Show Your True Strength!

Mo Fan could see that even working together, those two couldn't handle the Shadowmark Berserker Wolf. So he deployed his own Gloom Wolf Beast to join the fight. Two people and one beast — surely they could at least keep the creature occupied for a while.

By Mo Fan's reckoning, the Shadowmark Berserker Wolf was still weaker than either the Scale-Skin Mother Demon or the Cursed Beast Demon he'd faced before. The trouble was that Battle-General-class creatures were simply built stronger than Intermediate-Level Mages in a straight fight. Without enough Enchanted Gear and some kind of special trick, a one-on-one duel was completely hopeless.

*Dean Xiao — if I hadn't accepted that favor from you, there's no way I'd be putting myself through this,* Mo Fan thought, his hand brushing the Focus Pendant at his neck.

School honor? Mo Fan couldn't care less. But he'd given his word to Dean Xiao and the department head, and if you took someone's payment, you did the work.

"Song Xia," he said, turning to her, "keep that Wind Element guy tied down. If you can, stay just behind me and use Sacred Shield Blessing to cover me."

Song Xia nodded and moved into position just behind him. She'd barely begun tracing the first Star Trail when the air around them plummeted — a sharp, biting cold that drove straight to the bone.

"Something's wrong!" she cried.

"Get back — fast!" Mo Fan felt it too. The chill was rising fast.

Song Xia ran. When she burst out of the frozen zone, she realized the cold hadn't been aimed at her at all.

**Crack — crack — crack — crack — crack — crack — crack — crack—**

The icebound earth split apart. Massive chains of glacial ice erupted from the ground, coiling and whipping through the air, ringing out with a sharp metallic clang each time two of them struck each other.

Song Xia could only stare in horror. She'd been reaching for her Light Element Sacred Shield Blessing — but it was already too late. All she could do was watch helplessly as Mo Fan was swallowed by the chains in an instant, wound so tight there wasn't a gap left to breathe through.

**Clang!! Clang!! Clang!!!**

The chains crossed and coiled without pause. Each one was long enough to wrap around Mo Fan's body several times over.

It didn't take long. He was bound completely — sealed up like a mummy in ice, the chains' freezing power flooding into him without restraint.

The far ends of every chain drifted slowly upward from the ground, held in a loose one-handed grip. Silver hair. Mu Ningxue. Clearly her work — each of those chains radiated a bone-deep, unyielding cold.

This Ice Lock was visibly a tier above what Luo Song could produce. It existed on an entirely different level from anything that young man was capable of. No matter how much Fire Element power Song Xia threw at the chains, not a single one yielded.

Snow swirled. Mu Ningxue's silver hair drifted with it. Commanding those tremendous chains, she looked even colder, even more untouchable than before — as if the air for kilometers in every direction had silently declared that no man had the right to remain standing alive within it.

"That's — that's insane!!" Students from the other schools stared, slack-jawed.

Half of them hadn't even caught Mu Ningxue tracing her Ice Element Star Chart. Which meant her command of Intermediate-Level Ice Magic had nearly reached the threshold of instant Release. And the sheer scale of her Ice Lock was breathtaking — the ice-void effect that came with her higher-grade ice bloodline caused delicate frost blossoms to crystallize in the air surrounding every chain.

Those blossoms were anything but ornamental. They were ice spike flowers.

Which meant: if Mu Ningxue decided to kill, those flowers wouldn't linger harmlessly in the surrounding air. They would manifest inside the chains themselves — and they would impale whoever was trapped within, alive, and completely.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the arena, Mu Nujiao and Shen Mingxiao were working alongside the Gloom Wolf Beast and could only just barely hold the Shadowmark Berserker Wolf at bay.

Here, with Mo Fan locked fast in those chains and Song Xia powerless at the rear, the match seemed all but decided. It had ended far more quickly than anyone had imagined.

Teacher Gu Han, Teacher Ah Li Jing, and Teacher Qiu Yuhua looked at one another. They'd more or less anticipated losing — but not like this. Not so effortlessly.

"That Ice Element mage is terrifying."

"If we'd run into her last round, we'd have been crushed the same way." Peng Liang pulled his neck down into his shoulders.

Zhao Manyan said nothing. He stared at the field dense with ice chains, struggling to accept that Mo Fan — Mo Fan, who had killed the Scale-Skin Mother Demon single-handedly — had been taken down this fast. He simply didn't buy it.

"Alright — let's call it," Teacher Qiu Yuhua said with a sigh. He was worried about what the ice might do to Mo Fan if this dragged on any longer.

Teacher Gu Han nodded.

Against an Ice Element mage with domain-level power, and a Summoning Element mage who could command Battle-General-class creatures — there was truly nothing left to hope for.

"Teacher, wait." Zhao Manyan couldn't help himself.

"Wait for what?" Luo Song snapped.

"Shut your mouth."

Teacher Ah Li Jing was already bristling at Zhao Manyan's tone and about to say something — but she noticed that Teacher Gu Han had gone very still, his eyes sharpening as he fixed his gaze on the tangle of ice chains.

"What is it, Teacher Gu Han?" Ah Li Jing asked.

"Fire… I'm sensing fire element. An extremely powerful fire element." He paused. "Yes — there's no mistake."

He had been about to signal the referee. But then, from somewhere deep inside those frozen chains, a thread of flame energy seeped out.

That flame carried a wild, furious heat — slamming against the ice from the inside. A crimson glow, almost blood-red, began bleeding slowly through the white of the chains.

Teacher Gu Han's cultivation was higher than the others — that was why he'd felt it before anyone else.

But no matter how he turned it over in his mind, he couldn't explain it. How was there a fire blazing inside those ice chains?

"Looks like we'll be toasting our victory tonight. That was almost too easy — no fun at all," Lu Zhenghe said with a laugh.

"Captain, go ahead and release your ice," said Mingcong, the team's Lightning Element user. "No need to freeze the kid to death."

Mu Ningxue gave no response to either of them. Her hand remained raised, her grip on every chain unchanged. Her eyes gave away nothing — no warmth, no expression — but there was no loosening in her stance whatsoever.

She watched Mo Fan.

Just watched him.

Then she spoke. Her voice was clear and musical, like silver bells ringing over winter snow: "Stop pretending. Show me everything you have — Mo Fan."

When his name left her lips, something shifted faintly in her eyes.

She didn't know how long it had been since she'd last spoken that name aloud. She certainly hadn't expected to find him here, of all places, at an exchange-student competition.

But Mu Ningxue knew better than anyone: Mo Fan was nothing like what he appeared on the surface. Because on the night of the Mu Clan banquet, this young man had displayed something that had genuinely stunned her — a natural-born Dual Elements affinity.

That was exactly why she had stepped into the arena herself. She wanted to see just how capable someone whose talent was rumored to surpass even her own truly was.

"Pretending?"

"*Show his full strength?*" The words rippled through the watching crowd, and everyone exchanged uncertain glances.

Could it be that the student named Mo Fan hadn't actually been fighting at his limit?

But — even if he still had stronger Lightning Element power held in reserve — trapped as he was inside those chains, how on earth was he supposed to get free?