An overwhelming, icy mental force formed countless invisible, poisoned needles, stabbing directly into Scarface’s chaotic Sea of Consciousness, as if a billion red-hot spikes tore through his brain!
‘GRAAHHHH—!!’
The roar inside the icy coffin twisted into a scream of agony!
Scarface’s head slammed back against the ice, blood vessels bulging beneath his skin like writhing worms, bursting to stain the Rock Crystal Coffin crimson!
Spirit Strike targeted the Sea of Consciousness itself—excruciating beyond physical pain.
The berserk state trembled, on the verge of collapse!
Lin En’s right hand spread, fingers splayed at the immense coffin restraining Scarface.
Rock Coffin Crush!
Earthen mana glowed on the stone’s surface!
The massive coffin squeezed inward like a titanic press!
Rock groaned, ice compacted, tightening around Scarface’s body, grinding flesh and bone with merciless pressure!
The twin tortures of freezing, crushing flesh and the agony of a thousand psychic blades!
The berserk rage was slowly snuffed out.
A hint of clarity returned to Scarface’s gaze—now mingled terror and pain.
“Speak!”
Lin En’s voice was an arctic gale, each word biting with soul-rending cold and undisguised killing intent.
“My sister—where is she?!”
“N-no… never tell you!”
Scarface croaked through clenched teeth, voice slurred by pain.
Lin En’s gaze turned even more merciless.
A Spirit Strike ten times more ferocious than before exploded in Scarface’s Sea of Consciousness, every needle a blade on his soul.
“Not talking? Then keep suffering this endless torment!”
Lin En’s tone held not a shred of emotion, as if sentencing a death row prisoner.
Scarface’s body convulsed in the icy stone coffin, squeezed tighter and tighter.
Blood gushed from his bitten lips, splattering and freezing to red ice crystals on the coffin.
“Guh-huh!”
The agony robbed him of screams.
“Will you talk?!”
Lin En pressed, his killing intent so dense it seemed to freeze the air.
Under pain exceeding human limits, even the Feral Potion’s strength and pain resistance shattered.
“Sent… sent away!”
Scarface sobbed, drool and blood streaming down his chin, his voice hoarse and desperate.
“A team of elites took the girl… west… I was hired—I don’t know by who—just told to take her to Night Raven Outpost…”
Every word was a cold dagger in Lin En’s heart!
A towering inferno of rage—vengeance that could burn the stronghold to ashes—was instantly doused by three words: “Sent away.”
Icy cold swept through his limbs, freezing his blood, his breath.
Wei’er… isn’t here!
West! An elite team!
Night Raven Outpost!
The hope of rescuing his sister, the fire of revenge just kindled, was nearly extinguished by this cruel truth.
Despair coiled around his heart like a venomous snake.
Lin En released the Spirit Power suppression and the crushing stone.
He looked at the writhing, sobbing Scarface, then slowly swept his gaze over the terror-stricken survivors in the ruins.
The last glimmer of human emotion in his eyes faded.
Only pure, overwhelming fury remained, bent on dragging everything into the abyss.
“AHHHH—!”
A scream, inhuman and filled with agony, despair, and willful destruction, tore from Lin En’s throat!
The air itself trembled.
Lin En spread his arms wide, as if embracing annihilation!
Spirit Power surged out like invisible hands, covering all of Skull Ridge!
The world’s elemental forces, like obedient slaves, bent to his will for a symphony of destruction!
Countless high-voltage arcs formed in the air, dense enough to split molecular bonds, filling the entire region!
Pooled blood on the ground was pierced by electricity, boiling and vaporizing, water content electrocuted out!
Scattered water barrels and wine skins, remaining fluids instantly vaporized!
Even moisture in the soil and rocks was forcibly extracted!
Masses of hydrogen and oxygen, mixing wildly, billowed like boiling clouds!
Lin En slammed his hands together!
A colossal wind-element funnel, hundreds of meters across, materialized above Skull Ridge, its suction force monstrous!
The swirling hydrogen-oxygen mixture was sucked in, compressed, and concentrated to an explosive limit!
A single spark could trigger total annihilation!
