Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 149
Challenging the Top 30 Battle Ranking
The deafening roar of over twenty thousand spectators surged like a tidal wave, slamming violently against the titanium-alloy domed ceiling of the Shenzhou Hall of Fame Arena and sending suffocating reverberations humming through the cavernous stadium.
Today marked the grand opening of Shenzhou Academy’s monthly Special Challenge round for the prestigious Battle Ranking. Yet, unlike ordinary exhibition duels or routine skirmishes between upperclassmen, not a single seat remained vacant across the colossal, elliptical amphitheater. Even the polished granite walkways and the windy corridors flanking the VIP prism glass suites were choked with jostling crowds. A vast sea of heads bobbed under suspended arcane banners pulsing with radiant luminescent glyphs, while a cacophony of heated debates, partisan cheers, and manic betting wagers echoed from all four directions.
Every eye in the arena was locked onto Central Dueling Ring No. 1.
Spanning over three hundred yards in diameter, the monumental octagonal platform was constructed from thousands of interlocking Hardened Granite flagstones steeped in defensive warding elixirs. Four towering boundary pillars anchored its perimeter, fusing Earth and Barrier arrays into an impervious runic cage capable of containing the devastating shockwaves of Intermediate-tier magic.
High above on the highest tier of the honor grandstand—upholstered in opulent crimson velvet and isolated by an acoustic-dampening spell barrier—the atmosphere was no less charged.
Dean Gu Tianya occupied the central high-backed armchair, his fingers laced atop a polished sandalwood table, his deep eyes calm as an ancient well as he gazed down upon the arena floor. Flanking him were the revered faculty deans of the Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Shadow Schools. Not far off, delegates from the Magic Capital’s most illustrious patrician clans had gathered in full force: the chief financial steward of the Xie Clan, a battle elder from the Lu Clan, alongside grim-faced retainers from both the Bai and Liu Clans.
“This Lin Feng kid... is truly far too arrogant for his own good,” Dean Wu Kun of the Lightning School murmured, shaking his head with a mixture of exasperation and reluctant pity. “He barely returned from the Blood Wave Bay expedition three days ago. Before his wounds have even finished mending, he slaps down an out-of-order challenge missive. Leaping straight from Rank 48 to challenge Rank 28 on the Battle Ranking... Does he honestly believe the Top 30 are pushovers like the freshmen he trampled at the Beast Battling Arena?”
“Dean Wu speaks the absolute truth.” A middle-aged steward of the Liu Clan seated in the row behind sneered, cold mockery glinting in his eyes. “Within Shenzhou Academy’s Battle Ranking, the Top 50 is already the threshold separating true dragons from the common herd. But the Top 30? Every single one of them is a third-year senior who has spent two grueling years honing their Intermediate magic to perfection. They all wield premier defensive Magic Armor and possess extensive, blood-soaked combat experience forged on the brutal frontiers of the wilderness. A bumpkin freshman who crawled out of a backwater border town tastes a thimble of success and deludes himself into thinking he is invincible under heaven. Such unbridled conceit must be repaid in blood and broken bones!”
Hearing these caustic words, Gu Tianya remained serenely impassive. He merely lifted his porcelain cup, took a measured sip of bitter tea, and replied in an unhurried cadence:
“Victory and defeat upon the dueling ring are determined solely by martial strength, never by seniority. If Steward Liu possesses such absolute faith in your clan’s disciple, why rush to declare the verdict before the duel has even begun?”
The Liu Clan steward gave a disdainful snort and fell silent, turning his face away, though the vicious smirk lingering at the edge of his mouth remained brazenly unhidden. His eyes drifted toward the competitors’ tunnel at the northern rim of the arena, where a broad-shouldered, imposing figure was slowly striding into the light.
“Rumble——!”
The instant that figure emerged beneath the blazing arcane spotlights, the eastern grandstand—heavily occupied by third-year upperclassmen—erupted into an earth-shattering roar of applause.
“Senior Brother Liu! Crush that arrogant freshman!”
“Teach him the proper hierarchy of Shenzhou Academy!”
