Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 167
The Shenzhou Special Task Force Deploys
As Han Yue’s decisive declaration resonated, the air within the subterranean operations center seemed to freeze solid. The frigid aura radiating from the silver-trimmed combat robes of the Battle Ranking’s Number Two caused the suspended magical chandeliers to sway, casting flickering ribbons of pale azure light across the stunned faces of the assembly.
Lieutenant General Lu Haojun stared deep into Han Yue’s eyes—sapphire-blue, as still and fathomless as a glacial lake locked beneath a millennium of permafrost—before shifting his gaze toward Lin Feng. Standing shoulder to shoulder were two of the most peerless geniuses ever produced by the Shenzhou Archmage Academy. One carried the ferocious might of flame and lightning, unyielding and steadfast as a monolith; the other commanded the zenith of frost and ice, razor-sharp and prideful as a dawn glade of hoarfrost.
“Good!” Lu Haojun brought his leather-gloved fist crashing down onto the holographic tactical sand table, his booming voice stirring the blood of everyone in the room. “With Han Yue’s Ice Empress Demon Eye augmenting the vanguard, our odds of reclaiming Beacon Island just rose by thirty percent! Dean Xiao, I request your formal authorization for the strike force’s immediate deployment!”
Dean Xiao Yan stroked his blazing crimson beard and offered a slight, measured nod. “The coastal front cannot afford a delay of even a single breath. To guarantee the absolute success of this operation, the strike force will consist of five members: Lin Feng shall serve as vanguard commander; Han Yue will oversee battlefield control and sea-surface suppression; Ye Qingwan will deploy her Wind element for long-range reconnaissance and navigation; Gu Xiaowei shall coordinate defense through a dual Lightning-Earth perimeter; and Xie Zhaoyuan...”
The Dean’s gaze pivoted to the plump figure trembling behind the blast doors. “You are an exceptional pupil of the Magical Logistics Institute, skilled in piloting enchanted assault craft and bearing an extensive arsenal of restorative draughts. You shall take the helm of the high-speed armored magic vessel, provide logistical support, and maintain our offshore extraction route!”
“Y-Yes, Dean! This student will give everything he has!” Xie Zhaoyuan clasped the heavy metallic chest tightly against his ribs. Though his knees knocked together beneath his trousers, an uncharacteristically resolute gleam flashed through his eyes.
Ten minutes later, atop Pier One of the Whale Sea Naval Base.
The shrieking wails of the Level-1 Crimson Alarm echoed incessantly across the slate-gray sky, tearing through the suffocating canopy of storm clouds that hung low over the churning surf. Staccato bursts of sirens ground against the eardrums like jagged iron files, signaling that an oceanic deluge of demonic beasts was closing in by the second. Behind them, the sprawling coastal defense grid of the Magic Capital blazed with tens of thousands of luminous warding formations. Ye Lingtian and a vanguard of senior professors had already taken their battle stations along the seawall, bracing to intercept the inaugural wave of the tsunami.
Moored right at the edge of the thrashing pier, an assault vessel purpose-built for slicing through violent swells let out a guttural mechanical roar. This was the Storm Hunting Whale—a high-speed armored magic skiff engineered exclusively by the Coastal Defense Corps for suicide-run penetrations. Its entire hull was forged from lustrous, dark obsidian-tinted magical titanium alloy, its prow tapered to a razor-sharp wedge designed to part the fiercest torrents. Running along either flank were recessed Water- and Wind-element formation runes that pulsed with vibrant sea-green and cerulean luminescence.
“Board!” Lin Feng barked.
In a blur of motion, he vaulted over the gunwale and landed with solid poise on the forward deck. The remaining four followed in lockstep. The heavy enchanted bulkhead slammed shut with an airtight hiss, instantly sealing out the pelting, face-stinging deluge.
BOOM!
Deep within the vessel’s belly, the primary mana drive unleashed a throaty rumble like a colossal leviathan rousing from slumber. Dozens of elemental exhaust thrusters mounted at the stern erupted with spiraling jets of emerald wind, hurling the skiff out from the harbor basin. Parting the pitch-black swells with relentless momentum, it plunged headlong into the maelstrom of the Whale Sea!
The ocean had long ceased to resemble its tranquil, cerulean expanse, having devolved instead into a boiling, monstrous cauldron of pitch.
