Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 23
The Clashing Squad
Early morning winds sweeping down from the jagged heights of the Cang Lei Mountains carried a bone-biting chill that howled through the narrow gorge, furiously whipping the military banners lashed along the razor-wire barricades.
Across the vast, packed-earth staging grounds of the frontier outpost, more than a hundred students from Feng Lan Magic High School’s experimental class stood in rigid formation. Pale plumes of white vapor curled from their lips into the crisp highland air. Their neat, spotless school uniforms stood in stark, fragile contrast to their weather-beaten surroundings—moss-covered reinforced concrete bunkers, heavy watchtowers, and towering ramparts deeply gouged by the savage claws of beasts.
Following the iron-fisted declaration and the crushing trial mandate from Commander Lei Zhen, a suffocating tension clamped down upon the student ranks. The dangling prize was immense: an Elementary Magic Shield Talisman, capable of preserving its bearer’s life against a lethal blow from an advanced Soldier-tier beast. But the price required to seize it was equally perilous: plunging deep into Lu Yuan Valley, an untamed wild lying completely beyond the sanctuary of the city’s protective elemental barrier.
“Attention, everyone!”
Homeroom Teacher Kang Mu’s deep, resonant voice boomed through an enchanted brass megaphone. In his hands rested an oak box intricately carved with suppression runes designed to block all spiritual probe:
“The terrain of Lu Yuan Valley is treacherous in the extreme. Field operations strictly forbid lone wolves. The faculty will now conduct a randomized drawing to divide the class into five-person squads. Each squad must maintain a balanced composition of offensive, defensive, and crowd-control elements. No matter whose name you draw, you will learn to trust your teammates and shoulder your responsibilities together!”
An instant swell of frantic murmuring broke out across the grounds like a disturbed beehive.
“Gods above, please put me in a squad with an Earth or Water mage! If we end up with all Fire mages charging blindly, we’re as good as dead...”
“I’d give anything to be in Young Master Ling Bai’s squad! Not only is he handsome, he’s also at the peak of the Elementary Ice tier—and he has personal magic tools for protection!”
“I’m just praying I don’t get stuck with some cowardly deadweight from the bottom of the class. That alone would be a blessing from the ancestors!”
Teacher Kang Mu began drawing the glowing magical slips one by one from the oak box. Squad by squad, names were called out. Some students sighed in visible relief upon being paired with trusted friends; others grimaced in despair, already burdened by having to carry weak links.
Until the first luminous slate glowed with brilliant fluorescent radiance in Kang Mu’s palm.
The instructor looked at the names inscribed upon the radiant parchment, his eyebrow twitching slightly. Even he seemed taken aback by the sheer, perverse irony of the arrangement. After a momentary hesitation, he raised his voice:
“Squad 1: Ling Bai, Zhou Min, Li Peng, Zhang Hu... and Lin Feng!”
A dead hush instantly smothered the courtyard.
In the next heartbeat, dozens of pairs of eyes snapped toward the back corner of the formation where Lin Feng and Chubby Hu stood. The crowd began to murmur in frenzy. Stares of bizarre curiosity, pity, and unbridled schadenfreude converged upon them from every direction.
Who at Feng Lan High didn’t know about the ocean-deep enmity between Lin Feng and Ling Bai? Only two days ago, at the Ling clan’s young mistress’s birthday banquet, Lin Feng had ruthlessly torn a thirty-year deed of indentured servitude to shreds, flung the greasy remnants directly into the face of Patriarch Ling Zhuofeng, and strolled out without batting an eye. The scandal had swept through the city’s high society like wildfire before spilling into the ears of the student body, becoming the most explosive humiliation Bo’an City had witnessed in years.
And now, fate had thrown these two mortal enemies into the exact same trench!
“Are you fucking kidding me...” Standing beside Lin Feng, Zhang Hu’s round face flushed crimson with rage. He clutched his beefy fists until his knuckles popped, gritting his teeth in a savage curse: “That goddamned drawing box is rigged! Brother Feng, how the hell did we end up at the same table with that pale-faced bastard Ling and his sycophantic lapdog?!”
