Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 134
Ambush in the Dark Alley
Night fell over the slopes of Wind Spirit Ridge, dense and suffocating like a jar of overturned Chinese ink. The drizzle that had pitter-pattered incessantly since dusk had finally tapered off, yet the biting, icy vapor still clung stubbornly to the exterior panes of Villa 16, “Golden Eagle Estate,” condensing into long, meandering rivulets that traced crooked paths downward like fresh gouges scored across the darkness.
From the basement conduit connecting to the ground floor, the reinforced iron door shuddered imperceptibly, gliding into its wall recess without letting out even the faintest metallic creak.
Lin Feng ascended the polished granite steps. A midnight-black windbreaker was draped across his broad shoulders, its hem fluttering softly in rhythm with his strides, each footfall light and silent as a wildcat stalking across grass. He came to a halt at the edge of the living room, where an evening primrose-shaped nightlamp cast a warm, hazy amber luminescence across the floor.
Curled up upon the plush flannel sofa, Gu Xiaowei was sound asleep, her arms clutching tightly to a stuffed blue whale plushie. A corner of the thin fleece blanket had slipped off the cushion onto the floor, revealing her slender, fair calves and the quiet, steady rhythm of her gentle breathing. A few paces away, atop the low tea table, sat an untouched porcelain cup of chamomile tea that Ye Qingwan had left to turn cold. The mezzanine bedroom door above stood half-ajar; a delicate, soothing fragrance of herbal vitality drifted through the gap, signaling that its occupant had pushed her mana to sheer exhaustion during hours of vigilant guard-duty and had slipped into deep, restorative meditation.
Lin Feng did not approach. Standing quietly along the demarcation line between light and shadow, he tapped his index finger lightly against the crystal face of the enchanted watch strapped to his left wrist.
With a subtle shift of his consciousness, the Primordial Dragon Pendant tucked beneath his thin sweater against his bare chest pulsed with a gentle wave of heat. This intuitive resonance did not guide him forward, but pointed straight toward the grey stone perimeter wall lining the northwestern edge of the garden.
At that precise sector, the dense, interwoven network of wood-spirit vines that Ye Qingwan had meticulously planted as an early-warning perimeter had just suffered five cleanly severed main branches. The cuts were razor-flat and decisive, tainted with the acrid, coppery reek of a mana-corrosive toxin.
The intruders were not merely seasoned hands at dismantling defensive wards; they exuded the sinister, blood-steeped killing intent unique to cutthroats who made their living licking blood off the blade.
There were three—no, precisely four.
One lurked beneath the canopy of a crimson maple thirty meters from the stone wall, breathing as shallow and muted as a hibernating tortoise, melting almost seamlessly into the shadows. The remaining three had positioned themselves at the intersecting forks leading toward the estate’s main thoroughfare, forging a tightening pincer formation, lying in wait for their quarry to drop his guard before launching a fatal assassination strike.
The corners of Lin Feng’s lips curled into a chilled, razor-thin arc.
An ambush right outside my front door? he mused inwardly.
If a skirmish erupted within the courtyard of the Golden Eagle Villa, the violent fallout of Intermediate-tier magic would undoubtedly reduce this elegant manor to rubble within seconds. Moreover, both Gu Xiaowei and Ye Qingwan were currently depleted of mana following the auction and their exhaustive vigil over his closed-door breakthrough. Dragging the two girls into this blood-soaked whirlpool of violence was completely contrary to his principles.
More importantly... within his sea of consciousness at this very moment, the brilliant golden-crimson flames of the newly assimilated Scarlet Flowing Flame were churning and roaring like an ancient beast newly unshackled, famished to bathe in fresh blood and enemy mana to validate its absolute sovereignty of destruction.
He, too, was eager to discover just what terrifying threshold his destructive potency had reached after devouring that peerless Spirit Seed worth upwards of thirty million gold coins!
With that resolve, Lin Feng awakened no one. He slipped the latch of the back door and glided soundlessly across the dew-drenched garden lawn. Rather than heading toward the brightly floodlit front gates and the security outpost, he turned and strode purposefully onto a gravel-strewn trail winding deep into the Wind Spirit Bamboo Grove.
That secluded footpath led to the most deserted dead-end alley on the academy’s northern periphery—flanked on all sides by sheer limestone precipices, choked with knee-high weeds, and positioned entirely beyond the scanning perimeter of the campus arcane surveillance towers.
An ideal graveyard to bury fools who did not know the height of the heavens or the depth of the earth.
