Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 70
The Descent of Blood Rain
Night fell over Mount Cang Lei like a colossal vat of pitch-black ink overturned across the heavens.
The silence blanketing the wilderness was unnatural, bordering on the grotesque. Not a whisper of mountain wind stirred through the jagged limestone crevasses; no nocturnal insects chirped among the thorny beech thickets; even the familiar, gentle rustling of dry foliage across the sprawling forest canopy had vanished without a trace. It was as if heaven and earth were holding their breath, waiting for an invisible executioner’s blade to fall. Within that stifling stillness, Lin Feng could hear with razor-sharp clarity the frantic hammering of his own heart against his ribs and the hot blood rushing through the veins at his temples.
He stood tall upon a limestone promontory jutting outward from the northwestern slope. From this high vantage, his gaze commanded the entire rocky valley, looking straight toward the Cang Lei Ridge Forward Outpost roughly three kilometers in the distance. Beneath the heavy combat-leather soles of his boots, the blackened cinders left behind by the violent conflagration of his Scarlet Flame remained scattered over the stone, giving off the sharp reek of scorched flesh intermingled with the greasy death miasma of the Black-robed Cultists he had exterminated less than half an hour ago.
Tucked into the thick chest pocket of his tactical hunter’s jacket, the ash-gray glazed ceramic flask containing the “Frenzy Blood Spring” seized from the cultist leader continued to emanate eerie pulses of bone-chilling frost. This foul alchemical concoction, coupled with the dark-runed warding obelisks he had discovered buried around the subterranean aquifers, provided the definitive answer to the horrific string of anomalies plaguing the wilderness over recent days.
Lin Feng tilted his head back, gazing into the vault of heaven.
The night sky above Bo’an City had been utterly swallowed by a dense, suffocating cloudbank as heavy as molten lead. These clouds did not drift lazily on high-altitude winds; instead, they churned violently in the lower atmosphere like thousands of titanic black serpents writhing across the jagged, snow-capped peaks, slowly coiling their coils around the throat of the entire border region. Neither starlight nor moonlight could pierce that oppressive, leaden blanket. A fathomless abyss of gloom smothered all existence, bearing down with an invisible weight that pressed upon flesh and bone, making every breath feel as though one’s lungs were being slowly crushed in an iron fist.
Suddenly, a dry, deafening crack tore through the deepest belly of the storm clouds!
SCREEECH——!!
The gloom of the sky was violently ripped in two!
A colossal lance of lightning plunged from the apex of the firmament. Yet this surging electric arc bore neither the blinding silver-white nor the familiar azure-violet luminescence of orthodox Lightning magic.
It blazed with a ghastly, sickening crimson!
The jagged blood-colored lightning bolt gouged across the night, resembling a titan’s flaying blade tearing through the chest of heaven itself, exposing raw, crimson veins convulsing wildly against the cosmic void. Its malignant crimson glare swept over the rugged slopes in an instant, painting the craggy limestone bluffs in vivid blood-red, carving sharp silhouettes of ancient gnarled pines, and reflecting starkly in the dark, unblinking eyes of the youth standing motionless upon the precipice.
BOOM—— CRUMBLE-CRUMBLE-CRUMBLE——!!
Following the crimson bolt came an earth-shattering roll of thunder. It did not echo crisply across the valleys; rather, it groaned with a muffled, choked, dragging rumble—like a colossal granite millstone grinding living bones deep within the ninth layer of purgatory. The seismic shockwave slammed directly down into the bedrock, sending violent tremors through the limestone beneath Lin Feng’s feet and dislodging loose shale that tumbled skittering down into the abyss.
And then, just as the ominous thunder faded into the crags, the first droplets began to fall.
Drip... patter... plink...
Heavy drops struck the waxy leaves of the surrounding beech trees, producing bizarre, viscous thuds that lacked any trace of the crisp, refreshing cadence of natural mountain rain.
Lin Feng’s brow furrowed tightly. His survival instincts, honed through countless brushes with death in the untamed wilds, rang with urgent alarm. Slowly slipping his bare hand out from his sleeve, he spread his five fingers wide, catching the angled drops slicing through the dark canopy.
Plop.
A droplet landed squarely on the back of his hand.
The sensation against his skin was not the piercing, familiar chill of alpine snowmelt. On the contrary, it carried an unnatural, lukewarm clamminess, slick and greasy to the touch like rendered animal fat.
