Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 168
Siege of Beacon Island
A feral tempest howled across the ocean thirty nautical miles offshore, flinging sheets of briny spray and the rancid, suffocating stench of abyssal silt straight against the jagged rocks.
Through the storm-wracked darkness, Beacon Island loomed like a desolate shard of ancient bone thrust into the heart of the roaring sea. The entire landmass was a colossal, monolithic crag rising sheer from the depths, its flanks gouged by centuries of violent breakers into precipices as sharp as straight razors. At the island’s highest summit, the Coastal Magic Lighthouse—once the impregnable guardian of Eastern Shenzhou’s coastline—had gone entirely dark. Stripped of the luminous beam that had pierced the cloud cover for generations, the seventy-meter stone spire stood as a mute, towering monolith of gloom, billowing dense plumes of oily black miasma that coiled into the heavens like funeral streamers.
BOOM!
A tidal swell exceeding ten meters slammed against the cliff base, erupting into a geyser of frothing white spray that rained down across the slick granite shelves.
Four figures touched down upon a narrow ledge jutting over the crashing surf. The mana-armored skiff that had ferried them across the open water immediately retreated into the churning sea mist to evade the aquatic horrors prowling the shallows, leaving the Shenzhou Strike Team isolated in the heart of this perilous death trap.
“Watch your footing!”
Gu Xiaowei tightened her grip on her brass-knuckled gauntlets, their amber gemstones pulsing with faint light as her eyes swept through the swirling fog. “The stone here is drenched in beast secretions. Friction is practically nonexistent. One slip over the edge, and the subterranean undertow will drag you straight into an abyssal feeding trench.”
Beside her, Ye Qingwan stood poised against the gale, the azure hem of her combat robes snapping wildly. Invisible ribbons of wind coiled around her ankles, lifting her on tiptoe to maintain effortless balance on the treacherous rock. Clutching her short wand inlaid with a Wind Spirit Core, her delicate brows knit together. “The foulness is overwhelming. The beacon was extinguished less than four hours ago, yet the miasma has already grown dense enough to distort the atmospheric mana.”
To the left flank, Han Yue stood draped in silver-blue robes embroidered with frostflake patterns. She spoke not a word, her garments hanging undisturbed despite the raging winds. With every step the Battle Ranking’s Number Two took across the stone, a gossamer film of rime blossomed beneath her boots, flash-freezing the slick secretions under the entire squad’s feet and turning the treacherous shelf into solid, dependable ground. Her glacial azure eyes gazed upward toward the summit, the biting chill around her frame undulating in slow, rhythmic pulses.
Lin Feng held the vanguard. His dark trench coat repelled the stinging rain, his gaze fixed like iron spikes upon the sprawling ruins and the towering spire ahead. Beneath the fabric of his shirt, the Primordial Dragon Pendant pressed against his chest thumped with deep, resonant vibrations, sending smoldering ripples of heat through his flesh to warn of an imminent, catastrophic peril.
Suddenly, the bedrock beneath their boots convulsed.
It was no mere shockwave from breakers pounding the crags. It was the frantic scraping of thousands of razor-sharp talons clawing and gouging into granite from high above.
SKRRRRT... SKRRRRT... SKRRRRT...
The ear-splitting shriek of scraping iron echoed from every quarter. Along the vertical cliffs of the lighthouse, piercing through the oily black shroud, hundreds of blood-crimson embers ignited simultaneously like glowing coals in the dark.
“They’re coming!” Lin Feng barked, his right fist clenching tight.
BOOM!
The shroud of black fog clinging to the spire was torn to ribbons.
Hundreds of massive, obsidian silhouettes hurled themselves downward in a catastrophic avalanche!
A ravenous swarm of Giant Night Demon Fiends—savage predators bred in the tectonic rifts of Whale Sea. Their torsos were built like primordial mountain apes, corded with pitch-black muscles braided like steel cables, trailing long, writhing serpent tails plated in foul, armored scales. Most terrifying of all were their backs and broad shoulders, entirely encased in black horn carapaces bristling with needle-sharp spikes that dripped dark indigo venom, hissing and sizzling wherever it splashed onto the stone.
Every single Night Demon Fiend stretched over three meters in length, their lanky ape-like arms tipped with hooked talons forged like tempered iron gaffs. Hundreds of the grotesque beasts howled with rabid bloodlust, swarming across every crag and ridge, cascading down like a black deluge poised to swallow the four solitary figures stranded at the precipice.