The nocturnal wind whistled shrilly through the towering culms of green bamboo, scraping leaves together in a sound reminiscent of hungry ghouls gnashing their teeth. A thick white mist, rising from the subterranean brook within the ravine, wove a damp, murky blanket over the trail, compressing visibility to less than ten paces.
Crunch... Crunch...
The steady crunch of boot leather pressing into decaying bamboo leaves and wet gravel echoed solitary and rhythmic against the spine-chilling stillness.
Lin Feng strolled with both hands tucked into the pockets of his trench coat, his stride measured and unhurried, appearing for all the world like a leisurely student returning from an evening stroll beneath the moon. He advanced roughly three hundred meters into the horseshoe bend of the limestone ravine before abruptly coming to a halt.
Around him, the chorus of nocturnal insects that had been droning ceaselessly choked off in an instant, strangled as though by an invisible hand.
The surrounding air plummeted instantly, growing heavy and thick with the acrid stench of rusted iron mingled with sulfur.
“Come on out.” Lin Feng did not bother looking back. His voice rose calm and steady through the drifting mist, echoing off the canyon bluffs. “Tailing me all the way from the Jinghai Auction House into this deserted ravine... aren’t your legs tired yet?”
The moment his voice faded, a raspy chuckle—grating like two rusted iron plates grinding together—drifted down from the moss-covered crag ahead.
“Khehehe... Sharp senses, little bastard. No wonder Young Master Zhao was willing to drop five million cold, hard gold coins just to purchase your skull and that spatial ring of yours!”
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Through the dense fog, four silhouettes blurred into motion from four separate directions, cleanly sealing off every path of retreat and trapping Lin Feng in the blind corner of the gorge.
All four wore skin-tight, ash-grey combat attire favored by wilderness mercenaries, each chest embroidered with the crimson emblem of a snarling wolf’s head dripping droplets of blood. Black arcane respirators masked their faces, leaving only bloodshot eyes simmering with ravenous, homicidal frenzy.
Barring the mouth of the gorge was a hulking brute built like a grizzly bear, his forearms wrapped in heavy iron gauntlets socketed with earthy-brown Earth mana stones, his corded muscles twisting like ancient tree roots.
Over on the left flank crouched a gaunt, wiry rogue, wisps of pale azure frost curling lazily from his fingertips. The ambient temperature around him plunged below freezing, the weeds beneath his boots instantly crystallizing into brittle shards of rime.
Holding the right flank was a hunter wielding a pair of crescent daggers, their edges enveloped in a shimmering, rippling film of pressurized water—clearly a Water-element mage versed in lethal close-quarters combat.
As for the speaker perched atop the boulder ahead, he was the leader of the pack.
He dropped down to the earth with a heavy thud. Standing nearly two meters tall, his frame was scrawny yet possessed unnervingly broad joints. Most terrifying of all was a ghastly scar slashing down from the outer corner of his left eye all the way across to the corner of his mouth; every time he sneered, the warped flesh squirmed like a grotesque centipede. Swirling around his body, dual currents of deep-crimson Fire mana and pitch-black Shadow mana clashed and crackled in a terrifying display.
Blood Wolf! The notorious commander of the Black Blood Assassin Squad—a mercenary syndicate that took on the dirtiest wetwork and silencing contracts for the underworld and noble houses of the Magic Capital!
A peak Intermediate Dual-Element practitioner of Fire and Shadow, flanked by three battle-hardened Tier-1 Intermediate lieutenants!
Such a strike force deployed on any wilderness battlefield would possess more than enough lethality to slaughter a pack of Minion-class beasts in a heartbeat, or even pin down and slay a low-tier Warrior-class demon beast with proper preparation.
“The Black Blood Assassin Squad?” Lin Feng’s gaze swept over the wolf emblems across their chests, a faint smirk of ridicule playing at the corners of his lips. “Zhao Jingshan is certainly generous. Five million gold coins... It’s just a pity that while you might have the lives to accept the bounty, you won’t have the fortune to live and spend it.”
“Bwahahaha!” The Earth mage blocking the rear burst into uproarious laughter, his booming voice grating like a cracked bronze gong. “Boss, this brat hasn’t even been weaned off his mother’s milk, and his head is already short-circuiting! Does he think that being fawned over by a few pretty birds at that magic academy makes him an invincible hero of the realm?”
The Ice mage on the left flank shook his head, his eyes dripping with disdain and cruelty. “A mere freshman runt who awakened the garbage Summoning Element, who got lucky and contracted a mutated Warrior-class black wolf on Huanglu Island, actually dares swagger out alone in the middle of the night? Did you think the underbelly of the Magic Capital plays by the child’s rules of your academy dueling ring?”
