Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
Chapter 175
Capturing the Remnant Soul & Tracking the Lead
Night winds whistled through the cracked clay tiles of Magic Capital’s Old Quarter, laden with the briny bite of the ocean and the pungent stench of scorched stone.
Deep within the deserted alley, the shadowy miasma of the Ghost Domain Barrier was tearing into tattered shreds, dissolving into nothingness like bursting foam. The once-smooth bluestone pavement was now webbed with jagged fractures, hissing with residual arcs of violet-black lightning that spat sparks into the frigid air.
Four corpses belonging to the Nether Church’s deathsworn assassination squad lay sprawled in pools of rancid, copper-tinted blood.
Beneath Lin Feng’s boot, the deathsworn captain—draped in an ash-gray mantle embroidered with gloomy occult sigils—clung to his final ragged breaths. His chest had caved inward, blasted through his reinforced armor by the devastating punch of thunder and flame; his mangled lungs rattled like broken bellows with every agonizing gasp. His black iron yaksha mask was split clean in two, exposing an emaciated, sickly pale face mapped with twisting gray-green veins—the unmistakable mark of dark magic’s corrosive backlash.
“You... you monster...” The captain shivered, staring up at Lin Feng’s towering silhouette, his bloodshot eyes swimming with stark despair and bottomless horror. “The Church... will never... spare you...”
“Your dying words are all cut from the same cloth. I’ve grown sick of hearing them.”
Lin Feng’s tone was ice-cold. He shifted his weight, driving the heel of his boot downward into the man’s shattered sternum.
CRACK!
The sharp snap of splintering bone echoed crisply through the dead of night. The captain’s final breath died in his throat, his pupils dilated into glassy vacuity, and his head slumped limp against the stone.
Yet, the instant the spark of life was extinguished, a blood-red glyph flared violently to life upon the assassin’s forehead. It was the “Dead Soul Curse Seal”—a vicious forbidden hex implanted into the soul of every Nether Church deathsworn, designed to annihilate every scrap of memory the moment their heart ceased beating, ensuring no psychic mage could ever unravel the syndicate’s secrets.
WHOOSH!
From between the corpse’s brows, a greasy cloud of ashen-black smoke billowed furiously upward, congealing into a twisted demonic visage that shrieked soundlessly in midair. The captain’s remnant soul was already detonating, intent on self-destructing into total oblivion!
“Dreaming of a clean death? Not in this life!”
Lin Feng snorted in contempt, his right hand snapping shut before his chest.
Beneath his black tunic, the Primordial Dragon Pendant pressed against his chest suddenly flared white-hot, burning like a slab of celestial slag freshly dredged from a divine forge. A beam of primordial, black-gold luminescence—ancient, immaculate, and heavy as an unbroken mountain range—erupted from the collar of his coat, manifesting in midair as an ethereal, razor-sharp dragon claw that struck forward like a thunderbolt!
SHIIING!
The surrounding air congealed beneath the sovereign pressure of the Primordial Divine Dragon. The black-gold dragon claw clamped down squarely upon the captain’s remnant soul, choking off the psychic explosion at its inception. Glowing chains patterned with iridescent dragon scales lashed around the dark vapor, binding it tight and compressing it into a hovering sphere of black-gold radiance directly before Lin Feng.
“SKREEEEEE—ROAARRRR!”
Within the black-gold orb, the captain’s remnant soul convulsed in madness. His blank, phantom eyes bulged wide, his spectral jaw gaping as piercing psychic shrieks battered Lin Feng’s mental defenses. To the captive soul, it felt as though ten thousand white-hot needles were skewering his consciousness simultaneously.
Yet before the supreme majesty of the Primordial Dragon, the insidious Dead Soul Curse Seal proved as fragile as a sliver of frost cast into a bubbling caldera. In the span of three breaths, every layer of the suicidal curse was pulverized into dust!
“Open wide for me!”
Lin Feng barked in a low, authoritative voice. His psychic force surged forward like a crashing tide through the Primordial Dragon Pendant, plunging straight into the core of the remnant soul.
BOOOOMMM—!
The physical world faded away, replaced by an endless expanse where fractured, dark-gray memory shards swirled in a violent cyclone. Under the unyielding dissection of the divine dragon’s talons, the deepest, most tightly guarded secrets of the deathsworn captain unfolded in stark, vivid clarity before Lin Feng’s mind.