The distance from the base of the spire to the cliff edge was less than sixty paces. At their frantic, diving speed, the entire squad would be torn to shreds beneath a sea of claws within a single breath and hurled into the deep as feed for aquatic abominations.
The situation hung by a razor’s edge.
“Xiaowei, halt their charge!” Lin Feng commanded, his voice cold and steady, without a trace of panic.
“On it!”
Gu Xiaowei let out a sharp cry. The petite girl didn’t yield an inch, weaving an incantation seal into a brilliant streak of deep ochre before her chest. Forty-nine Earth Star Particles flared to life within her sea of consciousness, locking together in a flash to form a magnificent Earth Star Pattern that spun furiously beneath the soles of her combat boots.
Channeling mana into her fist, she drove the reinforced heel of her boot hard into the granite!
“Earth Ripple: Quagmire Trap!”
BOOM!
The unyielding rock ahead buckled as though struck by a falling meteor. Over thirty meters of solid granite instantly liquefied, collapsing into a churning, bottomless morass of muddy stone. The inverted gravity of her Earth magic tore away the stone ridges, throwing the leading wave of Night Demon Fiends completely off balance. More than thirty beasts barreling down at breakneck speed lost their footing, tumbling headlong into the collapsing quagmire. Their spined carapaces collided with sickening, bone-snapping cracks, their agonized shrieks tearing through the tempestuous night.
The horde’s terrifying forward momentum was strangled at the vanguard. Yet the beasts behind frantically trampled over their fallen kin, lashing their venomous serpent tails through the air like whistling whips as they scrambled to leap across the sunken quagmire.
“Qingwan, gather them!”
“Ready!”
Ye Qingwan spun half a turn on the frost-covered stone, her azure silk robes billowing as they caught the gale sweeping in from the ocean. Her short wand carved seven dazzling emerald Star Trails through the air, linking into the ethereal silhouette of a storm hawk spreading its wings.
“Wind Trail: Tempest!”
WHOOOOOOSH!
A raging magical cyclone exceeding ten meters in diameter erupted from the center of the collapsed quagmire. The violent vacuum of the vortex dragged all the loose debris, shattered rock, and thrashing Night Demon Fiends straight into the eye of the storm. Monsters weighing hundreds of pounds were hoisted helplessly into midair, their hulking ape-like torsos spinning wildly within the roaring squall, their snake tails whipping aimlessly without finding purchase.
Earth and Wind magic coordinated down to the tenth of a second, bundling more than half the ferocious swarm into a dense, struggling cluster, locking down every direct avenue of assault against the squad!
Even so, dozens of cunning Night Demon Fiends split off along the two flanks, skittering along the sheer vertical rock walls toward the cliff edges to encircle the strike team from behind.
“Leave the left flank to me.”
Han Yue’s voice rang out, cold and razor-sharp like a thousand-year glacier snapping in twain.
She raised a slender, pale hand to eye level. Her pale blue hair danced of its own accord despite the absence of any localized draft. Her eyes underwent a sudden, supernatural transformation—the dark pupils vanished, supplanted by a brilliant, crystalline glacial azure reminiscent of ancient uncut sapphire, projecting two chilling beams of divine light that pierced straight to the soul.
Ice Empress Demon Eye!
The innate talent of the Shenzhou Battle Ranking’s Number Two—the absolute terror of the magical realm—finally unleashed!
SHRRRR!
No lengthy chants. No tedious weaving of Star Trails. With nothing more than a solitary gaze from the Demon Eye, an absolute, annihilating wave of permafrost mana erupted from the void, sweeping laterally across the entirety of the left hillside.
CRACKLE-SNAP!
The humid, sea-borne mist instantly crystallized into massive hexagonal snowflakes that cascaded down in a rustling squall. The granite surface was glazed beneath half a meter of dense azure ice at a velocity the naked eye could scarcely track. Nearly forty Night Demon Fiends crawling and snarling across the cliffs froze dead in their tracks.
Their glossy black spiny scales, their sinewy corded muscles, their serpent tails arrested mid-strike, even the thick drops of crimson saliva dribbling from between their jagged fangs... all of it was flash-frozen into crystalline, transparent ice statues within a fraction of a second!
Han Yue gently clenched her slender fingers.
SHATTER!
Over forty ice statues detonated simultaneously into tens of thousands of glittering crystal shards, spraying across the void before showering down toward the base of the cliffs! The entire left flank was swept utterly clean of monsters in a single heartbeat, leaving behind a vast expanse blanketed in shimmering diamond dust.
