Chapter 503: The Eerie Forest

In Afternoon Town, while Dai Lik rolled forward to dodge the monster's attack, the Hurricane Axe in his right hand struck a giant's black, short‑haired calf.

Boom!

A silver‑white lightning bolt fell from nowhere, slashing the monster so that its whole body trembled and froze in place.

Dai Lik rose calmly; he did not continue to swing the Hurricane Axe, but spread his arms as if embracing the sun.

A bright, pure, radiant holy light descended, enveloping the monster ahead.

In the light filled with sacred solar aura, the black, short‑haired monster shrieked and fell, its body emitting a puff of black mist that instantly melted into the light and vanished.

Elsewhere, Chief Ke Lin of Silver City held a silver‑white straight sword in each hand; after repelling several monsters that approached, he suddenly stepped back, slightly bowed, and drove his swords into the decayed ashstone ground.

Fragments of dawn‑like light burst from the blades of the two swords, countless and dense, forming a flashing, ferocious, sharp hurricane that swept outward.

The bright dawn light quickly enveloped everything around, cutting, dissolving, and eroding the black, short‑haired monster to nothing.

The bright dawn lasted about half a minute; only after Ke Lin rose from the ground did the dawn gradually fade, leaving no monster in sight.

After a period of fighting, the people of Silver City discovered that the monsters here feared intense light.

Although the Dawn Knight's dawn light is weaker in the holy and luminous realms than that of the Prayer Light, the dawn wielded by Demon Hunter Ke Lin is no less effective than the holy light summoned by Dai Lik, and it can cover a larger area.

As the last monster was dealt with, Afternoon Town suddenly fell silent, with only deep darkness shrouding everything.

Chief Ke Lin of Silver City looked around and said in a deep voice:

"First rest, then return to Silver City."

The exploration of Afternoon Town kept encountering mishaps; although the scouting party suffered no casualties, they were all somewhat injured, and the sudden appearance of the outsider "Mr. Bai Ta" and A Meng forced him to reconsider the plan to explore the Giant King's Court.

In Silver City, clusters of black, hair‑like plants grew in patches within the gaps of its towering walls, fluttering like strands of hair in the whimpering wind.

Lei Ke Dun lingered at a distance, casting a long glance toward Silver City, seeing the wall tops dotted with lanterns at intervals and hidden residents patrolling while carrying beast‑skin lanterns.

After a brief assessment, his figure became transparent again, turning into sparkling starlight that surged and drifted away with the wind.

Lei Ke Dun alternated between strolling and transforming into surging starlight, soon traveling far toward the southern side of Silver City.

He wore a black, classic long robe with a hood, adorned with many strange sigils and magical marks like scattered stars surrounding a cold, indifferent eye; in his left hand he held a transparent crystal ball glowing with faint starlight, presenting the image of a mysterious wizard wandering the wilderness of legend.

On a dried riverbed, specks of starlight gathered from within, reconstituting Lei Ke Dun's figure.

He glanced thoughtfully at the riverbed, noting it wasn't especially dry yet contained no water; the moisture was evenly distributed, not like a slow drying, but as if the river had vanished suddenly, trapped in an incomplete hidden state that only returns at random or fixed times.

As he paused, his eyes flickered, becoming profoundly deep, then cleared again after a moment.

"There is lingering aura of the Night Goddess nearby; it seems the river has indeed been concealed."

"But it seems someone once lived here, hmm, there was once life."

The glimpses he saw through the River of Fate showed scenes of this place's past, featuring monsters and humans, their bodies bearing varying degrees of mutation, carrying dim lanterns and cautiously gathering river water at the banks.

Although the exact time could not be determined, those scenes likely occurred long ago, and the surrounding survivors did not continue to struggle in the darkness.

He sighed inwardly and followed his intuition toward the dark depths on the right side of the riverbed.

Using the occasional lightning from the sky, he saw a gloomy, withered, eerie forest less than a hundred meters from the river.

There were no leaves; both trunks and branches grew extremely twisted, the trunks riddled with holes of various sizes, resembling snarling, distorted, screaming faces.

Each tree exuded rot, cold, and death, yet conveyed a strange, living sensation.

In Lei Ke Dun's eyes, deep blue flowed continuously, sketching one complex symbol after another.

