Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 57
Double Flame Eruption
“Do you truly believe... that this pathetic turtle shell and a few brittle chains of ice are enough to hold me?”
The words slipping from Lin Feng’s lips were by no means loud, yet they carried a deep, resonant rumble, each syllable driving with razor precision into the freezing mist that veiled the dueling ring. Amidst the howling gale and the deafening clamor of thousands packed into the amphitheater, his voice was eerie in its utter tranquility—like a tempered blade cleanly slicing through the suffocating tension.
Ten paces away, Han Yi’s head was thrown back in raucous laughter, a cruel sneer of condescension carved across his features. Beneath his boots, the pale cerulean magical glyphs of his 3rd Level Novice-tier Ice spell, Frost Bind: Ice Lock, continued to pulse, incessantly exuding waves of frigid mist. Thick, jade-tinted chains of ice—broad as a child’s wrist—meandered sinuously across the granite stage. They coiled tightly around Lin Feng’s calves, their bristling lattices of needle-sharp frost barbs digging in, madly pumping bone-chilling frost into every muscle fiber.
“Hahaha! Lin Feng, even now you’re still posturing like a tough guy?!”
Han Yi raised his silver-gauntleted hand and rapped his knuckles hard against his own chest. There, the Ice Scale Magic Armor personally bestowed upon him by Patriarch Ling Zhuofeng shimmered with an impenetrable, deep-azure radiance, its overlapping scales of enchanted ice locked flush against one another to forge a seamless bulwark of defense.
“Do you have any idea how much this suit of Magic Armor costs? Millions of magic dollars! A laborer like your father could haul ore until his bones turned to dust and still never afford a single corner of its trim! As for your flea-bitten Novice magic, even if I stood still and let you wail on me, you wouldn’t scratch the outer finish! My Frost Bind has your legs locked dead in place! Drop to your knees, kowtow, and beg the Ling Clan for mercy! If you do, maybe I’ll show some pity and spare your pathetic life!”
Han Yi’s arrogant bellow boomed across all four quadrants of the grandstands.
Down in the section reserved for students of Feng Lan School, the wealthy scions allied with the Ling Clan erupted in immediate chorus, their mocking jeers and laughter ringing out without pause.
“Haha! Look at that country bumpkin—probably never seen a piece of Magic Equipment in his entire miserable life!” Li Peng slapped his thigh, convulsing with gloating laughter. “Wrapped up tight in Frost Bind like that, he’s finished! The frostbite sinks straight into your marrow within ten seconds, causing total paralysis. That bastard Lin is crippled for good!”
Sitting in the front row of the clan’s private booth, Ling Bai’s lips curled into a smirk of vindictive satisfaction. He lightly swirled the porcelain teacup between his fingers, coldly gazing down at the figure entombed in frost. “Nothing more than an insignificant pawn who doesn’t know his place beneath the heavens. The moment he dared to defy our Ling Clan, his fate was sealed two years ago.”
Over in another corner, Homeroom Teacher Kang Mu’s face turned an ashen gray, his ten fingers gripping the iron railing before him so tightly that his knuckles went white. Zhang Hu could hold back no longer; cupping both hands around his mouth, the hefty youth roared at the top of his lungs: “Brother Feng! Watch your feet! Break the ice, quickly!”
Yet amidst the thousands of gazes converging on him—steeped in pity, gloating malice, and frantic dread—Lin Feng remained motionless.
He lowered his eyelids slightly, glancing down at the icy chains constricting his trousers. The biting cold gnawed at flesh and bone, yet strangely enough, an invisible warmth emanated from behind the lapel of his chest. Pressed snugly against his bare skin, the Primordial Dragon Pendant hummed with a gentle vibration. Its vast, ancient draconic breath effortlessly neutralized every trace of invasive, toxic frostbite, preserving the absolute, peak flexibility of his legs.
Lin Feng slowly lifted his gaze, meeting Han Yi’s triumphantly warped sneer head-on.
To deal with a bootlicking lapdog riding high on borrowed prestige—a lackey who donned armor gifted by his master and suddenly fancied himself a superior being... did he truly need to reveal his Lightning Element?
Not in the slightest!
His 2nd Level Novice Lightning spell, Lightning Strike, infused with eerie dark-violet arcs and the destructive majesty of ancient dragon prestige, was his ultimate trump card—reserved for lethal wilderness incursions and the truly perilous factions lurking in the shadows. To brandish it merely to crush a worm like Han Yi would be like slaughtering a chicken with a butcher’s cleaver meant for oxen!
