Ulf decided to concentrate his gaze on the Howling mountains, especially on the middle mountain. Then he barely noticed something extremely abnormal.
A very thin, thread-like thing was hanging and gently shaking on top of the mountain as if it was trying to touch heaven.
Ulf was using so much inner qi on his eyes that they started to give painful signals to his brain. Nevertheless, he could endure for some time and decided to risk it.
Maybe, from this distance, this natural creation was hardly noticeable, but it must have been huge from a closer view.
"It clearly isn't a living being, as its shape changes rapidly. However, what could cause something like that to be created?" Ulf was awestruck.
Usually, he would think it was a tornado. However, he had other thoughts because of its unchangeable position, ultimately, which made him come here and after more observation, Ulf had a theory that this strange was what had been pulling raw qi toward the south.
Of course, this idea didn't come out of thin air. After the current advancement, his spiritual energy's censorship ability got much stronger.
With help of spiritual energy, Ulf got a faint feeling, but could still sense that this tornado-like phenomenon was tremendously rich with very pure qi.
"This is even more alarming. I can detect its field of qi even a few hundreds of kilometres away." Ulf was wondering if he must go back to the tribe and report.
Who knew what kind of danger this strange occurrence could bring up on them? Stubbornly hiding it may result in terrible consequences and the whole village would be unprepared for unknown danger.
Even if Ulf didn't trust almost everyone in the village, a big part of it came from his past life's horrible experiences. He was selfish and considered himself and his family the main priority in this life. Even though, he had also developed a sense of belonging to his tribe. There were the people Ulf greatly respected and had close connections with.
'However, it must also be considered that by reporting this case, I am defending my family too.'
"Reporting this incident in the village is equal to revealing myself. Therefore, before doing it, I must be sure that this thing has a high risk for my tribe."
Ulf made the decision and began to descend from the mountain. As for the next destination, he chose to cross the canyon and rush toward the central part of the forest.
In order to get down in the canyon, Ulf had to find a valley or dale. If not, climbing down wouldn't be as easy as reaching the cave, when down parts of the cliff were much harder to climb.
To his surprise, Ulf soon found a few spots to trespass the huge border-like cliff to set foot on the plains of the canyon.
Ulf selected the place where the little river had cut through the cliff. It seemed, during the tens of thousands of years of flowing, this small stream caused unimaginably great damage to terrain, split the giant rocks in half and made a perfect way to connect two different parts of the forest.
The surroundings appeared peaceful, so Ulf followed the stream. At the start, everything was well and nothing unordinary in the surroundings.
But suddenly, he saw the large number of creatures moving from the down part of a gully toward the upper part of it.
There were many of them, almost every kind of animal he had seen was there.
'What's happening now? Is this beasts' horde or even more dangerous monster tide?' Ulf froze on the spot.
If it was the beasts' horde, Ulf would still have a slim chance of escaping, but as he was told the monster tide was guaranteed the death penalty. Every animal, beast or monster in such groups was much more violent than usual. However, no matter what, he wouldn't give up without trying and resisting. Ulf climbed up on the high ground on the left side of the gully.
When Ulf had such thoughts, he noticed that no creature was expressing any hint of aggressiveness. It was the opposite, they were most likely afraid of something and rushing out of the canyon as fast as they could.
'What bizarre encounter is this? I am even more confused now.'
Ulf was thinking that maybe there was a very strong beast behind them and that was why they were running. However, he discarded this theory soon after.
Firstly, other hunters told him that even if the beasts could slaughter the animals like the lambs, they didn't enjoy that much committing large-scale massacres of lower-stage existences.
Moreover, the spiritual energy didn't give him any warning, so he stayed to detect the reason for the change in behaviours of the forest's creatures.
After waiting for several minutes, Ulf was only seeing unending tides of animals passing through him, without even glancing at him. It didn't matter if the carnivorous creatures were fleeing with herbivorous animals on their sides.
Due to this reaction, Ulf became courageous to take even more risks and continue processing downward.
On his way, he even saw a few early-grade beasts among the rushing creatures.
As Ulf reached the down part of the canyon, there were almost no creatures remaining, only giant trees around. Because of no danger nearby, he crossed the forest and encounter another big hurdle to overcome.
It was a large river, which was cutting the canyon and the entire forest in two different sections.
'I have a hope that inside the river is in the same situation as outside here. Especially, when I have low-level knowledge about the existences residing there.' Ulf gulped.
By using Aeglos, Ulf performed several powerful slashes and cut down the tree on the riverbank. Right after the tree fell into the river, it started floating. Then Ulf pointed the direction by using an oar-like tree branch. Thankfully, the speed of this large river was quite slow and flowed calmly too.
Fortunately, his gamble was right. Whatever had scared the animals and the beasts, it also influenced the creatures inside the river. His spiritual energy didn't give him any dangerous signals too.
After crossing the river, Ulf easily found his way out of the canyon. He was very interested to study the environment of this exotic place, but there wasn't time. Getting out from the canyon was enough for Ulf to sense that the drawing speed of external qi toward the southern direction was accelerated.
Perhaps, running faster would be a good opinion, because of the absence of the majority of living beings around. Nevertheless, Ulf went against this idea, due to one particular reason. All creatures he saw running out from the central part of the southern forest were early-grade beasts or weaker ones. As for stronger beasts, non of them could be seen among them, when these territories must have been strongly inhabited by these big fellas. There was something fishy going on.
At that point, it was already very clear that, whatever was happening on the howling mountain, must have scared the crap out of low-level beings.
If not for spiritual energy, Ulf wouldn't find any abnormality in external qi. However, maybe, the inhabitants of the forest could sense the changes, on account of their different built and cultivation systems.
Ulf had several vague anticipations about an ongoing event in the central part of the forest. Though, making decisions beforehand without getting more proof didn't go well for him.
Even with the speed of a leader rank hunter, Ulf would need at least two or three days to reach the Howling mountains. He had been marching tirelessly for the daytime and was also getting more anxious.
The same series of developments arise everywhere he went: animals and weak beasts were escaping from something desperately, but stronger beasts just disappeared.
P.S. I am sorry everyone. I wanted to publish this chapter yesterday, but got some problems and had to delay.