Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 77
The Feng Lan Student Defense Line
Crash!
With a decisive kick, Lin Feng smashed through the fractured plaster wall obstructing their path. Concrete and brick rained down into the murky, crimson rainwater pooling below. He tightened the parachute cord binding his little sister, Xiaomo, securely to his back. Clasping his father Lin Hai’s wrist with his left hand, he pulled him and the ragged column of South Street refugees through the breach of the collapsed building.
Stepping past the jagged debris, the scene unfolding before Lin Feng’s eyes made his heart hammer against his ribs.
The sprawling Hong Bang Boulevard intersection, leading straight toward Feng Lan Magic High School, had devolved into a blood-soaked slaughterhouse.
Four heavy mana fuel tankers lay overturned across the roadway, forming a crude, V-shaped barricade. Plumes of acrid black smoke billowed from their mangled chassis, around which the carcasses of magical beasts lay strewn across bubbling, iron-tainted pools of blood. Behind the makeshift rampart, over a hundred frightened civilians huddled together beneath the truck undercarriages. Terrified wails of weeping children blended with the trembling prayers of the elderly, all competing against the mournful, continuous wails of the city-wide annihilation siren echoing through the tempest.
Standing at the vanguard of that fragile barrier, braving the brunt of the storm to shield the helpless crowd, were neither the elite soldiers of the Azure Thunder Ridge Legion nor seasoned, battle-hardened hunters.
They were the familiar young faces of Feng Lan Magic High School!
“Hold the left flank! Zhang Hu, get a Stone Wall up, now!”
A hoarse, gravelly roar tore through the din of combat, laced with choked coughs.
Homeroom Teacher Kang Mu was drenched in blood. His dark crimson battle robes had been shredded into ribbons by savage claws. His left arm dripped profusely, deep gouges laying bare bruised, mangled flesh. Yet his right hand remained rock-steady, cutting incandescent red arcs through the downpour. A Fire Star Path ignited in a fraction of an instant, unleashing a searing jet of flames that blasted away two demonic wolves lunging over the hood of an overturned truck.
“I—I’m on it! Stone Wall—Rise!”
Less than ten meters away, Zhang Hu—Fatty Hu—was caked in grime and sweat, his tight school uniform split wide at both armpits. Crouching low, he slammed his thick palms violently against the fractured asphalt.
Rumble!
The road shuddered violently. Driven by the desperate surge of his mental energy, a slab of volcanic stone nearly half a meter thick and over two meters high erupted from the cracked earth, sealing the breach between two tanker chassis.
Crash!
A crimson-eyed Black-Spurred Wolf, the jagged horn on its brow gleaming with vicious malice, slammed headlong into the rock face. The violent impact sent stone shards spraying in all directions. The beast let out a pained howl, staggering back two steps as its skull cracked from the force. But Zhang Hu’s stone wall immediately webbed with hairline fractures, its earthen mana fluctuating on the verge of total collapse.
“Dammit! These bastards went completely rabid from drinking that red rain—they’re built like crazed bulls!” Zhang Hu spat, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth as psychic backlash rattled his consciousness.
“Zhang Hu, move!”
A crisp, commanding shout rang out. Zhou Min stepped up, her high ponytail whipping in the wind, her refined face streaked with soot and scratches. Her eyes burned with fierce resolve. Seven crimson Fire Stars orbiting her figure aligned into a flawless, radiant circuit.
“Fire Spark: Burst!”
Zhou Min whipped her right arm forward. A blazing fireball the size of a bowl ripped through the air with a piercing hiss, flying straight through the fissure in the stone wall to detonate squarely against the chest of the dazed Black-Spurred Wolf.
BOOM!
A violent blast of fire erupted, scorching away the beast’s coarse gray fur. The demonic wolf thrashed in agony, rolling across the sizzling, foul-smelling rainwater. Yet Zhou Min’s flames only inflicted severe burns; they were not enough to claim its life outright. The pungent stench of charred flesh and scorched fur only drove the surrounding pack into a greater frenzy. Corrosive saliva dripped from their bared fangs, hissing and sizzling as it ate into the asphalt beneath their paws.
“Fall back one pace! Ice Spread: Freeze!”
From the opposite flank, Ling Bai stepped forward. The once-pristine designer uniform of the Ling Clan’s young master was now torn and caked in dirt, his meticulously styled hair plastered disheveled across his forehead. His hands shook violently—his sea of consciousness was nearly drained dry of mana—yet he bit his lower lip until it bled, forcing himself to stay alert.
