Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 155
Nether Metamorphosis & The Fury of Lightning
The moment of death hung suspended midair.
Descending from the spiraling horn of the Thunder Whale Behemoth, the devastating sphere of blue-black lightning—spanning more than ten meters in diameter—crashed downward with earth-shattering, mountain-toppling majesty. The atmosphere was scorched into warped, writhing ribbons of near-vacuum, unleashing thousands of degrees of blistering thermal radiation and millions of volts of raw electromagnetic fury capable of shredding three heavily armored transport vessels into twisted scrap metal in the span of a single breath. The Water Curtain Skyflower defensive barriers shielding the surrounding naval craft shattered into countless crystalline shards the instant they brushed against the outer fringe of that surging electromagnetic field, dissolving into thin air.
Lin Feng’s fused pillar of dual-elemental lightning slammed head-on into the sphere of doom!
BOOM————!!
A deafening detonation shook the abyssal seabed to its foundations. The apocalyptic concussive backlash of the Commander-tier strike rebounded with monstrous savagery, crushing the very fabric of space around the vessel’s prow. The thick, reinforced steel deck beneath Lin Feng’s boots caved inward by more than a meter, and the bones throughout his body emitted an agonizing, groaning screech under thousands of pounds of sheer kinetic pressure. Even with the Desolation Berserk Lightning and the Nether Black Lightning encasing his frame in protective electrical armor, a crimson trickle of fresh blood seeped from the corner of Lin Feng’s lips, his internal meridians churning with scorching, white-hot agony!
The gulf in power between an Intermediate Archmage and a deep-sea Commander-tier titan was simply insurmountable!
The colossal azure-black lightning orb merely hitched for half a heartbeat before grinding Lin Feng’s lightning pillar into nonexistence, continuing its inexorable, bloodthirsty plunge straight toward the crown of his skull!
“Dammit... You honestly think you can swallow me whole?!”
A savage, indomitable madness flared within the depths of Lin Feng’s pupils. Straddling the razor-thin precipice between life and death, not half a shred of fear stirred in his heart. On the contrary, the feral, ruthless killer instinct slumbering deep within his marrow was provoked to its absolute peak!
Thump-thump! Thump-thump!
Beneath his shredded robes, the Primordial Dragon Pendant pressed against his chest suddenly erupted with an unprecedented, blinding dark-mystic brilliance! The ancient jade burned scalding hot against his flesh, radiating heat like a lump of primordial coal freshly hauled from a furnace that had burned for ten millennia, sending a deep, resonant draconic roar vibrating straight into the deepest sanctum of his soul!
A torrent of pure, unadulterated Primordial Dragon Force, carrying the supreme sovereign majesty of an ancient true dragon, flooded wildly into Lin Feng’s meridians. Flowing through the divine spiritual tether of their Contract Bond, it cascaded straight into the nascent soul of the Abyssal Nether Wolf!
AWOOOOOOOO————!!
A wild, guttural wolf howl, dripping with bloodthirsty fury that seemed to surge from the nine subterranean hells of the netherworld, reverberated across the entirety of the Whale Sea, completely drowning out the thunderous roaring of the storm-lashed heavens!
From within Lin Feng’s physical frame, the dark silhouette of the Abyssal Nether Wolf was catapulted into the open air. Under the violent infusion of pure primordial draconic might, the wolf’s anatomical structure underwent an earth-shattering, apocalyptic metamorphosis!
Its skeletal framework expanded outward with a barrage of sharp, crisp cracks. Its sleek black muscles ballooned furiously, swelling like slabs of dark steel forged in the fires of an infernal abyss, while its soft undercoat transformed into coarse, overlapping dark-leaf scales that exuded an ancient, devouring fiendish miasma. Its four massive paws elongated into lethal obsidian scythe-blades of absolute jet-black, clawing the tempestuous gale to bloody ribbons.
In the span of a single eye-blink, a colossal dark wolf—standing ten meters tall and stretching more than twenty meters from snarl to tail—loomed proudly in midair, completely blotting out the storm-swept firmament above the ship’s prow!
The Dark Taotie Behemoth Wolf!
An extreme combat form awakened from the primordial roots of its bloodline upon absorbing the Primordial Dragon Force!
Directly atop the Behemoth Wolf’s crown, a wickedly jagged single horn of pure obsidian thrust skyward, wound tightly by somber, pitch-black streamers of crackling lightning. The nether lightning shrieked in continuous, ear-splitting wails, bearing the ancient, all-consuming property to devour heaven and earth!
A mere deep-sea beast dares try to crush its master?!
