The entire Forest Sea seemed to boil. Under the ferocious bombardment of Fang Qianyuan and Little White, who unleashed their spirit essence and attacked with all their might, wave after wave of hurricanes and cold fronts battered the forest. Trees snapped and fell, swathes of woodland froze, and Wei Baojun and the others hiding within could only retreat again and again. Even so, they could not escape completely in time.
At last, an enormous spirit creature resembling a flood dragon revealed itself in the mist.
The creature had deer antlers, a red mane around its neck, backward-growing scales, and broad, webbed feet. Spiritual light flickered faintly around it in the bitter wind. It resembled a phantom castle in the air, liable to vanish again at any moment.
But the instant Fang Qianyuan saw it, realization dawned on him.
He finally understood why his judgments had kept going awry, leaving him unable even to distinguish their true bodies from their water-form doubles.
"To think there was a mirage dragon hiding here!"
This spirit creature was indeed a mirage dragon, an exceptionally rare water-element dragon species among Earth Rank creatures.
Mirage dragons generally lived along the coast, where they liked to float above the sea on clear days, breathing clouds and mist in and out.
Unlike other dragon species, which gathered clouds and brought rain, their mist possessed a reflective effect comparable to illusion arts. It could reproduce distant scenery, making it appear to be right before one's eyes.
Adult mirage dragons could even manipulate these images at will. Yet these were not ordinary illusions, and thus were not easily seen through.
"Mirage"-a city rising above the sea-was the term the ancients had coined specifically for this phenomenon.
Fang Qianyuan finally understood that the earlier deception had been the work of this