A pale azure frost emanated from Ling Bai’s outstretched palms, gliding across the rain-slicked road. A thin layer of frost rapidly crusted over the dark red water, flash-freezing the puddles into treacherous ice that crept up the limbs of four pouncing Black-Spurred Wolves. The beasts’ claws were momentarily frozen in place, halting their charge in furious, snarling frustration.
“Ling Bai, just hold on a little longer! The school has a rescue unit carving out an underground tunnel!” Li Peng cowered near the flank of a tanker, his knees knocking uncontrollably. He tried to muster a gust of Wind Track, but halfway through the cast, his panicked concentration shattered, and the breeze dispersed into thin air.
“Shut your mouth! Stop whimpering and focus on linking your Stars!” Ling Bai snapped fiercely, his chest heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows.
The entire intersection was besieged by more than thirty Black-Spurred Wolves, and more beasts were slinking out from the dark alleys with every passing second. For high school graduates who had only ever practiced on training dummies, even those from the elite experimental class, facing ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters in real combat tested their limits. Their mana reserves and fragile composure were like candle flames flickering in a tempest.
Just then, the combined impact of three charging Black-Spurred Wolves shattered Zhang Hu’s stone wall with a thunderous crash. Rubble and stone fragments exploded outward. Zhang Hu tumbled backward, losing his footing. Looming right over him was a massive demonic wolf with a jet-black venomous horn, snapping its jaws as it lunged downward to tear his throat open.
“I’m done for!” Zhang Hu shut his eyes, instinctively crossing his bare forearms over his face.
Whoosh!
A silhouette tore over Zhang Hu’s head like a localized gale.
“Get lost!”
A low, bone-chilling growl exploded directly above Zhang Hu.
BANG!
A brutal kick imbued with tremendous physical power slammed squarely into the airborne wolf’s lower jaw. The beast’s jawbone shattered with a sickening crack. Its four-hundred-pound frame was blasted backward, flying over five meters through the air before slamming into the metal side of a tanker, convulsing twice before going limp.
Zhang Hu opened his eyes in stunned disbelief. Before him stood a broad, steadfast back, clad in a rain-drenched black shirt, planted like an iron spear driven into the earth. Tied securely to his back was a young girl with clear, innocent eyes.
“F-Feng-ge?!”
Zhang Hu’s squinty eyes flew wide. A second later, he leaped to his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs over the roar of the wind:
“Feng-ge! You’re alive! Holy shit, you’re alive! I thought you and Uncle Lin were trapped down on South Street, turned into wolf food!”
Zhang Hu’s roar instantly drew every pair of eyes along the defensive line.
Zhou Min, struggling to catch her breath, whipped her head around. Her soot-streaked face lit up with radiant joy. Not far away, Teacher Kang Mu had just repelled a beast with a fire blast. Seeing Lin Feng emerge unharmed alongside the refugee column, the veteran teacher’s bloodshot eyes shone with profound relief.
“Lin Feng! Thank heavens you made it!” Kang Mu let out a ragged breath, quickly waving his arm to direct the flow: “Quickly! Guide your family and the civilians into the central formation! We’re escorting the evacuees toward the school’s underground shelter! The school gates are protected by an underground magic barrier—only by getting inside will everyone survive!”
“Dad, take Xiaomo and the others inside, fast!”
Lin Feng wasted no time. With swift, practiced fingers, he unclasped the harness at his chest, gently transferring Xiaomo into his father Lin Hai’s arms.
“Big Brother... please be careful!” Xiaomo tugged lightly at Lin Feng’s sleeve, her eyes brimming with worry, though she bit her lip to hold back her tears so as not to distract him.
“Be good. Stay close to Dad. With me here, not a single wolf will cross this line.” Lin Feng patted his sister’s shoulder gently. The warmth in his eyes vanished the moment he pivoted, replaced by lethal, razor-sharp intent as he faced the front line.
Lin Hai nodded firmly. Clasping his daughter tightly, he led the South Street residents through the gap in the tankers into the sheltered center of the barricade.