Jagged forks of violet lightning scarred the ink-black firmament in violent succession. Howling gales whipped the ocean into towering, ten-meter-high surges that crashed mercilessly across the armored bow. The vessel pitched and yawed violently, rearing up into the tempest only to slam back down into the churning abyss. Plumes of briny white foam detonated against the hull, hissing and instantly scorching away as they struck the swirling gale-force barrier enveloping the skiff.
Inside the bridge, illuminated only by the faint, rhythmic glow of mana crystal displays, the tension was suffocating enough to crush a man’s lungs.
Xie Zhaoyuan was wedged firmly into the shock-absorbing pilot’s seat, his knuckles white as he clamped both hands around the enchanted helm inlaid with high-grade Wind crystals. Though his round cheeks were drained of all color by the thundering tempest outside, the fat youth gritted his teeth and kept his foot planted flat on the elemental accelerator. “Brother Feng... the propulsion array is running at a hundred percent capacity! I’ve already pre-channeled thirty measures of Freezing Ice Powder and refined Tier-2 Mana Fluid into the auxiliary manifolds. If the core overheats, the draughts will flush the heat instantly!”
Gu Xiaowei gently stroked her sandalwood focus staff, its head crowned with an uncut earthstone. Her round, rosy cheeks were taut with focus. “My Lightning and Earth elements are linked and primed. If we suffer an underwater impact, I can erect a Terra Wave Stone Barrier beneath the keel in an instant to absorb the shock.”
Standing beside the navigation array, Ye Qingwan kept her eyes tightly shut, wisps of ink-black bangs fluttering in the micro-currents eddying around her slender frame. She had unfurled Wind’s Wing-Listening—an esoteric Wind-element scouting art that commandeered the howling squall to intercept every rhythmic mana pulse across a five-kilometer radius.
“Three nautical miles ahead... three catastrophic necrotic maelstroms,” Qingwan suddenly opened her eyes, her crisp voice laced with grave urgency. “Submerged beast pack detected moving against the tide. Headcount... no fewer than five hundred!”
At the forward observation viewport, a slender silhouette stood as motionless as an alabaster statue.
Han Yue wore a flowing robe of pale frost-blue embroidered with patterns of silver snowflakes, her ash-white tresses cascading down her back and fluttering slightly in the gale drafts seeping through the reinforced seals. Upon her flawless, sculpted visage, a pair of deep sapphire eyes radiated a chill that bit straight into the bone.
Since stepping foot aboard the vessel, she had maintained absolute, chilling silence. As the Second Rank of the Shenzhou Archmage Academy’s Battle Ranking and the renowned bearer of the Ice Empress Demon Eye, Han Yue was accustomed to crushing her opposition in solitude upon the dueling platform. Even though Lin Feng had just toppled Zhao Tianlei to claim the Fifth Rank, in her eyes, he remained a first-year fledgling who had barely crossed the threshold into the elite ranks. Arena combat within the academy’s sanitized confines was a far cry from wading through a charnel sea of aquatic horrors amidst a pitch-black ocean, where a single misstep meant serving as food for abyssal predators.
Lin Feng did not spare a thought for her cold detachment. Standing ramrod-straight before the holographic nautical display, he planted both hands against the bronze-trimmed console, his dark eyes scanning the flickering coordinates with predator-like precision.
“Maintain course. Do not steer away from the three maelstroms,” Lin Feng spoke suddenly, his voice unnervingly steady amidst the roaring storm.
Han Yue’s delicate brows knitted together, her tone cutting and sharp. “What did you say? Ramming directly into three maelstroms is no different from driving straight down the gullet of a leviathan. As sturdy as this armored skiff is, it cannot withstand the crushing bite of an aquatic horde swarming beneath the vortex.”
“That isn’t an ordinary hunting pack,” Lin Feng jabbed a finger at a pulsating, blood-crimson node on the navigational chart, his analysis crisp and methodical. “Look at the frequency of the mana fluctuations. The waves aren’t dispersing in an outward radial fan; they’re spiraling inward in a counterclockwise vortex. Those three maelstroms are temporary staging pits where a colony of Sea Ghost Serpents lies in wait, ready to swallow whole any craft that panics and breaks toward the flanks.”
He raised his head and locked eyes directly with Han Yue, his gaze unshakable as a primeval cliff. “The reefs flanking both sides are bristling with dark-spiked outcroppings. If we cut hard to port or starboard, the skiff will lose half its speed, steering us straight into an ambush by Black Yakshas. The only route that preserves our kinetic momentum is to redline the thrusters and punch straight through the eye of the first vortex!”
