Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 138
Breakthrough to Intermediate Lightning Tier 2: Thunderbolt - Yaksha
The atmosphere inside the Sky Demon Arena of Shenzhou Archmage Academy felt ready to combust beneath the deafening roar of tens of thousands of cheering voices.
Since the academy’s prestigious Battle Ranking commenced its quarterly challenge cycle, never had a first-year freshman triggered such a ferocious seismic shockwave. In a mere three days, the name Lin Feng had surged from an obscure newcomer dwelling in the freshman dormitories to sweep through the echelons of renown. Vaulting from beyond the top thousand, he had crushed Sun Liang of Rank 142; then, in yesterday’s duel, his ferocious Scarlet Flowing Flame had thoroughly melted the three-meter-thick granite bulwark of the Earth Faculty’s Hou Hao, cleaving a direct, bloody path straight to Rank 78.
Yet the black-robed youth’s ambition showed no signs of abating.
He had chosen neither to pause and consolidate his rank nor to challenge safer opponents within his immediate vicinity. The crimson challenge writ that Lin Feng had tossed onto the arbiters’ desk earlier this morning bore only a single name: Rank 55 — Murong Xue!
His objective was clear to the point of ruthlessness: force his way into the Top 50 before the gates of the Ancient Secret Realm slammed shut at the end of this week.
The Ancient Secret Realm—a sacred sanctum preserving primordial mana currents from the dawn of time, a promised land for which Shenzhou Archmage Academy allocated a mere fifty passage tokens exclusively to the most peerless talents of the entire student body. To set foot within its depths, toppling the formidable gatekeeper entrenched at Rank 55 was the swiftest route—yet it was also the most insane.
“That freshman brat has truly lost his mind! Does he think defeating a turtling coward like Hou Hao gives him the right to look down on everyone under heaven?”
Down in the spectator section reserved for the Wind Faculty, a sophomore folded his arms across his chest, his tone dripping with sneering mockery:
“Who is Murong Xue? She is the eldest young miss of the primary branch of the Murong Clan in the Magic Capital, the wielder of the supreme-grade Ice Spirit Seed ‘Bone-Piercing Chill’! Half a year ago, even a third-year Lightning mage armed with top-grade defensive magic equipment was frozen solid into a block of ice by her within five minutes. Just because this kid possesses a mutated flame, throwing himself at Murong Xue’s Ice magic is no different from marching straight into a glacial crypt to freeze to death!”
“Indeed. Fire counters Ice, but that theory holds only between mages of identical mana quality! Once frigid frost reaches a tier where it freezes the very air itself, mortal fire—and even standard Spirit Seeds—will be snuffed out in the cradle!”
Muttered debates surged like rolling tides across the four tiered granite stands. Upon the elevated VIP box reserved for supervising faculty, two silver-haired professors watched intently, their gazes fixed upon the massive arena stage spanning over a thousand square meters below.
Upon Battle Platform Number 1, the demarcation between the two combatants was starkly defined.
Standing at the eastern end of the platform was Murong Xue.
She wore a pale azure combat robe tailored snugly against her slender, tall, and aristocratic figure. Her long, platinum-silver hair was bound neatly behind her nape with an enchanted silk ribbon adorned with deep-sea pearls. Her face was exquisitely sculpted and breathtakingly beautiful, yet veiled in an aloof veneer of biting frost. Her sapphire-blue pupils gazed indifferently forward, as though nothing under the heavens was worthy of holding her attention.
Her delicate, jade-carved hands hung loosely at her sides, but visible wisps of pale frost continuously rose from her fingertips, spilling onto the stage floor and instantly crystallizing into razor-sharp snowflakes.
The ambient temperature around her had plunged far below freezing point long ago.
Opposite her, Lin Feng remained dressed in the academy’s understated silver-trimmed black coat. He stood upright like an unyielding spear driven deep into bedrock, hands casually tucked into his coat pockets, his gaze as deep and tranquil as autumn lake water. Frigid gusts swept across from the opposing end, whipping the black bangs across his brow, yet the youth’s frame was as immovable as a submerged reef amidst a tempestuous swell.