The sheer dominance of the Ice Empress Demon Eye sent a shudder through the two girls flanking her, leaving them in awe of her peerless mastery over absolute frost.
Yet along the right flank, the remaining monsters realized the imminent slaughter and erupted in rabid fury. Dozens of the largest Night Demon Fiends, their barbed carapaces bristling like iron caltrops, pounced together straight toward Lin Feng. Their saw-toothed maws gaped wide, spraying streams of dark indigo venom like torrential rain, aiming to corrode their prey’s flesh down to the marrow.
Lin Feng did not retreat even half a step. A fierce, arrogant smirk curved the corners of his lips.
“You want to tear me apart? Let’s see if your teeth are sharp enough!”
Spreading both arms wide, his thumb grazed the surface of the Primordial Dragon Pendant. His sea of consciousness surged like a tempest, and a translucent silver Summoning Star Pattern erupted with blinding luminescence across his chest. A pitch-black dimensional rift violently tore through the damp air, releasing the pungent, primal stench of ancient bloodlines surging into reality.
“Come forth, Nether Prison Dark Wolf! Devour them all!”
AWOOOOOOOOOOO!
A deep, earth-shaking howl resonated like a thunderclap from the underworld, tearing through the stormy night!
From within the dimensional rift, a colossal wolf draped in midnight-black fur bolted forth. Its proportions far eclipsed any ordinary beast—over six meters in length, its legs corded like stone pillars, its talons wreathed in roaring violet-black lightning.
Most formidable of all, atop the titan beast’s brow, a pitch-black obsidian horn radiated an eerie, demonic luminescence, triggering its most berserk metamorphic state: the Taotie Colossal Wolf!
BOOM!
The moment the Taotie Colossal Wolf touched down, it surged forward like a streak of black lightning. Its speed was so blistering that it left blurred afterimages dancing across the slick stone. The first two charging Night Demon Fiends didn’t even have time to swing their talons before the wolf’s colossal forelegs slammed down upon them, crushing them flat against the stone floor. Ribs and organs pulverized into bloody paste beneath the titan’s multi-ton momentum.
CRACKLE... BOOM!
The obsidian horn upon the Taotie Colossal Wolf’s brow pulsed with frenzied arcs. Streaks of Nether Lightning—pitch-black lightning imbued with soul-rending lethality—erupted outward, discharging into a fan-shaped web of electric death that swept across the entire right flank.
Screeches of agonized torment tore from the Night Demon Fiends as the Nether Lightning punched through their horn carapaces. The abyssal thunder scorched their flesh to cinders, shattered their venomous serpent tails, and blasted dozens of fiends backward over the cliff’s edge, sending them plummeting into the churning sea below. The Colossal Wolf roared, its maw snapping shut to cleave the largest monster clean in half, crunching through the armored shell as effortlessly as chewing crispy biscuits, exuding an unstoppable, sovereign ferocity!
“Well done!” Lin Feng muttered with a grin of approval.
Yet just as both flanks were cleared and Qingwan’s wind vortex gradually subsided, a suffocating surge of necrotic energy erupted from the summit of the lighthouse.
HOWLLLLL!
Agitated by the pungent blood of their fallen brethren, the entire canopy of black miasma atop the stone spire twisted violently, condensing into the grotesque, contorted visage of a titanic demon face. Under the driving compulsion of this dark, malevolent power, the remaining fifty-odd Night Demon Fiends cast down from the dispersing cyclone snapped their bloodshot eyes toward the squad. Stripped of all fear, their veins bulging to twice their normal girth, an unbridled savagery ignited within them. Howling madly, they trampled across the corpses of their kin, charging forward in a suicidal, mutually destructive frenzy!
The suffocating pressure of this berserk beast tide weighed upon everyone’s chests, the air thick enough to choke on bloodlust. Gu Xiaowei and Ye Qingwan paled slightly; their mana had been heavily depleted by the preceding large-scale spells, making it impossible to immediately cast another wave of wide-area combinations.
“I’ve got this.”
Lin Feng took a long stride forward, passing even Han Yue.
His eyes were as deep and fathomless as cosmic black holes. Pressed against his skin, the Primordial Dragon Pendant trembled violently, and a surge of warm, ancient dragon breath flooded through his meridians.