“Punch through the eye of the vortex?!” Xie Zhaoyuan nearly bit his tongue off, his face contorting into an agonized grimace. “Brother Feng, we’ll be tossed straight into the sky!”
“We won’t,” the corner of Lin Feng’s mouth curled into a razor-sharp smirk. “The vortex’s eye creates a fractional window of absolute mana stillness the moment the counter-currents collide. Zhaoyuan, prepare to overload the Gale Crystals to maximum output. Xiaowei, channel Earth Force to weigh down the keel by two inches to stabilize our center of gravity. Qingwan, pinpoint the exact coordinates of the eye for me.”
A flurry of commands—crisp, lucid, and pinpoint-precise—was delivered in the span of mere seconds. Not a sliver of hesitation, not an ounce of panic in the face of mortal danger.
Standing beside him, Han Yue’s chest heaved subtly beneath her silken robes. Her sapphire-blue phoenix eyes lingered on every deliberate movement of the black-clad youth. That chilling composure could never be feigned; it was the instinctual mastery of one who had crossed the precipice of life and death countless times, a strategist who held the very pulse of the battlefield in the palm of his hand.
In that single heartbeat, the lingering skepticism and disdain within the proud sorceress vanished like melting frost, replaced by a quiet, unyielding respect.
“Fine,” Han Yue spoke, her tone cool as ever, yet her inflection had shifted entirely into one of seamless tactical alignment. “If you have the gall to pierce the eye of the vortex, I will personally freeze every talon that dares scrape against our hull!”
“Good! Battle stations!”
Lin Feng barked his final order, his hand clamping onto the manual mana throttle.
ROOOAAAR!
The assault skiff howled with mechanical fury as its stern ignited with an explosive detonation of azure gales. Cleaving through a towering black swell over ten meters high, it hurled itself straight into the swirling maw of the colossal maelstrom!
CRACK! SHRRRREK!
Exactly as Lin Feng had calculated, the moment the prow struck the calm pocket at the eye of the whirlpool, the vessel’s center of mass plunged downward under the crushing ballast of Gu Xiaowei’s Earth magic. The skiff skittered across the vortex’s swirling lip at gale-shearing speed!
From the pitch-black depths below, hundreds of grotesque Sea Ghost Serpents—slimy, elongated abominations slick with foul mucus—surged toward the surface in a ravenous frenzy. Their cavernous jaws unhinged, revealing rows of dagger-like fangs eager to tear the metal plating to shreds.
Yet, before their venomous maws could graze the reinforced alloy, an arctic wave of subzero frost detonated across the water!
Han Yue flicked her sleeve with languid grace, sending a torrential shower of glittering, ice-blue crystalline shards slicing outward like an executioner’s hail. The churning sea flanking the hull instantly flash-froze into jagged, razor-sharp floes. Dozens of serpentine monstrosities were minced and entombed in solid ice within fractions of a second, shattered into frozen chum that sank like stones into the stygian depths!
SHROOOOOM!
Like a bolt loosed from an archangel’s ballista, the enchanted skiff tore through the storm-choked gloom and burst free of the death trap, leaving only the baffled, enraged shrieks of the submerged beasts echoing futilely in its wake!
After over an hour of fierce running battles through three successive waves of deep-sea monstrosities, Beacon Island finally emerged through the suffocating curtain of black fog before the special task force.
Yet the nightmarish spectacle that greeted their eyes sent a frigid shiver cascading down the spines of all five mages.
This was no longer the verdant, stalwart vanguard bastion of imperial memory. Cloaking Beacon Island in its entirety was a suffocating dome of necrotic miasma, pitch-black as calligraphy ink and reeking of putrefying flesh and corrosive toxins. Mountainous swells battered the jagged black volcanic cliffs, churning up ominous, subterranean booms that sounded like the collective wailing of ten thousand damned souls trapped in the underworld.
Lurking beneath the ink-dark waters girding the island’s shores, countless massive silhouettes writhed and coiled in terrifying density. Ancient Sea Ghost Serpents and Black Yakshas—monstrosities bearing grotesque half-human, half-fish physiques with ebony talons and eyes burning like smoldering coals—prowled the shallows, waiting to butcher any living trespasser.
Perched atop the island’s highest precipice, a colossal white marble lighthouse stood desolate against the raging tempest. Its pinnacle—which housed the Great Sun Crystal responsible for anchoring the coastal grand ward—lay utterly extinguished, smothered beneath coiling ribbons of malevolent black haze like rusted chains of death.
