Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 27
Lin Feng Steps Forward
A freezing gale whistled through the jagged fissures of the granite vault, carrying the suffocating, damp chill of Luyuan Valley. Yet within the cramped confines of the cavern, the only odor that truly suffocated the air was the nauseating, metallic reek of a man-eating predator.
Xiao Min sprawled across the jagged stone floor.
Her back slammed hard against a razor-sharp spur of rock. A jolt of agonizing pain shot straight to the crown of her head, sending violent tremors rippling through her entire frame. Her slender fingers clawed frantically at the jagged gravel, her fingertips tearing and bleeding as she tried in vain to scramble backward. But the frigid wall of solid stone behind her had completely severed every avenue of retreat.
Before her loomed the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf, standing colossal as an engine of black iron.
The demonic beast’s frame stretched over four meters from snout to tail. Coarse, ash-gray bristles stood rigid along its spine like clusters of iron quills. Curved, wicked fangs jutted outward from its blackened jowls, dripping thick, foul saliva that sizzled as it splattered against the stone, venting thin curls of caustic white steam. Yet the most terrifying sight of all—the detail that plunged anyone who laid eyes upon it into bottomless despair—was the spiraling horn thrusting nearly half a meter from the dead center of its skull. Pitch-black and etched with sickly gray striations, its tapered tip gleamed like a war pike fresh from a forge of virulent poison.
A low, guttural growl vibrated in the beast’s throat, a resonant rumble that squeezed the breath from Xiao Min’s lungs and caused her heart to stutter. Its blood-red eyes locked onto the human girl trembling helplessly in the dirt. Lowering its forelegs, the rock-hard slabs of muscle across its massive shoulders bunched tight.
Then, it lunged!
A foul, tempestuous gust whipped dust and grit through the cavern! The lethal horn ripped through the air with a bone-chilling shriek, spearing directly toward Xiao Min’s chest!
Less than three paces remained.
Xiao Min’s eyes snapped wide, her pupils constricting to needlepoints. Absolute terror choked her throat, robbing her of even the strength to cry out. The instinct of an apprentice mage urged her to throw out her hand, desperate to ignite her Fire Star Path to mount a defense. Yet her fingers shook so violently that the scarlet Star Cores within her mental cosmos shattered into dying embers the instant they brushed together.
She had lost all control over her magic!
Roughly fifteen paces away, huddled in a sheltered recess against the cavern wall, Ling Bai and Li Peng pressed their backs flat against the rock. Ling Bai’s face was drained of every drop of blood, his teeth chattering in a frantic tattoo like wooden temple blocks. The muddy quagmire coated the hem of his expensive white blazer, and his trouser legs were soaked through with cold sweat. His trembling hand reached outward, trying desperately to summon the faint traces of frost left over from his earlier, pathetic failure of an Ice spell—yet that meager chill could not have ruffled a single bristle of the beast’s pelt.
“Dead... Xiao Min is dead for sure...” Li Peng slumped on the ground, clutching his head in both hands, his voice warped with sheer hysteria. “That monster is a high-tier Servant beast... We’re finished! We’re dead meat!”
Not a single soul dared to step forward. Not one of them possessed the courage to confront the murderous horn of an apex predator!
Death arrived in the span of a heartbeat. The razor-sharp tip of the horn hovered a mere hand-span from the fabric of Xiao Min’s uniform. The cutting wake of its kinetic rush sliced a clean tear across her collar, carving a shallow red welt across her skin.
Xiao Min bit down on her lip, giving up all hope as she squeezed her eyes shut. Tears of utter helplessness spilled over her lashes.
At that exact fraction of a second, just as the horn of the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf was about to impale Xiao Min’s heart—
CRACK——!!
A dry, thunderous snap detonated violently from the cavern flank, sharp as a lightning bolt splitting granite!
A half-meter-thick ledge of stone jutting from the cliff wall shattered into a thousand shards under a terrifying, explosive kick! Pulverized rock and gravel blasted outward in all directions!
A figure blurred through the air like a gale-splitting arrow! Launching off the shattered crag, Lin Feng hurled his entire body between the charging monstrosity and Xiao Min!
BOOM!
Worn canvas shoes slammed hard against the ground, gouging two deep furrows into the gravel bed. The violent landing kicked up billows of dust, yet the youth’s spine remained straight as a bronze spear driven deep into the bedrock.
