Provocation!

Days slipped past one by one, and the second Challenge Week arrived.

As planned, Mo Fan challenged one of the top-fifty-ranked students, aiming to secure access to the Three-Step Tower for the following month.

The challenge went without a hitch. He unleashed the Swift Star Wolf to apply relentless pressure, flooding his opponent with a torrent of basic fourth-level spells cast at blistering speed, and demolished the 48th-ranked student with overwhelming force — breaking into the academy's top fifty.

Just as Mo Fan had expected, the top-fifty students were almost universally equipped with Enchanted Gear. Without his three elements to lean on, beating any of them would have been far from easy. The combat strength of Fire Hall's top fifty had already reached the level Mu Ningxue had demonstrated during the exchange student sparring sessions.

Whether at the Imperial Capital Magic Academy or Pearl Academy, the Main Campus had accumulated far too many elite veterans over the years. For freshmen like them to dominate, it would take years at minimum.

If the top fifty were already at that level, those ranked even higher would be something else entirely. Mo Fan concluded that breaking into the top ten would be nearly impossible until he resolved his issues with his Contract Beast, the third tier of his Lightning Element, and his Enchanted Gear.

Rather than overreaching, he stopped pushing for a higher rank. After claiming 48th, tougher challengers would inevitably start coming for him. Wanting to preserve his strength for the vampire hunt, he chose not to press further up the board. For now, being able to enter the Three-Step Tower was enough — he wouldn't worry about the rest.

More than a full week passed, and the vampire still hadn't appeared. Even Liu Ru had begun to think he'd probably given up — that her dreams and waking visions were nothing more than the products of her own troubled mind.

Mo Fan and Lingling kept their guard up regardless. Until the vampire was dealt with, neither of them felt at ease letting Liu Ru return to her normal life.

If the other side was willing to play the waiting game, then so were they. Mo Fan simply kept up his cultivation, while Zhao Manyan looked after Liu Ru. Liu Ru's arrival had — predictably — caused Zhao Manyan to break up with his latest girlfriend, though this seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Zhao Manyan...

"Damn it, this vampire has the patience of a saint!" Mo Fan muttered as he stomped back into his apartment, thoroughly fed up.

*Is this vampire brain-dead?* Keep waiting and Zhao Manyan and Liu Ru would have kids old enough to run their own errands before this was over. Vampires were supposed to be obsessive about their prey, fixated to the point of madness — that was common knowledge. And Zhao Manyan — Mo Fan knew exactly what kind of animal he was. With a girl as gentle and tender as Liu Ru spending every waking moment at his side, if nothing happened between them, Mo Fan would change his own surname.

He flopped down on the couch, his restlessness mounting by the second...

*What if the vampire never showed up at all?*

*It's not like I can be her bodyguard forever...* Oh, right — he didn't need to be. Zhao Manyan was far more dedicated to that job than he'd ever be.

Liu Ru didn't have the striking, jaw-dropping beauty of Ding Yumian or Mu Nujiao, but she had her own quiet charm. Even Mo Fan, jaded as he was by beautiful women, had walked away from their first meeting favorably impressed. To say nothing of Zhao Manyan, who never said no to a pretty face.

Just as he was stewing over the prospect of his bounty slipping through his fingers, his phone rang. Zhao Manyan.

"Mo Fan, something's happened." Zhao Manyan's voice had dropped, suddenly grave.

"Need money for an abortion?" Mo Fan quipped.

"I'm serious. Something's happened to Liu Ru — you and Lingling, get over here now." Not a trace of humor in his voice.

Mo Fan's brow furrowed. He could tell when someone was joking. This wasn't it.

Without another thought, he reached Lingling and rushed to the location Zhao Manyan had given.

It happened with brutal suddenness. Mo Fan had imagined Liu Ru and Zhao Manyan settling into a life of shameless bliss together — not a cold, expressionless corpse.

She lay in the academy grove. When Mo Fan arrived, her skin had gone deathly pale, her body slightly shrunken. Save for the expression of quiet sorrow still etched on her face, he could barely believe this was the same spirited young woman who had shown such astonishing courage and resolve in seeking vengeance for her sister.

One of Zhao Manyan's heavy coats had been laid gently over her body. On the pale skin of her neck, two gaping holes stood out in horrifying relief — the wounds that had surely killed her...

This time there had been no attempt to hide anything. The two bite marks on Liu Ru's neck felt deliberate, placed there to mock whoever had been protecting her. Mo Fan could almost hear the vampire's laughter riding in on the wind through the trees.

"I'm sorry. I failed her." Zhao Manyan stood with his head bowed. No tears in his eyes, but the guilt carved into his face was unmistakable.

The moment Mo Fan saw Liu Ru's body, something drove straight through him — a cold shock. Then his gaze fell on those wounds, and fury ignited in his chest, burning hotter with every passing second.

*Provocation.*

This was the vampire's provocation.

It had used Liu Ru's life to mock Mo Fan's so-called protection and capture plan — a message delivered in the clearest possible terms: *Don't ever think you can stand against a vampire lurking in the shadows.* But Mo Fan's fury wasn't rooted in being so brazenly challenged. What scorched him deepest was the realization that a girl's life could mean so little in a vampire's eyes.

Behind Liu Ru's fragile appearance was a resolve and courage that would have commanded respect from any Mage. In all the time she had spent under their protection, she never imposed, never burdened Mo Fan beyond what she couldn't help, never disrupted his life. Her gratitude toward him was the kind she never voiced — held quietly in her heart — yet every time she'd seen him, a flicker of warmth had lit up her eyes.

At first Mo Fan had pitied her — or more honestly, he'd been more interested in completing the bounty and claiming his expensive Enchanted Gear. But somewhere along the way, he had come to think of Liu Ru as a friend who had been dealt a cruel hand, someone he genuinely wanted to help free from this vampire nightmare...

If the vampire had some grievance with Mo Fan the hunter, it should have come for him directly — he wouldn't have even blinked. Instead, it had gone after Liu Ru — not as prey this time, just as a warning. A provocation.

That was a life. A living, breathing girl's life.

Books said that vampires were, at their core, closer to humans in bloodline — that they could be thought of as humans afflicted with some terrible disease.

But could this one, given what it had just done, still call itself human?

Mo Fan thought back to something Huo Tuo had once told him: *Why bother drawing a line between human and Demon-Beast? Just look at what they do.*

And what had this vampire done?!

Something that had forfeited every last claim to humanity. It deserved to be put down like the animal it was.

"Should we notify the upper echelons of the Hunters' Alliance?" Zhao Manyan asked.

"Useless," Mo Fan said. "We'd need ironclad proof that a vampire did this. You saw those holes yourself — they're large enough to look like something a sharp instrument made."

Even someone with Huo Tuo's standing bearing direct witness hadn't been enough before. A body with no concrete evidence — and a victim who wasn't even a Mage — would end up handed to the regular police.

"Then what do we do?" Zhao Manyan asked.

"Tell me exactly what happened." Mo Fan was a volcano on the edge of eruption.

Wherever this vampire was hiding, whoever it had disguised itself as in this city — Mo Fan would drag it out, tear it to pieces, and use what was left to fertilize the white roses on Liu Ru's grave.