Volume 4: Super-Tier Awakening & The Ancient Capital Calamity
Chapter 327
Night Battle Outside the Walls: Scouting the Dead Land
Midnight in the Ancient Capital; a desolate, soundless drizzle of blood-tinted rain fell unceasingly. The droplets carried the pungent, metallic stench of ancient iron and stagnant mire, pattering softly against moss-grown ancient tiles before trickling down wall crevices into sluggish streams of deep crimson. Crimson fog intertwined with ink-thick darkness, shrouding the vast plains outside the city walls and turning the expanse into a literal death flat. Not a single lamp flickered, not a single insect chirped—only the sound of the wind whistling through rock fissures like the grievances of millions of wandering souls trapped beneath the frozen earth.
At the secret underground gate on the western side of the ancient city wall—reinforced on all sides by tens of thousands of massive megaliths carved with high-level defensive magical runes—a low, grinding clatter echoed. The stone gate, over three meters thick and weighing dozens of tons, slowly parted just wide enough for a human figure to squeeze through.
Outside the gate, an elite vanguard stood ready. Lin Feng led the front, his eyes sweeping swiftly across the dense fog ahead, feeling the tangible, invisible pressure from the dead land pressing heavily down upon every fiber of his being. Behind him, Mu Ningxue wore snow-silver battle robes, her hand grasping a thin ice sword fragile as cicada wings yet radiating a bone-chilling, razor-sharp frost. Tang Yue, her fiery red hair bound neatly, possessed sharp, scythe-like eyes as she circulated dark magic throughout her entire body. Xie Zhaoyuan clutched the Magic Energy Positioning Compass tightly to his chest, his expression visibly tense. Bringing up the rear was Zhang Hu, his burly, tower-like physique gripping a massive battle-axe carved with defensive array formations.
“Attention everyone. The terrain outside the city wall is now completely corrupted by malevolent Qi. Maintain formation; strictly do not initiate large-scale magic without orders,” Lin Feng transmitted mentally, his voice calm yet carrying absolute authority.
“Understood!” came the crisp, unified reply.
The squad immediately adopted a stealthy, shadow-weaving tactic. Tang Yue waved her hand gently, and a hazy curtain of dark mist drifted from her body, blending seamlessly with the natural crimson fog to envelop the entire team within the “Shadow Night Domain.” Under the protection of the dark domain, the figures and breaths of the five individuals were entirely swallowed; even the spiritual sense of nearby commander-tier demonic beasts would find them difficult to detect.
They stepped past the protective perimeter of the city wall’s grand array, setting foot upon the desolate, barren plains.
Beneath their feet, the earth was no longer ordinary soil, but a layer of thick, viscous blood-mud that emitted the noxious stench of long-decaying corpses. Every few paces, horrifying sights greeted the eyes: at one moment, a pale white skeletal arm jutted upward from the ground as if trying to claw at a passerby’s ankles; at another, a half-mummified torso with hollow eye sockets and bared canine teeth grinned eerily in the dark. These entities and remains were once soldiers or civilians who had fallen in cataclysmic battles a millennium ago, now stimulated by the dense resentment of the land to mutate into concealed walking corpses.
Xie Zhaoyuan lowered his head to look at the Magic Energy Positioning Compass in his hand. The compass needle, forged from refined iron, spun frantically while the magical runes etched across the dial flickered with a gloomy cyan light, continuously pointing toward the violent, surging undercurrents of malevolent Qi flowing toward the southwest—the epicenter of the desolate graveyard.
“To the southwest, the density of malevolent Qi is increasing exponentially. It looks like a large-scale corpse-qi breeding ground is forming beneath the earth,” Xie Zhaoyuan reported in a low voice, his fingers trembling slightly as they touched the compass’s ice-cold metal casing.
The surrounding atmosphere was terrifyingly silent. This silence was not peaceful; it was the stillness before a tempest. Aside from the pattering of bloody raindrops on dry leaves and the sickening squelch of combat boots treading through blood-mud, bizarre sounds echoed in their ears: mournful wails, suppressed weeping, and bone-chilling whispers originating from millions of restless souls slumbering deep beneath the earth.
