High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1830: Chapter 51: High-Altitude Adventure

If someone asks Zheng Qing about his feelings at ten thousand meters altitude.

Zheng Qing would answer, swollen and cold.

The swelling is due to the extremely low air pressure at high altitude, whereas the pressure inside the human body is very high, resulting in a feeling of being blow-up.

Zheng Qing has no experience of being pregnant, but at this moment, with the violent swelling in his abdomen, he feels like he’s about to give birth. And his ears, throbbing with pain, as if something is about to burst through his eardrums in the next second.

As for the cold, it’s because high altitude receives less surface radiation heat, a bit of geography knowledge Zheng Qing knew since middle school.

So, when the magic envelope that originally covered him shattered, Zheng Qing first felt his whole body ’swelling’ a few circles, then his exposed wrists, neck, and cheeks, sharp cold, as if plunged into a bucket of dry ice, stinging and numb. So much so that when the vine in front of him dragged him downwards, he worried he might be torn into pieces like frozen meat jerky under the violent pulling force.

”Gē... crack crack...”

The young wizard tried to chant two more binding spells to wrap himself warmer. But the massive pressure difference and extremely low temperature made him feel his nose was about to explode, his teeth chattering coldly, making it hard to chant even one complete spell.

After a moment of stalemate—which maybe lasted only seconds, or perhaps more than ten, one segment of time that felt actually very short but very long to Zheng Qing—the young wizards wrapped in a cluster of vine balls swooped headfirst into the black-gray, roiling cloud sea under the pull of gravity.

Soaked.

That was Zheng Qing’s first impression of the cloud sea.

In a daze, he was somewhat unsure whether he was in the sky or had really fallen into the sea.

Huge masses of water interspersed with hail slammed consecutively into the vine ball they invaded, producing bursts of muffled pitter-patter sounds. The damp air penetrated through the gaps between the vines, giving Zheng Qing a feeling of suffocating water immersion. He had to strive to lower his breathing rate to ensure he wasn’t ’drowned’ by the water rushing from all directions.

Besides the water, there was wind.

The force capable of rolling the boundless cloud sea was overwhelmingly immense to Zheng Qing and the others. The ferocious wind turned into the hands of a giant, effortlessly tossing around that small vine ball in the cloud sea. Losing the control of the flying curse, Zheng Qing felt he had completely lost his sense of direction, spiraling around in mid-air like a top.

For an instant, he felt as though he was not falling but flying upward.

Of course, everything—whether cold, swelling pain, humidity, wind, or chaos of losing direction—all these discomforts, upon the appearance of lightning, receded into corners of near imperceptibility to the young man.

Blue-white arcs appeared silently outside the vine ball, Zheng Qing almost instantly caught a whiff of the burnt smell of vine combusting.

Observing above the cloud sea, he always described the lightning he saw as ’slender.’ But diving into the cloud sea to face the lightning itself, he realized that the seemingly thin lightning was so massive, so terrifying.

Blue-white arcs several meters, tens or even dozens of meters long, stretched into bizarre shapes amidst the wind and ’storm.’ Zheng Qing dared to bet he saw a few white foals playing chase among those lightnings.

”Doom! Ahhhh!!”

”Ow ow ow ow!!”

Xin Fat Man’s shrieks and Li Meng’s excited screams came by his ears. Looking down through the gaps between the vines, Zheng Qing could vaguely see a giant dragon condensed from lightning, baring its teeth and claws, rushing out of the depths of the cloud sea, directly at this string of ’small fruits.’

Zheng Qing’s face turned ghastly pale, instinctively grasping for the law book hanging at his waist.

But the rapid descent and violent spinning made it hard for him to maintain balance. The half-damp law book slipped several times from the fingertips of the young cost student, then spun and fell behind him again.

Zheng Qing felt his ears aching more.

The dragon drew closer.

The young cost student at the end of the line could faintly see the row of gigantic turning fangs in its opened big mouth, and those manes of uneven length on its dragon back formed by a cluster of bouncing lightning.

But he couldn’t hear the roar of the electric dragon.

The boy touched his cold earlobe, suddenly froze, instinctively raised his hand, and formed a spell in front of him. Immediately, a pale green stream of light shot out from his left ear, swelling as the wind, rapidly transforming into a strange-eyed green snake wrist-thick, its left eye dark blue like water, right eye blood-red like jade, starlight overflowing as its gaze opened and closed.

The green snake seemed to greatly favor the environment in the cloud sea.

Head held high, it whistled silently, eyes filled with joy. Seeing what appeared to be a terrifying monster, the electric dragon dashing towards the vine ball shrieked, could not dodge in time, desperately halted, then broke apart into thousands of miles of lightning scattering in all directions.

The green snake tilted its head, glanced askance at those escaping lightning bolts, and slightly wagged its tail, which suddenly stretched long, transforming into an immense shadow comparable to mountains, wrapping, winding, collecting right there, and captured back the thousands of lightning blossoming like chrysanthemums, with only a few threads escaping alive.

The snake tail tip deftly manipulated like an elephant’s trunk, compressing the light into a small ball, and stuffed it into its mouth.

Burp.

It blissfully sighed, releasing a golden glow, which like a giant hand easily subdued the boundless massive waves raised by the dragon’s disappearance.

For a moment, the region of cloud sea where the vine ball was located became clean and clear; lightning retreated, hail dispersed, and even the rampant wind lost its spirit, becoming gentle and shy.

Zheng Qing stared dumbfoundedly at this scene, feeling its body of green scale armor seemed to become glossier and more smooth.

Just like that, the small string formed by five vine balls fell down without impediment.

...

...

As the young wizards of the Absolution Hunting Team lined up in a long snake formation to cross the clouds.

Far away above them, aboard the airplane where these young wizards once stayed, the practice teacher of Astronomy Class 08-1, Mr. Hilda Tang Alfonso, tugged the netting dangling from the ceiling, shut the cabin’s belly doors, then, struggling, squeezed through the small hatch at the end of the cabin into the cockpit.

A pink bunny was seated in the pilot’s chair, frantically tapping all around, causing Hilda’s eyes to twitch uncontrollably.

”Need any help?” The warlock decisively opened his mouth, appearing quite enthusiastic: ”You know, I’ve been a practice teacher for a long time and specialize in these alchemy gadgets...”

”No!”

The rabbit’s long ears atop its head wobbled widely, clearly declining the assistant teacher’s kind offer yet again, quickly responding: ”Thanks... but it’s my job.”

Hilda folded his arms, leaned sideways at the doorway, gazing at the cockpit’s front windows, let out a silent sigh.

Outside the windows wasn’t blue skies and white clouds, but endless rolling colors.