Lin Feng kept his arms crossed, his spine straight and unbending like an ancient mountain pine against the howling winter wind. His gaze drifted toward Ling Bai, the corners of his lips curling into a faint, nonchalant smirk. There wasn’t the slightest ripple of distress in his eyes.
On the other side of the yard, Ling Bai smoothed the fur-lined lapel of his tailored wool trench coat, wearing the polished, gentlemanly smile typical of an aristocratic scion. Yet deep within his pupils, venom and rancor slithered like a coiled viper waiting in ambush.
He shot a sideways glance at Li Peng. His lackey caught the cue instantly, a vile, triumphant sneer spreading across his greasy face. Li Peng squinted his beady eyes as if he could already envision Lin Feng’s gruesome end out in the desolate wilderness.
“Let’s head over,” Lin Feng said, tapping Chubby Hu on the shoulder with casual ease. “Let’s see what little circus act they have planned.”
At the designated gathering point for Squad 1, Ling Bai had already claimed the center spot, projecting an effortless poise as if born to command. Standing beside him was Zhou Min—the bellwether beauty of the Fire Element class. She wore a sleek, wine-red windbreaker that accentuated her slender yet athletic figure. Her high ponytail framed a delicate, sculpted face, though her arched willow brows were slightly knit, clearly displaying her distaste for the suffocating, awkward atmosphere.
The moment Lin Feng and Zhang Hu approached, Li Peng cleared his throat loudly, deliberately pitching his voice so neighboring squads could hear:
“Alright, everyone is here! This expedition into Lu Yuan Valley is fraught with peril. Deadly vipers, poisonous vermin, and wild beasts lurk behind every bush. A squad without a capable leader is nothing more than a flock of headless chickens throwing themselves into a tiger’s maw!”
Pausing, Li Peng turned to bow obsequiously toward Ling Bai:
“Here among us, Young Master Ling Bai not only wields the Ice Element—possessing the finest crowd-control capabilities in our entire class—but has also accompanied veteran mages of the Ling Clan on countless live-combat expeditions since childhood. His practical survival experience far outstrips that of common rabble like us. The role of squad leader for Squad 1 belongs to Young Master Ling Bai, and no one else!”
Ling Bai waved a dismissive hand, putting on a pretense of modest magnanimity:
“Li Peng, there’s no need to exaggerate. While I may indeed possess superior survival skills and a firmer grasp of the valley’s topography than most, we are all classmates here, and we must support each other. If no one objects, I shall reluctantly shoulder the mantle of squad leader to ensure that every single one of us completes this mission and returns alive.”
“Pah! If that isn’t the most shameless song-and-dance I’ve ever witnessed!” Zhang Hu sneered, spitting a glob of phlegm into the dirt. “Who the hell voted you leader? My Brother Feng took first place in the entire school’s magic examinations with a perfect practical score in star alignment! Why shouldn’t Brother Feng be the leader?”
Ling Bai’s face darkened for a split second before he swiftly recovered his placid mask, curling his lips into a condescending smirk:
“Exams taken before a slate of inscribed stones are nothing more than theoretical child’s play. When you stand before a man-eating Soldier-tier beast, will high numbers on a certificate save your worthless life? What good are top marks if your knees turn to jelly the second you step onto a real battlefield? You’re still just trash.”
Li Peng jumped in without missing a beat, his crafty eyes darting around before locking onto Lin Feng, an oily smirk twisting his lips:
“Precisely! But since Lin Feng is our celebrated theoretical top scorer, and since he grew up scraping by in the slums—running errands in the mud and braving wind and rain—his footing must be far nimbler than that of ordinary people. Therefore, I propose that Lin Feng serve as our point scout! He can lead the way fifty meters ahead of the main formation to reconnoiter the terrain and sniff out danger!”
The moment those words left his mouth, the temperature within the squad plummeted.
Point scout? Fifty meters ahead?