It was Lin Feng!
His faded school uniform shirt whipped wildly against the backdraft. The angular planes of his face emerged under the faint, phosphorescent glow of the cavern—cold, calm, completely devoid of panic.
His deep black eyes clearly mirrored the reflection of that spiraling, lethal horn plunging directly toward his chest!
To anyone else, the speed of the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf was blinding as a lightning flash. But in Lin Feng’s perception, every twitch of the beast’s muscle, every tilt of its massive shoulders, and the precise vector of its charging horn were locked down to the exact millimeter.
Life and death hung by a single hair.
Deep within his spiritual consciousness, the Fire Star Dust that had been quietly churning suddenly erupted!
Seven incandescent crimson Star Cores heard their master’s call, immediately chiming with pristine, bell-like clarity. Not a single one wavered. Not a single one trembled. Steeled by an unyielding will forged through tens of thousands of silent, grueling drills, each Star Core streaked into its designated orbital coordinate!
The first star locked into place!
The second and third shrieked across the mental cosmos!
The fourth, fifth, sixth... and the seventh!
Connected!
A brilliant arc of blazing scarlet traced a flawless Star Path across his consciousness! From the instant Lin Feng shattered the rock ledge to the complete alignment of his Star Path, the entire sequence took a mere 0.8 seconds!
A vibrant, crimson fire flared atop Lin Feng’s right hand in under 0.8 seconds!
“Fire Burst: Crimson Sparks!”
Lin Feng’s crisp, resolute shout cut clean through the guttural roar of the charging beast.
His right hand snapped upward, five fingers spreading wide as they thrust forward!
The rich crimson flame erupted with blinding brilliance, instantly banishing every shadow clinging to the cavern walls. A violent fireball spun furiously within his palm, churning with savage thermal energy that superheated the surrounding air into a shrieking gale!
The muscles along his right arm coiled tight beneath his worn sleeve. His fingers snapped into a fist, then whipped forward in a clean, ruthless arc!
The raging fireball whirled out of his palm, hurtling with pinpoint precision straight toward the demon wolf’s left eye!
The beast’s most lethal vulnerability—bare flesh entirely unprotected by bone armor or armored hide!
The fireball ripped through the air, screaming like a banshee between the twin stone walls!
The distance was too short! The speed was too blinding!
No matter how ferocious the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf was, it never could have anticipated that this newly arrived human prey could unleash such a devastating strike in the blink of an eye. All it caught was the terrifying, instantaneous magnification of a blinding scarlet orb filling its vision.
And then—
KABOOM!!
The flame detonated directly against its eye socket!
An earth-shattering explosion assaulted everyone’s eardrums! The cavern ceiling shuddered violently, shaking loose a hailstorm of grit and splintered stone. The fireball superheated the air to scorching temperatures, discharging the full concussive fury of the Fire element directly inside the beast’s orbital cavity!
The shockwave tore the beast’s thick eyelid to shreds. Beneath temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees, its blood-red eyeball boiled instantly before bursting into a cloud of vaporized gore!
Tongues of dark crimson fire bored deep into its cranial cavity, incinerating optic nerves and charring the entire left side of its face into blackened, smoking slag!
The sizzle of scorched flesh rose alongside an agonizing howl that shook the very cavern!
The sickening stench of burnt meat and sizzling fat washed over the students, choking their airways until every breath tasted of ash.
AWOOOOOO——!!
The Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf shrieked in wretched agony, its massive head jerking violently backward. The direct strike to its critical weakness instantly shattered the momentum of its charge. Four massive, bristle-coated limbs stumbled across the stone, its claws raking desperate, smoking gouges into the floor.
Reeling backward four paces, black blood gushed like an open fountain from the incinerated eye socket!
Thick, tar-like blood mingled with scorched ocular fluid and smoldering ash, pattering steadily against the floor and causing the damp moss to bubble and smoke.
Thrashing its bloodied head, its remaining right eye burned crimson with ruptured vessels as it drew ragged, heavy breaths.
Xiao Min had cheated death by a hair’s breadth.
The venomous horn had vanished from her sight. In its place lingered a swirling heatwave left in the wake of the magical detonation, brushing gently against her tear-streaked, sweat-drenched cheeks with the warm embers of Fire magic.
