Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 150
Extinguishing Arrogance, A Shocking Victory
A biting gale howled through the fractured crevasses of the gray marble arena, swirling up millions of razor-sharp ice crystals that whipped viciously across the air like stinging needles.
The entirety of Platform One within the Shenzhou Dueling Coliseum had been transformed into a desolate, lethal arctic plain. Hundreds of jagged ice stalagmites, sharp as the fangs of prehistoric beasts, bristled across the shattered stone floor, crisscrossing in an impenetrable thicket that exhaled dense, milky-white plumes of frigid mist surging more than ten meters into the air. Under the suffocating suppression of this high-order Ice domain, the ambient temperature within a fifty-meter radius plummeted far below zero. The condensing moisture clinging to the surrounding translucent boundary ward crystallized into shimmering, frost-bitten moss that clutched at the runic barriers.
Perched haughtily atop a soaring spire of glacial ice, Lu Zhenfeng stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his sleekly groomed short hair fluttering slightly in the biting draft.
The dark-navy combat uniform of Shenzhou Archmage Academy he wore, trimmed with ornate silver thread, remained immaculate, devoid of a single speck of dust. Over his chest hovered an ethereal halo in the shape of a soaring crane’s wings—the renowned Ice Crane Magic Armor, an elite defensive relic custom-forged for the core heirs by master smiths of the capital’s Lu Clan branch, valued at no less than thirty million gold coins.
In Lu Zhenfeng’s eyes, a cruel, venomous gleam flared, the corners of his lips twisting into a sneer of supreme, overbearing arrogance. He stared down into the churning bank of glacial mist below, where a slender figure had just been pinned and encircled by dozens of barbed Ice Chains.
“A wretched gutter rat crawling out from the slums of Bian’an City... did you honestly believe that relying on a few cheap parlor tricks would grant you entry into the upper crust of Shenzhou Archmage Academy?”
Lu Zhenfeng’s voice resonated through the platform’s acoustic amplification arrays, reverberating across every tier of the colossal, semi-circular amphitheater:
“Lu Yifan may be a useless waste, but he nonetheless carries the noble blood of my Lu Clan! You crippled his limbs in that backwater wasteland, and today, I, Lu Zhenfeng, will snap every single bone in your body to settle that blood debt with interest! I want the entire academy to see with their own eyes the miserable, agonizing end that awaits anyone who dares offend our Lu Clan!”
With those vicious words, Lu Zhenfeng’s hands snapped together into an intricate arcane seal.
The surging Ice mana within the Star Pattern of his spiritual sea cascaded forth like a roaring glacial avalanche, igniting the second tier of his Intermediate magic:
“Ice Chain Barrage — Glacial Piercing Thrust! Shatter into dust!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The bedrock of the coliseum convulsed violently. Twelve massive chains of solid permafrost, each thick as a grown man’s thigh, erupted violently from beneath the flagstones. Sprouting half-meter-long, serrated blades of frost along their links, they coiled like rabid, colossal white vipers, hurtling from every direction with murderous momentum straight toward the epicenter of the mist where Lin Feng stood pinned!
The savage, apocalyptic spectacle drew gasps of sheer horror from the tens of thousands of spectators packing the grandstands.
Within the elevated VIP boxes reserved exclusively for the major patrician clans, Lu Jingshan—father of Lu Zhenfeng and an authoritative pillar of the capital’s Lu Clan branch—leaned back in his velvet armchair. He took a leisurely sip of premier Tieguanyin tea, his eyes glittering with smug condescension.
“Zhenfeng acts with decisive finality,” a Lu Clan deacon seated beside him murmured in sycophantic praise, his face beaming with servile flattery. “That little peasant Lin Feng merely rode a stroke of blind luck at Blood Wave Bay, yet had the insolence to skip the ranks and challenge directly into the upper echelon of the Battle Ranking. Now that he is ensnared within the Eldest Young Master’s Ice Chains, even if he survives the impact, the absolute frost will freeze his meridians solid and turn him into a crippled invalid. Truly courting his own doom!”