In a virgin wilderness that had never been purged of magical beasts, the man walking point was the first to trigger hidden ambushes, the prime bait dangling directly in the line of sight of every predator crouching in the underbrush! If an ambush struck, the point scout would be torn to pieces before the teammates trailing fifty meters behind could even finish chanting their first star pattern!
This wasn’t a tactical suggestion—it was an outright, barefaced scheme to commit murder by borrowed claws!
“Li Peng, what kind of dog shit is spewing out of your mouth?!” Zhang Hu roared. His eyes went bloodshot as he lunged forward, grabbing Li Peng by the collar of his windbreaker with both hands. “You want to march Brother Feng into an execution ground?! Point scout my ass! If you’re so damn eager, drag your own rotting carcass up there and walk point!”
“Y-You... Let go of me! You uncultured brute!” Li Peng choked, his collar cutting off his breath as his face turned purple, though he still screamed back: “I am proposing a sound tactical deployment! Since he boasts the talent of a top scholar, shouldn’t he contribute to the squad?!”
“Tactical deployment your grandmother!” Zhang Hu raised a fist like an iron anvil, ready to smash it square into the flatterer’s face.
“Stand down!”
A crisp, commanding shout cut through the brawl. Zhou Min stepped forward, her pale, slender hand snapping out to shove Zhang Hu’s thick arm aside. Around her delicate fingertips, ripples of unseen heat wavered faintly in the air, revealing an exceptionally proficient command over Fire elemental energy.
Zhou Min whirled around to face Ling Bai and Li Peng, her phoenix-shaped eyes blazing with unfiltered contempt:
“Ling Bai, Li Peng, put away your filthy, underhanded tricks! Military doctrine spells it out clearly: upon entering unexplored, high-risk territory, the standard formation is a tight diamond. Wind or Earth mages take point to clear paths and cast barriers, while Fire and Ice mages hold the flanks and center to unleash ranged artillery. And yet you want a pure Fire mage to walk alone as live bait fifty meters ahead? Do you take the rest of us for fools?”
The girl planted both hands firmly on her hips, her tone sharp as steel:
“If we are formed into a squad, we operate on equal footing and look out for one another. If the great Young Master Ling feels himself incapable of leading fairly, then you’d best yield the squad leader seat to someone else—or we can march straight up to Teacher Kang and request an immediate squad dissolution right now!”
Having his malicious scheme laid bare before the entire yard by a teenage girl, Ling Bai’s face turned an alternating shade of ashen grey and sickly green. His fingers clenched so violently that the heirloom jade signet ring dug into his skin, blue veins bulging along the back of his hand. He had intended to use the authority of squad leader to legitimately torment and grind down Lin Feng; he had never anticipated that Zhou Min would be this unyielding and razor-sharp.
“Zhou Min, you misunderstand my intent...” Ling Bai forced a conciliatory, strained smile. “Li Peng simply spoke without thinking. I never agreed to such an absurd proposal.”
While the standoff threatened to choke the very air between them, a low chuckle broke the suffocating silence.
Lin Feng lightly patted Zhang Hu’s shoulder, signaling the portly youth to stand down, then turned toward Zhou Min and gave her a slight, appreciative nod. Then, he took two measured steps forward, coming face-to-face with Ling Bai and Li Peng.
His eyes were deep and fathomless as an icy winter pool. The way he looked at the pair before him was akin to inspecting two amusing, insignificant playthings.
“Save your breath. There’s no need to waste spit over this.”
Lin Feng’s lips curved into a lazy, nonchalant grin, yet the glint in his eyes was razor-sharp:
“If you want me to walk point, I’ll walk point. Only in the deep woods will we see who is the hunter and who is the prey. Consider my clearing the path an act of charity toward the incompetent.”
He tilted his head slightly, his gaze settling onto Li Peng’s rapidly blanching face. His voice remained low, yet every syllable fell like a heavy sledgehammer against the lackey’s chest:
“My only concern is that once we venture deep into the fog and encounter something truly terrifying, certain individuals might piss their pants in sheer terror and find their legs turned to mush—too cowardly to even follow in the dust of my boots.”