The Water mage on the right twirled his crescent daggers through the air, cleanly severing a falling bamboo leaf before barking out a cruel sneer: “Young Master Zhao gave us explicit instructions. This brat is nothing without that pet black wolf. Where is your wolf, huh? Why haven’t you summoned it to serve as your meat shield? Without that beast shielding you, what is a Summoner who loses his mount other than a plump, tender lamb lying upon the butcher’s block, waiting to be skinned and butchered?”
Mocking him in turns, they slowly tightened their perimeter. The suffocating auras of four Intermediate-tier mages weighed down upon the narrow ravine like four invisible granite monoliths, grinding the stones beneath Lin Feng’s soles with brittle cracks.
In their eyes, an eighteen-year-old student of commoner birth like Lin Feng was merely someone blessed with exorbitant fortune. The Summoning Element was entirely dependent upon its contracted familiar. Once a Summoner was closed in on or caught off guard before they could channel the Summoning Gate, their fragile physical vessel was scarcely more formidable than an ordinary, defenseless mortal.
Yet, confronting four blood-soaked assassins radiating suffocating murderous intent and hurling vile insults, the youth encircled at the center showed not the slightest hint of fear.
The cold night wind tousled the raven bangs across Lin Feng’s forehead. His hands remained casually tucked into his pockets, his spine straight as a spear thrust deep into bedrock.
He let out a soft, weary sigh, shaking his head with mild boredom:
“Who told you... that I can only rely on my wolf?”
“What?!” Blood Wolf’s eyes narrowed, the hideous scar across his cheek spasming violently.
Having clawed his way through hundreds of life-or-death slaughterhouses on the brink of death, veteran instinct warned him that something was terribly wrong. The youth’s absolute composure was unsettlingly eerie. This was unequivocally not the petrified stupor of someone scared out of their wits; it was the chilling, arrogant amusement of a master huntsman watching savage beasts march willingly into his snare!
“No more chatter! End this quickly—take his head and pull out before the academy patrols notice!” Blood Wolf barked, his murderous aura detonating into the air. “Frost Leopard, lock him down!”
“On it, Boss!”
The Ice mage had long been primed. The instant the command rang out, the seven glacial-blue magic stars within his Star Dust linked together into a flawless celestial trajectory!
Tier-3 Ice Star Orbit—completed in under a single second!
“Ice Lock: Bind!”
Crack! Crack! Crack!
From the damp earth beneath Lin Feng’s boots, four azure chains of glacial ice—each as thick as an infant’s wrist and bristling with razor-sharp frost barbs—erupted through the soil! Writhing like four serpents of permafrost, they coiled tightly around his ankles, bound his thighs, and locked his knees in an unyielding vice!
Bone-piercing chill billowed upward in frigid waves. A pale crystalline frost swept from his soles to his waist like striking lightning, freezing the musculature of his lower body into a petrified ice sculpture, leaving him unable to shift so much as a fraction of an inch!
“Got him!” The Ice mage brayed with savage delight. “Locked down by my Tier-3 Ice Lock, even an iron-hided wild boar wouldn’t dream of budging! He’s dead meat!”
“Die, you little bastard!”
Blood Wolf granted Lin Feng zero reprieve. With a violent sweep of his sleeves, the savage Fire mana churning within his Star Nebula roared forth! Forty-nine blazing stars aligned in frantic succession, coalescing into a brilliant, hexagonal Fire Star Atlas hovering before his chest in the span of a single breath!
Tier-1 Intermediate Fire Magic—Fiery Burst!
“Fiery Burst: Flaming Blast!”
BOOM!
A deep-crimson sphere of roaring fire—massive as a millstone—manifested in midair. The harrowing heat radiating from the fireball instantly flash-vaporized the surrounding mist, setting bamboo stalks ten meters away ablaze like gargantuan torches!
Propelled by the monstrous concussive force of Intermediate Fire mana, the fireball shrieked as it tore through the night sky, trailing a blazing plume dozens of meters long. Carrying enough devastating kinetic force to pulverize an armored troop transport, it crashed headlong toward the chest of the frozen, immobilized Lin Feng!
A distance of less than fifteen meters!
The flight speed of the Fiery Burst fireball was so blindingly swift that an ordinary mortal’s retina would register nothing more than an incandescent streak of crimson light!
Trapped in the vice grip of Ice Lock, with no time to activate defensive Shield Equipment or Armor Equipment, any Intermediate mage taking a direct, point-blank hit from such an attack faced a single, inescapable outcome: being blown into shredded chunks of charred flesh and ash!
