The Nomination Tournament!

**Lintong Military District**

Feijiao, a Military Commander tasked with training special forces officers, sat in a training plaza blanketed in yellow dust, beneath a row of tall, swaying flags.

"Who sent this report?" He raised his head, eyes webbed with red.

"It came from a village near Hua Village," the intelligence officer said, keeping his voice low. "They say they were passing through an open stretch of land during the day when they found the ground covered in scattered gore. Based on the clothing, they could barely identify them as our military personnel. The entire unit was wiped out."

"Ha. Ha ha ha. A rescue squad. A *rescue squad*..." Feijiao lurched to his feet and erupted in fury. "That was a death march! Which bastard sent my men out there?!"

"Instructor, please calm—"

"How the hell am I supposed to calm down?! Those were my students. *My students!* What am I supposed to say to Zhankong?!"

He raged across the plaza, pointing at building after building and hurling curses at everyone from the highest command down to the lowest grunt — indistinguishable from a man gone mad.

Every Military Commander in the conference room stayed out of sight. Head Instructor Feijiao had stopped distinguishing between friend and foe.

"Go," he finally snarled at the intelligence officer. "Organize a team immediately. I want them found — alive, or in pieces, but *found.*"

"Head Instructor, please try to stay calm. They must have encountered a Death Abyss. Otherwise, even a powerful Corpse General couldn't have wiped out an entire unit."

"What? What did you just say?!"

"A Death Abyss. They were probably being chased by something and stumbled into one by accident. That's why even the Wind Element user didn't make it out."

"A... a Death Abyss..." Feijiao's eyes went wide — then went vacant, staring at nothing. "How? How could something like that appear there?"

A Death Abyss. That was hell itself. Even the most powerful Mage in all of Ancient Capital, falling into a Death Abyss, would stand no chance of survival.

He would walk into a dragon's den without blinking. But a Death Abyss — those who fell in were worse than dead. They dropped straight into the abyss, with no bottom and no return.

"Head Instructor, rather than raging like this, you might think about how to notify the families of the deceased." The intelligence officer had done his research. "Zhang Xiaohou is from Bo City — grew up without parents, raised entirely by his grandmother. She survived the Bo City disaster, but she's getting on in years and doesn't have much time left. As for Zhankong, you'll probably have to handle that notification yourself. There's one more thing: Zhang Xiaohou had a childhood friend who was essentially his only other family. Should they be informed as well?"

"Zhankong's whereabouts are unknown. Who would I even go to?" Feijiao exhaled slowly. "As for his grandmother... keep it from her for now. She's too old for news like this." He paused. "And the friend — let me find Zhankong first. If I can't locate him, then we notify the friend."

"Head Instructor, please, don't do anything reckless. That's a Death Abyss we're talking about — a bottomless pit of hell that no number of souls could ever fill—"

"I know! Now get out of my sight. Every time I see your face, it's nothing but bad news."

**Magic City**

A cold snap had swept through the city. Coughing echoed up and down every street, a new strain of illness spreading through the population with gleeful abandon.

"Do you seriously not close the window when you sleep?" Ai Tutu peered into Mo Fan's room, mystified.

"I'm Fire Element — and I've got a fire brazier going right there. Fresh air is good."

Mo Fan sat at his computer, idly scrolling through recent reports about Ancient Capital — the lurid, sensationalized kind that always drew a crowd.

It was a world with no shortage of suffering. Where his old world had natural disasters, this one had an endless parade of demon surges and magical calamities.

Ai Tutu noticed Mo Fan was actually reading national news and couldn't resist taking a few shots at him.

Mo Fan closed the laptop. His gaze drifted to Ai Tutu, sweeping over her impressive figure with practiced subtlety, before he settled back into perfect composure. "So you were saying — at the end of the semester, the top twenty ranked students from each department qualify for the World Academy Tournament nomination qualifiers?"

"Right. Haven't you noticed? Sister Mu has been in closed-door training forever."

"Her strength is improving fast."

When Mu Nujiao truly committed herself, she was someone you had to respect. Mo Fan had barely seen her these past few months, and on the rare occasions they did cross paths, she was always the one seeking him out to spar.

The vast power structure behind Mu Nujiao had apparently made its decision: they were throwing their full weight behind her entry into the World Academy Tournament. She not only possessed two extraordinary Spirit Seeds, her Enchanted Gear was uniformly top-tier throughout — and according to Ai Tutu, Mu Nujiao had a trump card she had never once revealed, one she would unleash to spectacular effect when the real fight for tournament slots began.

That actually had Mo Fan a little curious.

It made sense. Behind Mu Nujiao stood the Mu Family, the wealthiest and most formidable of the Four Great Families of Magic City. They would contest this slot regardless of cost.

And then there was the Zhao Clan — a Noble Clan of genuine conglomerate scale.

Zhao Manyan, that notorious playboy, had dropped the act entirely. He had vanished from sight, quietly buried in what everyone assumed was intensive secret training.

He would most likely bypass the academy's nomination slots and secure a spot through other channels. But even so, that path demanded several times the effort of an ordinary candidate.

Regardless of the backing behind you, the field was as vast as an ocean. Without something that could silence the crowd, there was no breaking through.

In short: everyone with any real ambition had already transformed into a cultivation fanatic for a shot at the World Academy Tournament.

Ai Tutu, on the other hand...

This pampered young heiress had always been more blessed in figure than in drive. She lived well and was perfectly content to do so — but now that her closest friend had vanished into a monk-like training seclusion, she found herself staggeringly bored.

Mo Fan, for his part, was essentially a pre-selected candidate. The nomination tournament? He didn't even need to enter.

With everyone around him locked away in grim, desperate training, only Mo Fan drifted about without a care in the world — which was precisely why Ai Tutu had come looking for him, hoping he would take pity on her and provide some entertainment.

"That said," Ai Tutu said, "I do think you should enter the nomination tournament anyway."

"Why?"

"You already have three votes in hand — practically a foregone conclusion, sure — but four votes are needed to make it official. If you enter and earn your nomination, you secure that fourth vote yourself. On one hand, no one will ever be able to challenge your slot. On the other, you won't give anyone anything to gossip about."

Mo Fan nodded. She had a point.

Not everyone knew where those three votes had come from. Even those who did would mostly chalk it up to luck. Which meant there were far too many people who questioned his legitimacy.

And besides — Mo Fan loved a good fight. A nomination tournament would pit him against the strongest students in the entire academy. If he didn't go out there and bring a few overconfident fools crashing back to earth, how could he justify having barely touched his Mystic Serpent Armor Enchanted Gear — or the little Flame Queen, who had finally broken through to the Juvenile Stage?

They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The little Flame Queen was not Mo Fan's biological offspring — but she hadn't picked up much of anything else from him. What she *had* picked up was a talent for stirring up trouble, and she'd already surpassed her "parent" at it by some considerable margin.

Of all things in the world, fighting was what the little Flame Queen loved most.