“Hmph. A nameless commoner with neither background nor pedigree—dying beneath Zhenfeng’s hand is an honor far greater than his wretched life deserves.” Lu Jingshan scoffed cold-heartedly, setting his jade-inlaid teacup down onto the table with a crisp clatter. His haughty gaze swept across the opposite stands, where the freshman cohort sat on the edges of their seats, pale with dread.
On the central VIP platform, Headmaster Gu Tianya sat motionless, his ancient, well-tempered eyes gazing down at the frozen arena with unreadable depth. Beside him, several military evaluators and academy elders leaned forward, their expressions severe as they analyzed the catastrophic convergence of elemental force.
Down in the freshman seating area, Gu Xiaowei clutched the fabric of her skirt so tightly that her knuckles turned paper-white. Her delicate face was taut with terror:
“Sister Qingwan! What do we do?! That Lu bastard’s Ice Chains clearly possess the elemental amplification of an Ice Spirit Seed! Their structural density and freezing lethality far surpass standard magic! Lin Feng... did he fail to dodge in time?!”
Seated beside her, Ye Qingwan maintained her poised, elegant demeanor, yet her graceful willow brows furrowed slightly. Beneath her flowing azure silk sleeves, her slender hands were clenched into tight, trembling fists. Her gaze remained locked upon the epicenter of the glacial vortex, where Lin Feng’s familiar, steady aura seemed to have vanished entirely in the wake of that cataclysmic collision.
“Don’t lose your head,” Xie Zhaoyuan said softly, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, a shrewd, analytical gleam flickering in his eyes. “Lin Feng has never once come out on the losing end of close-quarters combat. Look closely at the frost beneath his feet...”
Before Xie Zhaoyuan’s voice could even fade, atop the towering pinnacle of ice, Lu Zhenfeng’s triumphant sneer suddenly froze solid.
CRACKLE!
Beneath Lu Zhenfeng’s feet, the twelve barbed Ice Chains that had impaled the target transmitted neither the satisfying tearing of muscle nor the brittle crunch of snapping bone. On the contrary, as the swirling icy mist began to settle, the pulverized crater wrought by the barrage was laid bare.
It was completely empty!
Apart from a faint, dark silhouette slowly dissolving into wisps of ephemeral black smoke, there was not the slightest trace of Lin Feng’s body!
“What?!”
Lu Zhenfeng’s pupils contracted to needlepoints, a sudden numbness prickling across his scalp. “An afterimage?! Impossible! My Glacial Frost Domain completely sealed every cubic inch of movement space! How could he possibly evade without triggering a single ripple of mana?!”
“Were you looking for me?”
A placid, indifferent voice, calm as an unruffled autumn pond, drifted softly from directly behind Lu Zhenfeng’s neck!
The tone was neither loud nor hurried, yet when it struck Lu Zhenfeng’s eardrums, it was no different from a sudden clap of thunder erupting out of a cloudless azure sky!
A warm breath laden with the scorched scent of brimstone brushed against the back of his neck, completely dispelling the bone-chilling frost that he had so painstakingly cultivated across the stage.
Night Shadow Escape!
It was the Intermediate Shadow magic that Lin Feng had freshly mastered after thoroughly digesting the ancient draconic essence from his excursion to Blood Wave Bay! Utilizing the elongated shadows cast by the hundreds of jagged ice spires across the dueling ring, Lin Feng had dissolved into the darkness itself, assimilating with the void and silently gliding right past the oppressive suppression of the Ice domain to materialize directly at his enemy’s blind spot!
The honed survival instincts of an elite battle-mage caused every single cell in Lu Zhenfeng’s body to scream in mortal panic. Cold sweat instantly drenched his spine. In that razor-thin fraction of a second between life and death, he had no time to ponder how Lin Feng had bypassed his senses; his waist whipped around, his body pivoting with frantic desperation!