“Break both his legs and send him crawling back to that mountain ditch in Bian’an City!”
The young man stepping onto the stage was none other than Liu Zhendong—the formidable Rank 28 prodigy of the Battle Ranking and the uncontested powerhouse of the third-year Ice School.
Roughly twenty-one years of age, he possessed a frame as broad and towering as a temple guardian deity. With sword-like brows and tiger-sharp eyes, he radiated an oppressive, razor-sharp frost aura that sent the ambient temperature across the arena plummeting toward an absolute freeze. Most striking of all was the battle armor encasing his torso. It was the pale-blue Frost Crane Magic Armor, meticulously forged from the plumage of a Commander-class Frost Crane intertwined with thousand-year refined steel. Its overlapping scales resembled dragon scales, exuding serpentine tendrils of glacial vapor that twisted into the phantom silhouette of an azure crane taking flight.
With every heavy step Liu Zhendong took upon the Hardened Granite floor, a rim of glistening white frost spread outward, glazing the stone into lethal, crystalline sheets. Yet frost was not his only harbinger. At the tips of his dangling fingers, crisp, crackling pops snapped through the frigid air as slender threads of pale-violet lightning slithered like silver vipers, flashing in and out of existence.
Dual Ice and Lightning cultivator!
Two of the supreme offensive elemental schools melded into a single mortal vessel, fortified by premier defensive Magic Armor—Liu Zhendong was a living, breathing fortress of peerless offense and impenetrable defense, the waking nightmare of any contemporary rival!
Halting at the northern corner of the ring, Liu Zhendong folded his arms across his broad chest. His icy gaze snapped forward, locking onto the opposite entrance tunnel like twin steel bolts. Deep within his ribcage, a raging wildfire of vendetta clawed at his chest.
Liu Yifan—his younger cousin with whom he had grown up in the Bian’an City branch, the rising hope of their lineage destined to enter the main house—had seen his Stardust shattered and his magic completely eradicated by this very brat named Lin, reduced to a living corpse! Before that blood debt could be settled, Lin Feng had humiliated his cousin Liu Qing at the Freshman Beast Battling Arena. His summoned dire wolf had pressed its razor talons against her throat, forcing the proud daughter of the main clan to drop to her knees and surrender before ten thousand spectators, dragging the illustrious Liu Clan’s century-old dignity through the mud!
From that day forward, the Liu Clan elders had issued an ironclad decree: Any kinsman who crossed paths with Lin Feng upon the dueling stage was forbidden from returning to the ancestral shrine unless they shattered the whelp’s limbs and ruined his cultivation!
And today, Lin Feng had personally signed the challenge missive, walking straight into the lion’s den!
“A path to heaven laid open, yet you refused it; the gates of hell had no doors, yet you barged straight in...” Liu Zhendong muttered under his breath, clenching his fists until his knuckles popped with a terrifying crack.
Right then, a thunderous cheer erupted from the opposite stands, sweeping across the amphitheater with such ferocious volume that it drowned out the jeers of the third-year bloc.
“It’s Lin Feng! The new sovereign of the Summoning School has arrived!”
“Captain Lin! Show them what you’ve got!”
From the dark maw of the southern tunnel, a tall, slender silhouette draped in simple black combat robes trimmed with discreet silver thread stepped deliberately into the open ring.
Lin Feng’s face remained strikingly handsome, chiseled, and serene as an unfathomable mountain lake. He wore no ostentatious, gem-encrusted magic plate, nor did he brandish an ornate wand or costly protective amulets. Both hands hung loosely at his sides as he walked forward with unhurried grace, as though taking a leisurely stroll through an academy courtyard rather than stepping onto the precipice of a life-and-death clash.
Yet beneath the calm, ink-dark depths of his eyes lurked an unfathomable gravity—the aura of one who had undergone a profound metamorphosis.