Bloody execution orders... ruthless internal purges...
And then, a comprehensive panorama of the Nether Church’s secret branch stronghold within Magic Capital crystallized before his eyes!
Lin Feng narrowed his eyes, his breath involuntarily catching in his throat.
He had presumed that after orchestrating the catastrophe in Bo’an City, the Nether Church would lie low in the dark slums or abandoned underground industrial warrens beneath Magic Capital—where the dense labyrinth of tunnels and migrant transients offered easy cover.
He had been utterly mistaken.
They had never set foot on the mainland at all!
Within the assassin’s memories, a desolate expanse of open ocean stretched beneath a suffocating blanket of fog and thrashing, turbulent waves.
It was Heavenly Port Island—a desolate reef fortress situated more than forty nautical miles southeast off the coast of Whale Sea Bay.
During the old era, it had served as a naval defense outpost. However, because the surrounding waters were riddled with jagged, submerged reefs and lethal undersea mana vortexes, merchant vessels never dared approach. For decades, the island had remained completely abandoned, leaving behind only concrete gun emplacements encrusted in briny salt and moss.
Yet deep beneath the bedrock of that forsaken island, the Nether Church had hollowed out a colossal subterranean cavern network!
The shifting memory fragments plunged Lin Feng deeper into the bowels of Heavenly Port Island.
What met his psychic gaze ignited an inferno of blazing fury within his chest.
Over fifty meters beneath sea level lay a sprawling subterranean stone plaza, stained a sickly, glistening crimson. In the dead center of the square, a colossal basin spanning hundreds of square meters churned furiously, filled with a thick, dark-red soup that reeked of copper and sulfurous death—the Blood Sacrificial Pool!
Surrounding the pool stood dozens of pitch-black runic pillars inscribed with vile abyssal sacrificial glyphs. Suspended along the cavern’s vaulted stone walls, hundreds of rusted iron cages hung from heavy, brutal chains.
Inside those cages were countless human beings!
There were impoverished coastal fishermen abducted during nocturnal fishing runs far offshore... rogue mages from small hunting bands ambushed along the coastal wilderness... and, most horrific of all, more than a dozen youths clad in tattered arcane uniforms—the promising prodigies of Magic Capital’s arcane academies who had mysteriously vanished over the past two months!
With every passing hour, gray-robed and blue-robed cultists dragged a living captive to the edge of the pit, severing their throat with ritual magic daggers and letting fresh blood cascade along stone channels straight into the Blood Sacrificial Pool.
The gut-wrenching shrieks and weeping pleas of the victims reverberated endlessly through the cavern’s gloom, answered only by the sadistic, chilling laughter of cultists stripped of every shred of humanity.
All of this staggering volume of fresh blood and the boundless grievance of hundreds of innocent souls was being gathered to awaken an undersea Abyssal Summoning Formation!
Their unholy objective: to use this toxic blood as sacrificial bait to force the awakening of a slumbering, mutated Commander-tier monstrosity resting within the abyssal trench of Whale Sea—the Blood-Scaled Sea Beast!
Once this Commander-tier beast fell under their dark thrall and spearheaded a massive beast tide against Magic Capital’s central harbor while the coastal lighthouse’s barrier was still stabilizing, the entire coastal defense grid would crumble in an instant. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians living near the docks would become nothing more than raw meat for the deep-sea horde!
“Inhuman bastards...”
Lin Feng clenched his fists until his knuckles popped like breaking bamboo. Pure, razor-sharp killing intent blazed within his dark eyes.
He had never fancied himself a chivalric savior of the masses, but from Bo’an City to Whale Sea and Magic Capital, the Nether Church had repeatedly conspired to murder him and everyone he cared about. Now they had sent an elite deathsworn squad to ambush him in the heart of the Old Quarter, all while plotting the massacre of tens of thousands of Divine Province citizens.
This blood debt would be settled to the very end. Until the last root was severed and burned, he would never rest!
SHIIING!
As the final memory fragment faded, the captain’s remnant soul was completely spent. Its phantom eyes glazed over, its consciousness extinguished, leaving behind only a cluster of pure, unblemished psychic energy.
