Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 172
Netherworld Church's Shadow Retaliation
Deep within the subterranean sanctum of the Netherworld Church beneath the Magic Capital, the darkness was so thick it felt as though it could freeze into slabs of glacial ice. Situated more than fifty meters below ground, snaking through the ancient sewers built in the earliest era of the Magic Awakening, this subterranean realm was utterly severed from sunlight and the bustling, decadent metropolis above. At this fathomless depth, the air was stagnant, heavy with the stench of millennia of damp mildew, rotting moss, and the sickening reek of fresh, uncoagulated blood.
Drifting through the suffocating gloom were floating wisps of sickly green ghost flames. They flickered upon candelabras carved from human skulls, casting twisted, writhing shadows against the soot-streaked basalt walls like a legion of demons thrashing in cauldrons of boiling oil.
At the heart of the subterranean hall stood a colossal octagonal altar. Its scarlet meteoric stone was gouged with the frantic, clawed scratches of sacrifices in their final throes. Eight carved gullies shaped like ouroboros serpents converged toward a central pool of blood. Within the basin, viscous gore bubbled sluggishly, venting faint wisps of gray vapor that carried the suffocating, acrid stench of brimstone. Looming behind this pool of blood was a towering idol of the Abyssal God, carved from pitch-black obsidian with a hundred eyes and a thousand arms, exuding a malignant, suffocating pressure that weighed heavily upon the soul of anyone who dared gaze upon it.
Perched upon a black stone throne sculpted with yaksha demon skulls sat a motionless figure draped in robes of immaculate, pristine white.
The snowy garment was flawlessly clean, yet around its hem clung splatters of blackened, dried gore, producing an unnerving and ghastly contrast. The figure’s face was completely concealed behind a hideous bronze demon mask studded with protruding, razor-sharp fangs. Only the hollow eye slits betrayed life, burning with two baleful, blood-red embers—a manic fury simmering within, poised to detonate.
This was the White-Robed Cardinal—the supreme leader of the Netherworld Church’s Magic Capital branch, the monster who sowed absolute terror across the shadowed underbelly of the Divine Province’s coastal expanse!
At this moment, five skeletal, eagle-claw fingers encased in white silk gloves clenched tightly around a blackiron staff crowned with a skull. His knuckles trembled violently, emitting dry, grating creaks that echoed under the cavernous stone vaults.
CRACK——BOOM!
The black iron skull staff, inlaid with cursed gemstones, suddenly shattered into a hundred jagged fragments!
Razor-sharp shrapnel embedded itself deep into the surrounding stone walls. A torrent of supreme dark mana surged from the White-Robed Cardinal’s chest, sweeping through the grand hall like an ink-black vortex, violently shaking the stalactite-studded ceiling. Malevolent energy howled with fury, snuffing out more than half of the floating ghost flames atop the bone pillars and plunging the temperature within the subterranean sanctum below freezing!
“Useless! Incompetent wretches, all of you!”
The White-Robed Cardinal’s roar shattered the dead stillness. His voice hissed through the slits of the demonic mask, shrill and grating like jagged metal flaying raw flesh:
“Three years! Three whole years of meticulous preparation! How much pure magical essence, how many abyssal Dark Crystal clusters, how much refined vital blood from thousands of sacrificial lambs... All of it poured into nurturing the Abyssal Yaksha Devil Golem beneath Reef Beacon Island! This seat intended to use that titanic abomination to extinguish the Whale Sea Lighthouse and tear open the coastal defenses of the Magic Capital’s military at the height of the storm season!”
“A flawless scheme without a single crack... ruined in a single night! Crushed to pieces by a wet-behind-the-ears first-year fledgling brat!”
Beneath the steps of the sacrificial altar, a figure robed in deep indigo blue knelt prostrate on the ground. His forehead pressed tightly against the slimy, venom-slick stone floor, his entire body trembling like a withered leaf in a gale.
This was the Great Blue-Robed Deacon—the master of the church’s clandestine intelligence network and undercover spies planted throughout the Magic Capital. Yet at this moment, before the wrath of his supreme master, the usually domineering deacon could barely draw breath, his voice stammering in sheer panic:
“Your... Your Eminence, appease your fury! This subordinate deserves ten thousand deaths! But this time, an anomaly arose completely beyond our control...”
“An anomaly?” The blood-red eyes behind the demon mask narrowed, radiating killing intent so thick it felt like a cold blade resting against the deacon’s throat. “Will your excuses restore the lair at Reef Beacon Island? Will they resurrect the Abyssal Yaksha? If you cannot produce an acceptable reason, this seat will flay your skin, pluck out your bones, and throw you into the sacrificial blood pool this very instant!”