Following the perilous trial in Blood Wave Bay, tempered by the Primordial Dragon Pendant and nourished by the primordial essence of Ancient Dragon Qi, Lin Feng’s meridians and mental sea had achieved flawless purification. Both his Shadow Nebula and Summoning Nebula had firmly breached the threshold into the Intermediate realm! An eighteen-year-old youth possessing four complete, fully manifested Intermediate Nebulae: explosive Lightning, apocalyptic Fire, sovereign Summoning, and spectral, elusive Shadow!
This was the unshakeable foundation behind his absolute confidence to scale the pinnacle of glory!
“Lin Feng! Watch out for his armor!” High in the first-year spectator tiers, Gu Xiaowei cupped her hands around her mouth, screaming at the top of her lungs.
Beside her, Xie Zhaoyuan shifted restlessly in his seat, nervously rapping his ivory folding fan against his palm: “Liu Zhendong isn’t a pampered fop like Bai Wei. He spent three consecutive summer months stationed on the maritime frontlines slaughtering sea beasts with ruthless efficiency. His methods are vicious to the core. This match bodes ill...”
Ye Qingwan merely pressed her lips tight, her breathtaking eyes fixed upon Lin Feng’s straight, unyielding back. She said nothing, but the slender emerald vine wrapped around her porcelain wrist coiled tighter in subconscious rhythm with her racing heartbeat.
On the battle platform, the two combatants stood facing each other across a distance of fifty paces. A biting draft swept down from the high rafters, rustling loose stone dust across the gray tiles.
Liu Zhendong raised his chin, his features dripping with cold arrogance and venomous malice, his voice echoing across the arena like shards of cracked ice:
“Lin Feng, I truly must admire your dog-like audacity. You crippled Yifan in Bian’an, and you humiliated my sister at the Beast Battling Arena... Did you genuinely believe that relying on petty parlor tricks and that mangy summoned beast would grant you the right to sit at the high table with Shenzhou’s true elite?”
Lin Feng stood rooted in place, a faint, dry smirk playing across his lips:
“Liu Yifan relied on his clan’s shadow to bully others and reaped the bitter harvest he sowed. Liu Qing’s skills were inferior, and she yielded fair and square. Aside from hiding behind seniority and flaunting aristocratic privilege, does your Liu Clan possess any other trick under the sun? Why waste your breath? If you came to seek vengeance, take your stance and strike.”
“Court death!”
The two words hissed through Liu Zhendong’s bared teeth as an overwhelming, bloodthirsty aura erupted like a tempest!
“BAM!”
The shrill whistle of the High-Rank supervising referee had scarcely pierced the air when Liu Zhendong detonated his power without holding back even half a fraction of his strength! He knew all too well how terrifying Lin Feng’s explosive burst could be; therefore, from the opening second, he resolved to snuff out his opponent with the most savage, preemptive onslaught imaginable!
“In this duel, you shall repay blood with blood! I will snap every bone in your four limbs and obliterate your Sea of Consciousness, so that the entire world learns the fate of those who dare cross the Liu Clan!”
With a furious roar, Liu Zhendong stomped his armored boot savagely into the Hardened Granite floor!
“Crack! Crack! Crack——!”
Beneath his heels, a deep-azure Ice Star Pattern composed of forty-nine blazing Star Particles locked into place with blistering speed, erupting into brilliant light like a blooming millennial frost lotus!
Intermediate Ice Magic—Second Tier!
“Frost Lock: Bone-Chilling Array!”
The earth shuddered violently! From the four corners of the ring, four colossal pillars of ice—each as thick as an ancient tree trunk—shot skyward with ear-splitting shrieks that ripped through the air. In the next instant, thousands of barbed, razor-edged crystalline frost chains surged from the four pillars, intertwining into an immense, impenetrable cage of permafrost that sealed off the entire airspace above the platform!
The onslaught did not end there. The granite floor beneath Lin Feng’s boots fractured violently. Thousands of gleaming ice spears, sharp as a forest of halberds, thrust upward from the subterranean rock, entirely obliterating his footing and suffocating every possible angle of evasion! The ambient temperature plummeted off a cliff as bone-chilling mist rolled across the ring, freezing the very air solid and grinding Lin Feng’s movement speed and mana condensation to an agonizing standstill!