Lin Feng narrowed his eyes, bringing the back of his hand closer to his chest. Beneath the faint, residual crimson glow filtering through the storm clouds above, he scrutinized the droplet clinging to his skin.
His pupils abruptly shrank to needlepoints!
The droplet was not clear in the slightest!
It possessed a murky, translucent crimson hue, resembling the foul rinse-water drained from putrefying meat!
The instant it made contact with the warmth radiating from living human skin, the blood-colored droplet dissolved, spreading into a grotesque, oily crimson smear. Simultaneously, a rancid stench assaulted Lin Feng’s nostrils.
It was the suffocating, nauseating reek of spoiled animal blood, laced with the sharp, astringent, and aggressive acidity of a potent chemical stimulant! The foul odor was so overwhelming that a wave of bitter nausea surged straight up into his throat, his chest constricting with a suffocating tightness!
Buzz... hummm...
Against Lin Feng’s chest, pressed firmly to his skin, the Primordial Dragon Pendant suddenly convulsed with violent intensity!
The jet-black jade surface erupted with a wave of searing, ember-like heat, instantly incinerating the oily red stain on the back of his hand into a wisp of foul-smelling black smoke. An ancient, resonant dragon chant echoed through Lin Feng’s spiritual consciousness—as though the primordial soul of an archaic dragon had caught the scent of an eternal nemesis, releasing a low, menacing snarl to warn of a world-ending catastrophe!
“Blood rain...”
The two words slipped through Lin Feng’s clenched teeth, cold as glacial frost.
Every scattered clue—from the sacrificial carcasses of disemboweled magical beasts at the headwater reservoir, to the strange warding obelisks driven deep into the subterranean aquifers by the gray-robed zealots, to the flask of Frenzy Blood Spring resting against his ribs... At this moment, the complete, horrific conspiracy of the Nether Church laid itself bare before his eyes!
These heretical zealots were never merely attempting to introduce toxins into the underground aquifers supplying the city! They had activated a catastrophic, weather-manipulating dark ritual array, utilizing geothermal heat and dark magical energy to boil thousands of gallons of Frenzy Blood elixir straight into the troposphere, commandeering the first seasonal storm over Mount Cang Lei to rain a crimson deluge directly down upon the mortal world!
This downpour was not falling merely upon this isolated corner of the woods.
It was blanketing the entire expanse of Mount Cang Lei stretching for hundreds of miles, drenching every mountain pass, every valley, every ravine, every cave... the habitats of tens of thousands of the fiercest predators dwelling along the border!
Once this frenzy-inducing, mad stimulant soaked into the flesh and blood of those magical beasts, what would happen?
The moment that realization struck Lin Feng’s mind, a freezing chill bolted straight down his spine!
Patter... splash, splash, roar——
The downpour intensified. The murky red torrent cascaded from the heavens like a colossal curtain of blood obscuring all line of sight, coating every branch and blade of grass. From the sodden forest floor rose a foul, crimson-tinted mist that carried an unbearable metallic stench.
And then, deep within the woods less than three hundred meters from Lin Feng’s stone perch, the sound of snapping branches broke out in frantic succession.
Grrr... huff... grrr...
Labored, raspy wheezing, like a furnace bellows with a torn leather bladder, rattled from a dense thicket of brambles.
Underbrush shattered beneath heavy, unsteady footfalls. A dark silhouette stumbled out from the curtain of blood rain, halting erratically upon a patch of cleared ground.
It was a solitary patrolling Dark Crimson Wolf. Its frame spanned over three meters from snout to tail, corded muscles rippling beneath dense, ash-gray fur. Under normal circumstances, these magical wolves were extraordinarily patient and cunning hunters, possessing cold composure in the dark. Yet at this moment, the wolf was drenched from head to tail in the oily, pale-red rainwater.
The blood rain had already seeped through its coarse outer coat, penetrating directly through its open pores and into the fresh scratches along its hide.
Lin Feng held his breath, his eyes locked onto the beast.
The demon wolf suddenly froze mid-stride. Its four massive paws began to quiver violently, its claws gouging into the rocky earth, ripping up ancient tree roots in wild spasms. The corded muscles across its frame contracted and convulsed in uncontrollable waves, as if thousands of venomous parasites were burrowing through and gnawing upon its spinal cord from within.
Whine... YOWL——!!
An agonizing, gut-wrenching screech ripped from the creature’s throat.
