Gloom Wolf Beast!
"Luo Song, you're here — take a seat." The bald-headed examiner smiled and rose from his chair.
He walked over to Luo Song and dropped his voice. "You little rascal. Nothing better to do, so you come all the way to Pearl Academy — and then you insist on competing with a Summoning Element student of all people!"
"Uncle Li, what's the difference? You already know what I'm made of." Luo Song was perfectly at ease, utterly certain this examination was already his.
Examiner Li returned to his seat and glanced over at Mo Fan, who had already made his preparations.
The old professor with the thick glasses was also studying Mo Fan. When he noticed the boy had brought nothing with him, he asked offhandedly, "You haven't prepared any supplementary tools?"
The old professor had offered that week-long extension specifically to give the student time to consult his family and spend a bit on aid tools — doing so would have substantially improved his chances of admission. Summoning Element students were ones he genuinely wanted to recruit, but everything had to follow proper form.
"Too expensive. Couldn't afford it." Mo Fan's answer was blunt.
He had looked into supplementary tools. The cheaper ones easily ran in the hundreds of thousands; the better ones crept into the millions. Everything Mo Fan owned of any real value was the Sickle-Bone Shield — and that was strictly reserved for keeping him alive.
"Very well, then. Let's begin." The old professor let the matter drop.
Nearby, young master Luo Song couldn't quite hold back a smirk. He leaned toward his butler and murmured, "Old Li, this fellow is quite a character. Can't afford tools, but still picks Summoning Element? Any other element would serve him better."
Luo Song, whatever else he was, had grown up among the privileged and seen the world.
Summoning and Library Element were arguably the two most ruinously expensive elements of all. The power gap between Summoned Beasts was enormous — at their weakest, they were less useful than a watchdog; at their strongest, they could match a Demon-Beast. And that strength came from two sources: one's own cultivation, and one's willingness to burn through resources.
"He's already started," Old Li said with a quiet cough.
Luo Song fell silent. Privately, he was still baffled — just how impoverished did a family have to be for a student to not afford even an aid tool for his entrance exam? Were those things even that costly?
Mo Fan had already closed his eyes and was slowly drawing his Summoning Element Star Motes into formation.
Summoning Element Stardust was transparent, shot through at intervals with a faint shimmer of moonlight. As Mo Fan arranged the inner Star Motes in their proper sequence, that pale lunar radiance grew more vivid; the Star Trail formed by seven connected motes traced the shape of a thin crescent moon.
The Star Trail manifested, encircling Mo Fan's body.
It looked like a moonlit cutting edge — a blade of silver light that slowly tore open a rift in ordinary space, a fissure leading to another plane entirely.
Mo Fan's eyes opened. His pupils had taken on a vast, fathomless quality. His body stood in the Trial Arena, but his soul had already slipped away to some other, mysterious realm.
A black corridor. A moonlit dimensional gate. It was as though Mo Fan had burst from a pitch-dark, narrow cave into a sudden radiant expanse — an entirely new landmass unfurling before his eyes.
Like a mirage, it was right there in front of him and yet impossibly distant, as though he were a god suspended in a dream, gazing quietly down at the landscape spread below.
"Don't forget to use your Mental Intent to persuade whichever creature you choose." The old professor's voice drifted over, pulling Mo Fan back from the edge of his wonder.
Mo Fan was well aware: the time his consciousness could linger in the Summoned Beast Plane was extremely limited. Fail to lock on to a target quickly, and the entire summoning would be wasted.
Mental Intent surged outward, crossing ten thousand meters in an instant. He could feel himself hurtling across that dreamlike landscape, leaving behind every creature sprinting at full speed on the plains below — they vanished behind him in moments, swallowed by the horizon.
*"Awoooooooo—"*
From a solitary, jagged peak that jutted up before him, a proud silhouette of deep blue threw back its head and howled at a dim, overcast sky.
Mo Fan caught sight of the Gloom Wolf Beast, and satisfaction flared across his face.
*You'll do.*
His Mental Intent coiled into an invisible lasso and dropped from above, looping around the Gloom Wolf Beast before it could react.
He pulled tight — but the Mental Intent lasso snapped clean through. His spirit imprint, however, began to crawl toward the beast's forehead, seeking to leave there the unique bridge of communication that existed between a Summoning Mage and a Summoned Beast.
The Gloom Wolf Beast was having none of it. It had stepped out for a morning stretch, and now some inexplicable mental assault had come raining down on it.
"Be gentle. Keep in mind — you and your summoned creature are not in a master-servant relationship. You are using the power of the dimensional rift to *request* that it cross from its plane to yours and fight alongside you. That means reaching a mutual agreement, not forcing a binding." The old professor was clearly a teacher of genuine conscience; even though Mo Fan hadn't yet enrolled, he offered guidance throughout the summoning process.
Mo Fan took the advice to heart and eased back on the forceful second attempt.
Each failed bid to brand a creature with a spirit imprint drained a Mage's Magical Energy. Mo Fan's Summoning Stardust was only at the third tier — he couldn't afford many failures.
As Tang Yue had told him, once a spirit imprint successfully appeared on the wandering Summoned Beast's forehead, the summoning was complete.
The first spirit imprint had clearly failed. He'd shaped his Mental Intent into a lasso — and to any creature, a lasso meant kidnapping.
For the second attempt, Mo Fan reshaped the imprint into a wash of gentle light and let it drift softly over the still-stubborn Gloom Wolf Beast.
Sure enough. This one responded to kindness, not force.
The spirit imprint took hold on the beast's forehead.
That imprint was also the bridge connecting the two planes. The moment Mo Fan began the final step of the summoning — the call itself — his consciousness snapped away from that half-real, half-illusory landmass and surged back into the training ground in an instant.
Mo Fan opened his eyes. The bald examiner who had just raised his teacup was still mid-sip.
He had closed his eyes when the man first lifted that cup...
What felt like a sweeping voyage through another world had, in real time, barely lasted a heartbeat.
The moonlit Star Trail had not vanished the way other elements' formations did. It remained — a spatial rift torn between two planes — and through it, the Gloom Wolf Beast bearing Mo Fan's spirit imprint poked its deep-blue, somewhat fearsome wolf's head through with wary curiosity.
When it spotted Mo Fan, something in it seemed to settle.
It stepped straight out through the pale moonlit gap in the Star Trail, came to stand at Mo Fan's side, and swept those gloom-blue eyes slowly across the room.
"A Gloom Wolf Beast?! How can anyone possibly summon a Gloom Wolf Beast on their *first* try?!" The bald Examiner Li's voice rang with undisguised shock.