Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 29
Lei Zhen Appears, The Dragon Pendant Harvests the Soul
Mountain winds howled through the jagged crags of Luyuan Valley, carrying the moldy chill of churned loam mingled with a nauseating, copper-thick stench of beast blood.
Before the yawning mouth of the cavern, what had once been a carpet of wild grass was now plowed into a blackened wasteland of scarred earth, smoldering cinders, and floating ash.
The colossal Dark Scarlet Wolf—a peak Servant-class magical beast—was thrashing in wild, frenzied torment like a rabid predator caught in a bear trap. Following two surgical, pinpoint strikes of Lin Feng’s Fire Burst, its left eye had ruptured into a bubbling, charred socket of blackened gore, while the nape of its neck billowed dense, greasy smoke that reeked of roasted flesh. Its severed spinal cord, thoroughly cooked by the searing heat, caused its hind legs to spasm violently, robbing the beast of its lethal coordination. Yet, the savage, blood-crazed nature inherent to the frontier’s demon wolves only flared with greater ferocity in the shadow of impending death!
It threw its head back and unleashed an ear-splitting howl, the solitary, venomous horn upon its brow vibrating with venomous energy. Its razor-sharp foreclaws ripped gouges through stone and soil, channeling every remaining drop of its dying vitality to lunge forward—dead set on dragging its tormentors into the grave beside it!
“Aaaagh! It’s coming! Help meeee!”
Li Peng’s courage shattered completely. He kicked his legs frantically in the muck, scrambling backward on his elbows and rear. His urine-soaked trousers clung cold and slimy against his thighs, his shrill, pathetic wails echoing mournfully across the ravine.
A few paces away, Ling Bai stood paralyzed where he was. The handsome, arrogant countenance that this high-born young master normally wore like armor was now as ghastly pale as a bloated corpse dredged from a river. His hands shook with such violent tremors that of the seven Ice Stars in his Sea of Consciousness, the four he had managed to align instantly snapped, scattering into faint, dying motes of frost. Staring at the gaping maw bristling with dagger-like fangs barely five meters away, Ling Bai’s knees turned to wet noodles. He nearly tumbled backward onto the stones.
Xiao Min bit down on her lower lip until blood welled, both hands clutching her sandalwood magic wand with white-knuckled desperation. Her chest heaved in frantic, ragged gasps, utterly helpless now that her mana reserves had run dry. Zhang Hu slumped nearby, sucking in desperate lungfuls of air, his body drenched in cold sweat after exhausting every shred of his strength to erect the earthen rampart that had blunted the wolf’s initial charge.
Amidst the scorched earth and drifting soot, only Lin Feng stood firm.
He remained planted at the forefront of the formation, his spine straight as an iron lance, his deep black eyes locked unwaveringly onto every desperate twitch of the dying predator. His right arm hung loosely at his side, muscles coiled with latent explosive power. Within the vast expanse of his Sea of Consciousness, the seven Lightning Stars stood linked and crackling, coiled like vipers primed to tear through the gloom if this demon wolf managed to drag itself one step closer.
Yet right at that razor’s edge of life and death—
“WHOOOOOSH——!!”
From the crest of the sheer cliff soaring over fifty meters above the cavern mouth, a deafening screech of torn air plummeted straight down!
It was no bestial roar, but the ferocious thunder of helicopter rotor blades slicing through dense fog! Loose gravel and withered pine branches along the cliff face were blasted away like shrapnel under the crushing downward pressure!
“A-Another monster is dropping from the sky?!” Li Peng clamped his hands over his ears, sobbing hysterically with his eyes squeezed shut as he braced for death.
Ling Bai looked up as well, his dilated pupils drowned in pure, unadulterated despair.
Yet what descended from the heavens bore no resemblance to the foul, reeking claws of a wild beast!
It was a spiraling tempest of brilliant emerald wind!
The cyclone roared with terrifying majesty, sweeping the lingering poisonous miasma of the ravine into a gargantuan vortex. Right at the eye of the swirling storm, an imposing, heavily built figure strode downward through empty air, treading upon the howling gales as if descending a flight of stone stairs!
The man wore a moss-green military greatcoat, faded and weathered by years of frontier frost and blood, its tattered hem snapping violently against the gale. His short hair was as unkempt as a crow’s nest, and his bristling beard looked as though it hadn’t met a razor in weeks. Yet his broad, hulking shoulders and boulder-like posture radiated an overwhelming, suffocating presence that pressed down like a mountain upon the chest of everyone present!