The blood-red eyes of the Dark Taotie Behemoth Wolf blazed like twin crimson beacon towers, radiating an inferno of unbridled ferocity. Throwing its colossal head back in a sky-shaking bellow, the obsidian horn upon its brow detonated with the full annihilating fury of nether-black lightning, stabbing straight into the heavens to impale the plunging sphere of destruction!
BOOM————!!
The two cataclysmic titans of electrical destruction collided violently thirty meters above the churning sea!
A circular shockwave of concussive hurricane winds swept across the ocean surface, flinging up hundreds of mountainous silver breakers that surged forty meters high, ripping the murky deluge of torrential rain into vaporized mist. The sea below was compressed glassy-smooth in an instant before detonating into colossal spires of foaming water that soared straight toward the clouds.
The Taotie Behemoth Wolf’s black lightning devoured and gnawed ravenously at the destructive energy of the azure-black lightning orb. The two currents of lightning—one abyssal black, one deep azure—coiled and savaged one another like rabid prehistoric beasts, flinging sprays of blinding electric arcs across all four cardinal directions, melting the very air they touched!
CRACK!
Even having awakened its Taotie Behemoth form through the infusion of primordial dragon force, taking the Commander-tier beast’s fully charged ultimate attack head-on pushed the wolf’s physical threshold past its absolute limit. A deep, hairline fracture splintered across the obsidian horn on its brow, and a jagged trident of azure lightning punched through its defensive sheath of black thunder, slamming heavily into its massive shoulder!
Thick, viscous black blood showered across the storm-tossed waves!
The ten-meter frame of the Behemoth Wolf was hurled violently backward by the concussive backlash, crashing into the ocean with a tremendous splash that stirred a miniature tsunami. The scaly hide across its back was scorched black, yet the devastating sphere of lightning—potent enough to vaporize all three transport vessels simultaneously—had been completely pulverized into dying motes of electrical dross, fluttering harmlessly down into the ocean swell!
The fleet-destroying sure-kill blow had been stopped dead in its tracks!
“It... it stopped it?!”
On the bridge of the escort cruiser, the naval captain and his bridge officers stared with bulging, bloodshot eyes, their breath catching in their chests. Cold sweat cascaded down their faces like rain. A contracted beast... a young student mage straight out of an academy had actually stood his ground and shattered the ultimate lightning sphere of a Commander-tier sea monster head-on?!
Yet in the exact instant everyone else was paralyzed in stunned bewilderment, Lin Feng moved!
His gaze was as cold and predatory as a hunting eagle surveying its prey amidst the storm.
He saw with absolute clarity that after discharging every ounce of its accumulated mana into that titanic orb of lightning, the horn atop the Thunder Whale Behemoth’s head had noticeably dimmed. The protective electrical aura enveloping its titanic carcass had entered a brief, critical window of mana depletion. The beast’s respiration grew labored and shallow, and the fissures between the armored scales encasing its cranial ridge cracked open slightly, venting the horrific thermal pressure trapped within!
This was the one and only opening!
A once-in-a-lifetime window of life and death that the Abyssal Nether Wolf had bought him with its blood and shattered flesh!
“Nether Wolf, return to the Contract Space and recuperate!”
With a sharp sweep of his sleeve, Lin Feng recalled the floating Taotie Behemoth Wolf from the surface of the sea back into his summoner’s dimension. In the very next split second, his figure blurred into a faint wisp of dark vapor, dissolving seamlessly into empty space.
Intermediate Shadow Magic — Shadow Shift: Void!
Swish!
Lin Feng’s silhouette vanished entirely from the deck of the transport ship. He did not seek refuge within the cast shadows of the metal floor plates; instead, he commandeered the thick, oppressive blackness of the night and the gloom thrown down by the churning thunderclouds overhead to dissolve into the realm of total nothingness!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The hurricane wailed violently, winds screaming at hundreds of kilometers per hour. But rather than battling the gale, Lin Feng relaxed every sinew in his body, riding the titanic updraft of the maritime vortex to catapult himself straight toward the nine tiers of heaven!
His velocity was so blistering that he left behind only an ephemeral phantom flickering between the ceaseless stabs of lightning.
In two brief seconds, Lin Feng cleared more than a hundred and fifty meters of vertical airspace, materializing directly above the cranial vault of the Thunder Whale Behemoth!
Gazing downward from this height, the creature resembled nothing less than a demonic island jutting from the abyssal deep. The pungent, fishy stench wafting from the gaps between its armored plates burned the eyes. As if sensing that a tiny insect had dared to perch atop its skull, the behemoth’s blood-rimmed eyes suddenly rolled upward, flaring with rabid malice and homicidal fury!
OOOOOO-WOOOOONG!!
The Thunder Whale Behemoth roared in berserk outrage. It peeled open its cavernous maw, lined with jagged, serrated fangs like an iron forest of spikes, drawing in a massive vacuum vortex to swallow the tiny black figure whole!