“GET AWAY FROM ME!!”
Lu Zhenfeng bellowed like a cornered beast. His left hand smashed down upon his spatial ring as deep-blue radiance detonated from the band, manifesting a tortoise-shell Shield Magic Tool forged of heavy abyssal alloy to guard his chest. Simultaneously, the Ice Crane Magic Armor encasing his torso emitted an ear-piercing avian screech; its crystalline wings snapped inward, weaving dense, diamond-hard scales of glacial frost into an impregnable defensive bastion!
Two layers of absolute protection! One Commander-grade defensive shield relic, paired with an ancestral heirloom armor!
Lu Zhenfeng was thoroughly convinced that even the most destructive single-target Tier-2 Intermediate spell could not breach this bulwark in an instant. As long as it bought him a mere half-second, he could leverage the recoil to catapult himself backward and re-establish combat range!
Yet, he had fundamentally underestimated the speed, precision, and merciless brutality of a lethal hunter who had clawed his way out of a sea of blood in the wilderness.
Confronted by the thick runic alloy shield and the diamond-hard scales of frost, Lin Feng’s handsome countenance remained as calm as deep, stagnant water. His fathomless dark eyes were terrifyingly tranquil, gazing at Lu Zhenfeng as though looking upon a corpse already marked for the grave.
Lin Feng’s right hand curled into an iron fist.
No drawn-out incantations! No sluggish weaving of elemental orbits!
Within his sea of consciousness, the forty-nine crimson Stars of his Fire Nebula—fortified to the Fourth Boundary under the ceaseless nourishment of the Primordial Dragon Pendant—ignited simultaneously like miniature suns! Coiling alongside them, furious arcs of dark purple lightning from his Thunderbolt: Yaksha surged along his forearm, braiding seamlessly into the ravenous flame!
FWHSSSH —— ROAAAR!!
A blazing fist of pure, incandescent golden-crimson flame erupted with cataclysmic fury!
This was no mundane, pale fire of a mortal flame, but the apocalyptic, concentrated wrath of the Spirit Seed Scarlet Flowing Flame, delivering a devastating two-point-five-fold multiplier of destructive heat! The scorching temperature detonating within a half-meter radius warped the surrounding atmosphere into visible, distorting heat mirages. The colossal pillars of ice nearby began liquefying into cascading torrents of water the moment they were touched by that blistering radiant wave!
The sinew and muscle along Lin Feng’s right arm rippled like a dormant dragon coiling beneath the skin. The kinetic power generation refined through hundreds of visceral, life-and-death skirmishes merged seamlessly with the surging elemental fury:
“Intermediate Fire — Fierce Flame: Scarlet Exploding Dragon Might!”
A deep, primordial dragon roar tore from the depths of the youth’s fist, shattering the stagnant chill of the arena!
The golden flames spiraled furiously, condensing into the terrifying visage of a draconic beast, its blazing eyes crackling with thunderous wrath as it bared razor fangs and lunged forward!
The distance between them was less than half a meter!
The speed of the strike exceeded the physiological limits of human ocular reflexes!
CRACK —— BOOOOMMMMMM!!
An earth-shattering detonation erupted, akin to a heavy thunder-fire artillery shell exploding point-blank against Lu Zhenfeng’s sternum!
Lin Feng’s fist slammed dead-center into the abyssal alloy tortoise-shell shield. Beneath the crushing kinetic momentum of the Exploding Dragon Might and the incinerating fury of the Scarlet Flowing Flame, the exorbitant magic shield held for a pitiful tenth of a second before letting out a shriek of buckling metal. Spiderweb fractures spread violently across its surface, and it detonated into thousands of jagged, red-hot shrapnel fragments that scattered in all directions!
The draconic kinetic force suffered not the slightest deceleration, plowing through the vacuum to slam flush into the chest protected by the Ice Crane Magic Armor!
