Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 90
Retreat of the Blue Deacon
Bone-chilling gales howled relentlessly across the summit of the ancient clocktower, the highest vantage point overlooking Bo’an City.
The weathered, ash-gray granite structure had stood proud for over a century, once celebrated as a stately symbol of the border city’s bustling prosperity. Now, however, half of its colossal brass clock hand was snapped at a grotesque angle, dangling precariously in midair like the rusted scythe of the Grim Reaper. High above the streets, biting drafts whistled through jagged fissures in the cracked stone walls, producing a choked, mournful wail that harmonized with the distant rumble of thunder rolling across the Cang Lei Mountain Range.
Perched upon the stone parapet scarred by the vicious claw marks of wild beasts, a man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, motionless as a statue carved from glacial ice.
He was draped in an ankle-length, deep azure magic robe. The heavy, somber fabric repelled the crimson deluge, shedding the blood-red rain without absorbing a single drop. Emblazoned across the left breast was an intricate crest embroidered in blood-red thread—a crimson skull enveloped in webs of deathly miasma, glimmering faintly beneath a sickly phosphorescence. His hood was pulled low over his face, concealing his features save for a gaunt, knife-like chin and razor-thin lips as deathly pale as a corpse long buried in a crypt.
The Blue Deacon.
One of the most terrifying mid-tier authorities within the Nether Cult, known by the codename “Nether Wolf.” He was the mastermind who had personally engineered and orchestrated the “City-Purging Blood Rain” campaign, designed to wipe Bo’an City entirely off the map of Shenzhou.
Through the murky, ash-gray pupils beneath his cowl, he gazed coldly through the thick curtain of red rain, taking in the full panorama of the devastated municipality below.
The horrific tragedy unfolding before his eyes was enough to freeze the blood of any mortal soul. The once-thriving commercial avenues had been reduced to fractured ruins, with smoldering heaps of charred brick and pulverized tile belching greasy black smoke into the sky. The asphalt roads were torn open with deep, gaping chasms; rivers of muddy blood surged into subterranean basements, carrying away mangled furniture, twisted neon signs, and the lifeless remains of unfortunate citizens who had failed to reach the safe zones in time. The bloodthirsty roars of Black Crimson Wolves and the shrill screeches of Venomous Claw Apes echoed through every alleyway, weaving a gruesome symphony of the underworld played out upon the mortal plane.
The Blue Deacon slowly raised his left hand. Hovering above his five gnarled, withered fingers—which resembled brittle pieces of dried kindling—was an obsidian crystal flask with a long, slender neck. Inside, countless wisps of pale gray mist writhed, contorted, and soundlessly shrieked.
The Blood Sacrifice Soul Flask. A vile occult treasure forged exclusively to harvest the grievances and souls of the slaughtered during the Nether Cult’s large-scale massacres.
Yet at this moment, the crimson runes etched into the surface of the flask were only illuminated halfway.
One hundred thousand souls.
That was the absolute minimum quota handed down by the cult’s hierarchy when initiating the Frenzy Blood Rain Grand Array over Bo’an. To bring this grand slaughter to fruition, he had operated in the shadows for three entire years—evading the keen nets of the Magic Tribunal, infiltrating subordinates into the Hunter Union, and tampering with the municipal water supply. He had envisioned that once the blood rain saturated with the Frenzy Elixir poured down, the wild beast hordes from the Cang Lei Ridge would succumb to uncontrollable madness, tearing through the outer barrier and transforming the entire border city into a gargantuan slaughterhouse. One hundred thousand souls drenched in extreme despair and agonizing resentment at death’s door would serve as the ultimate tribute to the esteemed Red Cardinal, securing his ascension into the revered Council of Elders.
Yet now, the harvest had ground to a rigid halt at fifty thousand.
Half. Barely half!
“Useless trash.”
A rasping voice, grated like two rusted iron plates grinding together, hissed from beneath the cowl. The Blue Deacon’s thin lips twitched, revealing a row of sharp, ash-gray teeth.
His cold gaze shifted toward the grounds of Feng Lan Magic High School—the site of the largest Barrier Sanctuary in the inner district.
There, a gargantuan hemispherical barrier of earthen gold interwoven with gleaming silver light shone resolute against the pitch-black night. At the base of the magic barrier, the corpses of hundreds of Black Crimson Wolves lay piled high, their foul black blood pooling into putrid quagmires. The ceaseless, frenzied assaults of the monster wave crashed against it like ocean surf against submerged reefs, utterly incapable of shaking even a single corner of the ward.
Over seventy thousand citizens and students of Bo’an City had successfully retreated into the depths of that subterranean fortress.
