The fragrance spread at an astonishing rate. In the span of a single breath, every cultivator gathered at the mouth of the Sunken Fragrance Valley had been startled by its presence.
Beneath the silent night sky, this headstrong aroma lent the valley an aura of eerie mystery all its own.
Martial cultivators, for the most part, were a vigilant lot.
Upon catching wind of this bizarre fragrance, most of them arrived at the same immediate conclusion: "Could this scent be poisonous? Is someone releasing a toxin?"
In the world of martial cultivation, the art of poison might not win any prizes for elegance, but it remained one of the most feared methods among cultivators.
The art of poison was enigmatic and unpredictable — and above all, extraordinarily difficult to guard against.
The annals of the martial world were filled with records of mighty powerhouses who had stumbled and even perished at the hands of poison.
As a result, even though the art of poison was not exactly respected, whenever it was mentioned, cultivators instinctively kept their guard up.
His understanding of the art of poison far surpassed that of everyone present. In his previous life, he had been an alchemy grandmaster of the Myriad Heavens caliber, and his research into poisons had been equally profound.
Under the heavens, which poisons were the deadliest, which methods of delivery were the most covert, which poisons had antidotes, which poisons killed with a single drop of blood — in short, Jiang Chen's mind housed an encyclopedia of toxicology.
Of course, having refined the Golden Cicada bloodline, Jiang Chen himself was immune to all poisons and impervious to ten thousand thunders, so he was not particularly worried about any toxin hidden in the fragrance.
Still, he did not let his guard down.
He immediately set about analyzing the scent, parsing its composition.
He, Jiang Chen, might fear no poison — but the Peerless Emperor, the two Jiao brothers of Huaishan, and the others concealed on the outskirts would not share his immunity. If the fragrance carried a toxin, they might not be able to withstand it.
He had to be cautious.
What surprised him, however, was that the fragrance exhibited absolutely no aggressive toxic properties whatsoever — in other words, the scent contained no poison at all.
This caught Jiang Chen off guard. The fragrance had appeared so suddenly and inexplicably that his first instinct had been to assume it must be harmful. Yet after a careful examination, he overturned his own initial conclusion.
"This fragrance has no aggressive properties at all. Could it really be nothing more than a coincidence? Just some unusual herb inside the valley releasing its natural scent?"
Jiang Chen had essentially undermined his own theory.
It was evident that the top-tier cultivators, judging by their expressions, had reached the same determination — the fragrance posed no offensive threat.
"There is no need for alarm. This scent may simply be a clue from within the Sunken Fragrance Valley. It carries no poison."
"Indeed. Let us not panic and throw ourselves into disarray."
Outside the valley's mouth, the restless crowd gradually settled back into calm.
Jiang Chen sat in the shadows, covertly observing the reactions of the great sects and powerful factions, his mind turning. "If this fragrance was artificially produced, it would be someone's attempt to drive the rest of us away. If there truly is someone scheming behind the scenes, then this situation just became far more interesting."
He speculated that the fragrance might have been deliberately manufactured.
Yet as he secretly studied the expressions of those sect leaders and faction masters, they all wore the grave faces of people facing a dire threat — they hardly looked like the ones responsible.
Jiang Chen's suspicion slowly dissipated.
Still, the bizarre fragrance prevented him from entirely dismissing his unease. Even if the scent itself was harmless.
But when something abnormal occurred, there was always a motive behind it. Jiang Chen maintained a healthy wariness toward this inexplicable aroma.
That night was destined to be anything but peaceful.
None of the great sects or powerful factions dared to let down their guard. It was as if they feared some heaven-and-earth-destroying demon might erupt from the endless darkness and devour them all.
Jiang Chen, too, kept a sufficient level of vigilance.
Unfortunately, when morning came and the sun rose once more in the east, the endlessly lingering fragrance had vanished as though it had never existed.
Even Jiang Chen was taken aback by this.
"Could it be that this bizarre fragrance is afraid of daylight?" All manner of possibilities cycled through his mind.
But when day arrived, the mouth of the Sunken Fragrance Valley still had not fully opened. The passage into the secret realm had not appeared.
According to the local inhabitants of the Phoenix Cry Lower Domain, when the secret realm opened, the passage would manifest on its own. Yet despite waiting for so long, no such passage had emerged at the valley's mouth.
In other words, the time apparently had not yet come.
Daytime once again trickled away beneath everyone's burning impatience.
When nightfall descended, the bizarre fragrance returned just as it had the night before — and this time, its intensity had noticeably escalated, the scent far more concentrated and overwhelming than it had been the previous evening.
"Damn it, it's that smell again, and it's getting more pungent by the minute! Are they trying to destroy our sense of smell?"
"No kidding! Now I know — being surrounded by fragrance can actually be a form of exquisite torture."
Those murmured complaints laid bare the feelings of everyone present.