The watching Earth and Water mages were already breaking into triumphant grins.
“Five million gold coins, easy as breathing...” The Earth brute licked his lips, eyes gleaming with greed.
KABOOOOM!
An earth-shattering detonation tore through the quietude of Wind Spirit Ravine!
The ground convulsed violently as a shockwave driven by howling crimson gales blasted outward in all directions! The limestone bluffs shattered and fractured under the blistering thermal shock, spraying stone shrapnel like artillery shells. A churning sea of crimson fire erupted seven to eight meters into the air, swallowing Lin Feng’s silhouette entirely into the epicenter of the cataclysmic blast!
The pressure wave whipped violently at the coats of the four assassins, raining flakes of soot and scorched debris through the air like a pitch-black downpour.
“Bwahahaha! A wet-behind-the-ears snot-nosed runt actually dared put on airs before our Black Blood!” The Ice mage planted his hands on his hips, howling with laughter, his gaze saturated with supreme disdain. “Boss, you struck with such overkill, I’m worried that Fiery Burst just vaporized his spatial ring along with his corpse!”
“Relax. Spatial rings are forged from heat-resistant arcane alloys; they don’t melt that easily.” Blood Wolf dispersed his mana, a cruel smirk spreading across his face as his jagged scar twitched with sadistic satisfaction. “Second Brother, go sift through the ashes and retrieve his severed ring finger. While you’re at it, slice off whatever ear is left intact so we can present proof of kill to the Zhao Clan and collect our bounty!”
“Understood! Let me clean up this brat’s carcass!”
The burly Earth hunter chortled, drawing the heavy hunting blade from his hip and striding with heavy, thudding footsteps toward the billowing black smoke and smoldering crater at the epicenter.
Yet, the moment he took three strides...
Tap... Tap...
The crisp, light crunch of footfalls treading upon glowing embers echoed clearly from the depths of the black smog.
The Earth brute’s chuckle choked in his throat.
The smirks on Blood Wolf’s visage and those of his two comrades froze instantly.
The entire bamboo forest plunged into deathly silence. There was only the night wind wailing through the stone crevices, and the calm, rhythmic cadence of approaching footsteps drawing ever nearer...
Tap... Tap... Tap...
From within the churning red inferno and acrid veil of smoke, a tall, slender silhouette strode calmly into view.
His pitch-black windbreaker trench coat remained pristine and unwrinkled, without a single speck of soot or a solitary scorch mark. His hands were still casually tucked into his pockets, strolling across the glowing, slagged rock as effortlessly as if taking a leisurely walk through his own garden courtyard.
Yet what seized the souls of the four veteran cutthroats in an icy stranglehold, sending numbness crawling across their scalps down to their very pores, was the uncanny phenomenon unfolding around the youth’s frame!
Every remnant tongue of dark-crimson flame from the Fiery Burst fireball, upon encroaching within three inches of Lin Feng’s person, behaved like terrified mice encountering a sovereign tiger! Trembling and curling back, they were ravenously swallowed whole by an incandescent mantle of golden-scarlet radiance enveloping his form, leaving behind not so much as a stray ember!
That golden-scarlet mantle was pure, radiant, and supreme, resembling the midday sun descending from the ninth heavens into the mortal realm. The searing majesty it emanated was not chaotic and volatile like Blood Wolf’s flames; it was profound, ancient, and infused with the sovereign aura of absolute annihilation—the undisputed Monarch of All Flames!
Lin Feng halted right before the Earth brute, who stood petrified like a wooden stake.
He lifted his gaze.
Within the youth’s deep obsidian pupils, two brilliant golden flames burned incandescent, reflecting the blood-drained, paper-white face of the earth-armored giant.
The corners of Lin Feng’s lips curled into a chill smile that pierced straight to the marrow:
“The Fiery Burst of a peak Intermediate mage?”
Tilting his head slightly, his tranquil voice resonated through the silent night, yet to the ears of the four assassins, it rang like the tolling death knell from the depths of the Netherworld:
“Are your flames... only enough to keep me warm on a chilly night?”
“W-What the hell is this?!”
The Earth mage shrieked in unadulterated horror, his pupils contracting to needlepoints, his colossal bulk shivering like a leaf in a tempest!
Ten paces away, Blood Wolf stumbled back half a step, the curved scimitar at his hip rattling in its sheath. Staring fixedly at the golden-scarlet flame dancing upon Lin Feng’s shoulder, his throat convulsed as he croaked out four words in utter disbelief:
“A... A Fire Element Spirit Seed?!”