“Y-You... Who are you saying will piss their pants?!” Li Peng squawked, jumping as if his tail had been stepped on, his face flushing crimson with mortification. Two nights ago at the Ling manor, when Ling Zhuofeng unleashed the crushing aura of an Advanced Magus, it was Li Peng who had tumbled backward, nearly wetting himself in public. To this day, that remained the most humiliating stain on his pride.
Ling Bai let out a frigid sneer, malice flickering through his eyes:
“Big talk! Since you volunteered to lead the way yourself, don’t blame your teammates if something happens and we can’t save you in time!”
“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” Lin Feng replied casually.
Turning on his heel, he accepted a rugged canvas field backpack and an emergency flare tube from the quartermaster soldiers, slinging them over his shoulders with practiced, effortless familiarity.
Zhou Min watched the plain-clothed youth’s departing back, genuine astonishment flickering through her eyes. She hadn’t expected him to accept the most perilous post without the slightest hesitation or fear. That chilling, unshakable composure felt entirely foreign to a sixteen-year-old student stepping beyond the academy gates for the first time.
“All units, advance!”
A piercing military whistle tore through the morning gloom.
With a series of groaning metallic shrieks, the heavy iron portcullises reinforced with barbed wire at the Cang Lei Ridge Outpost began to rise. One after another, the student squads marched across the swaying suspension bridge that spanned the dizzying chasm below, officially setting foot into the untamed wilderness.
The instant they crossed the threshold of safety, a blast of damp, biting air enveloped every student.
Lu Yuan Valley sprawled before them like a monstrous titan with its jaws wide open. Primeval trees dozens of meters tall crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, their dense canopies weaving together to blot out almost all morning sunlight, allowing only faint, sickly shafts of gray light to pierce the thick layer of azure mist drifting across the forest floor.
The undergrowth was suffocatingly dense. Giant ferns reached waist-high, while thorny creepers as thick as a man’s bicep coiled tightly around decaying, moss-strangled trunks. The rancid stench of rotting vegetation mingled with the pungent odor of stagnant mire, producing a foul, nauseating funk that assaulted their nostrils.
The deeper they marched, the more all familiar sounds of human civilization faded into oblivion. In their place arose the shrill, grating chirps of grotesque insects hiding beneath the bark, the flapping wings of spectral black crows perched upon skeletal, leafless boughs, and the occasional savage howl of a beast echoing down from remote mountain crests, rising and falling through the shroud of mist.
Lin Feng gripped a stout wooden stave, striding steadily at the very front of the squad. His steps were exceptionally light, scarcely generating a rustle as his boots touched the decaying humus.
Ever since awakening his Lightning Element and fusing with the Primordial Dragon Pendant, his senses had sharpened far beyond mortal limits. Every gust of frigid wind whispering through the foliage, every bead of water dripping from the crags, even the faintest tremors running through the earth beneath his soles were mapped into his consciousness with crystal clarity.
Trekking roughly fifteen meters behind Lin Feng were Zhou Min and Zhang Hu. Chubby Hu kept a fistful of wet soil clutched tightly in his palm, maintaining an active mental tether to the Earth Stardust within his spiritual sea. His eyes darted back and forth like roasting beans, coiled to trigger an Earth Wave to protect his friend at a moment’s notice. Zhou Min maintained a measured distance, her fingers resting lightly near her collar where the embers of Scarlet Flame could erupt into a blaze instantaneously.
In stark contrast to his bravado back at the staging grounds, Li Peng had shriveled into a cowering wretch, scuttling timidly in the rear. Every time a raptor suddenly beat its wings and tore through the canopy above, he would flinch violently, nearly tumbling headfirst into the muck. The magical compass clutched in his trembling hands rattled in time with his ragged breathing.
Though Ling Bai strove to maintain a calm facade, his eyes darted nervously between the sheer rock cliffs flanking their path. His right hand remained clamped around his defensive magic bracelet, his knuckles white from excessive tension. In this stifling, lethal wild, the fragile pride of a pampered young master was being peeled away layer by humiliating layer.
