Transfer Student, Fire Hall
In smaller cities, the Fire Element was relatively rare in any given class. But Pearl Academy drew its students from among the very best across countless cities nationwide — and by those standards, Fire Element practitioners were fairly common.
On top of that, every student admitted to Pearl Academy's Main Campus had already reached the intermediate level. At that stage, most had some financial resources at their disposal, and anyone truly passionate about the Fire Element could even use Guided Awakening to improve their odds of obtaining it.
So naturally, the Fire Element had become one of the academy's major departments.
Now that his innate Dual Elements ability had been laid bare, Mo Fan saw no reason to keep hiding it.
The Fire Element was his primary discipline, after all. In a Main Campus as fiercely competitive as this, he needed to aggressively claim the resources that would push his growth the furthest.
His Fire Element Star Nebula had already reached its third tier. An enormous, seemingly insurmountable gap still stretched between him and the advanced stage — the Fire Element Star River — but cultivation was all about steady, patient accumulation. Mo Fan was simply laying the groundwork for his next realm ahead of time.
The Fire Element department at Pearl Academy was known as the Fire Hall. It housed no fewer than two thousand Fire Element students, with roughly a thousand on campus at any given time, and the number who had graduated from its ranks over the years was beyond counting.
Mo Fan's timing was perfect. Today happened to be the day the Fire Hall published its monthly ranking assessment results.
The purpose of those assessments was simple: resource allocation. The higher your ranking, the more resources you received. At the intermediate level, the drain on one's finances was a bottomless pit — anyone who wanted to rise above the rest needed ever-greater resources to sustain a long cultivation journey.
As a transfer student, Mo Fan was among roughly 1,100 participants in the assessment. Having never taken part before, he'd been placed dead last on the Fire Rankings — somewhere past the 1,100th spot — and the resources allocated to him were, to put it generously, pitiful.
Mo Fan arrived at the Fire Hall's main lecture hall, a space large enough to seat over a thousand. Every surface, inside and out, blazed in deep crimson. The moment he stepped through the door, the searing color hit him so hard he instinctively felt as though the entire building were on fire.
Looking up at the walls and the towering pillars, he could make out intricate fire patterns shimmering with a gradient effect. When viewed from different angles, the flames seemed to sway and dance across the surfaces — achingly lifelike.
The hall was arranged in tiered seating, row upon ordered row. When Mo Fan arrived, the place was already packed and buzzing with noise.
What cheered him up immediately was the sheer abundance of girls. Perhaps it was a side effect of cultivating the Fire Element, but every one of them radiated a sizzling, sensual energy that was very easy on the eyes.
He found a spot and sat down among a group of pretty girls, drawing in a long, appreciative breath. A tempting bouquet washed over him — rose-forward, threaded with other fragrances — a fitting reflection of fire-natured girls who chased excitement and passion.
"Hey. You look unfamiliar. You're not from another department sneaking over here to get close to our Ding Yumian, are you? With that face, you'd better drop that fantasy right now." The girl in the seat directly ahead turned around — short, choppy hair, expression dripping with disdain.
Mo Fan's temper spiked instantly.
*Twice today someone has questioned my looks. Completely unforgivable.* First it had been some effeminate pretty boy. Now it was a tomboy.
"We sat down here together," he shot back. "Why not consider that maybe all you girls were interested in me?"
The girls around him all turned in unison, their eyes writing the same verdict: *shameless.*
What mildly surprised Mo Fan was that the girl sitting slightly ahead and to his side — the one whose hair fell like silk — hadn't turned around.
He'd actually noticed her from the start. Her hairstyle was captivating: silky black hair flowing down on both sides, with delicate latticed braids woven through the center, draped over her cascading locks like a gauze scarf. It carried an air of gentle, refined grace without sacrificing elegance.
*As expected, a girl of real distinction knows better. She must think I'm telling the truth.*
"If you're smart, you'll move yourself to the back," the short-haired girl continued. "You're an eyesore here. This is where my girls sit — has been for the past six months."
"And if I don't?" Mo Fan said, utterly unbothered.
"I'll have you know, I'm Huang Xingli — ranked 300th on the Fire Rankings. Dealing with a nobody like you would barely register as effort. Don't push me into doing something about it. Those Healing Element people charge a fortune for their services."
"Xingli, let it go," said the girl who was presumably Ding Yumian.
She still hadn't turned around. Mo Fan could only stare at that elegant, distinctive hairstyle of hers, the curiosity gnawing at him.
"Yumian, you're always too easy on these pests — that's exactly why you keep attracting unnecessary trouble. You make an example of one shameless creep and word gets around fast. Honestly, I'll never understand how someone like you ended up with the Fire Element," Huang Xingli muttered.
Mo Fan sat and listened, genuinely curious what kind of face this girl named Ding Yumian was hiding.
Unfortunately, she never turned around.
Before long, Wei Rong — the Fire Hall's department head — strode in looking thoroughly exasperated. He carried an undeniable presence; the moment he entered, all thousand-odd students in the hall fell silent.
He walked to the lectern and swept his gaze across the tiered, fan-shaped hall and the sea of Fire Element students before him.
"Which one of you is Mo Fan?" he called out.
Mo Fan blinked in surprise and rose to his feet, confused.
Every pair of eyes in the room swung toward him. Being singled out by the department head in a hall of over a thousand students was anything but ordinary.
"You're the transfer student?" Wei Rong asked.
"That's right," Mo Fan said, nodding.
"The semester is nearly over. What exactly are you transferring here for? I don't take in wishy-washy drifters like you — you're not welcome in my hall!" Wei Rong didn't mince words.
Wei Rong had always been hot-tempered. The moment he'd heard that a student was transferring into his department, he had opposed it at every turn.
As it turned out, the student was no small fish — the dean himself had personally processed the transfer paperwork. With everything done through proper channels, Wei Rong had no grounds to refuse. But the department head held considerable authority within his own domain, and Wei Rong had no intention of giving this kid any special treatment, no matter whose backing he had.
His Fire Hall may have had the numbers — but every last one of those students was a one-in-a-thousand elite.