Furthermore, what did the Ling Clan pride itself on the most? They reveled in their overbearing authority, their bottomless wealth, and the superior Magic Equipment they used to trample impoverished mages underfoot. They looked down on his common Fire Element, arrogantly assuming that a destitute flame could never shake the dominion of the aristocracy.
In that case, Lin Feng would wield the very flame they despised so deeply. Tempered in the reeking blood and burning ashes of hundreds of ferocious monsters slain in subterranean sewers and wilderness frontiers, his fire would incinerate every shred of their laughable arrogance!
“Han Yi,” Lin Feng murmured softly, his tone icy as though echoing from the ninth circle of the underworld. “You think hiding behind that turtle shell can save your life? Let me show you what true power looks like!”
Wuuuuumph——!!
The instant the words left his mouth, a low, ominous thrum abruptly vibrated from the empty air!
In the span of a single heartbeat, the space enveloping Lin Feng’s body violently convulsed. The atmosphere warped and buckled under a staggering surge of thermal fury, refracting the morning sunlight into shimmering, undulating mirages like the surface of a boiling cauldron!
The milky-white tendrils of frost from Frost Bind, creeping within half a foot of his boots, suddenly froze dead in their tracks. A barrage of fierce, violent hisses erupted as the frost instantly vaporized into plumes of billowing white steam!
The smug grin on Han Yi’s face abruptly froze. His eyes widened in shock as an invisible, suffocating pressure slammed down upon his chest, turning his breath raspy, parched, and terrifyingly tight.
“Wh-What the hell is this?!”
Inside Lin Feng’s Sea of Consciousness, the spectacle was magnificent beyond measure!
His Fire Stardust churned like an ocean of molten magma stirred from a thousand-year slumber. At the heart of that blazing nebula, the seven Fire Stars bore none of the standard crimson hue common to ordinary Novice-tier mages.
Every single star was plump, crystalline, and condensed like a flawless, top-grade ruby, encircled by an aureole of incandescent, sovereign golden light! This was the unmistakable hallmark of Fourth-Tier Reinforced Stars—the ultimate culmination of devouring and refining top-tier monster Soul Essences through the primordial furnace of the Primordial Dragon Pendant!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
With but a flicker of Lin Feng’s divine will—
The seven gold-rimmed Stars howled with resonant majesty, tearing through the void of his mental expanse with mind-boggling velocity! There was no trace of hesitation, none of the trembling instability or clumsy stutter that plagued normal students. Tempered in the bloody crucible of hundreds of life-or-death battles in the wilderness, Lin Feng’s Star Path alignment had long reached the realm of flawless, instinctual perfection!
The first star, the second, the third... all the way to the seventh!
A mere 0.4 seconds!
A speed capable of making any master archmage choke on their breath and gawk in disbelief! A dazzling, radiant golden Star Path blazed across his mental sky like a river of molten gold, detonating into blinding brilliance!
“Fire Spark: Bursting Flames——Double Flame Eruption!!”
Lin Feng’s low roar detonated across the arena like a sudden thunderclap cleaving through a sweltering summer sky!
BOOM——————!!
The earth trembled violently!
A cataclysmic detonation erupted from Lin Feng’s right palm, battering the eardrums of all five thousand spectators packed into the stands!
This was absolutely not the dim, fist-sized crimson fireball typical of 1st Level Novice fire magic! Nor was it merely the raging blaze of 2nd or 3rd Level Bursting Flames!
From beneath Lin Feng’s boots and the center of his palm, a colossal pillar of deep, darkened crimson flame surged skyward! That ferocious inferno churned into a vortex of fire over two meters across, roaring straight into the heavens to a height exceeding five meters. It burned thick and dark as coagulated blood, yet the outer edges of every leaping tongue of fire were limned with a blinding, incandescent golden radiance!
From afar, that pillar of fire looked like nothing less than a rampant fire dragon bursting through the chains of the netherworld, baring fangs and brandishing claws as it descended upon the mortal realm!
Sssssssss——phshhh!
A rapid, ear-splitting barrage of explosive vaporization tore through the air!
The dense, menacing ice chains of Frost Bind: Ice Lock, which had struck dread into the hearts of so many, didn’t even have time to melt into water upon contacting that dark-crimson heat! Under thermal radiation surpassing thousands of degrees Celsius, they were reduced to nothingness—flash-vaporizing into billowing clouds of white mist that dissolved into thin air in under half a second!