“The barrier inspection has been completed!”
The booming, bronze-bell resonance of the Advanced Arbiter echoed across the colosseum:
“Battle Ranking Challenge: Lin Feng versus Murong Xue... COMMENCE!”
The moment the word “Commence” left the arbiter’s lips, Murong Xue wasted not a single breath on pleasantries.
Her slender legs, clad in pristine white leather combat boots, stomped lightly against the floor.
Crack... Crackle!
A crisp, spine-chilling screech instantly radiated outward from her heel. A dense sheet of glassy azure ice surged forward with terrifying velocity that the naked eye could barely track. Wherever it passed, the reinforced granite slabs of the battle platform splintered and buckled. In the span of a single heartbeat, a full third of the arena had transformed into a frigid glacial river. Churning plumes of chalk-white frost rose thick into the air, plunging the entire quadrant into a biting, arctic hell.
Spectators in the front rows instinctively shrank back, hurriedly channeling defensive mana to stave off the bone-chilling frost spilling through the micro-seams of the protective ward.
“Lin Feng, you are far too arrogant.”
Murong Xue spoke, her voice crystalline yet piercingly frigid, reminiscent of brittle ice striking against cold jade.
“Do you honestly believe that by relying on a Fire Spirit Seed you lucked into at an auction, you possess the qualifications to step past my threshold? This platform is no playground for a freshman’s farce.”
With that, her hands rose smoothly before her chest.
Within Murong Xue’s Sea of Consciousness, a resplendent, icy-blue Star Nebula whirled at astonishing velocity. Diamond-clear Ice star cores ignited one after another in rapid succession, tracing ornate, complex runes through the empty air.
Seven pristine Star Paths interlaced seamlessly, snapping together to form a complete Intermediate Ice Star Map!
Her Intermediate casting speed was horrifyingly fast—taking less than a second and a half!
“Intermediate Ice Magic — Ice Chains: Snow Array!”
CLANG——!
A screech of ear-splitting metallic clatter resonated violently, as though ten thousand iron chains from the depths of the Netherworld were tearing through the bedrock of the earth.
From the thick sheet of ice beneath Lin Feng’s boots, the ground abruptly detonated!
Twelve colossal chains of ice—each as thick as an ancient tree trunk and bristling with razor-sharp glacial barbs that gleamed with a deep azure luster—shot skyward. Coiling sinuously like prehistoric frost serpents, they roared inward toward Lin Feng from all eight cardinal directions!
This was no mere kinetic assault; as each glacial chain tore through the air, it trailed eerie streamers of mana-freezing mist. Such was the terrifying potency of the “Bone-Piercing Chill” Spirit Seed—a high-grade Spirit Seed endowed with the intrinsic property of penetrating through energy barriers to seal an opponent’s meridians!
Lin Feng’s evasion vectors were instantaneously choked shut.
Had this been an ordinary mage confronting such a comprehensive encirclement by the Ice Chains, their sole option would have been to deploy a heavy Shield Magic Implement to weather the impact, only to be relentlessly bound layer upon layer into an immobile glacial cocoon.
Yet Lin Feng did not yield a single step.
His pupils constricted, reflecting the twelve massive chain-heads hurtling down upon him.
“You wish to lock me down?”
Lin Feng let out a cold snort. His right foot glided deftly across the slippery ice, and the youth’s silhouette blurred in an eerie, surreal manner.
Beneath the glaring illumination of the arena lights, the shadow beneath his boots suddenly elongated, blending seamlessly into the cast shadows thrown by the airborne ice chains.
“Shadow Slip!”
Whoosh!
At the exact moment three crisscrossing ice chains slammed down and pulverized the spot where Lin Feng had just stood, gouging out a deep, jagged crater in the ice, his figure had already vanished without a trace.
That instantaneous translocation through absolute shadow elicited a collective gasp of shock from the entire stadium.
“What?! Shadow Element?!”
“Isn’t that kid a Summoner and a Fire mage?! How does he have the Shadow Element as well?!”