Still trembling from the brush with death, Xiao Min looked up at the unyielding silhouette standing firmly before her, her heart hammering against her ribs in wild shock.
That back was not overly burly, yet it appeared impossibly broad and unshakeable. His spine stood straight as an ancient cliffside pine rooted atop an abyss, refusing to yield even an inch beneath the crushing pressure of a high-tier Servant-class beast. His arms hung naturally at his sides, tiny sparks of scarlet flame still drifting from the spaces between his fingers before fading into smoke.
A draft sweeping in from the cavern mouth tugged at the hem of the youth’s faded shirt.
He stood there alone, shouldering the entirety of the beast’s murderous aura, transforming his body into an impenetrable bastion that cast the shadow of death far away from her.
Xiao Min’s chest heaved violently, her pulse pounding so hard it felt ready to tear through her throat. It was not terror, but an unprecedented shock that shook her soul. A warm, surging current welled from the depths of her chest, coursing through every trembling muscle in her body.
He had saved her!
At her darkest, most hopeless moment—when she had resigned herself to being impaled, when the self-proclaimed noble prodigies like Ling Bai could only curl into balls and shiver—it was this youth from the impoverished slums of South Street who had stepped into the breach, standing tall to deliver a thunderous strike that repelled the monster!
In the corner of the cavern, Ling Bai stared wide-eyed, his eyeballs bulging as if they might pop from their sockets. His fingers dug frantically into the rock face, his fingernails snapping and bleeding against the rough stone without him registering the pain:
“N-No... That’s impossible...”
A strangled gasp escaped Ling Bai’s throat, warping into a suffocated whimper:
“Zero-point-eight seconds... A cast time under a single second?! How could he... How could a destitute trash like him achieve this level of mastery over the Fire Star Path?!”
He was the celebrated talent of the Ling Clan’s branch bloodline! He had bathed in costly medicinal draughts and trained under private tutors since childhood, yet even under ideal, tranquil conditions in a school training chamber, it took him nearly three full seconds to manifest a single streak of Ice Frost! Yet this Lin Feng, staring down a demonic wolf hurtling toward him at blinding speed, had calmly traced his Star Path in the blink of an eye?!
Shock, horror, and burning humiliation surged through Ling Bai like a tidal wave, squeezing the breath from his chest.
Beside him, Li Peng’s jaw hung slack. He stared blankly at Lin Feng’s back, his knees turning to jelly until he couldn’t even prop himself up. That single Fire Burst had not only incinerated the monster’s eye, but it had also ground every shred of their aristocratic arrogance into powdery ash!
Yet the nightmare was far from over!
ROAAAAAR——!!!!
After the initial shock of the devastating counterstrike, the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf succumbed entirely to berserk fury!
The blinding pain tearing through its cranial nerves awakened the darkest, most bloodthirsty predatory instincts in its marrow!
Maddened by the loss of its eye, the dark horn atop its brow suddenly billowed with a pitch-black, virulent mist!
The toxic vapor coiled like writhing serpents, spreading rapidly to engulf the tapered horn and the blood-soaked left half of its face. Wherever drops of the black mist splattered onto the ground, the granite hissed violently, dissolving into pitted craters that vented plumes of acrid, gray death-mist!
The horn upon its head vibrated intensely, emitting a high-pitched drone like ten thousand venomous hornets beating their wings in unison!
“Corrosive Horn Mist! Its horn is coated with life-withering venom! Run!” Recognizing the lethal herald of a demonic beast activating its innate talent for a suicide charge, Ling Bai shrieked in absolute terror.
With a deafening bellow, every cord of muscle across the wolf’s frame surged with explosive force as it hurled itself directly at Lin Feng at sonic speed!
Four razor claws kicked off the granite bedrock! The stone floor split open into deep chasms, sending a hail of rock shards whistling through the air!
The colossal, one-ton bulk of the Blood-Eyed Frenzy Wolf streaked forward, turning into a black blur tearing through the subterranean gloom. Trailing a churning storm of toxic mist, it lunged with lethal momentum, aiming its poisoned horn directly for Lin Feng’s heart!
Over ten meters vanished in less than half a breath!
A tempest of caustic wind and foul poison slammed squarely into Lin Feng’s face, whipping his hair violently backward and plastering his uniform tight against his skin!
The black scythe of the Grim Reaper had descended directly above his head!