“H-Hey... Lin Feng!” Li Peng swallowed hard, his voice quavering as he called out ahead: “D-Do you even know how to read a map? We’ve been trudging for over an hour, and this valley is getting darker and darker! What if you lead the whole squad straight into a monster’s den?!”
Lin Feng didn’t even bother turning his head, his stride remaining steady and rhythmic:
“If you’re so terrified, run back and hide behind your mother’s skirt. We’ve only walked four kilometers along a dry stream bed and your knees are already jelly?”
“You!” Li Peng gnashed his teeth, but catching sight of the pitch-black thorn thickets hedging them in, he clamped his mouth shut, not daring to lag behind by half a step.
Zhou Min quickened her pace, closing the distance to Lin Feng’s back before whispering:
“Lin Feng, do you notice anything strange about the wind? Ever since we passed that narrow bend in the gorge, the air isn’t blowing down from the ridge anymore.”
Lin Feng nodded slightly, his gaze sweeping across a tree branch snapped clean off about two meters above the ground:
“The terrain here pinches into a funnel basin. The wind is being blocked by hidden rock walls up ahead. More importantly... the humidity is spiking fast, and the reek of stagnant water is growing thicker.”
His crisp, razor-sharp deduction caused Zhou Min to look at him in a completely new light. How could an impoverished youth who had supposedly never set foot outside the city possess field instincts this acute?
Gritting their teeth, the squad pushed forward for another kilometer.
By now, they had penetrated deep into the core sector of Lu Yuan Valley, roughly five kilometers away from the frontier outpost. Here, the mist hung so thick that visibility was reduced to less than twenty meters. Stark, chalk-white birch trees loomed through the fog like colossal skeletons thrusting out of the earth.
Right at that moment—
An eerie, unnatural stillness abruptly descended over the entire forest!
The incessant drone of cicadas vanished in an instant. The cries of birds calling to their flocks fell completely silent. Even the wind whistling through the rocky crevices died away, as if every living creature within a radius of several hundred meters had been gripped by an invisible hand and choked into submission!
A suffocating, rancid aura carried on the chill mist, rolling toward them from the darkness ahead.
Crack——!
Lin Feng stopped dead in his tracks!
He instantly threw up his right hand, snapping two fingers into an inverted V—the military signal for an emergency halt!
“What is it now?!” Li Peng, who had been marching with his head down, nearly crashed into Zhang Hu’s broad back. He snapped irritably: “What game are you playing this time, Lin Feng? Stop trying to play the ghost—”
“SHUT UP!”
Lin Feng whipped his head around, his voice dropping into a lethal, ice-cold snarl! The predatory hawk-like glare in his eyes caught Li Peng by the throat, freezing the words on his tongue and causing him to retract his neck like a terrified turtle.
Zhang Hu and Zhou Min instantly sensed the dire anomaly. Both stepped up beside Lin Feng’s flanks, their spiritual perception surging to maximum alert. Ling Bai’s expression shifted drastically as well; he edged forward with guarded steps, his trembling fingers hovering over his Ice runes.
“Look down at your feet,” Lin Feng said, pointing the tip of his wooden stave less than half a meter ahead of his boots.
All of them looked down simultaneously.
And in that singular heartbeat, Ling Bai and Li Peng felt their scalps go utterly numb!
Imprinted into the damp, black mud was a colossal, gaping beast claw print!
The footprint was more than three times the size of an adult man’s boot. Five razor-sharp talons had driven deep into the hardened clay, tearing through thick subterranean tree roots like wet paper. Even more terrifying, tiny bubbles were still rising and popping along the slick edges of the mud, and murky water was slowly trickling into the hollows of the gouged claw ruts.
A thin wisp of vapor, carrying the pungent stench of fresh blood and fetid slime, was still drifting up from the center of the print!
This track... had been pressed into the earth no more than three minutes ago!
The monstrous beast that left this gigantic footprint was, right this very second, lurking within arm’s reach of them!