Daughter of the Storm
"It's actually *her*?" Shen Shanhe stared in disbelief at the striking young woman already making her way toward the arena entrance.
Bai Cangfeng had frozen as well.
As scions of the great magical families, they all knew exactly who she was — what none of them had expected was that even she would step forward.
Murmurs erupted across the stands in wave after wave. No one had anticipated that the final challenger to emerge would be a woman of such breathtaking beauty.
She was someone most of the crowd already knew about. On her very first day of enrollment, she had drawn gasps from men all across campus, and within days the word had spread everywhere, elevating her to the status of campus goddess.
Mo Fan was not the type to follow campus gossip — yet even he had heard his dormmates mention this woman during those late-night conversations when the hour was deep, the hormones were flowing, and the imagination ran wild.
As she stepped into the Beast Cage, he found himself studying her with genuine attention.
He discovered that everything he had heard about her fell short of the reality. Her beauty was profound and undeniable, and the composed, aristocratic air she carried gave her the quality of something meant to be admired from a distance rather than approached — which, paradoxically, made it all the more maddening.
*Girls from the big city really are something else. A woman like this — I'd give up anything to bring her home.*
**"Grrrr——!!"**
The Gloom Wolf Beast was clearly incapable of appreciating female beauty. Its glassy green eyes locked onto Mu Nujiao, radiating deep wariness and hostility.
It had sensed, unmistakably, that this woman was nothing like the run-of-the-mill challengers from before.
"You're Mu Nujiao?" Mo Fan looked at her with unconcealed curiosity.
Mu Nujiao gave a slight nod. No emotion crossed her face beyond a flat readiness to fight.
Beautiful as she was, her bright, moon-clear eyes held a blade-like sharpness utterly at odds with the gentleness her features implied. The woman who had been dubbed a goddess within days of arriving clearly was not someone to trifle with.
"Let's make a deal," said Mo Fan, carefully maintaining his distance — just in case she decided to strike mid-conversation, though surely a woman that beautiful wouldn't do something like that.
A trace of puzzlement flickered through Mu Nujiao's eyes.
What was there to deal about at this point? In truth, she had never intended to compete in the Beast Battle, but events had been pushed to this extreme — she couldn't just stand by and watch her department's cultivation resources be stripped away.
"You're the last challenger I need to beat. If I take you down, I walk away with a massive haul." Mo Fan's eyes gleamed. "And I can already tell — you're genuinely formidable. Here's the thing: even if you win, all you've done is protect your department's sad little share of resources. But if I win, I get everything."
Mu Nujiao was sharp as a knife. Hearing this, an amused flicker passed through those keen eyes — quickly suppressed — and her expression returned to its cool default. "So?"
"I think you've already worked it out. How about a seventy-thirty split — in my favor?" Mo Fan smiled like a seasoned merchant who had closed a thousand deals, stopping just short of actually rubbing his hands together.
Not only Mu Nujiao heard this — Dean Xiao, the department heads, and Teacher Gu Han heard it too. The expressions on their faces went well beyond the word "complicated."
Mo Fan, could you *possibly* be any more shameless?!
Whatever happened to the lone hero who had held the line against the entire freshman class? Whatever happened to the towering declaration that he would sweep every department clean??
One moment an unstoppable conqueror — the next, a haggling merchant!
Mu Nujiao stood there caught between exasperation and laughter. She had met shameless people before, but never quite like this. His spine had clearly been eaten by a dog.
"You fought all the way to this point just to hand me thirty percent of your prize for free?" She studied him levelly.
"Making friends! You are, quite simply, a celestial beauty, and a man of my deep appreciation for beautiful things doesn't mind parting with a few material possessions." Mo Fan said this with complete and utter shamelessness.
"Then... what if I want seventy percent? You said yourself it's all just material things." A knowing gleam crossed Mu Nujiao's bright eyes.
The corner of Mo Fan's mouth twitched.
*Damn this woman — why can't she read the room? I'm being generous here, magnanimous even, and she's climbing the pole I handed her. Just take the thirty percent and be done with it. She's actually countering with seventy? Is she trying to force my hand?!*
"Stop playing games. Let's begin," Mu Nujiao announced, dropping all pretense.
She wanted to fight — plain and simple.
In its ordinary form, the Beast Battle was far too dull for an Intermediate-Level Mage like her — she'd had no interest in competing at all. But now that Mo Fan had displayed a combat capability capable of sweeping an entire year's worth of freshmen, the battle instinct in her had ignited.
Those who truly knew Mu Nujiao always described her in the same eight words:
*Heavenly face. Battle-mad soul.*
"Damn it — the hard way it is, then!" Mo Fan spat a curse as he felt the storm element erupting wildly around Mu Nujiao.
If this woman's cultivation weren't clearly above his own, there was no way he would have offered her any split at all.
*So what if she's stronger? That supposed to impress me?*
*Fine. I'll thrash you so thoroughly you'll spend a week wondering what hit you.*
**"Whooooooosh——!!!"**
The air in the entire arena seemed sucked away in an instant — then the gale erupted.
With Mu Nujiao's proud figure as its center, a torrent of high-speed rotating air currents, supercharged by a cyan Wind Element Star Chart, rapidly coalesced into a colossal storm that swept every particle of dust from the arena floor.
The behemoth rose from a ground-level whirlwind into a towering pillar that reached the arena ceiling — soaring to the height of several floors — with a diameter of two full meters.
"Wind Disk: Tornado!" The name of the wind spell left Mu Nujiao's lips with grave solemnity.
A dragon's coil, spiraling upward from the earth. Wind itself is formless and colorless, but the gravel and dust caught within its grasp traced the outline of a body that filled the heart with awe.
That body of wind twisted and spun high above, filling the arena's barrier with gusts sharp enough to sting flesh. Even the slightest loss of footing felt like it could drag a person in — to be made nothing more than a blade of grass, tossed and shredded at will.
"Son of a — fifty percent! Fifty percent, that's my absolute limit!"
Mo Fan's voice could be heard screaming from somewhere inside the raging Wind Disk, though it seemed to be growing ever more distant.
Not a flicker of hesitation crossed Mu Nujiao's eyes. She continued guiding the fully formed Wind Disk: Tornado, sweeping it relentlessly toward Mo Fan and his Gloom Wolf Beast.
Clouds of yellow dust billowed, the storm howled, and those inside the arena barrier could no longer make out anything clearly. Mu Nujiao, commanding the ferocious power of wind, seemed to have seized control of everything.
The core of the Wind Disk: Tornado might have been only two meters across, but an ordinary person within ten meters would almost certainly be ripped off their feet and swallowed in. Come within five meters, and even the weight of a car would be effortlessly tossed skyward.
Mo Fan was deeply unhappy.
He had known from the very start that Mu Nujiao was genuinely powerful.
Sure enough — his Lightning Element Star Chart was barely two-thirds complete, and she had already finished casting her Intermediate-Level Wind Element spell.