"Now, it's your turn!"
Lei Lin turned around, his cold gaze fixed on Leiseman.
……
Several days later, an explosive piece of news swept across the South Coast.
The Dark Wizards had attacked the
What shocked people the most was that the attacking Dark Wizards had not come away unscathed either. Not only had their leader Coben fallen, but every elite Dark Wizard dispatched alongside him had been wiped out to a man.
And after the great battle, Lei Lin's name spread far and wide.
As the mastermind behind the deaths of two Second-rank Wizards and the destruction of the Secret Realm gate, Lei Lin was placed under a joint bounty by both the Dark Wizards and the White Wizards.
Any Second-rank Wizard was a figure of considerable weight on the South Coast, enough to command serious attention.
Moreover, an unshackled lone Second-rank Wizard who possessed the terrifying ability to sway the course of a battlefield in an instant — Lei Lin's existence had already drawn the wariness of many high-ranking Wizards!
His title, "Venom Demon King," began to circulate in whispers.
……
On the western side of the South Coast, a region known as the Land of Eternal Light.
An bizarrely inverted castle stood there, its defensive runes shimmering with faint luminescence across its surface. This was the long-standing seat of the Portelli family, rumored for generations to possess the gift of prophecy. Though they had declined somewhat in recent centuries, they still retained a fraction of their former strength — something evident from the two peculiar stone guardians flanking the castle gate.
In front of the castle gate stood two sentinel statues, each clutching a massive sword driven point-first into the ground. Both figures towered over ten meters high and two to three meters wide, their features carved with sharp, chiseled lines that exuded an air of stern resolve.
At that moment, inside the castle — in a cellar filled with white, freezing mist.
Translucent blocks of enormous ice filled every corner, and at the very center of the frozen chamber, an ice coffin lay encased in clear crystal. Inside, a noble young woman with an elegant bearing rested with her hands folded together over her lower abdomen.
Though Jenna remained in a deep slumber, the cursed wound on her neck had begun to spread relentlessly. Black nodules and dark veins crept outward across her skin, and around her face, a ring of black gas coiled and lingered, writhing like a nest of slender serpents.
As the dark tendrils continued to coil tighter, the eyelids of the young woman fluttered, and an expression of intense agony twisted across her face.
Nearly a month had passed since Raylin laid the curse upon Jenna, and the curse upon her body was now on the verge of erupting completely.
If she could not be saved in time, Jenna would ultimately end up as nothing more than a pile of withered bones, just like Manla!
Bang! The door of the ice chamber was wrenched open, and the old woman who had just met with Raylin stepped inside.
"Jenna! Our Guide of this era! By the decree of the great Mother of Peace! You shall continue to exist!"
The old woman murmured, placing a blood-red key atop the ice coffin.
Hummmm! Waves of crimson light radiated from the key, slowly seeping into the interior of the ice coffin. In an instant, the red glow had spread across Jenna's entire body.
Under the illumination of the crimson light, the dark qi on Jenna's face gradually receded, and the terrible power of the curse visibly retreated at a speed the naked eye could follow.
"The curse-breaking runes Raylin provided really do work!" The old woman gazed at the ice coffin radiating red light, a look of unmistakable joy spreading across her face.
After striking a deal with Raylin and obtaining the curse-breaking runes in exchange for an incomplete, advanced Meditation Method passed down through her lineage, she had raced back without stopping, finally arriving just before the curse erupted.
"Raylin Faleier! You blasphemer! You shall face the judgment of the Mother of Peace!" The old woman traced several gestures with her hands, whispering as though in prayer.
Drip, drip!
Drops of blood-red liquid melted free from the key, pierced through the thick layer of ice, and fell directly onto the snow-white skin of Jenna's neck.
Tsss tsss! Wisps of white steam billowed upward. Under the covering of the crimson liquid, the wound on Jenna's neck began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Hummm!
Jenna, who had been unconscious all this time, suddenly opened her eyes!
Crash! The ice coffin shattered into countless fragments that scattered in every direction, and waves of strange energy rippled outward, reverberating throughout the entire ice chamber.
This energy fluctuation was something the old woman knew well — it was the outward manifestation that appeared when the Guide of their lineage began to prophesy!
"She's beginning to channel already?" The old woman's face flickered with a mixture of shock and unease.
"I see endless death! The Demon Lord! A Demon Lord who commands the power of lethal poison is approaching at terrifying speed..."
Jenna's eyes suddenly rolled back to pure white, and a low, clipped voice escaped her lips.
"Lethal poison? A Demon Lord? Could it be..." The old woman's heart jolted with shock. Recent intelligence suddenly flashed through her mind.
*Bzzzz!* The blood-red key from before suddenly floated into midair, radiating a blinding light.
"A positioning mark? No!!!" The old woman's pupils contracted to needlepoints!
At that very moment, outside the Inverted Castle, Lei Lin appeared there, clad in a black robe.