Behind Lin Feng, the ethereal phantom of a primordial dragon god—wreathed in shimmering gold and ancient crimson lightning—manifested in the void. Its boundless, awe-inspiring dragon eyes snapped open, looking down upon the lowly beasts below as though gazing upon specks of mortal dust.
BOOM!
An invisible shockwave of energy, yet heavy as ten thousand mountain ranges, detonated outward with Lin Feng at its epicenter!
Dragon Might Domain!
The supreme passive domain ability he had unlocked at the Dragon God Altar within the Shenzhou Pocket Realm!
Within a fifty-meter radius of Lin Feng, the entire space collapsed beneath an absolute bloodline suppression. The sovereign dragon might blanketed the earth, completely suffocating the feral savagery of the lower fiends.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
What followed caused the three girls behind him to widen their eyes in utter disbelief!
More than fifty frenzied Night Demon Fiends suddenly halted dead in their tracks mid-leap. Under the ruthless suppression of the Dragon Might, the beast bloodlines within them convulsed violently. Their limbs turned to jelly, and their bones rattled like chaff in the wind. The monsters that had been foaming at the mouth with suicidal fury an instant prior now collapsed onto their knees against the granite rocks, bashing their snouts frantically into the stone, whimpering in sheer, suffocating terror and absolute despair!
Completely paralyzed, their will to fight was shattered to dust!
“Time to pay your debt.”
Lin Feng spoke with frigid indifference. Not wasting a single fraction of a second, forty-nine incandescent crimson-orange Fire Star Particles roared to life within his sea of consciousness, weaving into a blazing Raging Flame Star Pattern. The flames of the Crimson Flowing Flame Spirit Seed surged forth, engulfing his entire sleeve and turning his arm into a torrent of churning magma.
He swept his arm toward the heavens!
“Raging Flame: Crimson Flowing Flame!”
ROOOOAAAR!
A brilliant sea of crimson-orange fire erupted into the sky, condensing into dozens of colossal sulfurous fireballs that shot upward toward the summit of the lighthouse. Blazing with a temperature triple that of mundane flames, the Spirit Seed fire collided with the oily black miasma and detonated like boiling oil meeting an open blaze.
HISSSS... CRACKLE!
A deafening sizzle echoed across the island. The sea of Crimson Fire swept across the stone spire, incinerating the twisted demon face and obliterating every vestige of foul fog that had festered over the past several hours. Showers of sulfurous embers rained down like a celestial meteor storm, cascading directly onto the shivering Night Demon Fiends pinned to the earth.
Tragic shrieks pierced the night before abruptly choking into silence. The berserk blaze incinerated carapaces, armored scales, and necrotic flesh alike, reducing over fifty ravenous beasts into mounds of smoking, soot-black ash.
Amidst the tempest, the Primordial Dragon Pendant at Lin Feng’s chest emitted a gentle, invisible gravitational pull, seamlessly vacuuming up hundreds of pale green soul remnants rising from the carcasses, drawing them into the pendant’s inner sanctum to fuel his next Star Particle upgrades.
The entire skirmish had taken less than three minutes!
The ocean wind still wailed, but the surface of Beacon Island had fallen completely still. The battlefield was littered only with drifting ash, glittering shards of shattered ice, and the acrid stench of scorched flesh.
The Taotie Colossal Wolf shook its obsidian horn, letting out a satisfied rumble before dissolving into a streak of silver light, returning to Lin Feng’s contract dimension to preserve its stamina.
“Is it... over?” Gu Xiaowei let out a long breath of relief, her shoulders sagging as she used her sleeve to wipe the beads of perspiration from her forehead. Looking at the charred wreckage scattered across the ground, she stole a glance at Lin Feng’s tall, resolute back with eyes full of awe. That oppressive domain ability of his had been nothing short of terrifying.
Ye Qingwan lowered her wand, offering a faint, relieved smile: “Flawless coordination. Lin Feng, your flames have clearly grown another stage stronger compared to when we were in the Pocket Realm.”
Han Yue also deactivated her Demon Eye, her irises returning to their customary tranquil, deep sapphire hue. She cast a sidelong glance at Lin Feng, a flicker of genuine astonishment rippling beneath her stoic veneer at this underclassman’s terrifying, all-around combat prowess. Yet the aloof composure of the Battle Ranking’s Number Two did not waver; she merely gave a cool nod: “The exterior is handled. But the source of the corruption remains inside.”
