The sky was dim, the clouds thick. At some unknown point, Little Olive Island's Nightfall Gloom Dust-Baleful Formation had activated, conjuring a scene shrouded in heavy twilight haze.
Within it floated a colossal shape like a coiled dragon, imposing an inexplicable pressure on Yi Chen and Gao Qingchen.
Gao Qingchen caught an unusual fragrance and, startled, asked Yi Chen about it.
Surprise appeared on Yi Chen's face. He had smelled it too.
It was an indescribably strange sensation, as though an unprecedentedly fresh fragrance filled heaven and earth, suffusing every direction.
Yet when they tried to identify it carefully, they discovered that the fragrance did not seem real.
It was ethereal, appearing and vanishing, repeatedly slipping beyond their perceptions, only for one of them to suddenly catch its scent again. When they investigated its source, it disappeared without a trace.
If people could hallucinate sights and sounds, constructing what they saw and heard from imagined scenes in their minds, then this fragrance could almost be called an olfactory hallucination.
It seemed to possess a rhythm that stirred the heart, lingering at the tips of their noses as though it might turn from illusion into reality at any moment and truly manifest.
Gao Qingchen pondered aloud, "Could this be a measure Li Ling left here?
"The Incense Accumulation Sect was founded on the Incense Path, and Li Ling himself possesses exceptional arts. He may well have mastered some exceedingly rare Incense Path divine ability that catalyzes an extraordinary fragrance through means ordinary people cannot comprehend, perfuming us with it. We'd best not smell it, lest we fall victim to his hidden attack."
Yi Chen glanced at him. "I understand the reasoning, but how exactly do we stop smelling it?"
Gao Qingchen choked on his words. That was indeed a problem.
If