Now You've Lit My Fire

Wei Rong watched Zheng Jiahui approach the stage with the bearing of a soldier deserting the battlefield rather than a student stepping up for a challenge. The sight set his teeth on edge.

If Fire Hall truly had a waste of space, it was Zheng Jiahui — no contest.

"Well? Get on with it," Wei Rong said, impatience sharpening each word.

Mo Fan stepped in front of Zheng Jiahui, took one look at the man practically folding into himself, and sighed. "What are you so afraid of? This is nothing but a staged performance. Or is there some wound inside you — are you just born scared of fighting?"

"N-no, that's not it. I'm not afraid of fighting, I just..." Zheng Jiahui's words dissolved into mumbling.

"Fine. If you can't manage an Intermediate spell, use a basic one. Don't tell me you can't link seven Star Motes — and don't think you can just punch me into surrendering, either. That would be far too obvious."

"Is this really okay?" Zheng Jiahui still wavered. "My classmates are all going to look down on me."

Mo Fan laughed. "Open your eyes and look around. Not one person here — teachers included — has any respect for you. Even the girls who make a point of being polite can only manage pity when they look at you. I don't know if there's someone in Fire Hall you secretly admire, but if all you ever read in her eyes is mockery, pity, or a blank stare — don't you think you're already in bad enough shape? You think far too highly of yourself. You think you still have a shred of dignity left in this hall? In everyone's eyes here, you're nothing but a joke."

Zheng Jiahui stared at him. He had thought Mo Fan was on his side — but after those words, his heart went colder still.

He tried to trace a Star Trail. Within moments, it shattered.

Laughter erupted around him. Cheeks burning, Zheng Jiahui tried again — and fumbled before reaching the fourth Star Mote.

"Your cultivation isn't weak," Mo Fan said. "And yet you're so nervous you can't cast a single spell. Honestly, give up on being a Mage. You'd be better off doing literally anything else."

Zheng Jiahui's expression shifted. He fixed Mo Fan with a hard stare. "What do *you* know?!" he snapped.

"Ah, so you actually *do* want to be a Mage?" Mo Fan's smile widened. *Struck a nerve.*

He wanted to be a Mage — yet he was too timid to draw even a Star Trail.

In the training grounds, Zheng Jiahui's Star Trails and Star Charts came together with surprising speed; the man was no slouch. But the moment anyone was watching, he seized up and couldn't complete even the most basic Star Trail.

Withdrawn. Stage fright. Mo Fan could practically see the insecurity wrapping around Zheng Jiahui like a dark shroud, blanketing him from head to foot — which meant he wasn't invisible at all. He was the most conspicuous punchline in the room.

An Intermediate-Level Mage, brought this low. It was almost pitiable.

Then again, this was Pearl Academy's Main Campus. Intermediate-Level Mage was just the minimum bar to clear.

"I've got all day. Take your time." Mo Fan shrugged and stood there waiting, perfectly patient.

Zheng Jiahui started over, tracing the Star Trail from scratch. He *desperately* wanted to push through the crowd-panic and Release the spell in full...

But the Star Trails and Star Charts he had drilled until they were second nature had gone completely blank in his mind. Every laugh from the crowd, every gaze with its own particular flavor of contempt, piled another weight onto each stroke he tried to trace.

"Is this guy some kind of clown Monkey dragged in?" Zhao Ji said outright. "He literally cannot fire off a single basic spell. How does he have the nerve to still be standing up there? If I were him, I'd go find a nice burial plot and do everyone a favor."

"Get down already! Hurry up and get off the stage — stop wasting everyone's time!"

"Don't be like that," said a girl with a gentle voice. "He's just nervous. Give him a little more time."

The hot-tempered ones had already joined the uproar. Most of the audience sat in their seats watching Zheng Jiahui with cold eyes, privately amused — though in the interest of appearing civilized, they kept the mockery off their faces.

"Zheng Jiahui." Wei Rong's voice was ice. "If you truly cannot manage a basic Fire Burst, step down." Every second this student stood up there was another point off his own dignity as department head. More importantly, he couldn't let that little schemer Mo Fan's plan come to fruition.

The mockery and contempt of his classmates — Zheng Jiahui had learned to endure it, more or less. But the moment Teacher Wei Rong spoke, the panic returned tenfold. He had a reflexive, bone-deep compulsion to obey the man. He bit down on his lip — and actually turned to walk off the stage.

Mo Fan saw what was happening and lunged, grabbing him. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'll give the Star Nebula Artifact back to you," Zheng Jiahui said, his face falling. "I still can't do it."

"You're not just a coward — you're *selfish*. Get it through your head: you and I are tied together right now. You get to bow to that self-loathing demon inside you and walk away free. And me? You leave me here to rot. If this challenge only concerned you, fine — do whatever you want, it wouldn't hurt anyone. But if you leave now, you're leaving me to face over two hundred challengers *alone!*" Mo Fan gripped him, expression dead serious.

Mo Fan's plan had been simple: have Zheng Jiahui — the last-ranked student — challenge him, then lose on purpose.

Once Mo Fan became the last-ranked student, no one could challenge him further.

And after taking last place, he would immediately turn around and directly challenge someone in the top fifty, bypassing the gauntlet entirely while jumping up the rankings all at once.

The plan was simple. Executing it should have been easy. What Mo Fan had never anticipated was just how completely Zheng Jiahui would fold — unable to produce even a single basic spell.

Competition rules were clear: if a competitor never cast a single spell, the other party could not be declared the winner — not even by voluntary forfeit.

"I... I don't want this either. I've tried as hard as I can, I really have. I'm sorry, Mo Fan. I know you were trying to help me too — but I'm just hopeless." Zheng Jiahui's voice trembled, fragile as a child fighting back tears.

Mo Fan had now witnessed human weakness at its purest.

He glanced at Teacher Wei Rong, who had let the ghost of a satisfied smile creep onto his face, then back at Zheng Jiahui — a man whose obedience had long since calcified into something bone-deep and rotten.

Mo Fan could feel it: Wei Rong had done that on purpose. As the judge, he had no business telling a competitor to step down. He had seen through the plan and deliberately moved to drive away the ever-compliant Zheng Jiahui.

"Don't you move!" Anger surged through Mo Fan.

"I..." Zheng Jiahui looked back — but his foot had already left the stage.

"You've gone and done it. You sold me out completely." Mo Fan's jaw tightened. "Fine. *Fine.* You are, without a doubt, the most useless waste of space I have ever encountered."

"The mess you've dumped on me — I have no choice but to fight all two hundred of them."

"All right, then. Open your eyes wide and *watch*. If I, Mo Fan, get knocked off this stage today — I'll own it. I'll stand right up and admit I'm an even bigger waste than you. I'll bow and apologize to this chimpanzee department head. I'll go down the line and grovel before every single person in this department I've ever mouthed off to."

Mo Fan was genuinely, properly furious — not just at his own predicament, but at Zheng Jiahui's particular brand of cowardice: the kind that believed retreating from the world made everything all right.

The most contemptible people weren't the ones laughing at the weak. They were people like Zheng Jiahui — so thoroughly buried in self-abasement, submission, and withdrawal that they couldn't scrape together even a sliver of backbone. True wastes of breath.

After venting those angry words, Mo Fan turned and walked back onto the stage.

He leveled a finger at Wei Rong — the department head every person around him regarded with reverence — and his voice rang out across the hall:

"Send me the next challenger!"