His eyes burned wide and piercing, gleaming like twin torches through the swirling haze.
“Useless little whelps, open your eyes wide and see what real magic looks like!”
The man’s roar boomed like thunder across an open sky, carrying a shockwave of raw concussive force that rattled the entire rock face of Luyuan Valley, leaving the students’ eardrums throbbing in agony!
While his body still hovered ten meters above the ground, his thick, sinewy right arm suddenly slashed downward! His five fingers snapped together like a steel blade, carving a lethal crescent arc through empty space!
“SHRRRIIIP——!!”
A sound like tearing silk, magnified a thousandfold, screeched through the ravine!
Dense, high-velocity Wind mana coalesced into a colossal, deep-azure blade of wind spanning over ten meters in length! This Wind Slash was unimaginably sharp, hurtling with such terrifying speed that the naked eye caught only a phantom arc of azure light bisecting the dust and fog!
The blade swept across.
No brutal impact. No resistance.
The gale blade sheared through the thick neck of the Dark Scarlet Wolf as cleanly and effortlessly as a hot razor through soft curd!
Every furious roar died in the beast’s throat.
The monstrous wolf head, crowned with its wicked, blackened horn, froze in midair.
A hairline seam of crimson silently etched itself around the circumference of its thick neck.
A heartbeat later—
“SPUUURT——!!”
A geyser of viscous, foul-smelling black blood erupted three meters into the air, like a subterranean spring bursting through cracked bedrock! The scalding, toxic blood splashed across the surrounding limestone boulders, hissing and sizzling as it belched clouds of acrid gray vapor!
The severed wolf head, weighing over a hundred kilograms, crashed onto the gravel slope. It bounced several times with heavy thuds before rolling to a stop right against the toe of Ling Bai’s leather boots!
The wolf’s severed head stared upward—one eye bulging in a vacant, lifeless glare, the other a charred, hollow socket oozing blackened fluids—retaining all the murderous hatred of its final moments, locked dead onto the young master’s face.
“AIIIEEE! MOTHER OF GOD!!”
Ling Bai violently shuddered, his teeth knocking together in rapid, uncontrollable clatters. Stripped of every ounce of aristocratic decorum, he scrambled backward on all fours like a frightened crab, his back slamming hard into a sharp crag with a gasp of pain. Beside him, Li Peng’s eyes rolled back; his head slumped sideways, and he passed out cold, sprawling limply in the filthy, drenched mud.
“THUD!”
The massive, headless torso of the Dark Scarlet Wolf collapsed heavily onto the earth. Its four thick paws twitched reflexively once, twice, and then stilled forever. A wide, steaming pool of rancid black blood pooled outward, painting the entire threshold before the cavern in a deep, glistening crimson.
“BOOM!”
The emerald cyclone shattered and dissolved into thin air.
The burly warrior landed squarely on both boots upon the gravel, leaving shallow spiderweb cracks in the bedrock and kicking up a cloud of grit and dust.
“SWOOSH! SWOOSH!”
Almost simultaneously, two figures clad in the crisp, dark-green tactical fatigues of the Cang Lei Ridge Border Garrison vaulted down from the cliffs, touching down with practiced agility to his left and right. Their hands firmly gripped defensive enchanted weaponry, their sharp, vigilant eyes methodically sweeping the perimeter with the disciplined lethality of frontline veterans.
They were two military platoon commanders!
And standing at their center, the rugged, bearded warrior whose officer epaulets bore the gleaming golden star of a Senior Colonel—his officer’s greatcoat billowing in the mountain wind—was none other than the legendary Commander-in-Chief of the Cang Lei Ridge Forward Garrison: Lei Zhen!
Lei Zhen did not spare a glance at Ling Bai shivering in the dirt, nor did he waste a second look at the unconscious Li Peng. His heavy combat boots, caked in dried mud and gravel, carried him forward with steady, deliberate strides toward the carcass of the Dark Scarlet Wolf.
He crouched beside the smoking, foul-smelling corpse, reaching out with a calloused, scar-battered hand to turn the beast’s severed neck to inspect it.
Yet the instant he saw the wounds, the Senior Colonel’s thick, unruly eyebrows knit tightly together.