Nor did the destruction cease there. The overbearing pressure of the gold-rimmed crimson fire swept across the granite arena floor. The thick granite slabs paving the stage groaned under violent, spiderwebbing fractures, their stone surfaces baked incandescent before liquefying into churning streaks of bubbling magma that spewed pungent black smoke!
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble——!
A savage thermal shockwave, accompanied by suffocating gale-force winds, exploded outward like an invisible tempest of fire sweeping across all eight directions!
Scorching waves of heat—like the fiery breath of a colossal blast furnace—blasted directly toward the surrounding spectator stands. The layer of frost and moisture clinging to the arena’s iron balustrades dissolved into boiling droplets in an instant, immediately flashing into thick clouds of steam.
All five thousand spectators seated in the stands felt a blistering, scorching blast buffet their faces at the exact same moment. Countless people shrieked in horror. Driven by sheer survival instinct, they recoiled backward, raising their sleeves to shield their faces. Soaked in cold sweat, they felt as if they had been abruptly flung into the center of a desert furnace at high noon!
“It’s burning! Heavens, what kind of temperature is this?!”
“Fire... dark-crimson fire?! What kind of monstrous Fire magic is that?!”
Frantic cries of terror erupted across the amphitheater.
Up in the honorary VIP viewing box—where the paramount power brokers of Bo’an City were gathered—
Ling Zhuofeng had been lounging leisurely just a second earlier, an arrogant smirk gracing his lips, his hand lifting a cup of exquisite White Jade Spring tea to take a sip and savor his foster son’s impending slaughter.
Yet the moment that five-meter-tall pillar of dark-crimson fire surged into the sky, the terrifying thermal radiation crashed straight into the VIP box. The scorching wave ruffled his meticulously slicked gray hair and instantly parched his beard!
Clatter————!!
Ling Zhuofeng’s hand violently jerked. The delicate white-jade teacup slipped through his fingers, plummeting to the marble floor and shattering into dozens of sharp fragments! Scalding tea and priceless tea leaves splashed across the toes of his leather shoes, but Ling Zhuofeng seemed utterly oblivious to it!
The patriarch of the Ling Clan shot upright like a coiled spring. His normally narrow, squinting eyes widened so far they threatened to burst from their sockets, crisscrossed with bloodshot veins!
Ling Zhuofeng’s entire body trembled, his lips twitching uncontrollably as a shrill, raspy cry broke from his throat, saturated with disbelief:
“Wh-What?! Dark-crimson fire rimmed with gold... This rampant heat... Just what tier of magic is this?! Standard Fire Spark could never possess such destructive power! How could that impoverished little mongrel possibly cast this kind of flame?!”
Beside him, Ling Bai’s face had drained of every drop of blood. The teacup in the young master’s trembling hands rattled uncontrollably. Staring fixedly at the colossal pillar of fire on the dueling platform, a suffocating panic welled up from the bottom of his soul. He was a cultivator himself; he understood better than anyone what the pressure of Novice-tier fire was supposed to look like. But the inferno before his eyes... it completely defied everything he had ever learned from his clan’s grimoires!
At that very moment, in the front row of the Bo’an City military garrison—
Chief Military Instructor Lei Zhen, who had been slouched against his seat with his trademark lazy, nonchalant demeanor, abruptly snapped to his feet!
The battle-hardened veteran’s towering, steel-hewn frame went taut as a drawn bowstring. Lei Zhen’s eagle-sharp eyes widened, reflecting the dazzling, blood-crimson glare of the blaze, bursting with an unprecedented mixture of shock and wild exhilaration!
Thud! Lei Zhen slammed a heavy palm down onto the metal armrest of his chair, warping the solid steel bar into a sharp ninety-degree angle!
“Mutated star cores! No... damn it, this isn’t just a simple mutation!”
Lei Zhen’s thunderous, booming voice roared through the VIP pavilion, drowning out even the howling firestorm: “Every single star core has been tempered to the pinnacle of purity, radiating an incandescent aureole of molten gold... These are Fourth-Tier Reinforced Star Cores! Double the destructive power! Double the explosive force! This kid... his magical caliber has completely shattered the conventional boundaries of human Novice magic!”
