Your Snake Scales Are Trash

Mo Fan sighed. More than half a year had passed, and his cultivation hadn't advanced an inch — not exactly encouraging news.

The competition at the Main Campus was even fiercer than he'd imagined, and resource allocation was blunt to the point of brutality.

To push his Lightning Element Star Nebula to the third tier, there was no way around it: he had to train inside the Three-Step Tower.

The Loach Pendant's Meditation speed let Mo Fan burn through the early accumulation phases reasonably fast, but when it came time to actually break through a cultivation threshold, he still needed the Three-Step Tower's extraordinarily dense elemental concentration.

Only the top fifty students had the right to enter the Three-Step Tower. He was hovering around a hundred — still a bit of a gap.

On top of that, this week he needed to let his body recover. He'd knocked out every challenger, yes, but that also meant he couldn't turn around and challenge anyone else…

*Let's shoot for a decent ranking in the second challenge week,* he decided, lifting an ice-cold fruit beer and draining it in one long pull.

Fire burns were deeply irritating. Even now he could feel something smoldering inside him, a dull persistent ache. The icy drink wouldn't actually fix anything — but damn if it didn't feel good going down.

The fourth week of each month was the second Challenge Week.

During the first Challenge Week, Mo Fan had been the one getting mobbed by challengers. Half a month later, it would be his turn to go on the offensive.

The academy's resources were too good to leave on the table. Fall behind in the rankings, and your strength would stagnate without question.

After a week convalescing in his apartment, once he felt his body had properly recovered, Mo Fan remembered what Old Bao had told him. He picked up his prized snake scales and headed for the Oriental Pearl Magic Tower.

With the letter of introduction in hand, Mo Fan made his way to the Magic Association hall in the middle sphere and quickly located the man he was after: Huo Tuo, a highly regarded Armor Enchanted Gear forgemaster with a formidable reputation inside Mingzhu Tower.

Huo Tuo's standing was clearly immense. He had his own lavish private reception room within the Magic Association — and at the height of the Oriental Pearl Mage Tower's middle sphere, the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows took in the most breathtaking stretch of the Huangpu River in its entirety.

The two most authoritative Magic Associations in the country were the Magic Court up in Beijing's Imperial Capital and the Oriental Pearl Mage Tower here in Shanghai. To have a personal reception room in a place like this was no small thing. Old Bao had really been hiding some serious connections all along.

"Hello. I am Senior Huo's disciple. My name is Ah Li Junnan." A neatly dressed young man greeted Mo Fan with polished courtesy.

*Ah Li Junnan. "Handsome Man Ah Li."* Mo Fan looked at this fellow who had given himself such a shamelessly self-congratulatory name. "Oh, hello there. I'm here to see Master Huo — is he in?"

"He is, but Master's temper isn't exactly… wonderful," Ah Li Junnan said, lowering his voice.

"I understand. But Old Bao told me that the materials I'm carrying can probably only be handled by Master Huo Tuo himself, so I'd still like you to pass along the message." Mo Fan spoke plainly and without any flattery.

Builders generally came from the Earth Element; forgemasters were mostly Fire Element or Lightning Element mages. The unusual bones, scales, and hides taken from Demon-Beasts were materials of a deeply peculiar nature — ordinary mechanical processes couldn't break them down. It required a forgemaster's specialized flame-smelting and lightning-electrolysis techniques to do the job.

Think of gold: to turn raw gold into jewelry and accessories, you first have to melt it down, then use Enchanted Gear tools to reshape and cool it into the desired form.

Every material that goes into Enchanted Gear has to be broken down first. Otherwise, how could things stripped off a Demon-Beast — hide, bone, claws, scales, feathers — possibly arrive already shaped into wearable boots, armor, bracers, pendants, or rings?

And because Enchanted Gear is linked to its user's soul, it must be activated when used.

The only materials in the world that carry energy compatible with the human soul are the exotic hides, bones, claws, scales, and feathers of Demon-Beasts. That was precisely why countless Hunter-mages ventured out endlessly to hunt — all for the chance to obtain materials capable of being forged into Enchanted Gear that could bond with a human soul.

The scales Mo Fan carried were exotic Serpent Clan scales — but the Totem Xuan Serpent was on an entirely different level. A boss among bosses. The apex fighter among Sovereigns. Its exotic scales were absolutely not something just any forgemaster could casually break down. Old Bao had made that clear to Mo Fan long ago.

This Ah Li Junnan was obviously here to brush him off on Huo Tuo's behalf. Mo Fan cut straight to the point.

Ah Li Junnan was, naturally, less than pleased to hear this. He was Huo Tuo's true disciple — what his master could do, he could more or less do as well. Besides, what kind of materials could a mage barely in his twenties possibly bring in that someone of Ah Li Junnan's caliber couldn't handle?

"Let me see your exotic scales," Ah Li Junnan said. He was civil enough not to throw Mo Fan out on the spot.

But Ah Li Junnan was not a patient man.

If this kid pulled out something that didn't meet his standards, he would personally walk him through the route: take Metro Line 2 to Nanjing East Road Station, transfer inside the station to Line 10, get off at Tiantong Road Station, walk over to Qipu Road — plenty of market stalls there that'd be delighted to help him with his Armor Enchanted Gear needs.

"Sure." Mo Fan opened his bag and withdrew a single piece of blue-black snake scale.

There were only two scales total, but given the sheer size of the Totem Xuan Serpent, those two scales were roughly the area of a full set of human clothing.

The blue-black scale lay on the table. It looked somewhat like a slab of worn old leather just pulled from a coal furnace — none of the dazzling, soul-stirring radiance that most legendary treasures announced themselves with the moment they were revealed. Nothing impressive about it whatsoever.

Why it looked so underwhelming, Mo Fan had no idea. Tang Yue had given it to him, and that was that.

Then again, it made sense. If the skin still radiated divine light, why would the Totem Xuan Serpent have shed it in the first place?

"This grimy black thing — let me just—" Ah Li Junnan gave a cold sniff, nearly ready to launch into the subway directions, when something about the scale gave him slight pause. Not a single serpent marking anywhere. Well, at the very least this fool deserved to understand *why* his material was worthless before he left. "Do you know what a serpent pattern is?"

"Yes," Mo Fan said.

"Your material is trash."

"Why?" Mo Fan raised an eyebrow.

"The nobler the serpent, the finer its scale markings. This scale of yours doesn't have a single serpent pattern anywhere on it — just this uniform blue-black smear. Pulled off something Servant-class, I'd wager?" Ah Li Junnan said.

Mo Fan looked more carefully. Sure enough, not a single serpent marking visible. Just solid blue-black, all the way across…

But — *what the hell* — these were two scales from the Totem Xuan Serpent!

The serpent pattern ran across the creature's *entire body*. How on earth could you expect a pattern spanning the length of a colossal serpent to show up on two tiny little scales?

The entire surface drenched in that deep, saturated blue-black *was* the pattern.