The next moment, a massive, illusory eye materialized above the forest, its cold, solid gaze sweeping every corner.

Lei Ke Dun halted, carefully analyzing the various details of the forest that surfaced in his mind.

Simultaneously possessing traits of the living and the undead—an incompletely transformed death creature? Can plants become revenants? Logically, this place lacks light and stable water sources, making it wholly unsuitable for plant growth, unless they have mutated into monsters.

They were once monsters animated by the Earth Realm's power, later infected by the lingering power of a former Death God, turning into revenants, yet their inherent peculiarity caused the transformation to remain incomplete.

After pondering for a while, Lei Ke Dun made the transparent, illusory giant eye above the forest vanish, then gazed deeply at the trees ahead, intending to rely on prophecy to judge the danger.

A moment later, he withdrew his gaze, planning to cross the strange forest directly.

These odd trees themselves cannot harm me, but together with the accumulated death, earth, and even the Night Realm's divine power here, they form a delicate balance; should that balance falter, I may not escape the lingering divine influence.

As Lei Ke Dun prepared to fly over the forest, a silver‑white lightning struck nearby, lighting the surroundings transparently.

Using the brief blaze from the lightning, he noticed an inverted tree buried at the forest edge, its twisted form bearing a strip of cloth matching the trunk's color.

Because it was so close to the trunk and nearly the same color, he would not have noticed this subtle abnormality if the lightning hadn't struck precisely there.

"Traces left by humans—did those who once gathered in this area find a way to coexist with this eerie forest?"

He muttered softly, took a few quick steps toward the forest edge, and subtly turned his left wrist holding the crystal ball.

The starlight inside the crystal ball flickered, an invisible gravitational disturbance pulling the inverted tree out of the ground.

Seeing the fully revealed bizarre tree, Lei Ke Dun lightly furrowed his brow; perhaps because most of it was buried underground, preventing free growth, this tree grew very restrained and strange:

The trunk bent, and near the top, a thick branch extended on each side, curving oddly like two separated, struggling arms.

From a slight distance, it resembled a hunched, painfully struggling person.

Lei Ke Dun reached out, grabbed the dark‑colored strip wrapped around the trunk, its faint bark pattern visible, and pulled it forcefully twice.

It felt very rough, like coarse hemp made from plant fibers; it had fused with the trunk, and despite several strong pulls, Lei Ke Dun could not tear it apart.

Keeping the motion unchanged, Lei Ke Dun lowered his head slightly, his eyes flashing, becoming profoundly deep like the sea before a storm, clearly losing focus, his gaze hazy.

His spirit briefly drifted, and a vision quickly formed in his mind:

In the darkness, a figure carrying a beast‑skin lantern ran swiftly, panting heavily; due to the perspective, Lei Ke Dun could not see the figure's appearance, only feel the fear and despair filling his chest, and the surrounding trees contorting bizarrely as they fell backward.

The surrounding trees retreated rapidly, allowing Lei Ke Dun to estimate the runner's speed, finding it faster than a wolf pack sprinting across the plains.

A Seventh‑ or Sixth‑Tier extraordinary being, of the type with significant physical enhancement. As the thought drifted, Lei Ke Dun felt the suffocating despair intensify, and the vision in his mind flickered:

The surrounding trees, constantly falling backward, seemed to change, as if coming to life, twisting, shaking, and emitting a moaning sound.

The vision in his mind shifted again, turning pitch black; it seemed the running person had dropped the beast‑skin lantern, leaving only heavier panting and a deeper, crushing despair.

Only when silver‑white lightning streaked across the sky could its light barely reveal the surrounding environment.

The silver‑white light, hidden by the branches, was sliced into countless tiny fragments, like the eyes of monsters lurking in the dark depths, appearing extremely oppressive.

The runner seemed very familiar with the roads here; even without lanterns, using the occasional lightning that lit up the surroundings, he could easily tell his position and the direction he should go.

In the shifting vision, the figure burst out of that oppressive, twisted, eerie forest, and the sound of rushing water rose around them.

At the most relaxed, most joyful moment, the fluctuating image in Leiketon's mind suddenly ended.

An indescribable feeling floated in his heart, and he subconsciously murmured:

「. Suffering has no end, the sun will never rise again。」

(End of chapter)