The Primordial Dragon Pendant against Lin Feng’s chest thrummed with a low, sovereign rumble. The black-gold orb contracted and shot like a falling star straight into the jade talisman. A faint, reverberating hum of refinement echoed within his sea of consciousness. Having devoured and purified the remnant soul of an Intermediate dark mage, the pendant channeled a warm, soothing stream of nourishment back into Lin Feng’s spirit, instantly washing away every trace of fatigue from the fierce ambush.
Gathering his focus, Lin Feng stepped over to inspect the four assassin corpses.
As an elite execution squad dispatched by the Nether Church’s local chapter, their spatial rings were bound to hold extraordinary spoils.
Lin Feng knelt and swiftly removed four ash-silver spatial rings from the right index fingers of the bodies. Sweeping his psychic force forward, he effortlessly shattered the lingering mental imprints within the bands.
HUMMM!
The contents of the four storage rings materialized vividly in his mind.
The first objects to catch his eye were four magic crystals the size of an infant’s fist, radiating an enchanting, violet-black luminescence. Their surfaces were polished smooth, while deep within their cores swirled boundless miniature galaxies of darkness.
“High-grade Shadow Magic Crystals!”
A genuine smile tugged at the corner of Lin Feng’s mouth.
Shadow Magic Crystals were exceedingly rare on the open market, as the darkness element typically condensed only within perilous forbidden zones or bottomless abyssal chasms thousands of fathoms deep. These four stones were astonishingly pure, devoid of any impurities; on the Magic Capital black market, each would easily command no less than three million gold coins!
For a mage who had recently awakened the Shadow Element like Lin Feng, four high-grade crystals were nothing short of a timely rain after a long drought. They would not only firmly solidify his Shadow Star Orbit, but also serve as premium nourishment to temper the physique and bone structure of the Abyssal Nether Wolf!
The second item he discovered was a yellowed sheepskin scroll, sealed inside a waterproof runic tube.
Lin Feng unrolled the parchment, and his eyes instantly ignited with brilliant light.
It was the classified nautical chart leading to Heavenly Port Island!
The chart meticulously documented every submerged reef coordinate, the seasonal shifting patterns of the lethal undertow whirlpools surrounding the island, and, most crucially, the exact locations of the Nether Church’s “Alarm Array Eyes.” With this chart in hand, an elite strike force could penetrate straight into the heart of the cult’s stronghold without tripping a single perimeter alarm!
Finally, tucked inside the captain’s personal pouch was a thick stack of arcane drafts issued by the Whale Sea Arcane Bank.
Lin Feng made a quick tally—there were over one hundred drafts, each carrying a face value of one hundred thousand gold coins.
“Twelve million gold coins in hard drafts...” Lin Feng murmured, letting out a low breath of admiration. “These scoundrels certainly plundered an immense fortune from the coastal populace. But tonight, every coin of it becomes the resource that paves my road to the summit!”
Combined with his prior savings, his liquid assets now comfortably surpassed seventeen million gold coins—a staggering fortune capable of buying practically any high-grade elixir or arcane tool he required for his cultivation breakthroughs.
Storing all the spoils into his own spatial bracer, Lin Feng rose to his feet and swept a discerning glance over the gore-splattered alleyway.
This location was barely two streets away from one of Magic Capital’s bustling commercial avenues. Though the Ghost Domain Barrier had muffled most of the combat shockwaves, the sharp noses of the City Enforcement Teams and military night patrols would bring them here within ten to fifteen minutes.
He had no intention of entangling himself in tedious official interrogations, especially when the strike against Heavenly Port Island required absolute, watertight secrecy.
“Burn it to ash.”
Lin Feng whispered, turning his left palm upward.
WHOOSH!
A dazzling crimson flame burst from his palm, crackling with fierce vitality. Empowered by the explosive potency of his Soul Seed, Scarlet Flame Flowing Fire, its thermal output was triple that of standard fire magic!
With a casual wave of his sleeve, the crimson flames coiled into four fiery serpents that lunged toward the corpses of the assassins.
SIZZLE—BOOOM!
The horrifying heat of Scarlet Flame erupted in an instant. Flesh, bone, garments, dark magic artifacts, and even the rancid pools of tainted blood flared like dry kindling soaked in oil. No foul black smoke rose into the air; only pure, incandescent crimson light incinerated everything into fine white ash in less than ten breaths.