“Four elements? No... could he be a Tri-Element Mage?!”
Up in the faculty boxes, even the seasoned professors furrowed their brows, their eyes flashing with sheer astonishment. A first-year freshman, barely enrolled in the academy, wielding three distinct magical elements—what manner of freak was this?
Yet down upon the stage, Murong Xue displayed not the slightest fluster. The corner of her lips curved into a sneer of cool disdain:
“Basic Tier Shadow Magic? Do you honestly think such petty skulking tricks can deceive my Snow Array?”
“Freeze!”
She clenched her slender fingers into a tight fist.
CRACK——!
All twelve colossal ice chains abruptly plunged their razor tips straight into the ground. Frost energy erupted from the chain links tenfold, generating a milky-white tidal wave of rime that swept across the entire battleground. The floor froze so thoroughly it gleamed like a polished mirror; even the faintest corners and narrowest silhouettes beneath the perimeter walls were instantly filled and sealed by transparent ice crystals!
Without shadows, Shadow magic was forcibly dispelled!
Thud!
Thirty meters away from Murong Xue, Lin Feng’s figure was forced out from a faint spatial ripple.
The instant his boots struck the ground, the horrifying frost of the “Bone-Piercing Chill” Spirit Seed latched onto his trouser legs like tens of thousands of icy needles. Sheets of thin frost swiftly crept up his ankles, aggressively seeping through his skin in a bid to lock the youth’s joints solid.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh——!
Giving Lin Feng not a fraction of a second to catch his breath, six massive ice chains lashed out from behind him, cutting through the gale with the terrifying shriek of thousand-pound steel!
“Lin Feng, you have nowhere left to run!” Murong Xue pronounced cold judgment.
Confronting this hair-trigger peril, Lin Feng’s breathing remained terrifyingly steady. He did not even look back; his right arm swept out, fingers splaying wide.
“Intermediate Fire Magic — Fierce Flames!”
Within his Sea of Consciousness, forty-nine star cores blazing with radiant golden-crimson instantly snapped into a complete Star Map!
“Scarlet Flame: Blazing Dragon Force!”
ROAR——!
A towering pillar of golden-red flame erupted from Lin Feng’s palm, coalescing into a seven-to-eight-meter fire dragon that coiled violently around his frame. The blistering heat of the Scarlet Flowing Flame Spirit Seed detonated in full force, clashing head-on against the bone-piercing wave of glacial frost!
Sssssss——!
Frenzied hissing erupted as enormous volumes of scalding steam billowed toward the rafters. The six hurtling ice chains slammed into the body of the fire dragon, their outer crusts instantly liquefied and sloughing away in steaming chunks.
Yet Lin Feng’s expression sank slightly.
He could clearly perceive that although his Scarlet Flame possessed twice the destructive potency of standard fire, upon clashing against these glacial chains, the rate at which the ice evaporated was far slower than he had anticipated.
Murong Xue’s “Bone-Piercing Chill” Spirit Seed was no ordinary frost. It possessed a uniquely dense molecular compaction, its coldness so absolute that it seemed intent on freezing the very mana coursing through his flames!
Wisps of teal-tinted frigid vapor slithered along the golden fire, seeping through the Blazing Dragon Force and biting directly against Lin Feng’s flesh.
This chill...
The muscles along Lin Feng’s forearm twitched subtly.
A piercing streak of frost drove through his skin, stabbing directly into the meridians of his right arm. His blood felt as if it were congealing, and the circulation of mana from the Fire Star Nebula within his Sea of Consciousness suddenly bogged down. The Blazing Dragon Force enveloping his body began to flicker and shudder like a candle in a tempest!
“Hahaha! Look! His flames are starting to gutter!”
Down in the spectator stands, the students of the Ice Faculty erupted into raucous jeers:
“Bone-Piercing Chill is the ultimate bane of pure offensive magic! So what if you have a Fire Spirit Seed? Once the cold poison infiltrates your meridians, your mana will freeze solid—when that happens, you won’t be able to link even a single star core!”