Before Lin Feng’s very eyes, a horrifying spectacle unfolded: The demon wolf’s eyes—originally the cold, calculating gray-green of a nocturnal predator—abruptly burst with rupturing capillaries! A blazing, incandescent crimson surged outward, completely drowning pupil and sclera alike, turning its eyes into twin sockets of burning gore blazing in the darkness!
Beneath the fur of its neck and across its temples, purplish-black veins bulged and squirmed like venomous centipedes, throbbing frantically in time with its runaway, manic heartbeat. The single sharp horn protruding from the crown of its skull vibrated violently, oozing foul droplets of black fluid that sizzled and frothed the instant they struck the stone.
The virulent poison brewed by the Nether Church had thoroughly shredded every neural boundary and instinct for self-preservation within the beast!
Fear of open flame, wariness of human magic, instincts of survival... all were reduced to cinders within its shattered brain. The sole remnant in its boiling veins was an absolute, insatiable thirst for slaughter—a psychotic urge to bite, to crush, and to annihilate every living thing that drew breath!
The demon wolf craned its neck toward the sky. Its ribcage heaved in violent convulsions, jaws gaping wide to reveal rows of jagged, yellowed fangs dripping with frothing crimson saliva.
HOWLLLLLL——!!
A mournful, sky-shattering howl tore through the stormy night! Hoarse, screeching, carrying unbearable torment intertwined with boundless madness, it ripped the suffocating gloom of the primeval woods to shreds!
Barely two seconds after that cry shattered the silence, from the limestone cliffs on the opposing ridge, an answering roar erupted in fury!
HOWLLLL——!!
Then from the towering snow-capped peaks behind...
From the yawning, lightless gorges plunging into the earth...
From the subterranean caverns burrowed deep beneath the granite...
HOWLLLLL—— ROAAAR——!!
ROAAARRR—— HOWLLLLL——!!
Thousands, tens of thousands of hair-raising howls detonated simultaneously!
The howling of the Dark Crimson Wolves was no longer the coordinated summons of a hunting pack; it had mutated into the death chorus of tens of thousands of berserk demonic beasts! The acoustic resonance converging from all directions rolled across the land like continuous thunderclaps, vibrating with such force that Lin Feng’s eardrums throbbed with pain, rattling his internal organs and sending his blood churning in violent waves!
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE——!!
The earth beneath Lin Feng’s boots shook violently!
This was no hallucination! The entirety of Mount Cang Lei was trembling beneath him!
Spiderweb fissures spread rapidly across the limestone ledge where Lin Feng stood. Boulders weighing tens of tons perched along the sheer slopes were jarred loose, tumbling headlong into the gorges below, snapping ancient trees and triggering deafening booms that shook the valley floor.
Lin Feng shifted his gaze toward the distant white snow slopes.
The sight that slammed into his vision caused his heart to freeze in his chest!
Against the stark white canvas of the alpine snowfields, a colossal, pitch-black tsunami was surging down the mountain at terrifying velocity!
That was neither an avalanche of snow nor a mudslide!
It was a suffocating wall of flesh and claw—the awakening of the Calamity Wave, a beast tide formed from tens of thousands of frenzied monsters stampeding down the slopes!
Gray-furred, blood-eyed Dark Crimson Wolves spearheaded the charge; directly behind them charged Nether Blood Wolves as hulking and muscular as ironclad armored transports; weaving among the pack were Venom-Clawed Apes leaping nimbly through the canopy with savage, shrieking roars; and titanic Rampaging Rhinos boasting hides as thick as steel plate, flattening everything in their path!
They possessed no formation, no pack hierarchy, no restraint. The second a beast stumbled and fell, it was instantly pulverized beneath thousands of trampling claws and hooves into a mangled pulp of gore, their crushed remains mixing with the red rain to paint the mountain slopes in gruesome smears. Century-old trees two arm-spans thick were snapped like brittle matchsticks against the charge. Whole swathes of forest collapsed in domino fashion, earth and splintered timber flying through the air amidst the red deluge!
This savage flood of living destruction was sweeping away everything before it, tearing down the valley at breakneck speed...
And situated right at the mouth of that valley, less than three kilometers from the forest boundary, sat the Cang Lei Ridge Forward Outpost.
Farther beyond, sheltered behind that fragile garrison, lay Bo’an City—home to over half a million innocent civilians, utterly oblivious to the doomsday catastrophe descending upon them!
“Damn it all! The Nether Church’s true objective... is the total annihilation of the city!”