Lei Zhen’s keen gaze skimmed past the mirror-smooth, pristine cut carved by his own Wind Slash, locking immediately onto two glaring, fatal points of trauma:
First was the left eye socket—a blackened, sunken crater bored straight into the skull. The surrounding muscle had split and charred to a crisp under horrific, concentrated heat, the eyeball itself melted away long before his blade had fallen.
Second was the nape of the neck—the critical junction between the cervical vertebrae and the central spinal cord that governed every muscle movement of the creature. The beast’s thick, wire-hard mane guarding this lethal point had been violently ripped apart, and the spinal cord within had been charred into brittle black charcoal!
The two platoon commanders stepped forward. Staring at the two brutal wounds, they exchanged glances of pure astonishment.
“Commander... these two wounds...” one platoon commander murmured, his tone hesitant. “They bear the distinct signature of the Basic Fire spell, ‘Fire Burst’!”
“It is indeed Fire Burst!” the second commander confirmed, nodding with undisguised marvel. “Yet how can that be? The concussive power of a standard Fire Burst shouldn’t even be able to breach the iron-hard hide of a Dark Scarlet Wolf. Whoever struck didn’t just compress the flames to detonate with surgical precision—they targeted the two most lethal weak points of the entire wolf species: one strike to blind the eye and extinguish its vision, and a second strike into the nape to shatter its motor control!”
Lei Zhen listened in silence. Having spent his life walking the razor’s edge of bloody battlefields, he had crossed blades with demonic beasts far more often than he had sat at banquet tables. A single glance was all he needed to reconstruct the life-or-death struggle that had just taken place:
This peak Servant-class beast had essentially been dismantled before his blade ever swung!
If not for those two vicious, surgical fire spells blinding one eye and paralyzing its locomotive nervous system—slashing its combat efficacy by ninety percent—the savage, explosive reflexes of a Dark Scarlet Wolf would have made it nearly impossible even for his airborne Wind Slash to decapitate it with such pristine ease!
The one who struck... not only possessed an intimate, anatomical grasp of the beast’s structural vulnerabilities, but also wielded a battlefield composure and icy daring that bordered on monstrous!
Lei Zhen slowly rose to his full height.
Turning his broad back, his fierce, fiery gaze swept across the clearing before the cavern.
By the cliffside, Xiao Min leaned against the cold stone, trembling shoulders hunched as she clutched her magic wand, gasping for breath in the aftermath of paralyzing terror.
Zhang Hu sat slumped on the gravel, hands coated with the dusty residue of Earth Magic, his chest heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows, though his face still held the stubborn, unyielding grit of a boy who had just crawled back from the brink of the abyss.
As for Ling Bai and Li Peng—one was a soulless wreck huddled against a rock, while the other lay face-down in a foul puddle of his own terror.
And then, the Commander-in-Chief’s gaze came to a halt upon the youth standing motionless in the center of the clearing.
Lin Feng!
A sixteen-year-old high school student dressed in a faded shirt slightly frayed at the shoulders. A solitary droplet of foul, black beast blood clung to his sharp cheekbone.
Yet Lin Feng was not panting. There was no fear in his eyes, nor was there the slightest trace of panic typical of someone who had just stared death in the face.
He merely raised his worn sleeve in silence, slowly and deliberately wiping away the speck of rancid blood from his cheek.
His expression was as serene as the unruffled surface of an ancient autumn well. Standing before a frontier commander who held absolute authority of life and death over this entire sector, the youth kept his spine straight as a javelin driven into bedrock, his breathing calm, rhythmic, and unshakable!
One second... Two seconds...
An uncanny stillness descended over the ravine of Luyuan Valley.
The two platoon commanders stared at Lin Feng, waves of shock churning within their chests. They had whipped countless batches of green recruits into shape over the years, but they had never witnessed a sixteen-year-old kid who, after single-handedly crippling a rampaging high-tier Servant beast, could maintain such chilling, ironclad composure!
Suddenly—
“BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!”
A boisterous, thunderous roar of laughter erupted from Lei Zhen’s broad chest!
The laughter, carried by profound, resonant mana, shook the entire canyon, sending showers of loose pebbles tumbling from the cliffs!
Lei Zhen brought a heavy hand down against his own muscular thigh with a resounding crack, striding straight up to Lin Feng. Raising a massive, calloused palm crisscrossed with old battle scars, he slammed it down onto Lin Feng’s shoulder with tremendous force!
“THWACK!”
The weighty blow caused Lin Feng’s shoulder to dip slightly, yet his feet remained anchored to the gravel like rooted ironwood, refusing to yield half an inch!