Nearby, Ling Bai leaned against a massive tire to catch his breath, his eyes fixed on Lin Feng. Back in school, Ling Bai had always carried the arrogant pride of a great clan scion, looking down on Lin Feng’s humble background and scheming to suppress him at every turn. But in this apocalyptic crisis, seeing Lin Feng carry his sister across a sea of blood to reach this front line, those petty rivalries of the past suddenly seemed pathetic. Ling Bai had neither the desire nor the luxury for underhanded tricks; he had poured everything into holding the line alongside his classmates.
Clenching his bleeding knuckles, he rasped through gritted teeth:
“Lin Feng... these wolves ingested that bizarre red rain. They’re twice as ferocious as normal. Don’t let your guard down!”
Lin Feng cast a brief glance at Ling Bai. Seeing the young master covered in claw marks, yet still gritting his teeth at the front line instead of fleeing like a coward, the lingering disgust in Lin Feng’s heart softened somewhat. In a matter of life and death, anyone willing to stand in the breach to shield their people—no matter how repulsive their usual demeanor—at least possessed a shred of backbone.
“Focus on holding your own flank,” Lin Feng replied flatly. He strode forward into the vanguard of the student defense line, taking his place shoulder-to-shoulder with Zhou Min and Zhang Hu.
Grrrr... Growl!
Sensing the shift in the human formation, the pack of Black-Spurred Wolves encircling the crossroads began emitting low, guttural snarls. Over thirty red-eyed beasts closed their ring, their claws scratching against the pavement with ear-grating shrieks. The pack alpha—a massive beast with a jagged scar running from its venom horn all the way down to its lower jaw—fixed its bloodthirsty glare squarely on Lin Feng.
“Damn it... they’re massing for a final breakthrough!” Zhang Hu wiped a smear of blood from his chin, his hands trembling as he tried to squeeze whatever mana remained in his sea of consciousness. “Feng-ge, I only have enough juice left to raise a thin mud wall with Earth Wave...”
“No need for a wall,” Lin Feng said coolly.
“Huh?!” Zhang Hu blinked, dumbfounded.
“These beasts move too fast. Raising a wall just gives them something to ram into. Gather them into one spot and burn them to ash—that settles it!”
With that, Lin Feng took a long stride forward.
He stood tall in the pouring crimson rain, his soaked clothes whipping in the howling gale. Within Lin Feng’s boundless sea of consciousness, his Fire Stardust—which had completely absorbed the millennium-old mana essence of the Underground Holy Spring—erupted like a violent volcano! Seven blazing Stars aligned into a constellation with blinding fluidity, linking together in an order so pristine that the naked eye couldn’t track it.
No hesitation! No tremor! And none of the unstable flickering that plagued inexperienced students!
At this moment, Lin Feng’s casting time for a Star Path was a mere 0.8 seconds!
BOOM!
A terrifying heatwave surged across the intersection. Rain falling within a three-meter radius around Lin Feng vaporized instantly with violent hisses, erupting into thick plumes of white steam.
Standing right next to him, Zhou Min felt the skin on her face sear as if she were pressed against a blast furnace. Her eyes widened in disbelief: This temperature... how could it be this blazing?!
In the palm of Lin Feng’s right hand, a sphere of compressed flame spun violently. Its mana density was so intensely packed that it emitted a high-pitched screech that sheared through the air. The fire burned an incandescent crimson, radiating a destructive aura that far exceeded any standard primary spell!
“Fire Spark: Burst!”
Lin Feng swung his arm in a crisp, sweeping arc.
The compressed fireball ripped through the crimson deluge, trailing a meter-long jet of flame as it blasted straight into the center of the charging wolf pack. Its flight speed was more than double that of Zhou Min’s magic!
BOOM-RUMBLE!
A deafening explosion tore through the crossroads.
The fireball detonated like a heavy mana artillery shell! A rolling thermal shockwave swept across the pavement, engulfing the three lead Black-Spurred Wolves into living torches in a fraction of a second. The kinetic force hurled five or six nearby wolves through the air, sending them crashing into the asphalt. Their dense hides were roasted black by the searing heat, their agonizing wails echoing across the abandoned street.
Yet that was far from all.
Lin Feng did not pause for even half a breath. The very instant the first fireball detonated, his left hand ignited with a second blazing ring of fire!
Whoosh! Bang!
The second fireball struck the base of a roadside banyan tree—where four demonic wolves had been skulking through the shadows, preparing to flank the students. The conflagration consumed the entire trunk in seconds, transforming that corner of the street into a roaring sea of fire and completely severing the beasts’ flanking route.
