Chapter 66

Yuhao quickly made his way out of the city and began heading south-west towards the fire basin. He travelled for just over four hours using his portal movement technique before he arrived at Mount Yanjiang, the only active volcano on the Douluo Continent.

This may seem like it was extremely close to the city as it was only a four-hour travel for Yuhao and would put the city in danger of an eruption, without his portal skill and only running on foot, it would take a normal person around 16 hours to get there. This distance was more than far enough to allow Gengxin City to be safe from the majority of an eruption's effects.

Yuhao while he was here, decided to explore the Hearthwood Forests, a group of forests surrounding the volcano which were filled with fire energy and thus, immune to the effects of fire and lava. Yuhao, as he entered into the forest, he immediately felt extremely comfortable. The higher than normal temperature brought him no discomfort and made him feel like he had just returned home after a long trip away.

As he walked through the forest, strangely he could not see or sense any spirit beasts in his surroundings. It was quite eery, with only the sound of the wind blowing between the trees and an occasional leaf or stick crunching under his foot. Yuhao activated his Spiritual Detection skill to help him see his three-hundred and sixty-degree surroundings. Even with this, however, Yuhao was still unable to discover any spirit beasts around him. His curiously peaked, Yuhao continued to venture into the depths of the forest, eager to see what has caused this situation to occur.

Fifteen minutes later of exploring the seemingly deserted forest, he finally found the first sign of life…. well used to be. On the edge of his detection radius, he discovered the dead body of a spirit beast. As he walked closer, he realised it was a Scarlet Fire Monkey. This species was low-ranked and weak compared to the majority of other primate-type spirit beasts. This monkey was below one hundred years of age, so it is essentially food for all of the other beasts in the Hearthwood Forests.

After he walked past the body, he increased his focus and reduced his movement speed. Gradually as he continued walking, he encountered more and more young and weak fire type spirit beasts that had been killed in vicious manners, ranging from more fire monkeys to snakes to cats. Seeing the numerous dead bodies that had been killed for seemingly no reason, all of Yuhao's conscious spirit beasts had expressed their anger.

As Yuhao discovered his first dead, one-thousand-year-old spirit beast in this forest, Shiva spoke up, "Yuhao, I ask you to find out the cause of this massacre. I will provide you with as much power as you can take to allow you to take out the source of this issue."

Yuhao wordlessly nodded as he walked with more determination and assurance than before. Even if he encounters a situation where he can't beat the aggressor using even Shiva's powers, he was confident he could escape using his portals.

He continued walking, moving past fresher and fresher, older and older bodies before finally, after moving at least four kilometres into the forest's depths, he encountered three living spirit beasts. There were two red and orange birds, which by the looks of it, somewhat resembled Ma Xiaotao's phoenix in shape. One of the birds was heavily injured, missing one of its wings entirely and the other clearly severely broken. It was laying a small distance away from where the second bird was fighting the third spirit beast.

The third beast was one that Yuhao recognised fairly quickly, being the sixth of the Ten Great Beasts. This scarlet red, extremely burly, five-metre-long spirit beast had three heads. This beast was the sadistic, three hundred-thousand-year-old, Three-headed Scarlet Devil Mastiff, also known as the Scarlet King.

The Scarlet King was currently dominating the second, smaller phoenix beast, continuously swatting at its back and wings every time it tried to take off from the ground. While it was easily beating the phoenix, it had several long gashed down the side of its body and along its neck, most likely from its battle with the larger, extremely injured bird. Every time is swatted at the phoenix, it was clearly favouring its front left paw over its right one.

As he watched it from the tree line, Shiva said, "I should have guessed it was that guy…Over my time being a spirit, there have been countless times where he has left the Star Dou Forest to perform massacres on spirit beasts and humans alike. Di Tian is the only one who can keep his sadistic side somewhat contained. He is a lot stronger than your current self Yuhao, however, with him being injured as he is and with my power, you do stand a chance."

"Just try and get some all-out attacks in Yuhao," Amra said, speaking up for the first time in the last few hours. "I will be able to use your already activated bloodline and essence to defend you from the first five of his attacks. You won't be able to use your bloodline rings because of that as only through the energy required to activate those skills will I be able to defend you. If you can't get rid of him in that time, then just escape. While I want to have that stain on the spirit beast race removed, it isn't worth you injuring yourself or worse, sacrificing yourself to do so."

"Ok, I will leave defence up to you Amra," Yuhao mentally replied. "Shiva, give me all you can."

Immediately, Yuhao felt Shiva's warm, dense and pure energy flow through his entire body. It soaked his muscles and veins, strengthened his bones and injected itself into his spiritual sea. Similarly, he felt his blood essence surging from Amra's influence, forming a faint golden layer on top of his skin.

Yuhao kept his Spiritual Detection skill going as he released his FrostFire spirit. He needs to attack hard and fast, so his dragon spirit would not help him in this situation. To finalise his preparations, he used his one and only spirit ring on his tool spirit, increasing the sharpness of the blade and his strength.

With everything ready, Yuhao broke from the cover of the trees just as he faded to be incorporeal, his presence diminishing almost entirely.