Volume 1: Bo'an Awakening & The Calamity Storm
Chapter 92
Memorial Service and Evacuation Order
A biting dawn breeze swept across the central plaza of Bo’an City, carrying with it the frigid, salt-heavy mist rolling in from the distant coastline, intertwined with the acrid stench of ash and cinder that had yet to dissipate after the prolonged nightmare.
Across the sprawling granite esplanade, jagged fissures and blackened blast craters bore mute testimony to the violence of the previous night. Amidst the ruin, thousands of silver-white mana torches had been planted in solemn rows, their flickering flames casting a melancholic, pure luminescence over the desolation. Drapes of pristine white silk and countless wreaths of wild chrysanthemums—hastily gathered by surviving townsfolk from the surrounding hillsides—carpeted the foot of the City Founding Monument, the grand obelisk engraved with the names of the pioneer forebears who had carved this border bastion out of the perilous wilderness half a century ago.
A mournful, resonant brass fanfare rose from the military band, its sorrowful cadence echoing beneath a vast canopy of cloudless azure sky. That tragic, solemn melody felt like a choked farewell, piercing through dense plumes of swirling incense and settling heavily upon the hearts of more than fifty thousand souls gathered in silence.
Directly before the memorial obelisk, hundreds of rough-hewn pine coffins draped in the brilliant crimson of the national flag were aligned in flawless, silent ranks. Within them rested the fallen: courageous battle-mages of the Cang Lei Ridge Garrison Legion, freelance vanguard hunters of the Qingfeng Hunter Squad, dedicated instructors from Feng Lan Magic High School, and uncounted civilian mages who had stood at the breach, offering their flesh and blood as an iron bulwark against the ferocious onslaught of the beast tide.
Commander Lei Zhen stood at the most revered position at the front of the military honor guard.
The grizzled, battle-hardened commander wore a freshly pressed moss-green service dress uniform today, yet his weathered face remained etched with jagged, dried lacerations, and dark, exhausted hollows framed his eyes after a full night of savage, desperate slaughter. With slow, deliberate solemnity, he removed his peaked officer’s cap adorned with a gleaming golden star, tucked it firmly beneath his left arm, and bent forward into a rigid ninety-degree bow before the caskets of his fallen comrades.
His calloused, sinewy hands clenched tightly against the seams of his trousers, thick blue veins bulging prominently across the backs of his weathered knuckles. His hawk-like, razor-sharp eyes—ordinarily blazing with fierce, indomitable authority—were now rimmed in raw crimson, shimmering with unshed tears.
“Comrades...” Lei Zhen’s gravelly voice tore through the heavy air, thick with choked emotion. “Bo’an City owes its very survival to your blood! Your sacrifice has preserved the spark of life for this land. May you rest in eternal peace!”
As the military dirge faded into a low, lingering hum, the fragile quiet was shattered by a wave of muffled weeping and heartbroken sobs that surged through the sea of tens of thousands of civilian refugees standing behind the perimeter.
There were young widowed mothers clutching terrified infants tightly against their bosoms; there were white-haired fathers whose palsied fingers trembled uncontrollably as they caressed the freezing, rough-hewn timber of caskets containing sons who had barely reached their eighteenth birthdays. The crushing weight of grief and bereavement settled over the entire plaza, as suffocating and immovable as the towering silhouette of the Cang Lei Mountain Range looming against the northern horizon.
Lin Feng stood in quiet contemplation amongst the ranks of surviving Feng Lan High School students, flanked by Zhang Hu and Xiao Min. Pinned to his left chest was a modest, white chrysanthemum.
His dark gaze drifted across the flag-draped caskets of the fallen young soldiers, a tempest of complex, unyielding emotions churning within the depths of his chest.
If not for those garrison soldiers who had willingly hurled their bodies into the meat grinder at the outer checkpoints; if not for the ultimate, selfless sacrifice of Instructor Kang Mu, who had detonated his own mana pool to buy precious moments for the retreating students—the entirety of Bo’an City would have been converted into a gargantuan mass grave beneath the ravenous claws and fangs of the monster horde.
Power!
Absolute, unquestionable strength!
The conviction blazed once again with blistering intensity within the youth’s soul. In this cruel, unforgiving world of magic and monsters, strength was the sole absolute truth, the only line demarcating survival from oblivion! Without sufficient power, not only one’s own life, but the lives of one’s father, sister, and loved ones were nothing more than fragile playthings, tossed about at the indifferent whims of catastrophe and predators!
When the three minutes of collective silence drew to a close, the last notes of the brass horns faded away entirely.
Mayor Yan Zheng—the chief executive of Bo’an City, a middle-aged magistrate whose hair had turned completely silver overnight beneath the crushing burden of this calamity—stepped forward onto the elevated granite podium. His voice, carried across every corner of the central plaza through the resonant amplification of municipal mana speaker arrays, sounded simultaneously heavy with grief and steely with unshakeable resolve:
“Fellow citizens, and brave defenders of Bo’an City!”