Lin Feng narrowed his eyes, his formidable spiritual power radiating outward like an invisible net that swept clean every minute detail within a radius of one nautical mile. He realized the atmosphere here was warped; the space teemed with minute particles of resentment clinging tightly to their magical armor, gradually eroding their defensive energy.
“No time to dawdle. Move,” Lin Feng signaled, his steps light yet exceptionally decisive as he glided through the fog.
Mu Ningxue followed closely behind with graceful fluidity. She produced not the slightest sound; each passing footstep left behind a thin layer of frost that instantly melted away, leaving no trace behind. Her ice-origin abilities in this chilling, gloomy environment were not hindered in the slightest—on the contrary, the resonance between her icy aura and the natural deathly Qi made her reaction speed manifold faster.
Venturing five nautical miles deep into the forbidden zone of the desolate graveyard, the scenery ahead grew even more desolate and bizarre. The terrain began to feature colossal sinkholes tens of meters wide and bottomless. From the depths of those sinkholes, thick pillars of black smoke carrying the rotting stench of countless corpses billowed upward, churning midway through the air and obscuring the rare, dim moonlight overhead.
Gnarled, withered trees with scabrous, blood-crusted black bark grew haphazardly around the sinkhole rims, resembling skeletal frames raising their hands in desperate plea from hell. Upon their barren branches hung not a single leaf, but clusters of glowing emerald-green orbs that emitted chirping sounds resembling the laughter of newborns.
“Careful! Those are Soul-Devouring Fruits, demonic flora specialized in draining the life force of passing enemies to nourish dead-spirit seeds,” Tang Yue halted abruptly, raising her hand to bar Zhang Hu just as he was about to step into the shadow cast by a withered tree.
Zhang Hu broke out in a cold sweat, hurriedly retracting his foot. Right where he had intended to step, a tree root as sharp as a spear thrust violently upward from the mud, plunging deep into the earth to create a gaping pit. Had he been a fraction of a second slower, his legs surely would have been pierced through like a sieve.
“Damn it, this place is truly a nest of ghosts,” Zhang Hu spat, tightening his grip on the battle-axe handle as a layer of deep yellow earth-light surged across his armor for rock-solid defense.
Lin Feng gestured for the team to halt and conceal themselves behind a massive boulder half-buried in the earth. He raised his gaze ahead, where the sole path leading deep into the valley was blocked by a towering, sheer precipice. At the summit of that cliff, countless withered branches intertwined to form a deeply ominous natural archway.
Suddenly, the Magic Energy Compass in Xie Zhaoyuan’s hand emitted a frantic, ear-piercing beep! The compass needle ceased spinning, instead vibrating violently as though about to shatter into fragments.
“Bad news! Malevolent Qi is erupting! Something terrifying is heading straight for our position!” Xie Zhaoyuan’s expression shifted drastically as he warned aloud through their mental link.
Before his voice faded, from atop the withered branches crowning the cliff summit, hundreds of crimson eyes resembling glowing coals snapped open simultaneously!
The blazing red light tore through the dense fog, casting down upon Lin Feng’s squad like hundreds of lethal searchlights. These were no human gazes, nor those of ordinary demonic beasts; they were the eyes of entities returning from the realm of death fueled by boundless grievances—cold, ruthless, and overflowing with a ravenous hunger to tear living flesh to shreds.
Rustle, rustle, rustle...
The frantic flapping of wings tore through the quiet expanse. Hundreds of Bone-Corpse Night Vultures—warrior-tier demons that subsisted on gnawing corpses and draining the vital blood of the living—swooped down from the cliff like a torrential black rain, baring sharp fangs dripping with viscous saliva as they lunged straight toward the five individuals with terrifying speed!
The night outside the Ancient Capital instantly transformed into a blood-soaked battlefield. The pressure exerted by the surging tide of demonic beasts froze the air solid.
Lin Feng drew a deep breath, the corners of his mouth curving upward into an ice-cold, murderous smile. He stepped past the massive boulder, opening his right palm as a dazzling golden flame carrying destructive might blazed fiercely in his hand, illuminating the gloomy sky.
“Right on time. I’ve been wanting to see what tricks these hellish spawn have up their sleeves!” Lin Feng’s chilling voice rang out amidst the howling wind, opening the curtain on the brutal battle outside the Ancient Capital.