“The island’s natural warding barrier has been entirely warped and defiled by the Black Ocean’s profane energy,” Ye Qingwan’s face was chalk-white, her lips pressed thin as she reeled in her wind currents. “The airspace is saturated with flesh-melting corrosive miasma. The seabed ahead is choked with jagged reefs, submerged abyssal crags, and violent pressurized counter-currents. Our vessel cannot approach within five hundred meters!”
“Five hundred meters...” Gu Xiaowei choked on her breath, staring at the vast expanse of churning black surf and thrashing abyssal shapes separating the ship’s bow from the jagged shore. “Swimming through five hundred meters of that hellish water is no different from jumping into a boiling cauldron of oil!”
At that moment, the armored skiff was forced to cut its engines, bobbing precariously atop towering swells five hundred meters from the coast. The mana core began to sputter and grind as the drifting miasma ate away at its outer seals.
Scenting the presence of living human warmth, thousands of pairs of blood-crimson eyes ignited across the depths. The ocean erupted into violent foam as hundreds of Black Yakshas broke the surface, brandishing tridents forged from black beast-bone. Their piercing, guttural shrieks tore through the howling wind as they prepared to swarm and devour the isolated vessel!
“No turning back now,” Lin Feng exhaled a long breath, his muscles coiling tight as steel cables, the Scarlet Blaze Floating Fire within his mental sea churning on the brink of detonation. “Zhaoyuan! Keep the helm steady and prepare to reverse the skiff into the outer mist perimeter. Keep it clear of the swarms to preserve our extraction route! The four of us will tread the surf and carve a bloody path to the shore!”
“Hold.”
A clear, crystalline voice—cool and resonant as jade chiming against fresh snow—cut through his words.
Han Yue stepped forward, her pale azure hem fluttering gracefully in the howling marine squall. She walked past Lin Feng, planting her boots firmly at the very tip of the skiff’s wedge-shaped prow, her slender frame facing the thundering gale without an ounce of trepidation.
Her gaze swept across the five hundred meters of boiling, monster-infested black sea. There was neither dread nor hesitation in her features—only the sovereign, untouchable arrogance of a frost monarch.
“These five hundred meters of black tide... allow me to pave the road,” Han Yue turned her head slightly toward Lin Feng, a faint, fleeting smirk gracing her pale lips. “Junior Brother Lin, conserve your mana for the far more perilous horrors awaiting us upon the island!”
With those words, she raised both slender hands to chest height.
SWOOOOOSH!
A terrifying aura of marrow-chilling frost erupted violently from the maiden’s delicate frame!
Within a split second, the ambient temperature surrounding the prow plummeted off a cliff, dropping past minus fifty degrees Celsius. The lashing sheets of freezing rain instantly halted mid-air, crystallizing into tens of thousands of immaculate, dazzling snowflakes that drifted gently downward.
Han Yue’s eyes blazed with a halo of pristine, ethereal azure luminescence, regal and sublime as a winter moon presiding over the nocturnal sky. The Ice Empress Demon Eye had awakened in full!
Beneath her boots, forty-nine sapphire-blue Ice Stars darted with blinding speed, weaving seven flawless Star Orbits in the void. In a fraction of a second—faster than an ordinary mage could blink—the seven Star Orbits intertwined and locked into place, coalescing into a resplendent Glacial Star Atlas that revolved beneath her crystal heels!
The speed of her Star Atlas assembly was nothing short of divine! This was the absolute pinnacle of Intermediate Tier 3 Ice Magic—the unrivaled zenith among the entire student body of Shenzhou!
Han Yue leveled a slender, jade-like finger toward the darkened lighthouse atop Beacon Island. Her petal-soft lips parted, releasing four syllables spoken with the unyielding authority of an empress descending upon the mortal realm:
“Ten-Mile Glacial Freeze!”
CRACK... SKRRRRR... BOOOOOOM!
An earth-shattering, apocalyptic cacophony of shattering frost detonated across the heavens!
From the tip of Han Yue’s outstretched finger, a colossal ribbon of luminescent frost-blue energy erupted, plunging like a fallen comet straight into the ink-black sea!
The instant that glacial torrent touched the surface, a cataclysmic spectacle unfolded, rendering every observer breathless!