“Good! Truly outstanding!”
Lei Zhen roared with laughter, flashing a row of brilliant white teeth through his scruffy beard, his voice booming like rolling thunder:
“One strike to blind its eye and kill its line of sight, and one strike to fry its spinal cord and collapse its nervous system! Brat, your combat instincts are sharper than half the greenhorns in my garrison! Hell, if I threw a fresh squad of military academy graduates into this cave, nine out of ten would have pissed their pants like that pathetic waste over there before getting torn into dog meat!”
As he spoke, Lei Zhen jabbed a thick, callous-covered finger directly at Li Peng lying sprawled in his shameful stupor.
Those blunt, unvarnished praises struck Ling Bai’s chest like a series of heavy sledgehammers!
The young master huddled on the ground felt a violent shiver rack his entire frame. His face flushed a furious, burning crimson before draining into a sickly, humiliated pallor. Every word from Lei Zhen felt like a scorching slap landing square across the face of the prestigious Ling Clan!
Why?!
He was the blessed Ice prodigy, groomed with mountains of clan resources, guided step-by-step by elite private tutors since childhood! Yet when confronted with an actual demon wolf, he had been terrified to the point of breaking his Star connection, collapsing into a trembling, pathetic heap!
While Lin Feng... that dirt-poor pauper from the South Street slums, the son of a ragged carriage driver... had faced the beast alone, calmly using two Fire Bursts to dismantle a peak Servant beast, earning the highest praise from the garrison commander himself!
Jealousy and humiliation gnawed at Ling Bai’s innards like venomous vipers. His chest constricted with suffocating agony, his fingernails digging into the sharp gravel until his fingers bled.
Hearing Lei Zhen’s praise, Lin Feng merely curled the corner of his lips into a faint, modest smile. He deliberately kept his tone measured and respectful, concealing all traces of his latent Lightning Element:
“The Commander flatters me. If you hadn’t arrived in the nick of time, Sir, that beast’s final death throes would likely have left our squad severely injured. We only managed to hold our ground thanks to my teammates’ earth barriers and collective defense buying time.”
“Hahaha! And humble to boot!” Lei Zhen’s admiration grew the more he looked at him, nodding vigorously. “Courageous, calculating, and free of arrogance. My Cang Lei Ridge garrison needs stout-hearted seeds just like you!”
Yet, at the exact moment everyone’s attention was captivated by the exchange between the two...
Beneath the worn shirt against Lin Feng’s chest, the black jade Primordial Dragon Pendant abruptly began to vibrate with violent intensity!
“Hummmmm——!”
A strange, icy sensation suddenly radiated through his skin, seeping deep into Lin Feng’s muscles and meridians.
Lin Feng felt a covert shiver, but his exterior remained tranquil as still water, revealing not the slightest flaw.
He lowered his eyelids slightly, focusing his spiritual awareness inward toward his chest.
The black dragon pendant, which had always rested in quiet slumber, was now like a primeval sovereign beast stirring from a thousand-year slumber!
From the ancient carved grooves of the Dragon Pendant, an invisible, immensely potent gravitational pull silently rippled outward into the surrounding space. This suction force was completely detached from standard mana fluctuations—so completely hidden that even a seasoned, battle-hardened veteran like Lei Zhen standing right beside him remained entirely oblivious!
Within the field of vision granted to Lin Feng alone...
From the bloody, headless corpse of the Dark Scarlet Wolf lying several meters away, a hazy speck of luminescence began to float upward from the pool of black blood!
It was a sphere of pale azure light, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp drifting across a desolate graveyard. Within that luminous orb, the miniature phantom of a demon wolf was howling furiously, thrashing in futile desperation!
A Soul Remnant!
It was the Soul Remnant of the Dark Scarlet Wolf left behind upon its death!
According to the ancient magic texts Lin Feng had studied, after a magical beast perished, its soul would rapidly dissipate into nothingness within a few fleeting seconds. Only mages carrying specialized, exorbitant Soul Vessels worth millions of magic coins could capture and preserve such remnants.
Yet right now, before the Primordial Dragon Pendant, that soul remnant was like a dry autumn leaf caught in a gale!
“SWOOSH——!!”
Under the absolute, overwhelming gravitational pull of the Dragon Pendant, the pale azure Soul Remnant was violently yanked backward the instant it lifted from the ground!
