Thunder rumbled as a bolt of lightning tore through the heavens. Though it was afternoon, the marsh blanketed in poisonous miasma seemed plunged into polar night.
Anomalies had appeared in the heavens, and days of unceasing rain had turned the marsh into Accumulated-Water Lake. The water appeared only two feet deep, barely above the knees, but underneath lay more than ten feet of rotting sludge, harboring venomous insects, snakes, and rats. With poisonous miasma stretching endlessly on top of that, anyone below Transcendent Grade could barely travel here.
The few birds and beasts that lived here huddled trembling on scattered islands of high ground, like orphans abandoned by heaven and earth. Though it was only eight hundred li from Misty-Wave City, the surroundings rivaled a primordial apocalypse.
Having left the safe zone for this perilous place, Xie Jinhuan naturally had to guard against being watched. Rather than ride the wind or skim across the water, he had swallowed an Invisibility Pill and found a tree trunk to use as a boat, drifting deeper across Accumulated-Water Lake while relying on A Piao's senses to search his surroundings.
With this concealment, so long as he did not deliberately give himself away, outsiders would see nothing but driftwood and could not spot him first. The price was somewhat poor efficiency; searching all of Hundred-Blight Marsh would not be easy.
Ye Yunchi stood at the other end of the trunk, holding her Worn Sword wrapped in black cloth. Studying the young hero in the bamboo hat, who seemed no different from a rock, she said softly,
"This Invisibility Pill really is formidable. Just who is Miss Lin? If she developed this pill herself, she truly deserves the title 'Alchemy Sage.'"
Finding no clues despite all his searching, Xie Jinhuan was getting a little bored