The Blue-Robed Deacon shuddered violently. Desperately, he reached into his robes and produced a poison-steeped, dark-crimson parchment scroll, raising it high above his head with trembling hands.
“Reporting to Your Eminence, this subordinate has investigated every trace! The one who directly sabotaged the Abyssal Altar, slew the Yaksha Devil Golem in the subterranean pool, and personally reignited the core of the Lighthouse Crystal monolith... is that insolent cur, Lin Feng!”
“Lin Feng?”
The White-Robed Cardinal softly repeated the name. The crimson flames in his eye sockets flared violently, as if brushing against an unhealed scar.
“This name... sounds familiar.”
“Indeed it is!” The Blue-Robed Deacon latched onto the opening like a drowning man clutching driftwood, blurting out rapidly: “It is the very beast from Bian’an City on the northern frontier! Over half a year ago, the Raging Rain Plague plot orchestrated by our Bian’an branch along the Azure Thunder Ridge—the operation designed to dismantle the city’s barrier and unleash a horde of ravenous mutated wolves—was sabotaged single-handedly by that brat!”
“Back then, he was merely a high school student who had barely awakened Primary Magic. Yet he dared to lead hunters in a surprise raid on our lair, wiped out the entire squad of Black-Robed scouts, and even left the former Blue-Robed Deacon of Bian’an City dead in the desolate wilderness!”
Hearing this, the killing intent radiating from the White-Robed Cardinal grew even more suffocating. He remembered now. The catastrophic failure in Bian’an City had earned him a scathing reprimand from the church headquarters, severely delaying their schedule for harvesting stray souls across the entire northern territory.
“The mere ant from back then? He did not end up buried in the borderlands, but crawled his way all the way to the Magic Capital?”
“Not only has he reached the Magic Capital, but his rate of growth is horrifying beyond belief!”
The Blue-Robed Deacon unrolled the parchment. A faint blue magical glow illuminated lines of confidential records alongside an ink portrait of a sharp-jawed youth whose gaze was resolute as an unyielding boulder.
“Reporting to Your Eminence, after the Bian’an crisis, he received an exceptional direct admission into the Divine Province Archmage Academy—the nation’s premier academy situated right here in the Magic Capital. Initially, our informants assumed he was nothing more than a lucky commoner. Who could have foreseen that he possessed heaven-defying innate talent: an innate dual awakening of supreme Lightning and Fire!”
“During the freshman Beast Battle Tournament at the start of the term, he crushed every pampered prodigy from the prominent noble clans by himself. His Fire element is no ordinary flame; it harbors an apocalyptic, explosive fury, enhanced by a pinnacle Spirit-Grade Seed imbued with the suppressive majesty of an ancient dragon!”
“And that is not all! Just a few days ago, in the campus-wide Battle Board challenge, this monster directly challenged Zhao Tianlei—the foremost Lightning prodigy of the illustrious Zhao Clan. Despite Zhao Tianlei possessing high-grade Lightning defensive magic tools and a perfected Intermediate Star Orbit, Lin Feng battered him into utter defeat, shattering his magic tools right on the arena stage! After that duel, Lin Feng officially seized Rank 5 on the academy-wide Battle Board!”
The Blue-Robed Deacon swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he continued:
“And then, the moment the Whale Sea Lighthouse broadcast its distress beacon, he was assigned to the rapid-response squad deployed by the academy to coordinate with the coastal military. Covert reconnaissance reports confirm that the abyssal sealing formation atop the lighthouse was saturated with soul-corroding malevolence—something even Advanced Mages would hesitate to touch. Yet from Lin Feng’s body erupted a sacred, pure-yang divine radiance carrying the horrific majesty of an ancient primordial dragon!”
“That radiance incinerated every single one of our sealing glyphs, completely purified the crystal core, and unleashed a thousand-meter beam of mana piercing through the night sky. Guided by that radiant pillar, the military directed their magical fleet to obliterate our Abyssal Night Sirens offshore...”
The grand hall plunged into a suffocating stillness. Only the steady, rhythmic dripping of blood trickling from the altar’s stone grooves into the basin echoed with sickening clarity.
The White-Robed Cardinal slowly rose from his stone throne. The hem of his white robe brushed against the floor carpeted in ash and pulverized bone. The scarlet embers behind his yaksha mask bore into the parchment bearing Lin Feng’s details.
“Dual Lightning and Fire... mutated Spirit Seed... pure primordial dragon majesty...”
