High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1070: Chapter 132: Banishing Magic Festival

The Forbidden Magic Festival is a traditional holiday in the Wizard World. It usually takes place one hundred days after the winter solstice and one week before Qingming Festival. On this day, wizards voluntarily cease to use any spells, cooking, warming themselves by fire, walking, and socializing just like mortals, and so, this day is also referred to by wizards as ’Mortal Life Day,’ meaning a day of mundane life.

The reason for such a strange holiday, according to a story passed down from the elderly, dates back to an old tale.

It is said that long, long ago, there was a Big Wizard who, in the pursuit of power, lost himself and turned into a Monster that hunted only wizards.

This Monster was even more terrifying than Demons. While most Demons only ate the flesh of wizards, drank their blood, this Monster didn’t spare even the souls of wizards. What’s worse, it could sense the Magical fluctuations of wizards casting spells and track down those wizards.

In order to avoid the Monster’s hunt, many wizards gave up their power and ceased casting spells, living silently like mortals, with sickness, aging, and Death.

The benefits and drawbacks of this were clear. The advantage was that the Monster couldn’t hunt by sensing the Magical fluctuations from casting spells, affording Ordinary Wizards some respite; the drawback was that this greatly suppressed the development of the entire Wizard World, leading to a significant gap and regression in magical skills for nearly a century.

In that dark era, most ordinary wizards were indistinguishable from commoners—living from sunrise to sunset, treading carefully, afraid of natural disasters and man-made calamities, as if on the edge of an Abyss, as if walking on thin ice.

Years later, heroes from the Eight Directions came together, slew the Monster, and peace and freedom were restored to the Wizard World.

To commemorate those heroes and the wizards who had been hunted by the Monster, and to remember that dark epoch, it was proposed by a great number of wizards that on the last weekend before the return of the energy tide each year, they would abstain from all Magic and Witchcraft, as a tribute to the heroes and as an act of remembrance.

This has continued for over a thousand years to the present day.

As time passed, many customs of this festival have changed, with some additions and deletions, but the fundamental practice of ’forbidding magic’ has remained unchanged, enduring throughout the years.

Nowadays, the ’Forbidden Magic Time’ of the Forbidden Magic Festival generally starts at Mao hour and ends at You hour of each day, roughly from six in the morning to six in the evening, spanning an entire daytime. Some families of stringent Wizards extend this period from five in the morning to seven in the evening; however, others choose seven in the morning to five in the evening, making the Magic-free period slightly shorter. It varies widely.

In summary, the timing of the Forbidden Magic Festival doesn’t have rigid rules, and most wizards are quite casual about it.

Being unable to use Magic means wizards can’t work, study, or live normally.

Hence, on this day, many wizards who usually immerse themselves in labs will step outside, bask in the long-lost sunshine and the spring equinox, and enjoy the brief, yet liberating sensation.

First University also takes this opportunity to organize spring outings for the students, using nature’s beauty to soothe the restless spirits of the Young Wizards in springtime.

Due to so many students going out on the same day, suitable spots for spring outings on Buji Island are extremely scarce.

On this day every year, veteran students unanimously ’bully’ the lower-year students—they often secure their next year’s Forbidden Magic Festival outing location as soon as the current year’s festival ends.

This temporal advantage was something that first-year students could not compensate for.

Veteran students had long since occupied all the prime outing spots—places with clear mountains and beautiful waters, bird songs and floral fragrances, lush grasses and warblers flitting about, peach blossoms and willows. What was left for the first-year students were only the more remote corners of the island.

Of course, to say that these places were bad didn’t mean they were particularly dangerous or the environment was horrible. After all, it was an island where First University always stayed, so the environment couldn’t be that bad. The main reason these places were considered poor was because they were far from food, fuel, and clean water. This was particularly troublesome for young wizards who couldn’t use magic throughout the whole day.

Astronomy Class 08-1 was one such unlucky first-year class.

However, under the leadership of Class President Tang Dun and with the help of a few ’quite energetic’ clan children in the class, waving Old Yao’s banner, they actually found a spot that wasn’t so bad.

It was a depression near the coast of Buji Island, nestled at the foot of a small hill, with a nearby open grassland surrounded by rolling hills, and some sparse evergreen shrubs. Further out, there was the boundless sea and a silent forest.

On the other side of the hill, those beautiful beaches had long been claimed by others.

Inside the hill, young wizards were clumsily setting up tents, campfires, suspending iron pots, organizing pots, pans, and ladles, along with all kinds of food materials, creating a chaotic scene.

Because Zheng Qing had a rich history of living as a commoner, he naturally took on the task of kindling the stove and making fire. Jiang Yu also arranged for the knowledgeable Doctor Xiao to assist. With knowledge and experience combined, the two did a fairly decent job.

In the midst of tending the fire, Zheng Qing found himself with leisure time to discuss the story behind ”the Magic Ban Festival” with Xiao Xiao. He was interested in the identity of the wizard who had turned into a monster, as well as in the warriors who had ultimately killed the monster, and he was curious about what the legendary principal of First University was doing then.

Unlike him, Xiao Xiao didn’t like discussing those ’already happened’ facts; he preferred to delve into deeper meanings expressed by the story.

”This story tells us, the world of wizards is very dangerous,” Doctor Xiao would become particularly serious when doing such analysis: ”Choosing to surpass a Big Wizard and embark on that thorny path, one does not face merely immense economic pressure, but also the deep malice of the universe, of the starry sky.”

”Look at the consequences those wizards who failed their breakthroughs have faced!”

”Becoming octopuses or big mice is actually lucky, at least they retain their magic power and lives.”

”More wizards disintegrate during their breakthroughs, with scarcely a chance to put together a proper grave... There are those unfortunate enough to be completely erased from existence by catastrophe, following the thread of karma.”

”And then there are the worse cases, such as the Old Day Rulers, the Witch Demon Kings, the Sea Demon Kings, and the predecessor who ’created’ Magic Ban Festival, who not only lose their selves, become slaves to chaos and disorder, but also become enemies to the whole wizard world.”

”When you think about it, it’s actually a very sad thing.”