“Senior Sister Murong Xue is invincible! Finish this duel now and kick this arrogant freshman off the stage!”
Upon the battle platform, Murong Xue watched as Lin Feng’s flames were beaten back inch by inch by the relentless layers of ice chains, her gaze growing colder still.
“It’s over.”
She raised her left hand. All twelve colossal ice chains reared upright in midair simultaneously, forming an enormous, cage-like enclosure that hovered directly above Lin Feng’s crown before plunging violently downward:
“Ice Chains - Snow Array: Quad-Directional Spirit Lock!”
The atmosphere was thoroughly sealed off. Bone-piercing chill bore down from all four directions with such crushing weight that the platform floor beneath Lin Feng’s boots caved in, spiderwebbing with fractures. The breath escaping the youth’s lips instantly condensed into frost beads that showered across his collar.
Yet right at the juncture when the Scarlet Flame appeared on the verge of complete extinction—right when tens of thousands of spectators believed Lin Feng had suffered defeat...
The youth abruptly lifted his head.
Within his fathomless eyes, there was not a trace of despair or resignation.
Instead, there was only an icy, absolute tranquility, concealing a tempestuous inferno of will compressed to its absolute threshold!
“Did you think... this was all I possessed?”
A low, rasping cadence rumbled from Lin Feng’s throat.
Murong Xue gave a subtle start. The honed instincts of a seasoned battle mage suddenly sounded frantic alarm bells within her mind.
He had not invoked his Summoning element to unleash his renowned Warrior-class Nether Hell Dark Wolf.
Nor had he activated any defensive magic equipment to weather her assault.
From beginning to end, he had deliberately pitted his flames head-on against her frigid frost. What in the world was he using the bone-piercing chill of her “Bone-Piercing Chill” for?!
Before Murong Xue could ponder further, against Lin Feng’s chest where the Primordial Dragon Pendant rested close against his skin, an ancient surge of primal heat detonated like an awakening supervolcano!
ROAAAAR——!
It was not a roar echoing through the physical world, but a primeval dragon chant that reverberated violently across Lin Feng’s entire Sea of Consciousness!
The roar of the Primordial Black Dragon carried the supreme, inviolable majesty of the primordial epoch, utterly obliterating the invasive frost poison infiltrating his meridians. The bone-piercing cold had barely touched this primordial dragon aura before shattering into mindless wisps and being incinerated clean!
Simultaneously, within the deepest recess of Lin Feng’s mental world:
Where the violet-black Lightning Star Nebula held sovereign domain:
The forty-nine Lightning star cores that had previously rested in the order of Tier-1 Intermediate, subjected to the extreme compression of the glacial frost and catalyzed by the tempestuous ancient electrical charges of the Primordial Dragon Pendant, abruptly erupted with ear-piercing crackles!
Compressed!
The tighter the freezing cold hemmed it in, the more the inherently tyrannical, destructive nature of the Lightning element was provoked into frenzied madness!
Forty-nine deep-violet star cores voraciously swallowed mana, discharging violent arcs of crackling lightning. Tearing free from their previous orbits, they soared freely like rebel celestial bodies in full revolt!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The invisible barrier separating Tier-1 Intermediate from Tier-2 Intermediate—a bottleneck that thousands of mages spent one to two grueling years of bitter secluded cultivation just to touch—now splintered with dense webs of cracks beneath the combined onslaught of the archaic dragon breath and Lin Feng’s unyielding willpower!
Shatter for me!
Lin Feng roared within his mind.
CRACKLE——BOOM!
The bottleneck shattered into ten thousand spiritual shards!
A torrent of pristine lightning mana, surging like a torrential cataract from the void, inundated the entire Lightning Star Nebula. The forty-nine violet-black star cores were baptized clean; their volume instantly expanded by fifty percent, their deep-violet radiance morphing into an abyssal violet-black that exuded a spine-chilling aura of pure devastation!
Without requiring Lin Feng’s laborious guidance, the forty-nine newly elevated star cores automatically aligned into seven brand-new Star Paths.