“NO! THIS CAN’T BE——!!”
Lu Zhenfeng’s despairing shriek choked in his throat.
His eyes bulged in absolute horror as the proud, crystalline crane wings of his aristocratic clan—beneath that tyrannical golden flame—proved no sturdier than a sheet of dry paper tossed into a blast furnace! The frost scales fractured, melted, and vaporized into hissing steam in an instant! The thirty-million-gold-coin Ice Crane Magic Armor disintegrated into charred, blackened slag!
Lin Feng’s fist, cloaked in the snarling visage of the fiery dragon, drove directly into Lu Zhenfeng’s breastbone!
SPLAT!!
A fountain of dark crimson blood mingled with shredded viscera erupted from Lu Zhenfeng’s lips, but before it could even splash against the stones, the blistering heat wave flash-vaporized it into a fine, crimson mist.
The ten-meter-tall ice pillar beneath their feet could not withstand the apocalyptic recoil and detonated into powdered frost!
A circular shockwave carrying a surging tide of golden flame roared outward in all directions! The vast forest of ice stalagmites blanketing Platform One, caught in that raging thermal tempest, snapped like dry twigs and vaporized into nothingness in under two seconds!
Lu Zhenfeng’s body, like a tattered rag doll, was hurled into the air by the lingering draconic force, hurtling over thirty meters through the arena like an uncontrolled cannonball!
CRASH!!
Lu Zhenfeng slammed violently into the runic-reinforced granite warding barrier along the coliseum’s perimeter.
The concussive impact gouged a crater more than two meters wide into the reinforced masonry, spiderweb fractures crawling up to the very arch of the defensive formation. Lu Zhenfeng slid limp to the ground, collapsing motionless amid a heap of shattered stone. His sternum was visibly caved in, his lavish silver-trimmed uniform charred to cinders, his eyes rolled back in dead-white unconsciousness!
The duel was over!
From the moment Lu Zhenfeng launched his arrogant Ice Chains to the instant his body shattered the perimeter wall... fewer than ten breaths of time had elapsed!
Clean!
Ruthless!
Absolute, crushing domination!
The colossal arena, packed to the brim with over twenty thousand stunned spectators, plummeted into an eerie, suffocating dead silence.
Not a single voice spoke. Not a single breath was drawn.
Every eye was glued in dumbfounded shock to the dueling platform. Where moments ago stood a frozen arctic wasteland, there now lay a scorched, smoldering ruin, thick black smoke curling from slabs of stone baked glowing red.
Up in the VIP seating of the Lu Clan, the porcelain teacup slipped from Lu Jingshan’s limp fingers, crashing against the granite floor and shattering into fragments. Scalding tea splashed over his polished leather boots, but the high-ranking clan elder didn’t even flinch.
His complexion had turned from haughty self-satisfaction to corpse-pale shock, before swiftly darkening into a bruised, purplish hue of unbridled rage and humiliating disgrace. The muscles of his face twitched uncontrollably, his fingers clutching the mahogany armrests so violently that the joints cracked audibly:
“The... the Ice Crane Magic Armor... was obliterated by a barehanded punch?!”
The Lu Clan disciples and deacons seated around him sat mute as cicadas in winter, their heads bowed, cold sweat pouring down their foreheads. The mocking sneers that had lingered on their lips just moments ago had been pulverized into dust by Lin Feng’s fist! They knew better than anyone the defensive prowess of that armor—it was an heirloom capable of withstanding the full-force assault of a Mid-Rank Warrior-class beast! Yet before the fist of a first-year freshman, it had shattered like an eggshell!
“He won... HE WON!!”
A crisp, ecstatic cheer pierced the dead silence of the coliseum. Gu Xiaowei leaped from her seat, waving her hands in the air, her face glowing with radiant triumph: “Sister Qingwan, did you see that?! One blow! A single blow! That arrogant Lu bastard was batted away like a stray dog!”