The sole reason the Feng Lan Sanctuary still stood intact was because his most vital chess piece had been utterly shattered.
At the main entrance of the shelter, beneath the blazing glare of magic light towers, a figure knelt face-down in the muddy, blood-slick ground. It was Lu Yuan.
The mole that the Blue Deacon had painstakingly nurtured—manufacturing an untraceable background to embed him as an elite hunter squad member, the very traitor entrusted with the magic key to deactivate the barrier dome from within—now had both arms brutally snapped behind his back. Fresh blood dripped steadily from his shattered joints. Surrounding him were dozens of battle-mages from the Hunter Union and instructors from Feng Lan High School, glaring down at him with venomous, righteous fury.
Every ounce of the Frenzy Crystals concealed in Lu Yuan’s chest had been confiscated. His scheme to lure the beast tide into the bunker to butcher seventy thousand refugees had been extinguished in the cradle!
“Lu Yuan... worthless garbage,” the Blue Deacon snarled, his withered fingers clenching the crystal flask so tightly that the glass creaked under the strain.
He had meticulously anticipated the military’s response time, the bureaucratic delays of the Magic Tribunal, and even the predictable panic of the lowly townsfolk. Never in his wildest calculations did he foresee that such a well-hidden linchpin would be exposed and crippled on the spot by a mere high school kid.
Yet Lu Yuan’s failure was still not the revelation that shook the Blue Deacon to his core.
His eyes drifted away from the sanctuary entrance, coming to rest upon the South Street intersection two kilometers away.
There, amidst crumpled wreckage and flattened automobiles, a colossal carcass over ten meters long lay motionless like a mound of death. Ragged, skeletal bat wings were splayed across the shattered pavement, the deep-blue venomous horn atop its skull was snapped in half, and its broad chest was blasted wide open into a charred, cavernous crater.
The Warrior-class Dreadwing Frenzy Wolf!
The apex terror the cult had secretly unleashed in this raid, a veritable armored killing machine capable of obliterating an entire company of armed Primary Mages. He had expected this beast to plow through the South Street lifeline, thoroughly cutting off the refugee evacuation route to Feng Lan High School.
Yet that magnificent Warrior-class beast was now an empty, lifeless husk!
And the figure standing atop the monster’s carcass, leaning against a shattered magic blade, drenched in beast blood with violet-black electric arcs flickering about his frame... was merely a sixteen-year-old youth.
Lin Feng!
Observing Lin Feng’s lean frame standing straight as a poised javelin amidst the desolate battlefield, the Blue Deacon’s ash-gray eyes twitched imperceptibly.
Innate Dual Elements!
A wet-behind-the-ears brat hailing from the impoverished slums of this provincial border town had actually awakened two of the most explosive, destructive elemental affinities in the human repertoire: Fire and Lightning!
And it wasn’t merely the awakening of two primary elements. The youth possessed a level of spell control that bordered on the grotesque. A relentless barrage of Scarlet Flame blasts detonated with surgical precision against the beast’s old wounds, followed by an explosive second-tier Violent Flash discharged right into the beast’s jugular at point-blank range... That entire display of cold, calculated, and brutal combat was not something a high schooler could ever pull off. That was the demeanor of a veteran hunter who had waded through hundreds of life-and-death bloodbaths!
Most startling of all, the moment the Dreadwing Frenzy Wolf drew its dying breath, the Blue Deacon had faintly sensed a bizarre, dark gravitational resonance emanating from Lin Feng’s chest.
Ancient, unfathomable, and domineering, that resonance had directly dragged the residual soul and the pristine, intact Soul Essence of the Warrior-class beast into a pitch-black pendant!
A Warrior-class Soul Essence!
A peerless treasure that even Advanced Mages and noble families would slaughter each other for had been devoured by a Primary-tier brat right in plain sight, without anyone else noticing!
“A youth endowed with Innate Dual Elements... concealing an ancient relic upon his person...”
The Blue Deacon muttered, his voice hissing through his teeth laced with bone-chilling frost:
“The Ling Clan of Bo’an are blind fools. To harbor a ferocious dragon in their home for years, mistaking him for a worm in the gutter!”
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH——!!
Right then, an ear-splitting sonic boom echoed from the distant horizon beyond the Cang Lei Mountain Range.
The Blue Deacon glanced upward.
Through the churning gray storm clouds of the night sky, a pair of gigantic Wind Wings spanning over twenty meters—composed entirely of howling, emerald-green gale torrents—parted the clouds, surging forward at terrifying speed! With every sweep of those gale wings, hundreds of razor-sharp wind blades sliced down the mountain slopes, mincing hordes of monsters attempting to crawl over the outpost ramparts!
