Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 82
Striking the Weakness with Fire
WHOOOOOSH... CRAAASH...!!
The crimson blood rain continued to pour relentlessly from the ink-black firmament. Heavy, foul-smelling drops of dark red liquid pelted the skin with stinging force, bearing with them the pungent stench of rust and sulfur rising from the ruined streets of Bian’an City. At the shattered intersection, the air hung thick and viscous, weighed down by a suffocating pressure that made it nearly impossible to draw breath.
The Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf loomed like a towering fortress of sinister iron and steel. Its colossal ten-meter frame cast an oppressive shadow across the entire clearing, four blood-red eyes flaring like baleful will-o’-the-wisps, locked unwaveringly onto Lin Feng. The cold disdain of an apex predator provoked by an insect had instantly detonated into an all-consuming, primordial fury!
“ROOOAAARRR...!!”
A deafening roar shattered the eardrums, unleashing a concussive sound wave that tore the curtain of rain to shreds. The massive bat wings unfurled to their absolute limit from behind the beast’s spine, corded bundles of muscle rippling taut to expose prominent skeletal joints gleaming like polished obsidian.
WHOOOOOM——!!
With a ferocious downward stroke, the titanic wings beat! A screaming gale laden with churning plumes of pitch-black toxic vapor swept forward in a monstrous wave!
This venomous tempest was no ordinary squall; it was corrosive dark mana bred in the deepest abyssal caverns of Cang Lei Ridge, steeped in the festering malice of tens of thousands of rotting corpses. As the black gale scoured the roadbed, the asphalt immediately hissed and bubbled with frothy white scum, cracking wide open and melting into a foul, viscous sludge. The rows of two-story shophouses flanking the crossroads, already destabilized by the earlier tremors of battle, were struck dead-on by the toxic storm—their half-meter-thick reinforced concrete instantly dissolving like powdery flour! Heavy load-bearing steel girders shrieked and groaned before shearing clean through, collapsing into puddles of sizzling black sludge that billowed choking, eye-stinging smoke.
“Corrosive toxin... Dodge! Hurry and dodge!!”
Forty meters away, sheltered behind a crumbling brick wall, Zhang Hu screamed until his throat tore raw. He clutched the shattered masonry desperately, his eyes bloodshot with sheer terror. Beside him, Ling Bai and Li Peng trembled like leaves in a hurricane, their knees pinned helplessly to the freezing, muddy earth as their teeth chattered in rapid, uncontrollable bursts. Confronted by the apocalyptic aura of a Warrior-class beast, whatever shred of courage they possessed had been ground to dust.
Xiao Min bit down on her lip until fresh blood welled, her knuckles whitening as she gripped her rain-soaked uniform. She desperately wanted to rush forward and cast a Fire spell to back him up, but the crushing, tempestuous pressure emanating from the virulent storm ahead froze the mana in her sea of consciousness solid. She could not mobilize even a single star.
The rolling tempest of black poison resembled an abyssal leviathan unhinging its boundless maw, utterly swallowing the solitary figure of the eighteen-year-old youth!
Yet in that razor-thin fraction of a second between life and death—
CLANG——!!
A clear, resonant chime, solemn as an ancient bronze bell, reverberated from the deepest recesses of Lin Feng’s sea of consciousness.
Against his chest, beneath the torn fabric of his rain-drenched shirt, the Primordial Dragon Pendant suddenly flared with a pure, abyssal jet-black luminescence! The scalding blood coursing through Lin Feng’s veins felt as though it were infused with a surging, sacred spring, awakening primordial memories that had slumbered since antiquity.
An ethereal, translucent layer of draconic scales abruptly enveloped his entire frame! The dark scales of the ‘Black Dragon Ward’ hummed with rhythmic vibrations, coalescing into an unyielding barrier of energy as steadfast as a mountain fortress.
The toxic squall crashed down!
SIZZLE... HISS... SIZZLE...!!
The horrific corrosive venom slammed violently against the draconic shield, screeching like boiling lard splattered across an open furnace. Yet every wisp of the virulent miasma was pulverized by the invisible barrier, skimming harmlessly to either side before dissolving into the air—incapable of breaching Lin Feng’s flesh by even half a fraction of an inch!
Seeing the shroud of black smoke engulf its prey, the Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf tilted its massive skull toward the weeping sky and let out a guttural rumble of satisfaction. In its savage predator instinct, any puny human prey caught within that strike would rot into a pool of putrid slurry within three breaths. The beast’s ten-ton center of mass sank, the corded musculature across its broad back momentarily slacking after pouring its full momentum into that concussive wing beat.
Now!
This was the singular, fleeting heartbeat when the beast king had fully expended its momentum—its old power spent, its new power yet unborn!
From within the roiling black venom, Lin Feng’s eyes flashed with a razor-sharp brilliance, keen as an unsheathed blade.
THUD!
Lin Feng’s heel drove brutally into the fractured pavement! The astonishing explosive thrust forged into his legs by the Dragon Pendant detonated instantly, hurling his body forward like an arrow piercing the gale!