Lin Feng nodded, his gaze locking onto the foot of the lighthouse: “Let’s move. Into the energy control chamber. We must reignite the Core Crystal as fast as possible.”
The four quickly traversed the ash-covered crags, ascending the granite stairs leading directly to the base of the lighthouse tower.
Standing before them was a solid-cast iron portal over a palm-width thick and four meters tall—the sole entrance leading down into the subterranean energy control vault. Its surface was scarred with deep, jagged claw gouges, and the magical warding lock on the exterior had long since been smashed to pieces by some savage brute force.
CREAK... CLANG!
Stepping forward, Lin Feng unleashed a palm strike infused with the force of Raging Dragon Might, blowing away the fractured iron bolt. Putting his weight into it, he shoved the double doors inward.
The heavy iron portal groaned with a shrill, grinding screech before swinging wide open.
Yet the very instant the doors revealed the chamber within, a foul, bone-chilling stench of decay—thick and rancid as stagnant sewer water—surged forth, slamming directly into the nostrils of all four mages!
The rancid odor was so vile that Gu Xiaowei clapped a hand over her mouth and stumbled back half a step, her face turning pale with nausea.
Inside the cavernous circular chamber beneath the tower, there was none of the familiar, warm amber luminescence of the coastal defense wards. Instead, an eerie, sickly crimson glow cast ghastly reflections across the surface of dark water.
Holding their breath in unison, the four mages cast their gazes toward the center of the underground vault.
A grotesque, horrifying spectacle assaulted their eyes!
In the exact center of the chamber, the colossal Lighthouse Core Crystal—a diamond-shaped magical pylon exceeding five meters in height, formerly the beating heart providing mana to the entire defensive barrier system of the Eastern Shenzhou coastline—was now trapped in a state of utter violation.
The once-pristine, dazzling crystal was now impaled by dozens of pitch-black tentacles, thick as ancient tree trunks!
Those grotesque appendages were covered in slimy, diseased skin, writhing with dripping suction cups and barbed spikes driven deep into the heart of the crystalline core. Pure, cerulean streams of mana were being voraciously drained from the Core Crystal, gurgling audibly along the length of the tentacles and channeling directly into the abyss below!
And the origin of those abominable tentacles... sprouted from a pitch-black subterranean pool sunken into the floor of the vault!
This subterranean pool measured over thirty meters in diameter, opening directly into the fathomless abyssal trench beneath Whale Sea. At this moment, the inky water bubbled and churned furiously, churning with violent surges of blood-red froth.
GLUG... GLUG... GLUG...
The sound of churning water reverberated like thunder.
From the fathomless depths of the pool, a gargantuan shadow resembling a submerged fortress began slowly rising to the surface.
SPLASH!
The black waters parted to either side, revealing a grotesque monstrosity of unimaginable horror!
It was an abomination half-humanoid, half-crustacean, its entire frame armored in a carapace of blackened bone with violet undertones, hard as dark meteoritic iron. From its shoulders sprouted four colossal ape-like arms gripping four tridents carved from rotting sea-beast bones, while writhing from its back were twelve massive tentacles driven deep into the Core Crystal.
The monster’s head was completely hairless, its bloated skin wrinkled like a corpse submerged in water for months. And smack in the center of that abhorrent visage sat a single, gargantuan cyclopean emerald eye, radiating a malevolent, voracious, and bloodthirsty light!
The aura rolling off its massive frame pressed down like a collapsing mountain, suffocating the entire chamber until the air turned as thick and viscous as glue!
“An Abyssal... Yaksha Fiend Puppet?!” Han Yue murmured, her usually aloof voice betraying a profound tremor for the very first time.
It was a mutated peak Commander-tier beast!
This great fiend had not merely come to extinguish the lighthouse. It was ravenously devouring centuries of concentrated elemental mana from the Core Crystal to tear through its biological shackles, preparing to undergo the most terrifying metamorphosis of all: breaking through into the Monarch tier!
SHING!
The gargantuan emerald eye of the Abyssal Yaksha Fiend Puppet slowly pivoted, locking directly onto the four silhouettes that had just breached the threshold.
A grotesque, mocking sneer split the monster’s face from ear to ear, exposing rows of jagged, yellowed fangs dripping with rotting meat. A piercing, ear-splitting shriek erupted from the depths of its gullet, shaking the entire seventy-meter stone spire to its foundations!
A life-and-death bloodbath in the abyssal depths of Whale Sea had officially descended upon the Shenzhou Strike Team!