“Heavens! A fully mastered Bone-Chilling Array!” Down in the stands, countless second-year students cried out in terror. “He locked down the entire arena! Evasion space is zero, and movement speed is crippled by eighty percent!”
Yet the true horror of a dual-elementalist had only just begun to unfold!
The exact moment the Ice Star Pattern completed its arena-wide subjugation, Liu Zhendong’s right arm thrust straight toward the heavens. The Frost Crane Magic Armor encasing his chest emitted a resounding avian screech, absorbing the arcane backlash of the spell in its entirety and liberating his remaining faculties to ignite a second Nebula!
“Crackle... BOOM!”
A dazzling, deep-violet Lightning Star Pattern materialized above his head with breathtaking speed!
Crowd-control with Ice; annihilation with Lightning! This was the signature lethal execution that had cemented Liu Zhendong’s ironclad reign at Rank 28! He had no intention of allowing Lin Feng the breathing room to link a single Star Track or construct a Star Pattern to summon his beast!
“Thunderbolt: Apex Cleave!”
Liu Zhendong roared like a thunderstorm, chopping his right arm violently through empty air!
A dense, purplish-black thundercloud condensed instantly beneath the arena rafters. Violent lightning mana compressed in the span of a tenth of a second, coalescing into a colossal column of celestial thunder over a foot thick!
Tearing through the veil of frost mist, carrying temperatures of thousands of degrees and the apocalyptic might to grind all creation to dust, the bolt plummeted like a fallen pillar of heaven straight down upon the crown of Lin Feng’s head!
Below stood a forest of razor ice spears locking his feet; above descended an apocalyptic lightning cleave from the open heavens! An inescapable death zone without a single blind spot, executed to suffocating perfection!
“It’s over!” A senior professor in the stands bolted upright, his complexion draining of color. “A dual-element Intermediate fusion strike! That boy Lin Feng won’t even have time to deploy his defensive Magic Armor!”
“Referee! Save him!” Gu Xiaowei shrieked frantically, her eyes turning bloodshot.
High on the VIP grandstand, the Liu Clan steward burst into triumphant, cruel laughter. In his mind’s eye, he already envisioned Lin Feng charred to a crisp, tendons severed and bones splintered, drowning in a pool of his own blood!
Even Liu Zhendong’s lips curled into a feral, sadistic sneer upon the stage. He had channeled every ounce of his mana into this strike, determined to reduce Lin Feng to a crippled wreck before twenty thousand witnesses!
Yet...
Right at the epicenter of that apocalyptic death zone, facing the spear-points grazing his soles and the cataclysmic thunderbolt crashing down upon his skull, Lin Feng’s expression did not register a single speck of panic.
He did not retreat. He did not summon the Abyssal Thunder Wolf to absorb the blow, nor did he ignite the blazing embers of his Crimson Blaze Flowing Fire to mount a frontal clash.
He merely stood there, his hands still hanging loosely by his sides. A faint, serene smile curved his lips—composed, absolute, and chillingly imperious.
“Dual Ice and Lightning... is this all you have?”
Lin Feng’s quiet whisper was barely louder than a breath, yet it penetrated straight into Liu Zhendong’s eardrums with crystal clarity.
In that razor-thin fraction of a second between life and death, deep within Lin Feng’s Sea of Consciousness, his newly awakened, pitch-black Shadow Nebula suddenly erupted with a mysterious, swirling vortex of purplish-black cosmic energy!
Tempered by the primordial essence of Ancient Dragon Qi, the forty-nine Shadow Star Particles did not drift with the sluggish rhythm of ordinary magi. Under Lin Feng’s monstrous mental willpower, they fell into formation and interlocked in the span of a single heartbeat!
A brand-new Intermediate Shadow spell, grasped in the wake of his recent breakthrough!
“Intermediate Shadow Magic—Shadow Shift: Void!”
“BOOOOOOOOOOOM——!!”
The celestial thunderbolt of Thunderbolt: Apex Cleave slammed directly onto Lin Feng’s position, detonating with an earth-shattering cataclysm!