Ye Qingwan released a long, trembling breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, her chest rising and falling softly. A gentle, breathtaking smile blossomed across her face, her eyes glistening as she gazed at the straight, unyielding silhouette of the youth standing amid the swirling embers.
“That single-target burst... has already breached the threshold of Tier-3 Intermediate destructive power,” Xie Zhaoyuan swallowed hard, his hands trembling slightly as he held his tactical notebook. “That monster... just how many lethal trump cards did he keep hidden back at Blood Wave Bay?!”
Down on the stage, the chief arbiter—a battle-hardened High-Rank Archmage instructor—finally shook himself awake from the stupor. He rushed over to the rubble, pressing his fingers against Lu Zhenfeng’s carotid artery. After confirming that the young master had suffered multiple fractured ribs, internal bleeding, and a severe concussion but remained alive, he drew a deep breath to steady his trembling voice.
The enchanted whistle in the arbiter’s hand sounded a shrill, piercing blast across the stadium!
TWEEEEEET——!!
The instructor hoisted Lin Feng’s right arm high into the air, his mana-amplified proclamation booming across every tier of the coliseum:
“Winner of the Platform One Challenge Match: First-Year Freshman — LIN FENG!”
“New ranking confirmed on the academy ladder: Rank 25 of the Shenzhou Battle Ranking!”
BOOOOM!!
The instant the words fell, the entire Shenzhou Dueling Coliseum erupted like a powder keg touched by flame!
Cheers, deafening applause, and the impassioned roars of tens of thousands of commoner students burst forth simultaneously, coalescing into an acoustic tidal wave that shook the massive steel dome of the arena! How many years had it been since a commoner freshman, possessing no noble lineage, had crushed an elite clan prodigy with a single, unadorned punch, trampling the suffocating arrogance of the aristocracy beneath his boot to carve his name straight into Rank 25 of the prestigious Battle Ranking?!
Amid that sea of deafening, thunderous acclaim, Lin Feng stood motionless at the center of the ring.
The incandescent golden flames and residual purple lightning upon his knuckles gradually receded, withdrawing into the depths of his palm. Thermal updrafts carrying glowing sparks tugged at the hem of his dark battle robes, billowing wildly in the wind.
He calmly brushed away a speck of ash clinging to his sleeve, then slowly turned his gaze.
His eyes sliced through the vast expanse of the coliseum, paying no heed to the cheering masses, locking with razor-sharp precision directly onto the VIP box of the Lu Clan.
That gaze was freezing, fathomless, and sharp as a divine sword newly drawn from its scabbard, impaling Lu Jingshan’s trembling, livid countenance.
Lin Feng curled his lips into a smile that radiated bone-deep frost. He did not raise his voice, yet the deliberate movement of his lips conveyed every single syllable with unmistakable clarity into the eyes of the Lu Clan:
The blood debt of Bian’an... this was merely the first installment of interest.
Having delivered his silent warning, Lin Feng did not cast a second glance at Lu Zhenfeng as the unconscious scion was loaded onto an emergency stretcher by the medical team. He turned on his heel and strode calmly down the dueling corridor.
Behind him, the golden flames slowly guttered out, but the storm of shock he had ignited within the hearts of Shenzhou Archmage Academy had only just begun to rage!
High above the arena, nestled within a secluded alcove of the supreme observation balcony, Headmaster Gu Tianya stood beside a middle-aged commander clad in a deep-navy naval uniform adorned with three silver stars.
The military officer tapped his calloused fingers rhythmically against the reinforced balustrade, a profound, approving smile touching the corners of his lips as his eagle-sharp eyes tracked Lin Feng’s departing figure.
“What an extraordinary seed...” The officer murmured softly, turning his head toward Headmaster Gu Tianya. “Between the impending East Sea Taotie Abyss campaign and the national selection roster for the Venice World Tournament... this young man is an undeniable, non-negotiable must-pick. The vanguard position of our national team belongs to none other than him.”