Blazing Fist · Ground Shatter
"…"
"No question about it — it's right here!" Song Xia's expression darkened as her gaze fixed on the wall of blackness ahead.
Bai Cangfeng and the three other Noble Clan disciples grew solemn as well, their magic poised and ready.
"It reeks."
"It really does. Someone must have soiled themselves from fright — what else could smell this bad?" Zhuang Lifeng remarked.
"Stop talking nonsense. The Shadow Demon-Beast is moving fast — Zhuang Lifeng, get your Plant Element magic ready. We need to lock it down." Song Xia had caught the strange odor too, but the Shadow Demon-Beast was all that mattered to her right now.
Zhuang Lifeng nodded, dark green vines already coiling slowly around his hands.
Green Star Trails swept through the air as his vine skill held at the ready, waiting only for the Shadow Demon-Beast to show itself…
At last, a gray shape appeared — moving like the wind, so fast that only the tail perpetually flickering with light made it possible to track at all.
Bai Cangfeng readied his magic at the same moment, eyes locked without a blink on the Shadow Demon-Beast charging straight toward them.
A gale of putrid stench slammed into them. The grim composure on everyone's faces collapsed instantly — eyes rolling, grimacing — and Bai Cangfeng, with his obsessive need for cleanliness, doubled over in a dry heave.
"Good god, what ARE those things?!" Zhuang Lifeng suddenly cried out.
Standing at the front of the group, he was the first to see the source of that eye-watering stench: a massive swarm of black-skinned creatures with the warped, leering faces of spectral apes and the grotesque bodies of malformed humans!
They came in writhing hordes — some clambering up the black walls of the maze, some sprinting across the ground at terrifying speed, others skittering upside-down along the ceiling. The sheer density of them set every hair on end.
Zhuang Lifeng swore to himself he had never in his life laid eyes on anything so hideous and revolting.
"Get out of the way!!" Song Xia's face went pale as she shouted back at the others.
These were all elites among the new students. Faced with such a sight, none of them were foolish enough to stand frozen in place — they leapt aside, having absolutely no intention of standing in the path of that flood of black-skinned creatures.
"Use magic, use your magic!!" Bai Cangfeng shrieked.
He seized Control of his Star Chart, a wild, churning wind already surging between his hands.
Under the suppression of the Night Sovereign's Dominion, completing the Star Chart took far longer than usual — it nearly fractured apart.
In the end, he pushed through: Wind Disk: Tornado!
The Wind Disk coiled upward, fierce winds spinning at tremendous speed, shaping itself into a massive, spiraling tornado.
The tornado howled in place, and the Black-Beast Demons that threw themselves at it were hurled into the air. One after another they plummeted back down and shattered on impact, their remains splattered across the floor.
But that single Wind Disk: Tornado had thoroughly enraged the vindictive creatures. The surviving Black-Beast Demons snapped their gaze onto Bai Cangfeng's group and lunged straight for them.
"Are you brain-dead?! They were going after the Shadow Demon-Beast — why in the world did you provoke them?!" Song Xia screamed.
That Wind Disk: Tornado had taken out three Black-Beast Demons at most. Under normal circumstances, one Wind Disk: Tornado sweeping an open area would have no trouble wiping out dozens — but under the Night Sovereign's Dominion, every element except Shadow Element was suppressed. Only someone who possessed Shadow Element themselves could cast other magic without restriction.
When Bai Cangfeng saw still more Black-Beast Demons pouring out from deeper in the dark maze, his legs turned to jelly.
He had never imagined there could be so many. Now their eyes gleamed like a field of stars, every last pair fixed directly on him.
"Run, just run!!" the other team members cried.
"Zhuang Lifeng, now — use your mid-tier Plant Element magic!!" Song Xia commanded.
Zhuang Lifeng didn't waste a second. Abandoning his low-tier Plant Element magic, he threw himself into tracing a full Plant Element Star Chart.
"Kun Grove · Prison!" Even under pressure, his skill showed — his execution in a crisis was remarkably fluid.
Yet the Kun Grove, which should have been wide enough to seal off the entire corridor of the dark maze, was dramatically diminished under the Night Sovereign's Dominion. It sealed only two-thirds of the passage, leaving a conspicuous gap through which the creatures could still force their way.
"Stay calm. Hold formation. There are a lot of them, but they aren't that strong."
"Damn it — if this Night Sovereign's Dominion wasn't crippling us, I'd blast every last one of them into dust!!"
Fire blazed in Song Xia's eyes. She stepped to the very front of the group and waited in utter calm as the Black-Beast Demons squeezed through the gap in the Kun Grove. The moment they had closed to the right distance, she let out a sharp cry. Blazing flames erupted from beneath her feet, engulfing her tall frame — she became a being of living fire.
"Blazing Fist: Ground Shatter!!"
The Blazing Fist formed a ring and condensed around her wrists the instant the words left her lips.
Her eyes flashed. She drove her fist into the ground with everything she had.
Scalding fire energy flooded into the earth. A streak of crimson blazed across the surface, racing toward the Black-Beast Demons in a heartbeat.
**BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!**
The ground split apart. Massive columns of fire erupted upward, blooming into a death lotus of shattering flame that radiated with annihilation!
The lotus blazed across a vast area, fire pillars surging in every direction. Every Black-Beast Demon that slammed into the Ground Shatter rising from below was launched skyward — and turned to black ash before it ever reached the peak of its arc.
Zhuang Lifeng and the other two students stared at the death lotus of flame ahead, jaws hanging open.
It was the first time any of them had seen Song Xia unleash her full power. The second-tier Blazing Fist was nothing short of breathtaking. Bai Cangfeng's Wind Disk: Tornado had killed perhaps three of those creatures; this Blazing Fist: Ground Shatter had incinerated far more than three outright — and that wasn't even counting those still burning.
"The Night Sovereign's Dominion is suppressing too much of our power. We pull back now — there are far more of these things than we can ever finish off." Song Xia spoke to her team with calm authority.
The others naturally deferred to their leader and wasted no time retreating while the Blazing Fist: Ground Shatter's effects still lingered.
The moment Bai Cangfeng, Song Xia, and the others turned to leave, a lone figure emerged from the shadows of the dark maze wall.
He glanced after the five who had fled, then shifted his gaze — and locked onto the swarm of Black-Beast Demons still caught in the remnants of the Kun Grove and the dying embers of the Blazing Fist.
"Let me give you a proper send-off!!"
Fire ignited behind his eyes.
Rose-red flames, deep as blood, surged up from beneath his feet. Under the Night Sovereign's Dominion, his fire was completely unaffected — scorching beyond all limits.
Power built to a breaking point. It was as if boundless, roaring fury was about to explode from a single fist.
Rose Flame ·
Blazing Fist ·
Ground Shatter!!!
"**Die. All of you. DIE!!!**"
This was a flame of vengeance. Its power dwarfed what had come before by an incalculable margin.
Wave after wave of Black-Beast Demons were reduced to cinders within the death-rose blaze of the Ground Shatter, and their screams rang through the black maze one after another, fading into the dark.