The Hardened Granite floor ruptured under the apocalyptic blast, gouging a scorched crater over ten meters wide as stone shrapnel sprayed outward like artillery fire. The surrounding forest of ice spears was instantly flash-melted by the blistering heat and electrical fury, billowing into dense plumes of scalding steam as thousands of crystalline shards embedded themselves into the black-robed figure standing at the center!
Twenty thousand spectators held their breath in suffocating silence!
As the peals of thunder faded, the flying stone dust and purple ozone smog slowly settled.
Liu Zhendong threw his head back and laughed maniacally: “Hahaha! Die, you lowborn trash—”
The roar of laughter froze dead on his face.
The wild cackle caught in his throat as though strangled by an invisible iron hand!
At the bottom of that scorched, lightning-blasted crater, where the thunderbolt had torn the earth asunder... not a single drop of blood stained the stone. Nor was there the slightest shred of charred flesh or torn fabric!
Standing erect in the very center was the figure of Lin Feng.
Yet the frenzied arcs of purple electricity and jagged ice shards passing through his torso drifted straight through him as though piercing intangible smoke!
That was no mortal vessel of flesh and bone! It was merely a translucent, ink-black phantom silhouette, rippling like water cast across a polished mirror!
“W-What?!” Liu Zhendong’s eyes bulged, his pupils contracting to the size of pinpricks.
“Snap!”
The ethereal shadow offered Liu Zhendong a faint, mocking smile. Then, beneath the sheer, unadulterated horror of twenty thousand spectators, it dissolved softly into the open air, as though it had never existed in this mortal world!
Vanishment!
Absolute disappearance!
In broad daylight, under the direct surveillance of four elemental barrier pillars and dozens of High-Rank faculty deans, a living, breathing human being had completely evaporated without leaving behind a single trace of mana fluctuation!
“Impossible!”
High upon the VIP dais, the Dean of the Shadow School slammed both hands onto the table and leaped to his feet. His weathered eyes flared with staggering disbelief, his voice cracking into a ragged gasp:
“Shadow Shift... Free Nihility?! H-He is only a first-year freshman... How could he possibly command the Second Tier of Intermediate Shadow Magic to the pinnacle of turning substance into incorporeal void, erasing his entire presence beneath the midday sun?!”
The Shadow Dean’s exclamation landed like a bucket of freezing water over the heads of every master mage gathered in the hall!
Primary Shadow Shift could only glide across physical shadows cast along the floor. But Intermediate Shadow Shift: Void was an esoteric art that dissolved the physical body into ambient dark matter suspended in space, rendering the caster entirely incorporeal to phase through physical and magical strikes in an instant while traversing unseen at ghost-like speeds!
Down on the dueling platform, a bone-deep chill surged from the soles of Liu Zhendong’s feet straight into the crown of his skull!
He spun in frantic panic, lightning and frost condensing madly in his palms as his bloodshot eyes frantically swept every inch of the platform:
“Where are you?! Where are you hiding?! Get out here!”
No answer came.
There was only the desolate whistle of wind rushing through the jagged fractures of the shattered ring.
No figure. Not a ripple of mana. Lin Feng seemed to have merged completely with the boundless void of the dark, vanishing entirely beyond the reach of Liu Zhendong’s senses!
A primal dread of an unseen predator seized the heart of the former Rank 28 prodigy. Standing in the center of the vast, ruined arena, his premier Frost Crane Magic Armor failed to provide him with even a shred of comfort. He took several trembling steps backward, cold sweat drenching his brow and stinging his eyes.
Suddenly...
A breath of frigid air, sharp as the scythe of the reaper, lightly brushed the nape of his neck.
Directly behind Liu Zhendong’s back, rising out of the very shadow cast by the Frost Crane Magic Armor upon the scorched stone floor, a slender hand wreathed in the roaring, blood-red flames of Crimson Blaze Flowing Fire and crackling with deep-violet lightning slowly reached forth.
A calm, deep voice echoed right against his ear, sounding like an inescapable decree whispered from the underworld:
“Were you... looking for me?”