Mountain winds mingled with the night mist, whipping against his face as Pi Yanlin crouched beneath an old locust tree, his thumb rubbing against the copper buckle. The temperature of the metal surface was higher than his own palm; it felt like a piece of red-hot charcoal, stinging his fingertips until they trembled.
"Scent-Seeking Nose," he whispered. The System skill activated automatically.
Suddenly, his sense of smell became ten times sharper. The faint, elusive fragrance clinging to the copper buckle was magnified infinitely—the mellow notes of ambergris in the top notes, followed by a sharp, bitter, and fishy trace in the base notes, bearing a striking resemblance to the smell of the wild desert-fox grass from the Western Regions.
Chapter 21