Lei Zhen’s exclamation detonated like a high-yield bomb in the ears of the municipal officials, academy principals, and aristocratic clan heads seated around him.
Shattered the conventional boundaries of Novice magic?!
An eighteen-year-old destitute youth, barely graduated from Feng Lan High School, with no sect, no noble heritage, and not a single backer to his name—where on earth could he have obtained the resources to reinforce his star cores to Tier 4?! That was a miracle that even the prodigies of prime aristocratic clans in the imperial capital could only dream of!
Down on the dueling platform, at the eye of the raging firestorm.
Lin Feng stood tall and unyielding amidst the churning lake of dark-crimson magma, the hem of his Feng Lan uniform whipping fiercely in the swirling gusts of scorching air. Beneath the dancing firelight, the youth’s handsome, chiseled face was etched with unbending resolve, cold and impassive like a statue of an ancient war deity.
His right hand remained raised at chest height. Following the subtle twitch of his fingers, that five-meter pillar of dark-crimson fire suddenly collapsed inward, compressing and condensing into a ferocious, ten-meter-long fire dragon that coiled tightly around his arm! Each blood-red draconic scale ground against the next, unleashing shrill, piercing shrieks that carried catastrophic momentum, poised to annihilate anything standing in its path!
Across from him, Han Yi had completely turned to stone.
The ten-pace distance separating them had transformed into a fractured wasteland of cracked stone spewing thick, acrid smoke. Every trace of the frost mist and ice chains he had painstakingly laid down was gone without a trace.
Under the crushing weight of the terrifying thermal radiation, the skin on Han Yi’s face flushed bright red like a boiled lobster, cracking into dry, stinging fissures as if pricked by ten thousand red-hot needles. His temples and eyebrows had already begun to curl and singe, exuding the distinct, pungent stench of burning protein!
Han Yi’s pupils shrank to tiny pinpricks, devoid of anything except raw, unadulterated terror—the primal dread of humanity before an all-consuming conflagration!
“N-No... Impossible... You... you’re just a filthy gutter rat... How could you possess this kind of monstrous magic?!”
Han Yi’s voice choked in his throat, trembling so violently that his words were barely intelligible. His arrogance, his condescension, his haughty superiority as the adopted scion of a great clan had been burned to cinders by that pillar of flame in the blink of an eye! His survival instinct screamed within him: if this blow landed, he would die! Obliterated so completely that not a fragment of bone would remain!
Lin Feng stared straight into the dazed, terror-stricken eyes of his adversary. At the corner of his lips, a cold, razor-sharp smirk surfaced.
He wasted not a single breath on useless chatter.
Lin Feng’s right arm snapped forward with vicious momentum, aimed squarely at the center of Han Yi’s chest!
“Go!”
A single, chilling word cracked like frost!
ROOOAAARRR——————!!
The ear-splitting, sky-rending roar of the dark-crimson fire dragon erupted!
The creature of molten gold and scarlet flame detached from Lin Feng’s palm, ripping through the parched atmosphere and dragging a dozens-of-meters-long trail of blazing afterimages across the granite stage! Its velocity was so blistering that space itself seemed to retain only a streak of deep-crimson light!
The impending shadow of death severed the final threads of Han Yi’s sanity!
“Aaahhhhh——!!”
A desperate, bloodcurdling shriek tore from Han Yi’s throat! Standing upon the precipice between life and death, his instinct for survival went berserk. He drained every last drop of Ice mana remaining in his Sea of Consciousness, funneling it madly into the Ice Scale Magic Armor encasing his body!
“Magic Armor! Absolute defense! Activate for me!!”
Whoooomph——!
The Ice Scale Armor over Han Yi’s chest ignited with blinding brilliance, the arcane glyphs etched across its alloy gleaming like a full moon! Layer upon layer of dense magical ice scales frantically wove together, erecting a formidable ice barrier half a meter thick directly before his chest, radiating extreme cold in a desperate bid to repel the lethal inferno!
Yet the gold-rimmed crimson fire dragon, carrying the doubled destructive force of Tier 4 Star Cores, had already arrived right before the tip of his nose!
A mere palm’s breadth remained!
The apocalyptic heat slammed directly into the freezing barrier, an earth-shattering explosion poised to detonate in the next fraction of a second!
Could a multimillion-dollar suit of Magic Armor from the esteemed Ling Clan truly salvage the life of an arrogant fool against the wrath of the Double Flame Eruption?