Lin Feng’s casting speed left every onlooker utterly paralyzed with awe! The Fire Star Path within his sea of consciousness cycled continuously without a moment of respite. Volleys of destructive fire rained down like a meteor barrage, striking every critical vulnerability of the pack with pinpoint precision: one wolf had its chest blown apart; another had its hind leg tendons burned clean through; and the ferocious pack alpha, having barely leaped into the air, took a Fire Spark straight through its eye socket, detonating half its skull!
The pungent stench of charred meat completely drowned out the iron stench of the rain.
The intersection’s pavement was pockmarked with blackened craters, embers still licking at the beasts’ mangled corpses. Just moments earlier, over thirty savage Black-Spurred Wolves had pushed the entire defense line to the brink of annihilation. Yet less than a minute after Lin Feng entered the fray, twenty lay as charred carcasses, while the remaining dozen tucked their tails between their legs in sheer terror of the apocalyptic fire, trampling over each other in a frantic scramble to flee into the dark alleys.
The stifling pressure that had weighed on the defensive line evaporated into thin air.
An eerie quiet descended upon the crossroads, broken only by the steady patter of rain against beast corpses and the crackle of embers on the wrecked tankers.
Zhang Hu stood frozen, his eyes popping and his jaw dropped so low it nearly touched his chest: “Holy mother of god... is... is that the same Tier 1 Fire Spark we learned in class? Why does it hit like a heavy siege cannon?!”
Zhou Min stared blankly at Lin Feng’s hands, her chest heaving violently. For the past three years, she had been the top Fire student in their class, fiercely proud of her casting speed and control. But witnessing Lin Feng’s performance—sub-second incantations, three times the standard mana density, and firing off four consecutive Fire Sparks without his expression even shifting—she knew the gap between them had widened into an insurmountable gulf.
Ling Bai swallowed hard, his parched lips trembling. He stared at Lin Feng’s back, his tightly clenched fist slowly relaxing. A bitter ache rose in his throat, mingled with an undeniable, grudging reverence.
“Good! Incredible!”
Teacher Kang Mu was the first to snap back to reality. Hurrying forward, he clapped a heavy hand on Lin Feng’s shoulder, his voice shaking with excitement:
“Lin Feng, your spell release speed has reached the absolute pinnacle of primary magic! You just saved this entire defensive line! Everyone, listen up! The wolves are scattered—seize this opening to retreat immediately! The underground shelter entrance at Feng Lan High School is only three hundred meters away. Double time, move!”
At Teacher Kang’s shout, the refugees behind them scrambled to their feet like drowning men catching a lifeline, helping one another out from behind the tanker barricade. The students quickly rallied, securing both flanks of the civilian column. Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief, feeling as though they had just pulled one foot out of the gates of hell.
Yet that relief did not even last three seconds.
Whoosh...
A piercing, unnatural gust of freezing wind swept across the intersection, bearing a foul stench ten times more putrid than that of the Black-Spurred Wolves.
The flames crackling on the beasts’ carcasses were abruptly flattened against the asphalt by an invisible force, then extinguished entirely. Even the crimson rain cascading from the heavens seemed warped by a titanic pressure, parting to either side to carve out an eerie void.
BOOM!
A suffocating aura of dark mana, heavy as if a hundred-story skyscraper were crashing down from the heavens, slammed down upon everyone’s heads!
“Aaargh!”
Bloodcurdling screams broke out across the line. The refugees and more than half the students—including Li Peng and Ling Bai—were forced to their knees on the cracked concrete. Their bodies convulsed violently, their lungs and organs feeling as though they were being crushed in the fist of an invisible giant, starving them of air! Even Teacher Kang Mu had to plunge his magic blade into the ground to brace himself, spitting out a mouthful of fresh blood.
Lin Feng dropped into a low stance, every muscle coiling tight like a bowstring as his bones creaked under the terrifying gravitational pressure. Across his chest, the Primordial Dragon Pendant suddenly flared searing hot like a live coal, pulsing with frantic, violent vibrations that warned of mortal catastrophe!
Crack! Rattle!
The swirling, crimson-tinged storm clouds overhead churned into a massive, brooding vortex.
From the murky depths of that storm’s eye, a high-pitched, piercing shriek tore through the sky, shattering every glass window across the surrounding high-rises in a single instant!
A gargantuan shadow with a wingspan exceeding twenty meters, bearing eyes that burned like twin lanterns of blood, was plunging straight down from the clouds toward their defense line!