A sudden gust of ocean wind swept down the alleyway, lifting the ash into the night sky and scattering it harmlessly into the dark.
All that remained upon the bluestone pavement were scorch marks resembling ordinary lightning strikes, leaving behind not a single drop of blood, a strand of hair, or a solitary trace of Lin Feng’s mana.
“Time to leave.”
Lin Feng murmured an incantation. Beneath his boots, the pitch-black shadow stirred faintly. Having gorged itself on residual dark mana, the Abyssal Nether Wolf sank back into its master’s shadow. Lin Feng’s silhouette dissolved into a wisp of darkness, gliding soundlessly across the moss-covered walls before vanishing cleanly into the sprawling heart of Magic Capital.
Midnight. Golden Eagle Villa.
Resting secluded against the southern hillside of Magic Capital, Golden Eagle Villa was enveloped in the serene tranquility of the coastal night. Emerald pine boughs rustled softly in the sea breeze, and the pale-yellow streetlamps cast warm reflections across the manicured front lawn.
Following the raucous victory banquet celebrating the restoration of the Whale Sea Lighthouse earlier that evening, the entire villa had settled into stillness. Ye Qingwan and Gu Xiaowei, thoroughly exhausted from their harrowing campaign, had already retired to their second-floor bedrooms and fallen into deep sleep.
Lin Feng stepped soundlessly from the shadow of an ancient maple tree. Using his arcane key, he gently turned the lock on the side entrance and moved like a shadow through the quiet foyer.
Rather than heading up to his bedroom, he descended straight into the villa’s subterranean level—a specialized arcane cultivation chamber fortified with half-meter-thick granite walls, soundproofing steel paneling, and containment formations that prevented any mana leakage.
CLACK!
The heavy steel vault door sealed shut, its automated deadbolts engaging with a muffled thud. All sound and magical fluctuations within were hermetically severed from the world outside.
Lin Feng exhaled a long breath and hung his dust-dusted black coat on a wooden rack, revealing a lean, muscular torso forged through countless brushes with death.
He walked to the center of the chamber and sat cross-legged upon a meditation mat woven from Spirit Silk.
“Time to begin.”
With a flick of his wrist, the four high-grade Shadow Magic Crystals, along with dozens of Fire and Lightning Magic Crystals stockpiled from past expeditions, rose into the air, arranging themselves into an arcane circle around him.
The concentration of elemental mana within the room instantly multiplied tenfold, growing so dense that it threatened to condense into shimmering droplets of arcane dew!
Lin Feng closed his eyes and drew a deep, steady breath, casting his consciousness into the boundless expanse of his mental sea.
Within the cosmic vastness of his mindscape, a magnificent spectacle greeted him:
Two colossal Nebulae rotated in brilliant harmony side by side.
To his left was the violet-black Lightning Nebula, violently tempestuous. Forty-nine lightning stars, blazing like miniature suns laden with destructive charge, darted at blinding speed across the mental sky, trailing arcs of violet-black lightning in their wake. Every single star was bloated and saturated with mana, stretched to the verge of bursting.
To his right was the crimson Fire Nebula, churning like molten magma. Forty-nine fire stars burned with the fierce radiance of Scarlet Flame Flowing Fire, radiating blistering heat that sent towering waves of crimson flame sweeping through his mental sea like a tempestuous ocean.
After countless life-and-death engagements—from Huanglu Island to the Whale Sea Lighthouse—both his Lightning and Fire systems had reached the absolute pinnacle of Intermediate Tier 2!
The bottleneck to Tier 3 lay clearly before him, thin as a gossamer membrane separating two oceans, requiring only a decisive, thunderous push to shatter completely!
“Primordial Dragon Pendant, aid my breakthrough!”
Lin Feng roared within his soul.
HUMMMM—!
The dragon pendant against his chest vibrated violently. A cool, majestic current flooded from the talisman into his mental sea, enveloping his mind in diamond-hard serenity and absolute focus. Simultaneously, the gravitational pull of the dragon pendant activated every magic crystal hovering in the chamber.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
One by one, the magic crystals shattered into glistening dust.