Leading the charge was a burly figure clad in tattered military fatigues, yet radiating an imposing majesty like an erupting volcano—Commander Lei Zhen!
Behind Lei Zhen, hundreds of heavily armored military mages riding atop winged war-eagles swooped in. Blazing crimson magic flares shot into the night sky, illuminating the entire border territory. The resonant rallying horns of the regular army sounded, signaling that the vanguard had obliterated the outer encirclement at the frontier outpost and was formally sweeping into the city to eradicate the remnants!
The die was cast!
With the timely arrival of Lei Zhen’s division, the impregnable Feng Lan Sanctuary, and the decapitation of the Warrior-class leader, the Nether Cult’s “Bo’an Blood Sacrifice” plan had officially fallen apart at the seams.
If he lingered atop this clocktower for even a few minutes more, the moment Lei Zhen or the hidden Tribunal judges detected the dark mana signature of a Blue Deacon, he would be spatially anchored and surrounded to death!
The Blue Deacon snorted coldly, slowly sliding the Blood Sacrifice Soul Flask back into his voluminous sleeve.
“Lei Zhen... I will table this debt for now. The next time the cult marches south, your skull will serve as my wine chalice.”
His venomous gaze cast one last glance toward the South Street intersection, locking onto the back of Lin Feng, who was being embraced in tears by his father and younger sister.
A sinister, bloodcurdling smirk twisted the Blue Deacon’s pale lips:
“Intriguing... Truly intriguing! An innate dual-element seedling sprouting from the dregs of a border dump? Sooner or later, the cult will come for you... And when that day arrives, your dual-element soul will be the finest offering laid upon the altar of the Nether Lord! Savor whatever fleeting peace you have left, boy!”
With a sharp flick of his wrist, the Blue Deacon snapped his azure robe!
SWOOSH——!!
A surge of dark mana steeped in deathly essence erupted from his palm, spiraling into a deep, two-meter vortex of pitch darkness in midair. The vortex devoured all ambient light; space around its edges warped and splintered like shattered glass.
The Shadow Rift—a dimensional passage of the dark element!
Leaning backward, the Blue Deacon’s silhouette sank into the dense void of the spatial gate. In the blink of an eye, the shadow portal snapped shut with a muffled pop, and all traces of the sinister presence vanished into thin air, as if he had never been there.
The icy winds atop the clocktower continued to howl, but the grim specter had melted into the void.
At the same time, beneath the skies of Bo’an City...
A miraculous transformation quietly unfolded.
The foul, copper-scented blood rain, thick with frenzied venom that had poured without pause through the long night of terror, abruptly began to thin. The crimson droplets slowed, grew diluted, and gradually turned into the clear, natural rain of the heavens... before ceasing altogether!
The blood rain had stopped!
The pungent stench of gore and venom began to dissipate, chased away by clean mountain winds blowing from the Cang Lei Range.
Across the gloomy dome that had smothered Bo’an for twelve suffocating hours, the heavy clouds pregnant with lightning and slaughter began to churn. Slowly, they parted, drawn to the sides like a colossal black veil pulled open by the invisible hands of creation.
From that widening rift, a brilliant, golden beam of warm morning light spilled down upon the mortal world.
Dawn!
The first ray of the new day pierced the clouds, striking the rusted pinnacle of the clocktower, illuminating the devastated ruins along South Street, and shining directly onto Lin Feng’s weary, soot-and-blood-streaked face.
The warm sunlight dispersed the bone-deep chill of the stormy night.
Beneath the gates of the Feng Lan Sanctuary, the half-meter-thick steel blast doors weighing hundreds of tons began to grind open with a deep, echoing rumble.
Tens of thousands of refugees—mothers clutching their children, elders weeping through blurred vision, students trembling from head to toe—slowly emerged from the subterranean darkness. They looked up at the azure sky revealing itself in the east, feeling the gentle warmth of dawn settling over their shoulders.
Choked sobs gave way to tears of relief, quickly erupting into thunderous, earth-shaking cheers:
“We survived... We lived!!”
“It’s morning! The beasts have been driven back!!”
The most terrifying nightmare in the century-long history of Bo’an City had finally passed!
Yet amidst the rubble and devastation, Lin Feng lowered his head, staring at his palms still dusted with the scorched residue of lightning and flame, before glancing toward the distant clocktower—where a sinister, fleeting aura of darkness had just dissolved.
The youth tightened his fists, his gaze calm and profound as the waters of an autumn lake.
He knew all too well that while Bo’an’s dark night had drawn to a close, the terrifying storm gathering around him and this world of magic... had only just begun.