“Last night, our municipality suffered the most horrific and devastating catastrophe in its fifty-year history. Through the sinister, abhorrent conspiracy of the Nether Cult and the frenzied assault of the demonic beast hordes pouring from Cang Lei Ridge, we have lost thousands of our brethren and hundreds of our most exemplary warriors... But we have not been broken! We shall never be brought to our knees!”
“Yet the cold reality before our eyes remains merciless and severe,” Mayor Yan Zheng’s tone dropped into a grim, sobering register. “The ancient elemental mana core supplying power to our Grand City Defense Barrier was sabotaged and thoroughly annihilated from within by hidden traitors. To reconstruct an urban-scale defensive boundary of such caliber, the central state would require a minimum of three to five years of continuous engineering and an astronomical investment exceeding tens of billions of magic coins. In the meantime, the untamed depths of the Cang Lei Mountain Range harbor tens of thousands of feral, ravenous beasts that may sweep down to devour whatever remains of our city at any given moment!”
A restless murmur immediately rippled across the fifty thousand survivors. Anxious, bewildered eyes lifted toward the elevated dais, panic and uncertainty once again flickering through the crowd.
Mayor Yan Zheng drew in a deep breath. From his inner lapel, he withdrew an official parchment scroll bordered in gilded embroidery, stamped with the vermilion seals of the Supreme Magic Tribunal and the Ministry of National Defense. He unfurled it before the microphone, reading aloud in a clear, thunderous cadence:
“Pursuant to the National Emergency Decree on Magical Catastrophe Management, the Supreme Magic Tribunal in conjunction with the Southern Military Command officially decrees: THE GENERAL EVACUATION ORDER FOR BO’AN CITY!”
“Commencing at twelve o’clock noon today, all one hundred thousand surviving residents of Bo’an City shall be organized by the municipal government and the military garrison to execute a total evacuation. Utilizing the magic-track railway lines and heavy armored military transport convoys, all citizens shall be relocated to the secure metropolitan safe zones of the South—primarily resettling within the greater metropolitan jurisdiction of Whale Ocean Magic Capital, Jinghai, and its adjacent provincial prefectures!”
“The national government formally pledges to shoulder all transit expenses in full, provide interim housing and food rations, and grant priority status for land allocation and urban residency permits to every displaced household! Our departure from our homeland today is in no way an act of capitulation. We withdraw to preserve our people’s lifeblood, to amass our strength, and to bide our time until the day we march back to reclaim every inch of our sovereign soil!”
As the final words of the evacuation decree echoed over the loudspeakers, a stunned, breathless silence descended upon the plaza for several heartbeats—before detonating into an overwhelming tempest of heated commotion and emotional upheaval.
Abandon Bo’an!
To abandon the land where their ancestors were buried, the familiar neighborhoods where generations had lived and labored, only to journey into a distant, alien metropolis! For the impoverished working-class families of South Street, this sudden uprooting felt like a blade twisting through their entrails. Yet every person present understood with chilling clarity that this was their sole avenue of survival. Remaining behind in this defenseless, ruined wasteland without the protective umbrella of a city barrier meant only one outcome: becoming easy prey for the prowling beasts of the wild.
Down in the reserved seating for municipal dignitaries, Ling Zhuofeng sat motionless, rigid as a granite statue.
The century-old empire of the Ling Clan in Bo’an—from the opulent splendor of the Moon Garden Estate, to lucrative mana quarries, to dozens of thriving commercial boulevards—had dissolved overnight into worthless mounds of ash and rubble. The once-mighty patriarch buried his weathered face in his trembling hands, the muscles along his temples twitching violently in a state of utter, agonizing helplessness.
The gathering began to break apart. Thousands of refugees hastened back toward the makeshift disaster encampments and temporary shelters, desperate to pack whatever meager possessions they had managed to salvage from the ruins, bracing themselves for the historic migration southward.
Lin Feng turned on his heel, preparing to head toward the medical field tents where his father, Lin Hai, and his younger sister, Lin Xiaomo, were resting.
Before he could take a single stride, however, the crisp, authoritative crunch of heavy military boots echoed directly behind him.
“Lin Feng!”
Lin Feng stopped and turned. Standing before him was Commander Lei Zhen. The towering general looked down at the youth with piercing, appreciative eyes, a faint, meaningful smirk playing at the corners of his lips.
“Brat, don’t be in such a rush to pack bags. The military has already taken care of your family’s belongings. Everything for your father and little sister has been arranged down to the finest detail.”
“Sir? What does the Commander mean by...” Lin Feng blinked, genuine surprise flickering across his face.
Lei Zhen raised a calloused hand, gesturing toward a sleek, pitch-black armored mana transport vehicle idling near a cordoned-off corner of the plaza, flanked by four elite military sentries standing at rigid attention with spell-rifles drawn.
“Get in the vehicle. The Mayor and the Chief Inquisitors from the Magic Tribunal are waiting for you inside the Tribunal Hall. A hero who single-handedly saved over three thousand citizens and personally decapitated a Warrior-class Dreadwing Frenzy Wolf... does not slip away into the distance like an ordinary refugee in the dust!”
Lei Zhen’s grin broadened, brimming with unvarnished pride. “It is high time this city bestows upon you the reward you have so rightfully earned!”