A tiny orange ember, like the finger of death, touched the heart of the super-compressed gas cloud.
Starfire Ignition!
“Burn!”
The icy word fell like a divine decree!
Boom!!!!
Chain Combustion!
In a hundredth of a second, the tornado’s core became a sky-piercing, blue firestorm!
Blue flames swept mercilessly, melting rock like wax!
Corpses, weapons, ruins—everything vaporized in an instant!
The entire mountaintop melted and collapsed, forming a massive lava lake!
A blue pillar of fire soared to the clouds, painting half the night sky in ghostly light!
Divine punishment itself!
Lin En floated at the edge of the inferno, his robe snapping in the wild elemental winds.
His face was cold, eyes distant, as if the mountain-leveling, world-consuming scene before him was but a speck of dust brushed away.
His Spirit Power, controlling the destruction, was steady, precise, and merciless, without a trace of effort or tremor.
To him, this forbidden curse of mountain-burning fury was simply the venting of bottomless rage.
***
Dozens of miles away, a figure wrapped in crimson wind sped through the night!
Vice Principal Morton!
After settling Lin En’s mother, he used all his strength to pursue the residual energy Lin En left behind.
Just as he neared Skull Ridge, a wave of destruction swept out, sending chills through his soul!
“What?!”
Morton’s pupils shrank, body halting in midair!
He stared at Skull Ridge, aghast!
Far ahead, the night sky was lit by a blue tornado of fire that reached from earth to heavens!
So massive and violent was the flames that even across dozens of miles, he—a high-level Grand Mage—felt his heart pound in fear!
“What is this?”
Morton’s voice trembled with disbelief.
He sensed the terrifying destructive force and the impossibly vast, yet precise, elemental control within the tornado.
A coldness shot from his feet to his scalp!
“This level of element mastery… such mountain-melting power…”
Though he knew it was most likely Lin En’s doing, facing a forbidden-level spell like this made him doubt his own eyes.
He held his breath, keeping a cautious distance from the center of destruction.
Only when the blue firestorm finally faded, its oppressive force dissipating, did Morton dare approach the former Skull Ridge.
With each step closer, his heartbeat grew heavier.
The air was thick with a burnt stench—rock melted at unimaginable heat, substances vaporized to their base elements.
Even after the firestorm, the lingering heat warped the air, turning the landscape into a shimmering haze.
When Morton finally hovered above what used to be Skull Ridge, he froze in place.
Though a Grand Mage, Vice Principal of Fran Magic Martial Academy, a man who’d weathered countless storms and seen the mightiest of spells—even participated in legion-scale magical wars—
Even so.
The sight before him left his mind blank, his breath stopped.
The mountain was gone.
Where once stood the rugged, rocky Skull Ridge and the Blood Wolf Stronghold, a landmark clearly marked on his map, was now a void as if a giant’s hand had wiped it from the earth.
In its place was a vast, churning lava lake, sinking dozens of meters below ground.
The superheated magma gurgled, radiating waves that could melt steel, the very air above rippling with heat.
The region was silent—save for the bubbling lava and the hiss of burning air.
No sign of life remained, not even ash.
All things were vaporized, annihilated by that blue, divine fire.
Morton floated hundreds of meters above the edge, feeling the heat so intense it could evaporate his mana shield in an instant.
He trembled, face as pale as paper.
Morton himself was a master of fire magic, famed throughout the kingdom for his understanding and power.
He believed he’d seen the wildest, most extreme flames.
But the inferno before him shattered that belief.
It had turned an entire mountain and everything on it into molten lava in moments, using fire of inconceivable intensity.
It required a god-like mastery of the Fire Element Law—a level of burning fury he could not even comprehend.
“Forbidden Curse… this is absolutely forbidden-level power…”
Morton’s voice rasped in fear.
Within his Mana Sea, his fire-element mana sensed the residual energy of the lava lake—and responded with primal awe and dread.
His proud mastery as a Grand Mage, his decades of fire magic expertise, felt tiny and laughable before this lake of pure destruction.
Lin En…
Morton swallowed hard, as if a burning coal was stuck in his throat.
“How… how did he do this?!”