridians.

"That guy is nearby."

Chiaotzu closed his eyes and released his Mental Power to sense the distribution of auras around him.

Tien Shinhan had taught him a technique: in a complex environment, do not be distracted by superficial auras. Look past the impurities and find the most "unnatural" one.

The stench of decay in the swamp was so thick that the entire region was blanketed by the same foul odor.

Yet beneath that uniform