"So this is the legendary Inverted Castle? Truly extraordinary!"
Lei Lin pulled back his hood, gazing at the wondrous structure before him with a sigh of admiration.
Earlier, after killing two second-rank Wizards, knowing he would inevitably be hunted by both sides, he had immediately disguised himself and slipped out through another exit of the Henghe Secret Realm.
Though the entrances to the Secret Realm had strict inspection measures, they were at most designed to detect precious materials carrying the aura of the Henghe Secret Realm and prevent smuggling.
With Lei Lin's capabilities as a second-rank Warlock, slipping out had been effortless.
As for the plundered materials, they were all stored inside his Spatial Pouch—shielded by Spatial Runes, even the most sophisticated detection arrays couldn't detect any trace.
Lei Lin raised his right hand. On his right wrist, a blood-red key mark was pulsing with waves of light.
"This is the place!"
Lei Lin looked at the guiding mark on his hand, a faint smile appearing on his face.
The location of Jenna's clan was extremely well-hidden. Even Haitar needed the old woman's guidance to enter—there was no fixed map to follow.
In this deal with the old woman, although the old witch of Jenna's clan had harbored ill intentions—hoping Lei Lin would practice the incomplete high-grade Meditation Method and suffer cultivation backlash—Lei Lin had been no less scheming, embedding a positioning mark within the curse-breaking rune he gave her.
Following the mark's guidance, he had finally tracked down Jenna's clan's lair.
"The Sacred Light Candleflame—even in its incomplete form, this high-grade Meditation Method possesses uniqueness! This trait is extremely troublesome. It means that in this entire world, only one person can practice it..."
A fierce killing intent surfaced at the corners of Lei Lin's mouth. He had never held any favorable impression of this supremely arrogant clan. Now that he had found their lair, settling things once and for all would be for the best.
"Halt!!!" The two enormous stone statue guards at the castle entrance instantly came to life, their muscles flowing with unnatural fluidity as they bellowed in deep voices.
"Two arcane creatures? Together they possess strength approaching that of a Tier 1 Wizard!" Lei Lin's eyes flashed as he instantly saw through the true nature of the two guards.
"This level of defense is quite impressive, even among wizard clans!"
Lei Lin raised his hand, and two massive black fireballs shot forth, hurtling toward the enormous stone guards charging with swords raised.
Boom! Boom!
The fireballs collided with the giant stone swords and immediately spread like liquid across the guards' entire bodies. The two guards instantly began blazing like massive black torches.
Under the assault of Lei Lin's Shadow Fireballs, these stone guards that had endured for over a thousand years crumbled into heaps of black powder in the blink of an eye.
"Enemy attack!!!" "Who is it?"
Urgent cries echoed throughout the castle, followed by shrill, piercing alarm bells. The runes etched across the castle's surface began to squirm and writhe.
Once the ancient clan's full defenses were activated, even a peak Tier 1 Wizard would be unable to break through in a short time.
"Hah..."
Lei Lin exhaled a long breath. Tendrils of silver Spiritual Power continuously extended from his body, and then his entire figure eerily drifted into midair, transforming into an enormous silver visage.
"Bile of Extreme Venom!!!"
From the lips of the colossal silver visage, cold incantation syllables rang out.
The toxin of an ancient terrifying creature—the Komon Giant Snake—began seeping silently throughout the entire castle!
The runes on the castle's exterior seemed completely useless against this toxic assault. Inside the castle, one person after another—apprentices, servants, and even official Wizards—collapsed to the ground as their bodies began to rot.
It was not just the castle. Even the vegetation within a radius of over ten miles began to yellow and wither, falling to the ground and decaying.
Silence! The silence of death! It instantly engulfed the vast region surrounding the castle.
In this sprawling domain, no living thing was spared—all were consigned to eternal death.
……
Thud! The old gray gate, still bearing patterns steeped in the patina of ages, quietly toppled to the ground.
Under the corrosive assault of the virulent poison, the entire castle suffered not only devastating blows to its defensive wizard formations but also catastrophic damage to its very structure.
The granite, which once seemed impossibly solid, was now riddled with holes and permeated with the stench of decay. The whole castle stood on the verge of collapse; Lei Lin felt that with just a push, the entire edifice would come crashing down in a thunderous ruin.
The corridors, thick with the foul odor of putrefaction, were littered with bodies in various states of rot.
Following the mark he had left, Lei Lin delved deeper until he reached the ice cellar at the heart of the castle.
He stepped into the cellar, filled with a white, misty chill, and looked silently upon the two corpses within.
The old woman he had seen before had died in extreme agony, her hands still clutching vials containing different antidotes. Clearly, none had worked; the muscles on her body continued to rot before his eyes.
As a formal Wizard, her physical resilience was naturally stronger than that of an ordinary person. Even in death, her body proved more difficult to fully destroy than that of a common apprentice.