He did not retreat to defend! He chose to charge straight ahead!
The youth’s silhouette moved with the fluid grace of a phantom, skimming across the surface of the murky crimson puddles, banking and weaving through falling slabs of jagged concrete. His speed was so blinding that he left faint afterimages trailing through the tempestuous night rain!
In the blink of an eye, Lin Feng carved out a flawless arc, sweeping past the beast’s flank bristling with needle-like steel fur to materialize directly behind its back!
The distance between him and the Warrior-class monstrosity was now less than fifteen meters!
The howling chill whipped through Lin Feng’s drenched hair. Looming before his eyes was a back as vast as an obsidian city wall, its most prominent feature being the base of the colossal left bat wing drooping slightly lower.
“Vile beast... Did you truly think having wings meant you could soar above humanity forever?!”
Lin Feng growled through clenched teeth. His frigid gaze locked precisely onto the skeletal joint connecting the shoulder blade to the membrane of the Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf’s wing!
This was the fatal vulnerability shared by all winged magical beasts!
The body of the Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf was exceptionally resilient; from its chest and spine to its thick skull, it was armored in dense hide and barbed steel bristles that even heavy artillery shells could scarcely penetrate. Yet to maintain aerial mobility, the skeletal joints at the wing roots required absolute flexibility. Heavy plating could not grow there; the thin membrane was supported solely by interwoven bundles of sinew, bone, and muscle designed to bear tensile stress!
Snap this joint, and the arrogant Beast King of Cang Lei Ridge would be grounded on the earth forever!
Inside Lin Feng’s sea of consciousness, his Fire Stardust ignited into a furious tempest!
Seven vivid scarlet Star Cores rimmed with radiant golden halos spun at blinding speed, spurred on by his tyrannical mental focus! Dazzling golden conduits linked each star in the span of a single breath, completing a flawless Star Path in less than half a second!
Lin Feng thrust his right palm straight toward the sky!
“Fire Burst: Rupture——Dual Flame Surge!!”
The youth’s guttural shout sounded like an imperial decree handed down from a throne of blazing hellfire!
BOOM... BOOM... BOOM!!
Upon the palm of his right hand, a brooding, dark-crimson flame trimmed in incandescent gold detonated with ferocious fury! The ambient air instantly warped and twisted under the blistering heat, every drop of moisture within a five-meter radius flashing into steam within the blink of an eye.
This was no ordinary fireball!
Under Lin Feng’s micro-scale control of his mana, this Tier 4 magic had been compressed to its absolute physical threshold! Three dense, incandescent spheres of concentrated magma coalesced in rapid succession, orbiting his wrist in a tight vortex with high-pitched, screaming shrieks!
Lin Feng’s arm lashed forward!
The three heavily compressed fireballs shot outward like a salvo of heavy mortar rounds at point-blank range, tearing through the curtain of blood rain and scorching three blinding crimson streaks into the abyssal night!
Against the velocity of magical projectiles, a distance of fifteen meters was traversed in an instant!
The Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf had only just sensed a shadow slipping behind it. Its four blood-red eyes whipped around in panic, only to be met with three devastating plumes of apocalyptic heat bearing straight down upon its face!
KA-BOOOOM——!!
The first fireball scored a direct hit!
An earth-shattering blast detonated directly at the root of the beast’s left wing! Over a thousand two hundred degrees Celsius of raw thermal fury instantly vaporized the outer layer of protective fur, scorching the fragile wing membrane and blowing open a gaping crater half a meter wide!
Before the beast could even howl in agony, the second impact struck!
KA-BOOOOM——!!
The second fireball drilled straight into the epicenter of the ruptured wound, burrowing deep into the socket of the shoulder joint! The horrific concussive payload detonated the dense clusters of bone sinew; tendons thick as a grown man’s wrist were charred pitch-black by the blistering heat, turning brittle before snapping in rapid succession with sharp cracks!
And right behind it, the final, lethal payload arrived, carrying the full explosive might of Rupture!
BOOOOOM-RUMBLEEEE...!!
The third fireball exploded! The dual-burst Rupture shockwave tore through the deep muscle fibers from the inside out!
The entirety of the compressed Fire mana unleashed in one catastrophic blast, erupting into a crimson pillar of flame over ten meters high! The sheer force of the detonation sheared away a massive swath of flesh the size of a millstone from the beast’s shoulder, leaving behind a hollow, charred cavern of smoking gore that laid bare the colossal, blackened wing bone—now spiderwebbed with deep, jagged fractures!
CRACK... SNAP... CRUUUNCH!!
The crisp, sickening sound of shattering bone echoed through the thunderous explosion!
“ROOOAAARRR... SKREEECH...!!”
A shriek of agonizing torment ripped through the night over Bian’an City! The roar was stripped of every ounce of a beast king’s arrogance, reduced to the raw, primal agony of a living creature being flayed and dismantled alive!
The shockwave from the Warrior-class beast’s scream shattered every remaining window pane in the surrounding tenements, raining shards of glass upon the roadway!