The boiling, thrashing black ocean came to a dead halt. Mountainous swells tens of meters high, frozen mid-crest, transformed instantaneously into soaring ramparts of crystalline ice! The rampant frost energy raged forward like an argent dragon roaring across the waves, flash-freezing the entire five-hundred-meter expanse of demonic water in the blink of an eye!
The Black Yakshas surging out of the water with bared talons and gaping maws didn’t even have time to snap their jaws shut before sheets of multi-meter-thick permafrost encased them entirely, fossilizing them into hundreds of grotesque, shimmering ice statues! Deep within the submerged abyss, swarms of Sea Ghost Serpents were frozen straight to the marrow, snuffed out and suspended lifeless within the crystalline black depths!
A gleaming highway of pure white permafrost, a full twenty meters wide, its surface as level and unyielding as tempered steel, stretched imperiously across the raging sea—spanning the gap from the skiff’s bow directly to the rocky promontory at the lighthouse’s base!
Ten-Mile Glacial Freeze! The signature ultimate art of the Ice Empress Demon Eye, true to its legendary renown!
“The path is open,” Han Yue exhaled a wisp of white mist and glanced back at Lin Feng, the depths of her sapphire eyes blazing with sharp, radiant confidence. “Let’s move.”
“Zhaoyuan, reverse into the mist and keep watch! Strike team, advance!”
Lin Feng released a low battle cry and launched himself forward like an arrow loosed from a bowstring. His boots struck the dense permafrost bridge, his body a blur as he tore through the lingering haze of necrotic miasma.
Han Yue, Ye Qingwan, and Gu Xiaowei followed right on his heels. Four silhouettes streaked across the frozen highway at blistering speed. Beneath their feet, Han Yue’s eternal frost pinned the deep-sea abominations in suspended death, while the unfrozen waters on either side churned and foamed with impotent fury. Crossing five hundred meters of fatal waters in a dozen breaths, Lin Feng planted his weight on the final shelf of ice and vaulted upward, leading the vanguard onto the jagged granite crags beneath the Beacon Island lighthouse.
Behind them, the armored skiff under Xie Zhaoyuan’s control reversed smoothly according to plan. Its mana engines shifted into silent cruising mode, slipping into the dense offshore fog bank to evade wandering marine beasts and safeguard their solitary avenue of extraction.
The moment their feet touched the island, the atmospheric pressure constricted the four mages’ lungs like an iron vise.
Howling gale-force squalls whipped stinging brine and the putrid, suffocating stench of abyssal sludge straight into the sheer rock face. Beacon Island loomed in the stormy dark like a bleached, skeletal ribcage thrusting up from the heart of the ocean. The entire landmass was a singular, towering outcrop of submerged basalt, its perimeter carved into razor-sharp escarpments by millennia of relentless surf. At the island’s highest summit, the Coastal Defense Archmage Lighthouse—once the impregnable guardian beacon of Eastern Shenzhou—stood dead and extinguished, bleeding ribbons of inky miasma that coiled into the heavens like funeral streamers.
Lin Feng held the vanguard position. His dark overcoat deflected the stinging hail, his obsidian gaze pinned like two iron spikes onto the shattered, ruin-strewn stone tower ahead. Beneath his tunic, the Ancient Dragon Jade Pendant pressed against his chest suddenly convulsed violently, throbbing in heavy, rhythmic pulses that radiated searing waves of heat. His life-or-death instincts screamed that an apocalyptic catastrophe was on the verge of erupting!
Abruptly, the black granite beneath their boots began to tremble violently!
This was no tremor born of crashing waves. It was the synchronized, frantic sound of thousands of razor-sharp talons scraping, gouging, and scrabbling against granite, raining down from the heights above!
SKRRRCH... SKRRRCH... SKRRRRRCH!
A skin-crawling screech of metal against stone echoed from all directions, drowning out even the deafening rumble of the thunderous squall. The basalt cliff faces encircling the lighthouse fractured open in a massive, sprawling spiderweb of fissures.
From the abyssal gloom of vertical clefts and cavernous cracks in the rock, piercing through the swirling black miasma, hundreds of smoldering, crimson-red eyes ignited in unison!
A horde of Commander-tier Giant Night Fiends had awakened from within the stone monolith, swarming across the slopes and encrusting the crumbling walls of the lighthouse! Hundreds of colossal horrors—bearing the bodies of hulking apes and the muscular tails of serpents—packed the terrain on all sides, brandishing lethal talons and baring jagged fangs as they prepared to plunge downward in a devastating, suffocating encirclement!