“Too late, beast!”
Lin Feng’s voice cracked across the firmament, cold and unyielding as clashing steel, easily cutting through the howling of wind and wave.
He hovered dead-center in the tempest, spreading both arms wide.
Within the boundless expanse of Lin Feng’s Sea of Consciousness, the deep-violet Lightning Nebula spun at a crazed, violent velocity. Forty-nine Lightning Star Particles, glittering like the most brilliant celestial bodies in the cosmos, flared to life in simultaneous resonance!
One Star Track! Two Star Tracks! Three Star Tracks...
Seven violet Star Tracks intertwined with a mechanical precision calibrated to the thousandth of a second. The Intermediate Lightning Star Pattern locked into place beneath Lin Feng’s boots, erupting into a radiant brilliance that illuminated the pitch-black ocean for miles around!
These forty-nine Star Particles were no ordinary first-tier stars. Tempered and purified by countless beast soul essences distilled through the Primordial Dragon Pendant, every single Star Particle carried a somber violet-black luster, having attained the pinnacle of Tier-2 Stars!
Tier-2 Intermediate Magic!
“Primordial Dragon Pendant, awaken for me!!”
Lin Feng bellowed within his soul. The jade pendant resting against his sternum released an invisible pillar of draconic light that surged straight into the churning storm clouds above.
RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!
The resonance between the Dragon Pendant and the natural lightning storm brewing over the vast ocean instantly triggered an apocalyptic anomaly. All the ambient lightning within a ten-mile radius, as if discovering its rightful sovereign emperor, ceased striking indiscriminately into the churning waves, converging frantically toward Lin Feng’s back!
The pitch-black storm clouds were torn asunder into a colossal, spiraling vortex of raw electrical fury. Deep-violet lightning painted the entire firmament, transforming Lin Feng into an ancient Thunder God descending upon the mortal realm!
The concentrated aura of total annihilation compressed to its absolute limit, causing the hardened scales on the Thunder Whale Behemoth’s head to stand on end as its primal instincts screamed of mortal peril. It tilted its titanic head back frantically, desperately trying to reignite the lightning in its horn to shield itself.
Yet Lin Feng’s casting speed was countless times swifter!
Twin flames of radiant violet lightning flared in Lin Feng’s eyes. His right hand reached toward the apex of the heavens, then slashed down through the empty air like a divine halberd cleaving the universe!
“Thunderbolt —— NINEFOLD YAKSHA CLEAVE!!”
BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM...!!
Nine world-shattering detonations erupted almost in the exact same millisecond, reverberating with concussive force so violent it rattled the bedrock of the ocean trenches!
From within the churning vortex of black clouds, nine colossal pillars of deep-purple lightning—taking the helical shape of spiraling war spears—howled downward! Each thunderbolt was as thick as a temple pillar, its surface entwined with the snarling, terrifying apparitions of Asura Yakshas, carrying the realm-shattering might to tear space asunder as they plunged toward their mark!
Not scattered across the battlefield!
All nine Yaksha Divine Thunderbolts converged upon a single coordinate with pinpoint, mathematical precision—the very base of the Thunder Whale Behemoth’s lightning horn!
CATACLYSMIC EXPLOSION————!!
The strike detonated!
The ocean surface surrounding the Thunder Whale Behemoth plunged inward by more than ten meters under the apocalyptic electrical pressure. A blinding sphere of deep-violet light flared like a second sun amidst the stormy night, swallowing the colossal silhouette of the behemoth whole!
A sickening, bone-chilling screech of shattering metal tore through the air!
CRACK —— CRUNCH!!
The scales at the base of the behemoth’s horn, hard as mystic black iron, were struck consecutively by ninefold Yaksha lightning slashes and exploded into countless flying shrapnel pieces. The fifteen-meter-long lightning horn—the pride and the wellspring of the Commander-tier beast’s destructive might—was sheared in half! Deep, jagged fractures spider-webbed across its entire cranial vault!
The electrical energy accumulated within the horn backfired, detonating inward directly inside the beast’s brain!
SKREEEEEE-AWOOOOOOO————!!
A shriek of unimaginable agony ripped through the rain!
The Thunder Whale Behemoth thrashed wildly in the sea. Thick, foul black blood gushed violently from the shattered base of its horn like a toxic torrential downpour, spraying dozens of meters into the air. Wherever the blood splashed, the seawater boiled furiously, releasing plumes of acrid, scorching black smoke!
The unbearable agony caused the eighty-meter beast to violently slam its flukes against the ocean floor, sending seismic tremors shuddering through the coastal shelf. But its horn was halved, its electrical radiance extinguished, and its tyrannical, sky-towering Commander-tier aura plummeted off a cliff!