Seven Star Paths interlaced, revolving into a Tier-2 diagrammatic matrix far more intricate and exponentially more tyrannical!
Breakthrough!
Intermediate Lightning Tier 2!
Unlocking the second form of Intermediate Lightning Magic: Thunderbolt — Yaksha!
The entire breakthrough within his mental world transpired in the span of a single mortal eyeblink.
Yet the metamorphosis of aura radiating from Lin Feng plunged the entire Sky Demon Arena into a deathly, suffocating silence.
The fiery mantle of the Blazing Dragon Force enveloping his body extinguished abruptly.
In its stead, from every pore, every muscle fiber, and every fingertip of the youth, tens of thousands of gossamer-fine violet-black lightning arcs burst violently outward!
Crack... Crackle... ZZZT——!
The thick sheet of ice beneath Lin Feng’s boots did not melt from heat; rather, it was directly pulverized into fine, powdery snow by those jagged violet-black arcs!
The surrounding atmosphere turned thick with the pungent stench of scorched ozone and sulfur. A wave of pure, unadulterated destructive pressure—carrying the berserk fury of a heavenly lightning tribulation descending from the firmament—bore down heavily upon the chests of every soul present in the colosseum!
Murong Xue turned ashen pale. Her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks, every hair on her body standing on end in instinctive dread:
“This aura... What magic is this?!”
“Ice Chains, crush him this instant!”
She shrieked in panic, frantically driving the twelve colossal ice chains to plummet down upon Lin Feng’s head.
Yet it was already too late.
Lin Feng slowly lifted his head.
His pupils had completely transformed into blazing sockets of violet-black thunder, stripped of all sclera, harboring only the aloof, merciless majesty of an ancient thunder god gazing down upon ants crawling through mortal dust.
He raised his right hand high, pointing straight toward the vaulted heavens of the arena, his fingers clenching into a tight fist.
“Intermediate Lightning Tier 2...”
Lin Feng’s voice resonated. It was not loud, yet it sounded as though thousands of thunderclaps from the ninth heaven were roaring in unison, vibrating with such force that the eardrums of every spectator buzzed violently:
“... Thunderbolt!”
“YAKSHA——!!!”
BOOOOM——————!
A spatial-rending detonation erupted directly above the colosseum!
The clear azure sky of the Jinghai Magic Capital above the arena underwent a violent transformation. A dense vortex of abyssal purple-black thunderclouds condensed from the void with hysterical speed, forming a colossal storm funnel spanning over a hundred meters in diameter that spun furiously atop the protective ward!
At the epicenter of the storm funnel, sunlight was completely devoured.
All that remained was a blinding violet-black radiance capable of scorching mortal vision!
SKREEEAAAR——!
A savage, ear-piercing shriek, akin to the howling fury of an Asura fiend clawing its way back from the Netherworld, shook heaven and earth!
Tearing through the churning veil of storm clouds, a titanic thunder apparition standing over twenty meters tall abruptly descended!
It was a Thunder God manifesting in the ferocious guise of an Asura Yaksha, its entire physique forged entirely from hyper-compressed pillars of violet-black lightning. Twin horns of jagged lightning spiked toward the firmament from its brow, while six berserk lightning arms brandished talons behind its back.
And within the primary arms of this Yaksha Thunder God, it firmly gripped a colossal war spear of lightning spanning more than thirty meters in length!
The shaft of the spear blazed with archaic runic engravings, and its barbed tip emitted spatial-rending screams that carried the absolute, omnicidal devastation of heavenly lightning retribution!
CRASH——!
The Yaksha hurled its arm forward, driving the titanic violet-black lightning spear straight down toward the epicenter of the battle platform!
The twelve massive ice chains commanded by Murong Xue had barely brushed against the vanguard shockwave preceding the lightning spear before they instantly detonated into fine dust—incapable of enduring for even a solitary second!
Trailing a colossal shadow of death, the heavenly lightning spear ripped through the curtains of frost, descending with world-annihilating fury directly upon the crown of Murong Xue, who stood frozen in utter, paralyzed despair!