Chapter 48: Battle at the Parking Lot Entrance

It surged like a tide.

This was a phrase they had only ever read in textbooks—until now. For the first time, they witnessed it with their own eyes: over a hundred clowns wearing masks poured in from every direction of the plaza, rushing toward the students’ “base camp.” Chaos erupted in their wake.

Storefront windows shattered, civilians were shoved aside, and advertisements littered the ground in torn pieces.

“Kill! Kill!”

Some clowns clutched spray canisters filled with a concentrated gas—a stimulant for spirit power users, extracted from a certain type of mineral.

Under its influence, they charged ahead, fearless and wild, reaching the parking lot entrance in moments—only to suddenly halt fifty meters away.

The clowns behind them, unaware, kept charging forward, causing a pile-up and confusion in the front.

After some shoving and falling, things settled, and no one moved forward. For a brief moment, the two sides stared at each other across the open space of the road—you looking at me, I looking at you.

Before the operation, they had been told this would be a full-scale attack, and they had a clear numbers advantage.

Even if the white-haired student was strong, she couldn’t hold out against over a hundred attackers. Everyone had been eager, each one hoping to be the lucky one to land the decisive blow in the crowd.

But now, faced with the real scene, they hesitated.

“What’s going on?”
A small-time clown leader squeezed to the front. “Why’d you all stop?”

No one answered. But the moment he looked ahead, he understood. The students had all gathered tightly around the parking lot entrance. The narrow entry allowed only five or six people through at a time—fewer than the defenders had.

It was an easy-to-defend, hard-to-attack bottleneck. And there, standing in the center, was a striking figure with long white hair fluttering in the chilly winter morning wind. That alone was enough to make the clowns pause.

“Damn it! What are you afraid of? There’s so many of us—we can wear her down!”

The clown leader grabbed one of the stimulant sprays and jammed the nozzle into a front-liner’s mouth, pressing down hard until the guy choked and coughed.

“There’s no turning back. If we fail today, you’re all dead. CHARGE!”

The crowd surged forward again. The over-dosed clown was pushed a few times. His bloodshot brain could no longer process logic—he let out a shriek and leapt toward the entrance.

“They’re coming!”

Back at school, Cheng Li and the others had always talked big—eager for action and glory. But now, faced with a zombie-like wave of over a hundred clowns, their hands trembled slightly.

Thud!

Shen Ning raised her hand and fired a spirit-power shot, piercing the chest of a clown over ten meters away from the entrance.

The first clown fell. The others froze—only for a second—before the crowd behind them pushed forward again.

“Hold the entrance!” Xu Chuyao shouted through a loudspeaker. “Keep them outside at all costs!”

There were four 5th-year students present—two at early second-rank, and two at peak first-rank. They formed up on either side of Shen Ning. Working together, they were able to repel attackers efficiently. Yu Yuwei, though struggling slightly, roamed behind the defensive line to offer occasional support.

But as the main thrust of the clown assault arrived, things quickly became more dangerous.

“Don’t you have any area attacks?”
A voice sounded in Shen Ning’s ear—the sorrowful tone gave it away: it was the Melancholy Reflection.

She did have one—but it created a circular (spherical) blast. With her teammates so close, they’d be caught in the effect.

“You can modify the casting,” the reflection said. “Your skills are just simplified forms of your power—structured from your internal control. But they aren’t fixed in stone. You already know how to use both ‘Spirit Storm’ and ‘Spirit Focus’—so now, try condensing the storm.”

Condense the storm?

That would mean releasing Spirit Storm as a focused beam, using her fingertip instead of her whole body as the release point, and adding a final “condense” step during casting.

Shen Ning raised her hand again, pointing ahead.

“Kill! Kill! K—!”

Sometimes what drives people isn’t courage, but madness. A clown wearing a scorpion mask shrieked wildly, only to pause when he saw the white-haired girl calmly pointing at him.

Wait—why am I the first one here? Weren’t there people in front of me?

Then he remembered: she’d pointed once, and a teammate had taken a hole to the chest and collapsed. Then another. And now it was his turn… right?

A few seconds passed. Nothing happened.

“She’s out of spirit energy! Haha!”
The scorpion clown laughed and shouted to his comrades before charging joyfully, dagger raised—only to see air ripple at the tip of her finger.

BOOM—!!

When he was young, there was a video shop downstairs that blasted subwoofer bass every morning. It was the most unbearable noise he’d known—until now.

The sound of air rupturing at the girl’s fingertip was worse.

A crushing pressure robbed him of breath. Then his ribs snapped one by one. Blood and internal matter surged up his throat—but brought a strange relief, a taste of death as release.

The scorpion clown died instantly.

So did those behind him—and even a few fools who had believed his “false intel” and charged in hoping for a piece of glory.

In the cone-shaped Spirit Storm, over a dozen people died, their bodies scattered like leaves.

The scene was so horrific that even the next wave of clowns froze in fear.

Meanwhile, the defenders at the entrance suddenly felt the pressure lift.

“Fantastic, Shen Ning!” Xu Chuyao exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had something like that!”

When the fighting first began, she had realized they’d been too optimistic. While the team did have two other second-rankers, they were very new to that level—5th-year male students who fought primarily with fists and kicks. Their power came from upgrading their mechanics—from first-rank mechanical to second-rank pneumatic systems—but they hadn’t developed any spirit projection skills yet.

Simply put, they hit harder now, but couldn’t launch ranged attacks.

Without Shen Ning’s big move, they’d have been overwhelmed the moment enemies broke through.

But then she noticed Shen Ning giving her a helpless look—as if to say: that was the last shot.

Big moves burn through mana. And Shen Ning had also been using small spells constantly for precise eliminations.

Then the small clown leader returned.

“Why are you stopping?! She can’t use that move more than once!”

This leader wore a ram-horned mask, a symbol of misfortune. Internally, he was known as “Demon Clown.” He bent down, picked up the corpse of one of the fallen with a bloody chest wound, and hoisted it in front of himself like a shield.

Then he gave the order:

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“Shove the corpses forward. Push from behind. Force your way in.”