The purest elemental energies congealed into four distinct dragons of radiance—scarlet fire, violet-black lightning, and abyssal shadow—pouring continuously through the crown of Lin Feng’s head, coursing through his limbs and meridians before converging directly into the twin Nebulae within his mental sea!
BOOOOM!
Lin Feng’s entire sea of consciousness shuddered violently, as if rocked by a cosmic upheaval.
The Lightning Nebula roared! The forty-nine lightning stars devoured the torrent of energy with insatiable hunger, their volumes swelling to twice their original size. The violet-black lightning arcs no longer discharged wildly; instead, they began to condense and interweave, forming an intricate, majestic tapestry resembling a celestial spiderweb of thunder.
Beside it, the Fire Nebula surged with equal fury. The Scarlet Flame flared skyward; forty-nine fire stars spun at extreme velocity, their thermal density compressing so drastically that the bright crimson fire gradually deepened into rich ruby woven with majestic gold!
Every star began to crystallize!
This was the unmistakable hallmark of qualitative mana transformation—the defining leap to Intermediate Tier 3, the absolute summit of the Intermediate realm!
Once a mage attained Tier 3, their Nebula’s mana reserves tripled in capacity, their Star Pattern alignment speed accelerated to the speed of lightning, and, most crucially, the destructive lethality of intermediate spells like Thunderbolt and Fierce Fist was catapulted to an entirely new realm of devastation!
Thunder rumbled deep within his muscles, while flame coursed through his meridians. The excruciating ache of expanding mana vessels washed over him like a tidal wave, yet Lin Feng’s spine remained unyielding as an ancient pine standing against a howling blizzard. His sharp facial features did not flinch; only an ironclad, unshakeable resolve burned within his expression.
“Shatter for me!”
He roared inwardly, condensing his entire psychic will into a colossal warhammer that slammed down squarely against the barrier!
CRACK—SHATTER!
A crisp, reverberating fracture—like the shattering of an eggshell—echoed from the depths of his soul.
The invisible barrier broke into hundreds of thousands of dazzling shards of light!
Both the Lightning and Fire Nebulae within Lin Feng’s mental sea expanded in unison, doubling their original volume. The forty-nine stars of each element, having fully absorbed the refined elemental essence, underwent complete metamorphosis. They crystallized into diamond-like facets, radiating brilliant, incandescent luminescence that bathed his entire spiritual realm in dazzling majesty!
An imperious, boundless tempest of arcane aura erupted from Lin Feng’s physical body, slamming outward and forcing a low, heavy groan from the reinforced granite walls of the cultivation chamber!
Intermediate Tier 3 —— Breakthrough successful!
Lin Feng slowly opened his eyes.
Within the depths of his pupils, one eye crackled with razor-sharp violet-black lightning, while the other burned with radiant crimson-gold flame. His entire frame felt baptized in thunder and fire, every pore brimming with an unprecedented surge of power. With a mere flick of his fingers, he felt he could weave an Intermediate Star Pattern in under two seconds!
The threshold to becoming an Advanced Mage—the realm of the Galaxy—was now merely a single stride away!
Lin Feng stood up, walked over to the small ventilation grate of the cultivation chamber, and looked up at the starlit sky of Magic Capital.
The cool sea breeze filtered inside, soothing the lingering heat upon his skin.
Heavenly Port Island and the Nether Church’s Blood Sacrificial Pool... this blood debt would certainly be settled alongside the military in the coming days.
Yet before setting sail on an offshore expedition to purge the cult’s stronghold, he needed a true, pinnacle battle to test the full destructive might of his four elements at Intermediate Tier 3.
At Shenzhou Arcane Academy, having crushed Zhao Tianlei to claim his place in the Top 5, only two figures remained standing between him and the summit of supreme glory.
And the next opponent on the Battle Ranking within his sights...
The peerlessly beautiful, glacial countenance and sapphire eyes that saw through all illusions atop the Whale Sea Lighthouse rose vividly in his mind.
Rank 2 of the Shenzhou Battle Ranking —— ”Demon-Eyed Ice Empress” Han Yue!
A pinnacle clash between Absolute Frost and Berserk Thunder-Fire was on the verge of igniting within the grand arenas of Magic Capital!
A confident, razor-sharp smirk tugged at the corners of Lin Feng’s mouth.
“Senior Sister Han Yue... tomorrow, it’s your turn!”