Mo Fan — True Strength

"**Blazing Fist!!!!**"

The same technique, the same magic — Mo Fan answered Dongfang Lie's dirty move in kind, meeting fire with fire.

To most onlookers, it was the height of foolishness. Dongfang Lie's unparalleled talent left him dominant over every peer at his level; no one could face him head-on, and no one dared trade spell for spell against him.

He wielded the most powerful Blazing Fist in all of Pearl Academy — unstoppable and overwhelming. Not just any individual, but an entire team would be ground to ruin before it.

For Mo Fan to counter with his own Blazing Fist was suicidal. If the impact didn't kill him outright, Dongfang Lie would leave him crippled.

**BOOM — BOOM — BOOM — BOOM——**

Dongfang Lie had moved first. His fire-pillar dragons surged in from every direction and swallowed Mo Fan whole. All the crowd could see was a vast, churning mass of fire-dragon tails — Mo Fan himself had vanished completely within.

The firestorm rolled outward so violently that even Bai Yulang and the others standing some distance away were forced to raise their defenses against the shockwave. From that distance they could already feel the terrifying heat radiating off the spell — and Mo Fan was at its very center, consumed by those primordial fire-dragons.

Eyes wide, the crowd watched the inferno rage.

In the final instant before he was swallowed, Mo Fan had summoned no defense whatsoever. Even as a Fire Element specialist, whatever flame resistance he had would be utterly meaningless against this.

…

**WHOOOOSH——!!**

The flames blazed on as the entire arena reeled in stunned silence — but then something erupted from within Dongfang Lie's inferno: a presence of overwhelming, tyrannical fire.

Within the ashen crimson blazed a burst of vivid scarlet.

It resembled the Rose Flame Mo Fan was known to use, yet it was redder than Rose Flame — red as fresh blood.

A figure that seemed forged from molten metal flickered in and out of sight amid the dancing tongues of fire. The blood-scarlet flames suffusing his entire body began to surge back against the surrounding ashen crimson.

The fist-strike burst free like an arrow cleaving through haze, the spinning pressure wave it left behind sweeping the air clean...

No towering columns of fire. No dragons rearing up to snap and claw. That blood-red blaze condensed entirely into a single blazing fist — howling, razor-sharp. No matter how far the ashen crimson spread, the scarlet never dimmed; it punched straight through everything.

A meteor splitting the dawn. A heavenly rock shattering the sky.

Perhaps *Blazing Fist* was no longer the right name for it. This was a **Meteor Fist**.

Mo Fan's roar slowly drowned out the howl of the blaze. The blood-scarlet Rose Flame wreathing his body had evaporated every last trace of Dongfang Lie's Spirit Fire.

Evaporated. Every last trace.

When one fire burns fierce enough, it can simply evaporate a weaker flame entirely.

Dongfang Lie's gray flames were gone, vaporized by the Rose Flame. The entire arena had turned blood-red, and Mo Fan, standing at its blazing heart, was completely enveloped in fire — his skin radiating a fierce, inhuman brilliance.

A demon had descended upon them. *This* was true unstoppability.

In the stands, Zhao Manyan — who had been sick with worry over Mo Fan — froze as he watched. A memory struck him without warning: Mo Fan had looked exactly like this when the Flame Enchantress had used Possession on him.

*If the Flame Enchantress could use Possession... could the little Flame Queen I raised have the same ability?*

It was her. It had to be the little Flame Queen.

She had used Possession on Mo Fan, sending his Fire Element power skyrocketing.

Dongfang Lie had believed his unique, fourth-level Blazing Fist could lord over everything — unaware that Mo Fan, a man singled out by a Heavenly Calamity creature, was the true master of fire.

When it came to fire, Dongfang Ming had picked the absolute wrong opponent.

The Meteor Fist was blindingly fast. All of it — Mo Fan being swallowed by flames, his blood-red Rose Flame evaporating everything — had unfolded in mere seconds, and the Meteor Fist was already bearing down on Dongfang Lie.

Dongfang Lie stood rooted to the spot, frozen.

Shock filled his eyes. Nightmare. Utter disbelief.

He who had always swept all before him — his Blazing Fist's aura had been evaporated, his fire-dragons punched through, and now his opponent's Meteor Fist was barreling straight toward him, trailing a magnificent, blazing comet's tail.

**BOOM——!!!**

The Meteor Fist crashed into Dongfang Lie's Armor Enchanted Gear and Shield Enchanted Gear. Both expensive pieces of defensive equipment crumpled under the terrifying force, fragments of plate and armor flying apart and clattering across the ground.

Dongfang Lie's body seized for a split second — then the shockwave hurled him backward as though a cannonball had struck him in the gut, blood spraying wildly as he was launched through the air.

A streak of vivid scarlet traced the arc of his flight, and the entire arena fell dead silent.

At last the Barrier caught him. He slid down it like a boneless paper doll, hair splaying loose around his face as he crumpled onto the ground.

With tremendous effort he craned his head up, staring across the arena at Mo Fan blazing in the distance. Pain, humiliation, and stunned disbelief churned in his unwilling eyes.

"One or two rounds..."

Zhou Shuming had gone completely blank, forgetting entirely to go and help his teammate.

He remembered it clearly — Dongfang Lie had said that given one or two rounds, he could deal with Mo Fan. The result was the polar opposite.

*This Mo Fan — wasn't his talent supposed to be innate Dual Elements? How had he come to control such terrifying, demonic power? Could this truly be the real strength of the handpicked candidate?*

A long silence settled over the arena.

No one could believe their eyes. They found themselves wondering whether the man face-down on the ground, coughing blood, was really Dongfang Lie — the number one on the Fire Rankings.

Then every gaze swung back to Mo Fan at the center of the arena, staring with the kind of terror one reserves for monsters.

By now, the blaze wreathing Mo Fan's body was slowly dying down.

No one could quite name what power he had used. All they knew was that it had blown completely past the edges of their understanding.

The handpicked candidate...

*So this is what a handpicked candidate truly is.*

Whatever contempt and jealousy the crowd had once harbored toward Mo Fan — vast as the ocean — not a soul dared hold even a trace of it now.

"Mo... Mo Fan??"

Mu Nujiao, Zhao Manyan, and Ai Tutu — the three people who knew Mo Fan best — found themselves staring at a stranger on that stage. Or rather: this was his true strength, hidden for months.

Then what had caused him to stop hiding?

And when the flames finally faded, what was the grief and fury they had glimpsed in his eyes?

*Crack — crack — crack — crack——*

His fist slowly unclenched. The brand-new phone he'd been clutching had been ground to powder, sifting through his fingers to the ground below.

Mo Fan drew a long, heavy breath. He did not spare Dongfang Lie another glance.

"Mo Fan... where are you going?"

"The match isn't over yet..."

Amid the stunned silence, Mo Fan had already stepped off the stage. No one knew what he was doing. All they felt was awe — and the faint edge of something like fear.

Mo Fan heard none of it. Only when Mu Nujiao and Zhao Manyan stepped into his path did he come back to himself, just slightly.

"What's going on?" Zhao Manyan demanded.

"I need to go to the Ancient Capital." Mo Fan steadied himself and looked at them seriously. "There's an Undead uprising there."

"I know."

"What about the Academy competition?"

"I'll deal with it when I get back."

"We'll come with you."

Mo Fan shook his head.

He understood what they meant — both Mu Nujiao and Zhao Manyan. But this was his own matter. He couldn't let it derail their futures.