Lin Feng clenched his fists until his knuckles popped with loud snaps.
The image of his aging father, Lin Hai, hands calloused from decades behind the steering wheel of a heavy mana transport, and his crippled younger sister, Lin Xiaomo, sitting quietly in her wheelchair beside the window of their modest home in South Street of the Old District, flashed with agonizing clarity in his mind. The Old District lay right along the outer perimeter of the city; its defensive ramparts were pitifully fragile! The moment the beast tide breached the forward outpost and spilled into the urban sprawl, South Street would be the very first sector crushed into flat rubble beneath the monster sea!
“No! I have to warn everyone... They must be stopped!”
Gritting his teeth, the mana in Lin Feng’s spiritual sea began to surge violently. Both his blazing crimson Fire Stardust and his crackling azure-purple Lightning Stardust flared to their absolute limits, primed for battle.
Yet, faced with the sheer scale of tens of thousands of berserk magical beasts surging like a demonic tsunami, the power of a peak Basic Tier mage was nothing more than a solitary drop of water cast into a boiling vat of oil!
Just as Lin Feng prepared to channel his magic and sprint down the slope, from far in the distance...
BOOOOOOM——!!
An earth-shattering mana detonation suddenly erupted from the Cang Lei Ridge Forward Observation Outpost!
The four reinforced alloy watchtowers of the outpost ignited their massive mana spotlights simultaneously. Blinding white searchlight beams swept across the mountain ridge, illuminating the howling sea of demonic monsters barreling down like a hurricane.
Immediately following, atop the central fortress bunker of the outpost, a heavy-defense magical artillery cannon swung its colossal barrel skyward!
SHRRRRRREEEEEEK——!!
A beam of light as red as fresh blood, accompanied by an ear-splitting whistle that tore through the air, shot straight into the black storm clouds at an altitude of over three thousand meters!
The velocity of that arcane flare was so extreme it shredded the falling curtain of blood rain, leaving behind a vivid crimson trail bridging earth and sky.
Reaching its apex, the specialized arcane ordnance detonated!
BOOOOOMMMMM——!!
An apocalyptic blast reverberated through the heavens!
A shockwave of crimson mana expanded in a roaring ring of fire, blasting away the storm clouds across a radius of tens of kilometers. Yet unlike ordinary fireworks, the crimson light did not fade.
Instead, the blood-red mana condensed in mid-air, coalescing into a colossal, perfectly spherical blood moon, glaring down upon the mortal realm like the crimson eye of an awakened god of slaughter!
The sinister red radiance from the blood moon bathed the world below, dyeing the snow-capped mountain peaks crimson, dyeing the primeval forests crimson, and casting a blood-drenched pall over the distant silhouette of Bo’an City on the horizon!
At that very moment, atop the fortress of the Cang Lei Ridge Outpost, and echoing from every magic belfry and alarm tower scattered throughout the districts of Bo’an City, the arcane air-defense sirens howled in unison!
WOOOOOOO——!!
SKRRREEECH—— WOOOOOOO——!!
The shrill, guttural, wailing sirens shrieked like the collective weeping of tens of thousands of wronged ghosts, drilling violently into the eardrums of half a million citizens in the midst of the stormy night!
This was not the standard Blue Alert reserved for a handful of stray beasts breaching the perimeter fences.
Nor was it the Orange Alert sounded for small packs and skirmish-level threats!
This was a CRIMSON ALERT!
The absolute highest level of Total Annihilation Alert within the statutory laws of the National Magic Tribunal! A tier signifying that an extinction-level catastrophe was imminent—mandating every civilian to abandon all worldly possessions and evacuate immediately into underground blast shelters, and drafting every single registered mage within the city limits—from students, teachers, and independent hunters to regular military garrisons—to take up arms and step onto the frontline of life and death!
Throughout the fifty-year history since the founding of Bo’an City, this Crimson Alert siren had never once sounded!
And tonight, amidst the pungent stench of falling blood rain and the collective roar of myriad demonic beasts, the death knell of Bo’an City had officially been struck!
Standing upon the precipice swaying in the tempest, Lin Feng gazed up at the demonic blood moon suspended overhead. His hands clenched so tightly that his nails bit deep into his palms, squeezing out beads of fresh, crimson blood.
Within the youth’s obsidian eyes, a blazing inferno of battle intent ignited, outshining even the baleful crimson radiance of the blood moon:
“Bo’an City... it is my turn to protect you!”