From the mangled crater on the wolf’s shoulder, viscous black blood reeking of acrid brimstone gushed outward like a broken dam, drenching the cracked pavement below. Its colossal left wing—over five meters long—lost all structural support from tendon and bone. It hung limp and deformed at a sickening ninety-degree angle, dragging uselessly through the churning mud and jagged concrete rubble!
The ten-ton bulk of the Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf completely lost its balance. It stumbled heavily, its front left limb collapsing into the asphalt and caving the road inward, sending plumes of muddy water and gore flying in every direction!
The wing was utterly crippled!
The sovereign ruler of the skies over Cang Lei Ridge—the beast king that had brought terror to every outpost along the Bian’an perimeter—had just been stripped of its prideful wings by the hands of a Basic-tier mage!
“H-Heavens... Dear God above...”
A short distance away, Li Peng sat slumped in a pool of rain, his pupils dilated to their limits as if his eyes would tear from their sockets. He buried both trembling hands into his hair, muttering like a man possessed:
“F-Fire... Is that Fire Burst?! Can that truly be the Fire Burst of a Basic Mage?!”
“A single blow... broke the wing of a Warrior-class beast... A-Am I dreaming?!”
Ling Bai stood rooted to the spot, his face as pale as a corpse without a drop of color. All the arrogance of a genius from the Ling Clan, all the conceit regarding his Tier 2 Basic Ice Magic that he held so dear, had been incinerated into ash by Lin Feng’s three fireballs! He clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails bit deep into his palms, drawing blood. Yet in the depths of his eyes, nothing remained except sheer dread and despair at the insurmountable chasm between them.
Zhang Hu leapt into the air amidst the muddy sludge, his eyes blazing as he pumped his fist and roared at the top of his lungs:
“Incredible!! Brother Feng!! You blasted that bastard’s wing clean off!!”
Resting against the cracked masonry, Kang Mu’s chest rose and fell in ragged, agonizing gasps. He looked at the unbending silhouette of the student he had always shielded, and hot tears spilled from the corners of his aged eyes, mingling with the freezing rain. The teacher’s pale, bruised lips trembled faintly:
“Lin Feng... You... You truly are a miracle for our Fenglan...”
Yet amidst the cheers and stunned disbelief echoing behind him, Lin Feng did not relax in the slightest.
Standing barely ten meters from the ferocious beast, his chest rose and fell in controlled, measured breaths. The freezing wind carried the acrid stench of burned flesh and blood straight toward him, but his gaze remained cold as millennial frost, vigilantly tracking every micro-movement of his foe.
He knew all too well.
A beast backed into a corner was at its most lethal and bloodthirsty!
Losing its bat wing had indeed stripped the Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf of its aerial advantage and gliding speed. But in exchange, the agonizing pain had snapped its final tether of reason, degenerating it into a berserk fiend consumed solely by the urge to slaughter!
“URGH... GRRRR...!!”
The Black-Winged Frenzy Wolf pushed itself upright upon its three remaining iron-like limbs. The heavy muscles along its back spasmed violently with every throb of its ruined wound. Its crippled left wing dragged limply, carving a long, hideous trail of black blood across the ground.
It slowly wheeled its ferocious lupine head around.
Its four crimson eyes were now threaded with thick, savage veins of blood, glaring with murderous hatred at the slender youth standing before it. That gaze held no more wariness or hesitation—only sheer madness, vengeance, and unbridled bloodlust!
RUUUUMBLE... RUUUUMBLE...
From deep within the beast’s massive chest cavity, a muffled, suffocating hum began to resonate, sounding like thunder gathering in the depths of a bottomless abyss!
Its ribcage expanded to twice its normal volume, dark veins bulging visibly beneath the skin of its thick throat. Its colossal maw parted to its absolute limit, revealing two razor-sharp curved fangs over half a meter long, dripping with virulent saliva and sticky black gore!
At the bottom of the beast king’s pitch-black gullet, a sphere of dark crimson energy entwined with toxic azure radiance began to spin at dizzying speed! The violent mana compressed into an orb of abyssal bloodlight, releasing piercing, ear-splitting shrieks that rattled the very air above the intersection!
An invisible acoustic shockwave rippled outward, causing the cracked earth beneath Lin Feng’s boots to split into jagged fissures!
Blood-Poison Shockwave!!
It was the ultimate, apocalyptic trump card unleashed by the Blood-Winged Wolf species when cornered in a life-or-death struggle! A sonic wave of venom that concentrated the beast’s life essence and vile dark mana—once discharged, it would reduce every living soul within a fifty-meter radius to powdery ash!
The distance was a mere ten meters! Lin Feng stood directly in the crosshairs of that apocalyptic cannon!
Yet facing death mere inches away, the youth stood unwavering as a monolith amidst the tempest. The corner of Lin Feng’s lips curled into a cold, ruthless smirk.
His left hand, concealed behind the fold of his tattered shirt, suddenly clenched tight.
Across the tips of his left fingers, savage arcs of violet-black lightning began to crackle and dance, weaving a ruthless web of celestial thunder primed to detonate!