Amidst the lightning-scorched sky, Lin Feng slowly withdrew his mana, landing softly atop the highest mast of Transport Ship No. 1.
His robes were soaked with rainwater, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm after pouring out all his strength to unleash a Tier-2 Intermediate spell empowered by the Dragon Force. Yet his spine remained straight as a javelin, his piercing gaze looking down at the monster thrashing in a pool of black blood.
Across the decks of the entire fleet, thousands of soldiers and defensive mages stood frozen in stunned silence.
The gale still howled, the waves still battered the hulls, yet nobody seemed to register the sound.
All that filled their eyes was an impossible sight: a young student mage, with the sheer destructive force of a single lightning spell, had cleaved the horn off a Commander-tier sea monster, beating the deep-sea sovereign into bloody, screaming retreat!
“Heavens above... am I hallucinating?!”
A naval captain trembled so violently that he dropped his defensive magic shield onto the deck, his voice cracking in disbelief: “A single blow... crippled the lightning horn of a Commander-tier beast?! Is he... is he truly just a first-year freshman from Shenzhou Archmage Academy?!”
“Thunderbolt... Ninefold Yaksha Cleave! That’s the second tier of Intermediate Lightning! But how in the world could its destructive potency reach such an absurd scale?!”
Horrified murmurs erupted across the warships like a subterranean tidal surge. The stares directed at the youth standing atop the mast shifted from shock to awe, and then to absolute reverence!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Right at this moment, from the Whale Sea shoreline ten miles away, three brilliant streaks of magical radiance tore through the stormy night, hurtling toward the battlefield like falling stars!
Leading the charge was Colonel Yan Zhengshan—the battle-hardened military commander of the Whale Sea Third Defense Line! Behind him, emerald Wind Wings spanning over eight meters flapped vigorously through the air, releasing low sonic booms. Trailing closely behind him were two elite Advanced Archmages from the High Command, their bodies radiating the surging mana pressure of celestial Star Constellations!
Ten miles away, when he had seen the colossal ten-meter lightning sphere condensing over the behemoth’s head, Yan Zhengshan had believed the transport fleet was utterly doomed. He and the two Advanced Archmages had already braced themselves mentally for a tragic last stand to avenge thousands of fallen soldiers.
And yet...
When Yan Zhengshan’s wind wings swooped low over the battlefield, the scene that greeted his eyes choked the breath in the veteran colonel’s throat, nearly causing him to lose control of the wind mana beneath his feet!
There was no fleet drowning in a sea of blood.
Nor were there armored warships crushed into twisted heaps of scrap.
Before his eyes, the eighty-meter-long Thunder Whale Behemoth was writhing and shrieking in agony within a vast expanse of seawater stained black with toxic blood. Its proud lightning horn had been sheared open, its cranial vault charred black and billowing thick smoke, the electrical aura across its body completely snuffed out!
And right atop the tallest mast of Transport Ship No. 1 stood a youth in ash-gray robes, his frame upright and proud, surrounded by lingering wisps of deep-purple electrical arcs that had yet to dissipate!
“Colonel... look there!” An Advanced Archmage flying beside Yan Zhengshan pointed a trembling finger toward Lin Feng, his voice laced with unvarnished shock: “The electrical residual signatures on the behemoth’s fatal wound... perfectly match the mana fluctuations radiating from that student! He... he single-handedly dismantled the lightning horn of a Commander-tier beast?!”
The two Advanced Archmage experts trailing him took ragged breaths, exchanging glances, their minds reeling as if struck by a cataclysm! A youth not even twenty years of age, facing a Commander-tier beast, had not only survived, but had dismantled the creature’s deadliest weapon right before the eyes of the entire fleet?!
Yan Zhengshan’s weathered face was etched with profound astonishment, but within seconds, the battle-tested instincts of an experienced commander pulled him back to reality.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
The Thunder Whale Behemoth’s lightning horn was shattered; the beast had lost its most lethal trump card and was severely crippled by its wounds!
Yan Zhengshan drew the flaming magic saber strapped across his back, channeling his mana to amplify his roar until it shook the heavens:
“All forces, hear my command! The vile beast’s lightning horn is broken! Advanced squads, construct Star Constellations and execute the beast! All-out counterattack——KILL!!”
“KILL————!!”
The unified roar of thousands of soldiers erupted, tearing through the darkness!
And yet, just as the Advanced Archmages began linking their Star Constellations to deliver the finishing blow, from the pitch-black abyssal trenches deep beneath the carcass of the Thunder Whale Behemoth, an aura of dark, frigid, and malevolent mana ten times more terrifying suddenly erupted, causing the vast expanse of the ocean to violently boil...