He murmured each syllable, his voice low but dripping with bone-deep venom:
“A gutter rat born in a remote shantytown, in less than a single year, climbs to Rank 5 on the Battle Board of the Divine Province’s number one academy and shatters two grand operations of my Netherworld Church in succession!”
“If this cur is permitted to draw breath, if he is chosen for the national team and steps into the ranks of Advanced Mages... who in this entire Magic Capital branch will be capable of suppressing him?”
The White-Robed Cardinal descended the stone steps one by one. With every step he took, the basalt flags fractured into jagged webs:
“Under no circumstances can such a monstrosity be allowed to mature! This seat wants him dead tonight! Before the faculty of the Divine Province Academy and the Military Command can place him under priority protection, I must see his severed skull resting upon this sacrificial altar!”
The Blue-Robed Deacon raised his head, blood seeping from his grazed brow:
“B-but... Your Eminence, Lin Feng has just achieved immense merit by saving the coastal lighthouse. He is currently being fêted at the victory banquet held by the Military Command at Naval Harbor Number One. There may be Tribunal inquisitors or military powerhouses shadowing him. If we mobilize Elders or Advanced-tier Deacons to assassinate him within the Magic Capital’s inner city, the magical fluctuations of an Advanced Star Constellation will instantly trigger the city’s Skynet Radar system. Military paragons and academy deans would descend upon us in less than three minutes!”
The White-Robed Cardinal broke into a raspy, derisive cackle. The shrill laughter scraped along the stone walls, sending chills down the spine:
“Advanced Mages? Does this seat look foolish enough to stroll straight into Skynet’s snare?”
He swept his billowy white sleeves toward the darkest recesses of the rock wall behind the hall, his voice chilling as permafrost:
“Activate the Night Demon Deathsworn Execution Squad!”
CLANK... DRAG... CLANK... DRAG...
The sound of heavy iron chains scraping across stone echoed from the four darkest corners of the subterranean sanctum.
The sludge in the corners bubbled violently. Skeletal arms, their skin ashen and mottled like the flesh of drowned corpses, thrust upward from pools of dark venom.
Four figures shambled out into the sickly green ghostlight.
These were no longer human beings, but four emotionless killing machines—the most ruthless fanatics secretly trained by the Netherworld Church from childhood. To attain extreme dark power in a fraction of the time, they had willingly consumed the Night Demon Blood Pill, a forbidden alchemical concoction refined from the spinal marrow of abyssal beasts and hundreds of vengeful, tortured souls.
Their skin had mutated into an ashen, pallid gray, webbed with bulging black veins that twisted across their withered flesh like dry roots. Their faces were gaunt and lipless, baring jagged, needle-sharp teeth encrusted with dried black blood. Most horrifying were their eyes: void of any whites, their sockets were pitch-black abysses gleaming only with the savage, bloodthirsty hunger of nocturnal apex predators.
Their bodies reeked of rotting corpses mingled with the choking tang of sulfur. Every movement produced dry, sickening cracks from their mutated joints.
Their cultivation: Intermediate Rank 3 Dark Mages—the absolute pinnacle of the Intermediate Tier!
They cultivated the two most sinister elements: Shadow and Corrosive Poison. Their bodies could melt into black mist at will to slip through the narrowest cracks, while their claws and weaponry were coated in lethal venom capable of dissolving flesh and bone in the blink of an eye. Yet the most terrifying aspect of the Night Demon Deathsworn Executioners lay in their condition: their pain receptors had been completely obliterated. Sealed within each of their dantian energy centers was a Blood Demon Self-Destruction Formation—the moment their mission was compromised or they were suppressed, they would willingly detonate their entire reservoir of mana, transforming into toxic living bombs to obliterate everything in the vicinity!
The White-Robed Cardinal flicked his wrist.
WHOOSH... WHOOSH... WHOOSH... WHOOSH...
Four crescent-shaped, glossy black jade medallions glided from his sleeve, hovering gently before the chests of the four executioners.
Their surfaces were densely inscribed with abyssal archaic runes, pulsing with faint yet sinister spatial ripples.
“Take the Black Fiend Barrier Talismans!”
The White-Robed Cardinal spoke in a low, vicious tone dripping with malice:
“These are high-grade forbidden magic artifacts forged by my own hand from the millennial shell of a Yaksha Sovereign, fused with abyssal blood curses. When the four of you simultaneously channel your mana from the east, west, south, and north, these talismans will trigger the Nether Domain Barrier across a five-hundred-meter radius!”
“For ten minutes, this barrier will completely seal and isolate the space within! Every scream, every shockwave of destruction, and most crucially, every elemental fluctuation of Lightning or Fire... will be utterly devoured by the shroud of dark mist!”