It transformed into a slender silken thread of light, tearing through the intervening space to dart straight toward Lin Feng’s chest!
“SLIP!”
The Soul Remnant plunged through the fabric of his shirt, vanishing without a trace directly into the gaping jaws of the black dragon carved upon the pendant’s face!
“CHIIIME——!!”
A crisp, ethereal resonance rang out in the deepest depths of Lin Feng’s Sea of Consciousness!
The Primordial Dragon Pendant gave a faint, contented tremor. The icy chill instantly receded, transforming into a soothing, gentle stream of warm energy that flowed back into Lin Feng’s Starlight Sea. He could clearly perceive, within the abyssal interior domain of the Dragon Pendant, a pale azure mote of light hovering and revolving in place, peaceful and thoroughly subjugated like a tiny lantern!
The first Servant-class Soul Remnant!
Once ten Servant-class Soul Remnants were gathered, the Dragon Pendant would autonomously refine them into a complete Servant-class Soul Essence!
A priceless treasure capable of reinforcing a magic Star to Tier 4, multiplying a spell’s destructive yield several times over and imbuing it with a terrifying suppressive aura!
Lin Feng’s palms warmed slightly. A covert gleam of excitement flashed in his eyes as his fingers curled slightly at his side. To spoiled young masters like Ling Bai, this wilderness practical assessment was a waking nightmare. But to him, this was the dawn of his path of slaughter, harvesting, and ascending power!
At that moment, Lei Zhen turned and stepped toward the mouth of the cavern.
Swinging his massive hand, Wind mana enveloped his five iron-like fingers as he drove them straight into the rock wall beside the entrance.
“Crack... CRUMBLE!”
A solid slab of limestone was cleanly sheared off by his terrifying brute force. Reaching deep into the freshly exposed crevice, Lei Zhen withdrew a crystalline mineral block blazing with radiant azure luminescence!
The mineral chunk was the size of an army helmet, its surface as pristine and translucent as masterwork crystal. It radiated waves of pure, refreshing mana, instantly dispersing a great deal of the rancid coppery reek hanging over the cave mouth.
Crystal Magic Ore!
The ultimate objective of this entire wilderness trial!
Cradling the heavy magic ore, Lei Zhen strode back into the clearing.
His tiger-like eyes swept across each student’s face:
Ling Bai remained slumped on the ground, his eyes glazed with bitter jealousy and defeat;
Li Peng lay unconscious, his face ashen;
Xiao Min and Zhang Hu let out long sighs of relief, their eyes brimming with deep reverence toward their impoverished classmate.
Lei Zhen came to a halt directly before Lin Feng.
Before the watchful eyes of the two platoon commanders and the bloodshot, envious glare of Ling Bai, the Senior Colonel raised both hands and placed the massive chunk of Crystal Magic Ore directly into Lin Feng’s arms!
“It’s heavy, so hold on tight!” Lei Zhen grinned broadly. “For this trial, the flawless A+ score belongs to your squad! And this war trophy was earned by your own sheer ability!”
Lin Feng extended both arms to receive the magic ore. Its substantial weight and the cool, untainted flow of pure mana seeped into his palms, sinking deep into his flesh.
Holding his head high, he looked straight into the eyes of the battle-hardened commander and declared in a clear, resounding voice:
“Thank you, Commander-in-Chief!”
Lei Zhen laughed with unbridled gusto, spinning around as his military greatcoat snapped fiercely in the mountain wind.
Drawing a flare gun from his hip, he aimed straight toward the overcast, leaden sky of Luyuan Valley and pulled the trigger!
“BANG——!!”
A brilliant scarlet burst of magical pyrotechnics erupted against the clouds, illuminating the entire desolate canyon—signaling that the trial mission had been flawlessly concluded!
Lei Zhen threw his head back toward the sky, his resonant voice infused with surging mana booming across the mountains:
“The trial has ended! All units, withdraw!”
The thunderous command echoed through every ravine and crag, rebounding off sheer cliffs before rolling far toward the forward base of Cang Lei Ridge.
Holding the Crystal Magic Ore, Lin Feng felt the hidden pendant against his chest quietly vibrating. He looked back at the colossal corpse of the demon wolf slowly growing cold, then shifted his gaze toward the misty, snow-capped peaks in the far distance.
A vast world of magic—soaked in blood, yet overflowing with boundless temptation and supreme fortune... had now truly swung wide its gates before him!