Chapter 69: Deathly Hallow Forest

The sun shimmered and shone brightly in the mid morning of a friday.

Vroom!

A black blur raced across the cement road, light from the sun reflecting against its reflective sleek metal plated body, giving anyone who looked at it momentary blindness. It was a black colored motorcycle, going through one of the many long and empty roads in the Douluo continent.

The one riding it was fully clothed in black leather jacket, jeans and boots, and wore a similar colored helmet that covered his entire head and identity. Though his body figure plainly revealed him to be a male.

He was quite for the entire time as he rides through the quiet empty road, moving his right hand around a handle to accelerate his bike further ever so often; leaving behind dust and pebble, as his tyres screeched through the pavement and speeded off to the distance.

The rider continued on his way for about half an hour before he slowly stop his bike, turning to look at the road side near him that said, "Deathly Hallow Forest" and "Turn Back!", he then turned his head around and flipped his glass shield up to reveal a pair of narrowed golden eyes; staring straight at several withered up decaying trees. All without green leaves and healthy brown color you'd normally see, instead, their balk were an unhealthy pale gray like chalk, limp dark branches that looked like eldritch tentacles and a visible inky black aura surrounded each one.

"Just like what Xie Xie had said, a literal forest of death and rot. I just didn't think it would so bad." The Deathly Hallow Forest is a forest that spanned of around 5 kilometers in diameter and not a single living being can be seen or sense within it, one of the reasons why the forest was called like that. For not a single living organism would near the forest, much less go inside it. The reasons for that was not because of poison gas, deadly radiation, or even some dangerous mystical gas. No. They were just too afraid to go in.

Thousands of years ago, soul master experts were sent into the forest to investigate the reasons as to why the forest had cause such unexplained sense of fear to appear into the victims mind. They were comprised of one soul king, five soul ancestors, and twelve soul elders.

They were so confident of their numbers and strength, they didn't even brought their custom mechas along; thinking that it would all be finished in just a few hours of investigation.

It was true, it was all over a few hours they went into the forest and never to be seen again.

A further investigation was launched and a Titled Douluo was sent in to investigate it and quickly found out what was going on. The forest had some sort of natural strange spiritual domain that covered the entire forest that would affect anyone inside and around it; causing hallucinogenic effects and other spiritual attacks to any sapient life.

The effect was simple and yet horrifying. It causes those with little spiritual power, Spirit Origin Realm, to have an intense fear of going near the forest, even to the point of fainting when entering it. While those at Spirit Connection Realm wouldn't be as fearful but the moment they walked into the forest, things would turned worse for them. As they would fall into a deep lucid dream that you can never wake up from, even when being forcibly shaken and take major injuries.

Only those at the Spirit Sea Realm and higher can safely walked into the forest without falling into any spiritual attacks. The only worry however, were the things that killed the first investigation squad in the forest. They were what cemented the name of the forest: the Deathly Hallows.

Most had called for the government to destroy it, for fear that forest's effects would spread and the Deathly Hallows would go out of their territory, but for some odd reason, Shrek Academy had stepped in personally and had them back off from destroying it.

This had shocked everyone. Shrek has been a neutral party ever since its founding; they were an academy after all. They were to only teach and guide young soul masters, they weren't supposed to interfere with any worldly affairs. Heck, they had only half-assedly stopped the Spirit Pagoda from annihilating the entire soul beast species.

The Federation and other parties had asked Shrek many times for their reason of defending the forest but they had only remained silent. The Federation tried persuading them for years until they eventually stopped when they continued on ignoring them. What can they do? Force them to back down? The academy that houses and has alumnus of soul masters in the continent that have high statuses and strength?

All what they can do, was implanting warning signs and iron fences around the forest to not let people in. They had finally stopped trying to destroy it because the spiritual domain from the forest and the Deathly Hallows had just remained in place,never expanding and leaving their territory respectively.

For thousands of years, no one had the guts and strength to enter the dreaded forest. At least, to the public that is.

Xiu Ye parked his soul motorcycle ten meters away from the forest and got off it. He took off his helmet and stored it in his storage ring. Looking around to check his surroundings, he then went to his soul motorcycle's right handle and pressed a button.

Taking a couple steps back, he watched as the entire body of the soul motorcycle was covered in a blue glow with white lines around for a moment before the bike disappeared; though to be correct, camouflaged. This was one of Xiu Ye's many projects he'd been operating for the last few months; a high-tech soul motorcycle that looked like a black Dodge Tomahawk that can go up to 750 mph.

It wasn't easy making this, especially the cost materials, the paperworks needed to make the bike legal in the continent and getting a driver's license. The latter not being so hard, as the age requirement for a soul master is 10 years old. It wasn't really too weird as most young soul masters are more mature; mentally and physically, and stronger, than ordinary people. But the Federation isn't so stupid as to give away driver's licenses for free, you still gotta take a driver's exam.

Which was a pain in the butt. It wasn't because of the exam being hard or anything, but the waiting. God. Xiu Ye swore he would never return to that place ever again!

It is, however, worth it now because he can ride his sweet bike. Xiu Ye could still picture the envy and jealous looks of his male classmates as he showed off his ride to them.

Xiu Ye, with narrowed eyes, stared at the Deathly Hallows Forest as he walks towards it and jumped up the two meter electric fence that quarantined the entire forest and enter it.

Suddenly, he felt a prickling feeling entering his mind for a brief moment; a spiritual attack, before his spiritual power crushed it into nothing before it could do anything to him. But he ignored that a moment later, as he was faced with a bigger problem.

As he stands just several inches away from entering the dreaded forest, he stopped. His expression morphed from curious excitement to a frown.

"Ryūjin Jakka. This place, it's..."

"Mm, I feel it as well." Ryūjin Jakka's voice reached his ears, sounding both serious and wary. "This place, it reeks of evil and malevolence. So many souls are screaming for help, for peace, for release from this prison that traps these tortured souls that twisted them into what they are now."

"And they are...?" Xiu Ye said.

"Deathly Hallows, or what my previous world would say, Hollows." Terrifying loud screeches, roars and other unholy voices that wasn't was heard from the forest in that moment.

"Shit." Xiu Ye cursed.

❄️

Join my pa treon to support me and read 7-8 advance chapters! Pa treon/FroztDouluo

Also, don't forget to hit that power stone button! It'll make me a very happy person to continue writing more of this story.

AN: I have an announcement to make: this would be the final chapter I'll be posting for this month. I'll be busy for the next couple of weeks with my family and friends, so I won't have the time to write any chapters during this coming time period. I'm really sorry guys and gals but, family and friends comes first before anything else! The next upload will be on January 10.