“The Magic Capital military’s Skynet Radar will be rendered completely blind to this barrier. In those ten minutes, the alley where Lin Feng stands will become a bottomless grave, beyond the notice of a single living soul outside!”
Kneeling beside him, the Blue-Robed Deacon listened in awe and reverent terror at his master’s sinister foresight:
“Your Eminence’s wisdom is boundless! Deploying four Intermediate Rank 3 executioners alongside the Black Fiend Barrier Talismans, slaying an Intermediate Rank 1 freshman will take mere seconds! Yet... how shall we pinpoint Lin Feng’s coordinates amidst the sprawling metropolis of tens of millions?”
The White-Robed Cardinal sneered with icy derision:
“Did you think the purple wax-sealed envelope bearing the spider lily crest your subordinate slipped onto his banquet table was merely a hollow threat?”
“Woven into that blood missive penned in demon gore is the Resentful Soul Tracking Curse. The moment his fingers touched the envelope to break the seal, an imperceptible mark of malice latched onto his flesh and soul! To the senses of the Night Demon Deathsworn, that scent of resentment is as glaring as a blazing lighthouse in the pitch-black night!”
The White-Robed Cardinal stepped close to the four ashen shadows, his burning crimson gaze boring into them as he enunciated every syllable:
“According to the signal transmitted by the mark, after departing the military victory banquet, Lin Feng did not return to the Divine Province Academy dormitories. He is heading alone toward the Magic Capital’s Old Town!”
“A conceited youth flushed with a little fame, gifted with twin supreme elements, is undoubtedly eager to seek out rare magic stones in the Old Town’s black market to prepare for a breakthrough. He has no inkling that he has already stepped through the gates of death!”
“Hear my decree!”
The four Night Demon Deathsworn snapped their heads up in unison, billowing black mist gushing from their void-black eyes.
“Descend upon the Old Town, trigger the Black Fiend Barrier Talismans, and slaughter Lin Feng where he stands!”
“No need to take him alive! Tear him limb from limb, rip his flesh into a hundred pieces! Seize all his magic tools and the ancient jade upon his chest that emanates dragon majesty, and bring them back to me! As for his soul—drain every drop and offer it as a sacrifice to the Abyssal God!”
“Go!”
Not a word was spoken. The four executioners merely let out guttural, choked snarls like ravenous wolves catching the scent of fresh blood. Their silhouettes blurred in the air, transforming into four thick ribbons of black vapor that shot into the subterranean drainage conduits behind the altar, vanishing without a trace.
The White-Robed Cardinal watched the lingering smoke disperse, a cruel sneer curling beneath his bronze mask:
“Lin Feng... the price for opposing my Netherworld Church is your very life!”
Late at night in the Magic Capital.
In stark contrast to the dazzling opulence of the central avenues blazing with neon lights and hovering magitech skycars, the Old Town of the Magic Capital huddled quietly in a secluded corner of the city, exuding a solemn, antiquated gloom.
This quarter was a living relic from over a century ago, when magic had first integrated into modern civilization. Rugged cobblestone lanes slick with moss wound between rows of weathered gray-tiled buildings. Along the narrow alleys, enchanted paper lanterns cast sickly, amber glows, flickering erratically in the biting night wind sweeping in from the riverbanks.
By late night, the Old Town was desolate and dead silent. By day, this district was notorious as the most convoluted black market in the Magic Capital—a hub of underground magic tool forges, archaic apothecary workshops, and contraband mana stone smugglers evading tariffs. Only those hunting for unorthodox resources or desperate to avoid the eyes of the Magic Association ventured here at this hour.
Tap... tap... tap...
Measured, steady footsteps echoed rhythmically across the cobblestones damp with night dew.
Lin Feng wore a dark-ash trench coat, its high collar turned up to conceal his jaw, his hood drawn low to shadow the upper half of his angular face. Hands tucked deep inside his pockets, he strolled leisurely through the winding, deserted alleyway.
He had just left the black market at the end of the street after securing the required Supreme Fire Crystal Ore and two stalks of millennial Nether Thunder Grass. Following the ferocious battle on Reef Beacon Island and pushing his magical reserves to the absolute limit to ignite the Lighthouse Crystal monolith, both his Lightning and Fire Nebulas within his spiritual sea showed signs of brimming to the verge of eruption, primed for a transformative breakthrough. He needed these violently aligned herbs and minerals to temper his Stars, laying the groundwork to assault Intermediate Rank 2 and Rank 3.
Yet... that was not the only reason he had walked alone into this desolate alleyway in the dead of night.
Beneath his heavy coat, pressed against Lin Feng’s firm chest, the Primordial Dragon Pendant beat steadily against his skin, thrumming with warmth like the heart of an ancient titan.
From the very moment his fingers had touched the beast-hide envelope at the military banquet, the Primordial Dragon Pendant had transmitted a razor-sharp premonition: an insidious wisp of dark resentment had latched onto the skin of his fingertips, clinging like an invisible leech trying to track his coordinates.
Lin Feng could easily have summoned Primordial Dragon Power to burn that lingering malice to ash in a heartbeat. But he had chosen not to.
He had kept the bait pinned directly to himself.
He had not uttered a single word to the Military Commander or Dean Xiao Yan to seek shelter. Lin Feng understood the modus operandi of the dark cult all too well: if he cowered inside military garrisons or heavily guarded academy quarters, they could not touch him—but their venom would instantly spill over onto those around him. Little Mo at home, Xie Zhaoyuan, or anyone connected to him would become prime targets for their barbaric retribution.
The best way to eliminate a stalking pack of vicious beasts once and for all... was to step into the open, make oneself the most irresistible lure, bait them into the killing zone, and crush their skulls one by one!
Creak... clatter... creak...
The night wind gusted with sudden violence, rattling the rotting wooden shutters of an old house against its frame.
Lin Feng arrived at an L-shaped bend of the dead-end alley. Before him stood a five-meter-tall honeycomb stone wall smothered in withered ivy.
He stopped in his tracks.
Around him, the atmosphere abruptly plunged into an eerie, suffocating dead silence.
The howling of the wind through the eaves cut off without warning. The chirping crickets in the stone fissures fell dead silent. A wispy shroud of ashen mist began oozing from the drainage gutters along the curb, slithering across the damp cobblestones like venomous serpents.
The temperature in the narrow alley plummeted sharply. Lin Feng’s breath plumed into clouds of white vapor; the dew clinging to the edges of his coat swiftly crackled into a brittle crust of rime.
SNAP! SZZZT...
The enchanted paper lantern suspended overhead spat a tiny spark of dying magical embers, then snuffed out completely!
Pitch-black darkness instantly swallowed the narrow alleyway.
Yet the most sinister aberration occurred beneath Lin Feng’s boots... The elongated shadow cast upon the cobblestones under the pale moon... ceased to mimic his movements!
The shadow twisted of its own accord, peeling away from the heels of his boots, and rose slowly from the ground like a pool of bubbling, viscous tar!
WHOOSH——!
From the four corners of the ancient eaves atop the towering stone wall, four beams of eerie, dark-purple magical light erupted in unison!
Four crescent-shaped jade medallions hovered in midair, unleashing thousands of interlocking dark runes at blinding speed. In the span of a single breath, a pitch-black dome of tar-like barrier slammed down with a muffled roar, enveloping the entire alley within a five-hundred-meter radius!
SWISH!
The moonlight vanished. The night sky of the Magic Capital vanished. Every distant echo of the bustling metropolis was severed entirely.
The Black Fiend Barrier Talismans had engaged! The Nether Domain Barrier was fully established!
Within the sealed domain, a suffocating stench of sulfur and decaying corpses assaulted the nostrils, making one feel as though they had been dragged straight down into the nine circles of hell.
SHING!
Four ashen-gray figures stepped slowly from the darkest alcoves of the basalt walls, completely cutting off every possible path of retreat.
In the hands of each deathsworn gleamed a pair of jagged, serrated daggers coated in soul-corroding lethal poison, trailing wisps of sickly emerald fumes. Eight pitch-black eyes devoid of whites locked onto the gray-coated youth standing at the epicenter of the formation, radiating frantic, chilling killing intent straight from the grave.
Four Intermediate Rank 3 Dark Mages!
A lethal ambush executed with surgical precision down to the finest detail—enough to drive even a veteran battle-hardened hunter squad leader to throw down their weapons in despair!
And yet...
The youth standing trapped at the heart of this killing zone stood straight as an iron spear driven into bedrock.
He raised his hand unhurriedly, pushing his hood back onto his shoulders, revealing clean-cut black hair and an angular countenance that was unnervingly serene. His obsidian eyes swept across the four mutated apparitions surrounding him, without the faintest trace of fear or hesitation.
On the contrary, at the corner of Lin Feng’s lips, a razor-sharp sneer cold as a blade of ice slowly curled:
“You only sent four Intermediate sewer rats to welcome me? You Netherworld cultists... truly never learn to stop underestimating your opponents.”
Beneath his heavy wool coat, crackling arcs of violet-black lightning began dancing across his ten fingertips.